Counting the orbital launcher and orbital fabricator, I believe it is still more expensive than a T2 factory, but can no longer make Enforcer and Scorpion. It can only make the T2 builders and the T1 units from before.
Ah, I skimmed the changes too quickly, thanks for pointing that out. Removing the T2 combat units makes a big difference. Still seems a bit inexpensive, but at least this way it's not just an endless rain of Enforcers on your base.
In the early game, the cost analysis has to include an orbital launcher and at least one orbital fabber.
Do you have any ideas how to change Comet? Its best teleporter unit in game now,much better than Helios.Cuz no way to kill Comet before it teleported something.With just 2500 metal cost.
Thanks for the tip. We tested this and discovered that there was a bug allowing the Comet to begin teleporting immediately.
After playing more Legion in multiplayer, I thought I should address my concerns and see what other people are feeling. I feel that legion may be a little too tanky, has too much versatility in their roster or a combination of the two compared to MLA. It may not be apparent at first since people are still trying to figure out what all the units do. However, over time it seems too difficult to break through Legion players when you are MLA. In particular, it feels like you have to outwit Legion players. This may sound appealing, but there comes a point when playing MLA that Legion players can steamroll everything. We could argue that raiding can greatly hinder their ability, but it doesn't really matter since most Legion players only need around 4-5 extractors to have a sufficient army. Usually, this amount of metal is covered in the spawn area, so they never have to move. Granted, PA has a tendency to snowball in general, but I feel Legion players have too many options to not fail if your a mediocre PA player. While MLA can theoretically be the better faction, Legion gameplay is extremely forgiving and doesn't allow many options for MLA players to exploit. When playing as MLA, I feel like I cant control the game because Legion players already have the game decided. Legion balance is good right now, but it isn't perfect. I hope my criticism isn't perceived as negatively as it may appear. I could be wrong on my assessment, or a horrible PA player, but I thought I should mention this trend to you guys. Keep up the good work! TLDR: The mod is fun, but there is an issue. Currently, Legion faction is too forgiving for players and offers little opportunity for MLA players to exploit Legion weaknesses. Legion balance sometimes feels like it was designed to accommodate bad PA players and give them an opportunity to fight back against really good players. Good players exploit this by playing Legion, leaving MLA at disadvantage.
So, first of all thank you for your feedback. At this point I realize that we should have asked whether people are basing their feedback on 1v1, FFA, or a combination of the two? Anyways, you also reminded me of a way to test what you're talking about in a mostly quantitative way. (I leave the qualitative stuff to the balance guys with way more play skill than myself.) I found 1-2 things that are quantitatively interesting, but not necessarily bad either, and I've passed them on for review. I'm guessing about 20% of my test is qualitative, so I've asked for feedback from others on the balance team in order to hopefully come up with more representative qualitative components in the refined testing I might need to do. Vague enough for ya? (Edit: I was way off on my qualitative elements. Will try again tomorrow.)
got replays? Its important for me to isolate out skill levels, build orders, metal spent, unit combinations, timings etc. Also, legion having more choice is intentional. They are supposed to be tuned to feel like the under dog. If you want legion to be equal to MLA on this count, then we would essentially have to remove all but 5 units. That is how badly MLA is designed and balanced. One must accept that MLA spams only a few unit types.
My thoughts on all this is that the current meta (especially with com reclaim) is very early t2. That gives legion quite the advantage in my opinion. Unfortunately that isn't really a criticism of legion but of overall game balance, the t1 stage (where MLA have the advantage with expansion / raiding) is rather short (6 mins?), and it's true a legion player can bunker down and rush a t2 factory more easily than the MLA player thanks to the stronger start eco and stronger defensive capability. It's probably better on larger maps, and it also depends on scenario (for example a good 1 v 1 balance may not equate to a good ffa balance, where I feel legion is strongest).
Yep, comm reclaim influences alot with heavy bias towards armour factory to fight against a reclaiming MLA opponent. Even with stokes, this ofcourse leaves one more open to raiding and thus more defensive in playstyle = t2 rush. That you can't push against follow up ants with stokes makes things more defensive. My hands are tied with regard to this issue - any fix to reclaim will have to come from uber. 6 minutes is short indeed, but MLA t1 unit production should still have quite alot of utility against Legion. Both for keeping their deathball honest by threatening to raid, and for buffering and swarming against specific slow rof units e.g. havoc, deathmark, panzer, monstrosity, miniman. Testing shows this anyway - only time will tell whether players agree with me or not (and replays). The 6 minute length has to do We've internally discussed our approach to ffa balance here and there. The general consensus is that it can't be balanced to a knife edge by nature of the game mode. If it was ever balanced that finely, most other variables would usually be overwhelmingly more influential in determining outcomes. i.e. ganging up on someone, being ganged up on, blind counter builds, never being attacked by some miracle etc. However, we know that the majority of games tend to be either team or ffa. So if there are concerns and replays that specifically identify areas or units causing problems in ffas and the fix has minimal or zero impact on 1v1, then it would be a no brainer to do that.
So, I messed up and this test was invalid because I didn't notice that the MLA T2 factories were making an Ant after each Leveler. See my next post below for a better test of mass MLA versus Legion. It is amazing how a few more T2 units can sway a battle... Okay, so I was able to get a pretty good test that I can provide to you. I'll also provide my intent and methods in case anyone else want to tweak it to what you feel is more accurate (like adding another MLA T1 vehicle factory). (Initial Note: I tried to match up metal metal used by adding two more T1 Factories for MLA, but it still wasn't enough due to Legion units having high cost causing the factories to less idle time due to fewer units rolling off the assembly line.) Testing Methods: MLA had 2 T2 Vehicles, T1 was 2 bot and 6 Vehicle (8 T1) Legion had 2 T2 (Bot/Vehicle), T1 was 3 of each bot/vehicle (6 T1) I tried to choose/eyeball a good mix of units on each side and started/stopped building at the exact same time (7:52) after each had built my guess and a good mix of units In the EXACT same amount of time (7:52), metal: MLA was 66,780 (1,200 + 65,580 2Extra_T1_Factories + Units (of which 22,800 was T2) ) Legion was 69,650 (of which 37,850 was T2) Because Legion T2 builds at 5 metal faster and Legion units having high cost causing the factories to less idle time due to fewer units rolling off the assembly line) Formed the groups into formations far away, waited for them to all stop, formation moved them towards each other until they were almost in range, the at the exact same time gave them attack moves towards each other. Result: Legion had 3,605 metal remaining Breakdown: Conclusions: Legion's higher unit costs effectively increase their factory efficiencies When I tested with equal factory counts, Legion overall efficiency was +17.7%, T2 was +18.2%, and T1 was +17.1% (including how Legion T2 Factories build at 5 metal faster) If I were to add a third vehicle factory to MLA, then MLA metal total would be 73,305 (+32 ANTs and +5 Infernos) This would represent the scenario where MLA expanded 5% more than Legion. I think this would have resulted in a small net win for MLA (Feel free to test this yourself) Information to keep in mind: When MLA is undertaking a massive assault, like the one in the video, it is obvious that the most viable T2 choice against MLA and Legion is always the Leveler. Though there are things that we wish we could change for MLA, a frequent topic, we collectively agree that the best choice is to not touch MLA. Though we try to create Legion unit roles and mechanics to make the other MLA units more useful, the degree to which the Leveler is OP makes it a seemingly impossible goal to attain while keeping Legion power and play/unit roles interesting/competitive.
Well one issue I've run across, I feel MLA tends to wind up with more t1 factories than legion (e.g. lots of bot labs or lobs for dox used early game for raiding). I've had several games where I've had vastly superior numbers with a mix of primarily dox and a bit of T2, usually leveler + shellers, or Slammers + Blue-hawks. My issue that against a blob of legion t2 (which feels like it's worth less metal, hard to tell though), no amount of dox can get close, they just evaporate to all the ranged AOE weapons in the legion t2. Then you're left with an inferior T2 force. In comparison against another MLA player, I would expect a sufficiently large dox force to be able to get into range and do some damage. Maybe I'm using them wrong but currently dox in particular feel totally useless against legion once T2 is involved. You can't even assault the base with dox due to again the large AOE weapons such as Arsonist. Also out of interest does the Gustav have more AOE than the Holkins? Those feel particularly devastating to unit groups, although I don't see Holkins used much so it may not be any different... If I was to change anything, it would be to maybe tone back the overall AOE firepower legion has, perhaps in exchange for a buff to alpha damage on a few units, just so an MLA player with a few thousand metal invested into t1 bot production can actually use it for something. I've also tried booms but they're even more susceptible to AOE. Edit: Thinking logically, maybe sparks would be the solution for T1 MLA factories late game? I am aware that this could be as much me not having worked out the right unit compositions as actual balance issues
This test replaces the one I did above where there was an error, in the the MLA T2 factories were building an Ant after each Leveler. Okay, so I was able to get a pretty good test that I can provide to you. I'll also provide my intent and methods in case anyone else want to tweak it to what you feel is more accurate (like adding another MLA T1 vehicle factory). (Initial Note: I tried to match up metal metal used by adding two more T1 Factories for MLA, but it still wasn't enough due to Legion units having high cost causing the factories to less idle time due to fewer units rolling off the assembly line.) Testing Methods: MLA had 2 T2 Vehicles, T1 was 2 bot and 6 Vehicle (8 T1) Legion had 2 T2 (Bot/Vehicle), T1 was 3 of each bot/vehicle (6 T1) I tried to choose/eyeball a good mix of units on each side and started/stopped building at the exact same time (8:04) after each had built my guess and a good mix of units In the EXACT same amount of time (8:04), and metal: MLA was 72,510 (1,200 + 71,310 2Extra_T1_Factories + Units (of which 33,600 was T2) ) Legion was 72,930 (of which 39,900 was T2) Because Legion T2 builds at 5 metal faster and Legion units having high cost causing the factories to less idle time due to fewer units rolling off the assembly line) Formed the groups into formations far away, waited for them to all stop, formation moved them towards each other until they were almost in range, the at the exact same time gave them attack moves towards each other. Result: MLA had 26,040 metal remaining Breakdown: (Legion remaining values are actually zero, because I forgot to correct it before adding the screenshot.) Conclusions: Legion's higher unit costs effectively increase their factory efficiencies When I tested with equal factory counts, Legion overall efficiency was +2.2%, T2 was +18.75%, and T1 was +56% (after taking number of factories into account) -12.5% (?Big difference than before. I guess Shanks/Ants roll off a second faster) Information to keep in mind: When MLA is undertaking a massive assault, like the one in the video, it is obvious that the most viable T2 choice against MLA and Legion is always the Leveler. Though there are things that we wish we could change for MLA, a frequent topic, we collectively agree that the best choice is to not touch MLA. Though we try to create Legion unit roles and mechanics to make the other MLA units more useful, the degree to which the Leveler is OP makes it a seemingly impossible goal to attain while keeping Legion power and play/unit roles interesting/competitive.
Uhm so how did the first time Legion win, then in second test they lost so badly? Did you change the unit compositions?
Like he said, his mla t2 factories were building an ant between each leveler by accident the first time around.
Doh! I read that and somehow it didn't sink in. I must admit this surprises me, although perhaps some tests using different mixes would be interesting then. I'd like to see Vec vs Vec, Bot vs Bot and then Vec vs Bot and vice versa. Try and nail down what works. I'm guessing MLA bot looses as mentioned above but I'd be happy to be proved wrong (in which case, I guess I need to watch some replays haha).
Just wanted to clarify that when i said mla t1 is still useful, i didnt mean head on fights grinding against each other but rather, Make Legion stay in their base otherwise they die Make legion defend their expansions Make legion build 'anti-bot' units instead of powerful shanks and so on. Briefly, these things split up their death ball. And when legion builds havocs, panzers, deathmarks, or monstrosities to destroy your levellers, you buffer them with dox. Legion's counter play is the scorpion with the aoe. Scorpions do not do well against levellers unescorted however. In this way, legion and mla need to think about how they want to position and fight against each other.
Update: Remember how MLA beat the pants off of Legion above? Well, Levelers have some competition! Now, who's going to be the first to post the MLA composition that will beat what Legion is fielding below?
I think vanguard does not work well against most of units, including MLA's and Legion's . Mix in sheller may be better. I am not sure sheller can kite the Legion units or not.
