I know you're swamped with bugs and features, but when might we expect some game balancing? I think nukes are terribly overpowered (or anti-nukes are under powered). There's no advanced air defense (unless I'm missing something here) yet there's like 3+ ground defense towers... Which hey, that's great, but seriously? It's hard to play a game where everyone just rushes to build a nuke and blow up your commander. Building a ton of bombers and finding the commander is also a severe problem and given you guys understand total annihilation and other RTS, why on earth would you fall victim to the same problem? Other games changed mechanics simply because it was far too easy to rush the commander with bombers. The same is true in this game. Essentially, it's SUPER unbalanced and again I understand there's way way way higher priorities here, but some simple planning might have prevented the whole issue. Any plans on these issues? SUPER excited to see what's coming down the pipe this month. It really sounds like it's going to be awesome from the blog posts. Thanks guys!
Bombers aren't overpowered, there was a whole discussion and a test game to determine this. Rushing bombers will put you behind in terms of eco and unit production, and its very very easy to put up some anti air, static or mobile.
Balancing and bug squashing will be done in beta phase. Right now it's for getting the major features in place. It's a true alpha.
Antinukes are pretty effective from what I've seen. I think you need to scout the nuke before they will fire, so that could be one thing. Setting up a base patrol of fighters is a good way to combat bomber rush, as well
Let me put some of my own thoughts down. Nukes I do believe are a problem now. After playing a game that devolved into a nuke war, I solidly maintain that there needs to be a counter to nukes that is cheaper than the nukes themselves. Right now, we have antinukes: short range tactical defense. Their range is such that if the commander is standing in the antinuke's circle, you can nuke directly outside anti-nuke's radius, and still hit the commander (and maybe even the anti-nuke) with the blast radius. Anti-nukes need to be cheaper to build, and have a larger radius of effect. After all, it's a lot more fun to build a nuke than to build defenses against a nuke -- who is goign to build a crappy, anticlimactic counter when it's a more fun counter to nuke the nuke launcher? Bombers are NOT a problem though. Make two air factories. Maybe three or four. Set them to patrol right out of the factory around the base's perimeter. As you expand, double click a fighter to select all, and re-draw the patrol path (as well as resetting the factories' patrol paths). Because the fighters will opt to keep killing the slow-moving deathball of bombers, the fighters will pile up around the bombers until nothing is left (takes about 4 seconds usually). To know if the enemy is making bomber rushes, you just need to scout. Thus ground AA is less useful. Although advanced ground AA could have uses in tactical bases, I think air is squishy enough that advanced would be redundant, as normal AA already rapes air. Though I do think it's important to get interplanetary and asteroid collisions working before we start balancing everything else, because I think they'll be an important piece that will affect the rest of the game's balance
Such as having a better anti-nuke? You still gotta be in the same ballpark for balance if you want good testing.
I do agree about the nukes. They are really overpowered since the best counter to them is nuking the launcher instead of making anti nukes. This has nothing to do with other units its just that nukes > antinukes. So ye once your opponent gets nukes before you have one its pretty much over unless you can destroy the launcher before its too late.
The issue with air is not that its not defensible but that the counter to air is air (massed t1 fighters) and anything else is rubbish. Which makes me curious, anybody building t2 fighters and if yes, why?
Do they really? In my experience I get so many t1 fighters for that cost to bleed them to death easily. I'm really curious, I alwas massed t1 and never felt that t2 (which is building bombers) would be helpful.
Well sure, they die to superior numbers, so I usually use them in combination with t1, just like with land and navy.
T1 is more efficient. Metal for metal T1 beats T2 (9 T1 beats 2 T2). http://pamatches.com/wiki/units/air/hummingbird/ http://pamatches.com/wiki/units/air/peregrine/
How can balancing occur when all the pieces aren't in place yet that need to be balanced? Alpha access (and, to a lesser extent even beta access) were never a promise of a playable game. (If anything, people should be impressed by how stable and functional the PA alpha is.) All they are is an opportunity to see the pieces of the game being put together and toss ideas into the pot.
Or to use your own analogy - why throw darts at a dartboard that is still missing sections? Next build will have quite a few balance changes. They're still far from complete, but I've said it numerous times. Time spent on balancing incomplete systems is usually wasted time. We don't have a lot of time to waste, therefor we don't. Some stuff gets changed as we bubble up the biggest problems, but it's still going to be very subjective, especially at this early stage.
ok i hear the logic. but can they at least reduce build time/cost for anti-nuke? the game is seriously a nuke war...with catapults of course too.
All the more reason to outline where the pieces go now, so that new bits can be added without having to tear everything apart. There's a reason I keep emphasizing very basic, general purpose rules.
With a dartboard you already have a good concept of how the pieces fit together. You've seen other dartboards before so you can just use an example. Making a game on the other hand is far more abstract. You can lay down the pieces in the vicinity of where they need to be, but how they exactly fit together is yet unknown.
