Do Slammers need to be buffed?

Aright forum, topic of today: do Slammers (and maybe all T2 bots :O ) need a buff?

The answer, in my opinion, is yes. But lets let you decide!

But before the forum decides, do me a favor and become educated on all the math of this debacle.. thingy.. NUMBERS! YEAH!

So, here is some compare pages, in which I will be pulling out numbers and information to display to you people the horrible fate that slammers have been forced to endure for eons.. and by eons I mean probably a few seconds before they get shot by a leveler.

http://pa-db.com/compare?u1=tank_light_laser&cat2=bots
http://pa-db.com/compare?cat2=bots&u1=tank_laser_adv&u2=assault_bot_adv

I hope those work... - n -

ANYWAYS! Number time!

So, let me first direct you towards the build cost difference,
Dox vs Ant, 45 Metal / 150 Metal
Slammer vs Leveler, 450 Metal (10x the cost of a dox) / 600 Metal (4x the cost of an Ant?!?)

That right there kind of violates the first rule of bots vs tanks right? Much lower build cost for a squishier, quicker unit?

Well, if that wasnt enough, the speed for a slammer vs a leveler is also.. sub par.
Dox vs Ant, 18 / 10
Slammer vs Leveler, 14 / 10

Thats a big difference in this fragile game of balance, as you must see in any confrontation vs bots and vehicles..
With these two major nerfs between the progression of bots and vehicles, surely some other stat would be more useful to justify this, right..?
Sadly, there is not. As far as I can see, there is nothing redeeming slammers in the great struggle of bots vs vehicles, and thus need to be buffed immensly..
They need their cost reduced and their movement speed increased in my honest opinion. Not enough to out-play the levelers themselves because of the smaller range and dps gap..

So what do you all think? Now that you have been edumacated, why don't you voice your opinions on this post? and please, respect the work I've put into this and make your point structured for me, because this issue needs to be resolved!

Yes, I believe the slammer needs buff.
I even think slammer is not cost effective to fight against T1 tanks.

bluehawk could have a rangebuff imo
slammer a slight hp buff maybe and torpedobuff but not sure ...

I dont see this at all. I more and more start to prefer t2 bots over t2 vehicles or air. They got locusts and advanced combat fabbers and colonels too! I really think slammers are also better then described here. They are much more easily spammable and they do great damage and the stats are not bad at all. Also able to go under the water and use torpedoes there aswell. Colonels are great lategame for everything and t2 bots build atlas wich is crazygood. Also the locust are one of the best t2 units in my opinion. Often if you start with them you can shut down important things like factorys, eco, tier 2 buildings in very little time and use the extra metal for another t2 botfactory. T2 vehicles would have very little to counter it and is exceptionally open to this, more then t2 air who makes gunships (perfect counter to locusts).

I think Slammers are balanced correctly.

You point out a couple of numbers that make Levellers seem a much better thing to build, but then don't mention important things like Levellers super slow turret rotation speed, or the fact that Slammers are amphibious.

Levellers are kind of Slammers weakness anyway, so comparing them 1 on 1 is kinda weird.

Slammers should have flamethrowers though. Would explain why they can't fire their main weapon underwater (and fire torpedos instead) better, and would suit their "personality" better in my opinion. If someone could mod the arms of the Slammer to look more like the Inferno weapon, and added some Inferno-esk fuel canisters, I would love them forever.

EDIT: Like this:


I also want a flamethrower gunship model, and someone to modify the old "snakey" laser turret (the one I've used for the flamethrower defence tower in Boom Bot Wars) model to be more flamethrowery. Basically I should learn to model but don't have time right now... but if someone were to make this stuff I'd have a flamethrower units mod out pretty fast

I think I might have gone a bit off topic :/

But then how do you counter levellers? More levellers? The thing is that t2 bots simply can't keep up with t2 tanks.

I appreciate that a lot of you have pointed out a lot of things in counter to this post, but may I explain my vision on this?
Kiwi has pointed out that "how do you counter levelers", and my question is exactly that. You see, a very solid counter to almost all bots is T2 air, Which is entirely understandable. The counter to T1 bots is T1 air, so why wouldnt it be the same here?
Thing is, this is a bit of a broken system. I know its not supposed to be a RPS type of system, but the way its developing is currently a RPS system. We can't simply let imbalance stay strong in order to run away from the RPS system that this is very quickly beginning to represent.
Currently the system is Vehicles > Bots < Air < Vehicles.
There is really only two options here that can be taken to begin to balance bots and vehicles, as vehicles right now are.. a bit too good, or bots are a bit too bad to be countering them.
Bots need to be buffed in general maybe, so that they can counter the vehicles currently in the stronger commanding position.
A lot of people will say that "well bots arent supposed to be army composition, thats for vehicles" and I say Pthooey to that! And then I realize thats not a word, and I counter with this:

Vehicles vs Vehicles is boring!
Remember when it was just the dox meta? Spam dox over and over again, that was the entire meta, and thats boring!
But now its spam ants over and over again, then spamming levelers or shellers.
And while I will say that the ants and dox are much closer to being balanced, there are still some problems between bots and vehicles in general.

Why do I think that bots should be better than vehicles?
Vehicles have an anti-air unit and a T2 anti-air unit, while bots dont. Bots need to be stronger than vehicles to combat this ability of vehicles to combat air.

Im sure a lot of people have pointed this out in maybe a more organized thread than mine, but this is what I think about this whole topic.

I think the leveler is too OP now.
The turret without the wall can't stand in front of them too long.

The counter unit or building for leveler, I guess they are the dox and catapult.
The ROF of Leveler isn't too high, and the leveler overkill a dox.
Thus, I think dox can be used to counter pure levelers with better cost efficiency.
The catapult is also an counter unit for leveler because the leveler is quite slow.
While the catapult can fire from 240 range with very high damage.

However, the dox and catapult can be neutralized easily.
The opponent can mix T1 tanks in his troops to kill the dox.
Or mix the dox to let the catapult overkill.
The leveler is still the backbone of the T2 land troops.
Other units are just support units.

To balance the T2 land units, I suggest to reduce the rate of fire of leveler.
The slammer and leveler have similar metal price.
But the HP, DPS and single damage of leveler are all better than the slammer's.
I hope both slammer and leveler are useful, but please make them different.
One of the balance method is to let the leveler has higher HP,
while the slammer has higer DPS.

The reason I didnt point out the levelers slow turret turning speed is because while it might (even if I dont think it does) make up for the smaller slammer-leveler speed gap, it defenitely doesnt fix both that AND the much much smaller cost gap.
You'll notice that in the build times for the ant vs dox and leveler vs slammer, its a much different gap. 03 to 01 for the t1 group, and 13 to 10 for the t2 group?!?
Either the levelers need to cost more or the slammers need to cost less, because thats not fair to bot users ;w;

Booms or Dox or Sparks, and having more metals worth of those units in the fight because the speed allows you to pick your engagements better.

Although I do agree that when choosing between T2 bots or vehicles, I'd almost always pick vehicles. T2 bots need something, but I'd prefer the other units being changed (with the exception of the already mentioned flamethrowers). Like snipers being buffed or bot AA being added so you can have a more mobile army that doesn't die to air. Dox spam is just way more effective than almost any T2 bot based unit combination, so it's not worth making the step to T2 when going heavy bots.

I don't know what to do, but what I do know is that t2 bots definitely need a counter to the sheller but I think that the leveler needs a nerf while the slammer I think should have a range buff so you can micro around levelers slow turning radius

shellers could be countered by either gil-e's or bluewhawks .. but i guess both of them need tweaks for range

If I may bring this here, courtesy of Elodea on a different post about t2 bots..
leveller range: 120
leveller hp/metal: 2.5
leveller dps/metal: 0.5
leveller time to kill slammer: 2 seconds (effectively ~1.3 seconds adjusted for range and move speed)

Slammer range: 110
Slammer hp/metal: 0.8
Slammer dps/metal: 0.8
Slammer time to kill Leveller: 3.75 seconds (effectively 2.8 seconds adjusted for metal cost)

Conclusion: Kappabots are bad

sniperbot range: 180
gorilla bot range: 180
sheller range: 260

Sniperbot dmg: 350 single target
Sheller dmg: 400 + 15 splash radius

Conclusion: Sheller is god unit

Conclusion: t2 bot is trash unit

This pretty much highlights a lot of the problems between vehicles and bots..

I think t2 vehicle can have a nerf overall. DPS - HP - range. levelers tankyier plus range is better shellers range is good and the AOE makes it really good.

T1 gets pretty much shredded by t2 even with better numbers its hard

I think the biggest thing the Slammers need is a big speed increase. I've seen that with T1 dox, a lot of players move them around a lot to dodge tank shots. If that's how T1 dox are balanced why not do the same for T2 dox and have the T2 dox take advantage of the ridiculously slow turn rate on the levellers?

Also I don't believe increasing range is good idea. The Levellers can't kite for their lives and it would just make the levellers easily ambushable and T1 units wouldn't even be able to get near them (should range be coupled with speed). What T2 dox could also use, but not to such a high degree, is a damage increase. They need to at least be able to scratch levellers. Perhaps make them a specialized unit so that they do good damage vs units but not so good vs structures?

Speed and damage are the things T2 Dox need, they need to be able to cover the distance more quickly, engage the enemy more readily and effectively, all without removing the purpose of the "assault bot" (if I understand correctly that the bots are meant to be used as the go-to assault units) If range is an issue, then perhaps devs should consider making the T2 sniper bots more practical. From what I'm seeing they only do the damage of a T1 tank, with twice the rate of fire of a T1 tank, all that coupled with some range. They're not useful.

Have you try BlueHawk vs Leveler?? BlueHawk 2shots the Leveler and out range it... And work usefull against Kaiju too!

For me is not the Leveler against bots the probleme, but sheller vs bots.

Sheller out range BlueHawk and SniperBot, AOE damage, one shot all T2 bot. So you have anything to counter with bot. You only have pelter and other long range defensive stuff.

I think if we try more some mix with T2 bot we can found good one to work against sheller. Bots have the moving speed to maybe kitting the sheller. Just need to try more

At this moment i prefer start with bot. And haras eco with locustre

no they need to add Sumo from total annihilation, that what bot need right now

vanguard is pretty much sumo as the manhattan ... even so more a sumotick

not really, vanguard has faster speed and boring range, sumo was awesome because of the range also not only the health

Slammers should deflect some projectiles (percent chance). It makes them special and gives them a buff.