Friday Afternoon Playtest

hoo, so that's why there was no sound

Oh man, hornets are going to look SO badass in a formation like that.
I can see it now...

Missile towers categorically should be able to shoot ground. They didn't replace laser towers so don't tell me that allowing this ruins diversity. Sadly pa is descending down the hell of rock paper scissors like every other rts game in the name of balance, which I think would be a tragedy.

That will be pretty dang epic looking.

Imagine sitting there working on growing your base and on the edge of the screen you see dots appear on the horizon. Then more and more dots. And then they begin to take shape. A hundreds of Hornets with Peregrines flying out front and you only have a few more seconds to react and call in your own air force.

Gonna look so awesome.

Air formations will also solve a lot of issues with 100 hornets being all on top of each other and nigh unstoppable.

It'll also not only help with balancing and epicness, but it'll also increase the effectiveness of our air force by putting fighters out front and bombers safely behind.

Or some sort of perimeter formation.
Like, bombers are in the middle and peregrines create a sort of outline around them.

Missile towers were perfect in my opinion: they could hit land & air...moderately. They provided just enough generic defense to get you up and running, but still needed to be replaced with advanced/dedicated air and land protections later in the game. Removing their ability to hit air increases micro for fledgling bases.
...also you must play TA. They got lots of subtle things so right. That doesn't mean it has to be followed exactly, that would be boring, but it's a great resource to learn from.

It's on my todo list – but not a high priority.

I only have so much time in the day and I already have too much to do as it is.

Yes.

Adv. Tanks only do 25 DPS, whereas a combat fabber repairs 1800 health per second on a wall, because combat fabbers are totally broken in their implementation.

Their healing rate depends on the health to metal ratio of what they are repairing. They don't heal a flat "20 health per second", they heal "metal per second", and the amount they give back to the hp pool depends entirely on what it is they are repairing.

Just like splash damage, medics are currently broken.




On topic, I totally agree that missile turrets should still attack ground. You realise with the inability of laser bolts to track targets that means that a single laser defense tower is essentially useless against a bot?

That is only 1 on 1.

FTFY.

Correct. But seeing as the laser tower is supposed to stop a single bot, 1 on 1 is perfectly valid, as that's a 600 metal cost to defeat a 90 metal cost.

I'm pretty sure laser towers lead their targets?

True enough I suppose, the single laser I feel should be changed to do that, the double and triple are fine as they are.

Right on, I wasn't meaning to call you out. Just saying it's a joy to play and worth learning from.
Also, the rest of the changes in this play test sound/look Awesome. Really fantastic seeing this game shape up, everyone at Uber should be proud!

Just did a test vs AI to confirm:


As long as the doxen were moving parallel, they did not get hit.

And yet now if they don't fire at ground then they can be buffed to do a better job against air and fill the gap for high damage single target AA. They also mean single laser turrets can now be used rather than completely neglected.

Oh wow. ... tangential to the incoming bolts?

Yep. It's somewhat dependent on what gets targeted. For example, if the laser tower was targeting the front bot instead of the rear one, it would probably hit the ones behind it (but not the one it was targeting).

Isn't that something you'd want in an advanced, rather than basic, AA defence structure?

I second all of it.

I disagree with the people who think that making missile towers air only is a bad idea.
Yesterday I played a game where the problem was very visible, the player I played against had made a double wall of missile towers, with like 20 towers. We attacked it with all we had, 200-400 bots, and even though some of the towers died, most of them survived. They were nearly invincible. Bombers, ground units, nothing could take them down..

There are a bunch of ways you could have dealt with them. Every other defensive building can out range them and so can most advanced units.

The problem I have with what your saying is that if you build a lot of any defense they become hard to deal with. Missile towers are the weakest of all the defense towers.