Turtling with t2 mex trumps map control and expansion

Eco should be derived mostly from how much metal you control, not by your tech level. Thoughts?

Go play the game some more.

If you turtle up you are gonna have a bad time.

Many users on the forum agree that T2 mexes are overpowered. We don't all agree on how to fix it, but there have been several topics and discussions about it.

In every other area of the game we have strived for T2 being more specialized than T1 and not serving as a linear upgrade. Metal Extractors should not be excluded from this philosophy. I think a T2 Mex should replace a T1 instead of building on top of it, then T2 mexes can be made distinctly different from T1s with wildly different durability and other unique behaviors. If T1 extractors have a legitimate role through the whole game they should be able to replace T2s when needed.


My plan would be:

T1 mexes are very durable and have a basic defense structure built into them. This will help with early game expansion and in contested territory they would help lock down your control.

T2 mexes are very frail and only operate when powered. If you control a planet or large area you replace your T1s for the higher income, but you now depend on your base and units to defend the Mex. Also, 5X the production is too high. I'm thinking more like 2 or 2.5X as much.

There are other options like T2 Support Variants that give the same metal as a T1 but have an nanolathe to assist factories repair structures. These would be very efficient, but with limited deployability because they require metal spots.

If you surround yourself in walls, you're gonna have a bad time.

Exactly don't do it.

H

This does not contribute to the thread. Your dumb comment is unwelcome.

thats a good idea. Perhaps more expensive mex that are armed, like in TA spring

Expanding allows you to control more metal. You can put both T1 and T2 on your expanded metal and have more than somebody who turtles with just a few. I know, I often fail to expand, and that leads me to just fail.

I believe what gunshin is trying to say is that you are mistaken. Meta describes it better in the above post.

It's really hard to judge ''turtling''. How much metal do you have when you are happy to go t2? Do you build defences before you build your eco? How spread out is your base?

General rule of balance : a powerful unit is not balanced if it is fragile.
Just build more of them until you reach the critical mass.
This apply to units as well on structures (just a different measure).

If a structure is more efficient than an other, it will be used. Period.
Making it more fragile won't change a lot, as players will protect them a little more, or just blindly reap the benefits.
Raising it's cost or diminushing it's production will only delay it's rentability, to a point where it will not be used anymore because not rentable fast enough (or at all), in which case you can completly remove the unit rom the game because it will not be used anymore (except in certain rare cases like single player or fun games, where balance does not matter too much).
Sorry, but your ideas of T1=strong, T2=frail is not good.

Having a T2 Mexe having a support role is not very useful also.
A frail not moving ressource consuming support building ? What for ? You have construction bots for the mobile part, and it outshine the potential support role.
Or you can jsut construct more factories.

P.S. : sorry, i'm good at saying something is not optimal, but far less efficient for proposing something...

It all depends on how you turtle. This games scale is large and the biggest mistake ive seen in games (not picking on you meta) is people try to defend a large circle around your main base and wind up stretching your self 2 too thin. I have a hybrid strategy that i use that takes advantage of both expanding and turtling.

instead of trying to defend one large base, i build all my bases as heavly defended sub-bases. i normally have 3 or 4 of these bases at a time, each with there own units and defences for protection.

The point is, dont try to kill the turtle strategy from being an option, you can have really enjoyable games using a mix of the 2 (turtle/expanding).

Meanwhile the enemy has covered the remaining 90% of the world with their own T2 mex. Also vanguards, they go through walls like hot knife through butter.

Strongly disagree with this claim.

People who turtle never win against players who expand.

Not sure who your directing that post to, but that is an unfair statement, sure i agree that if someone turtles to the point where they just sit in a hole and never attack or expand will lose in this game, but i use a small amount of turtle strat, but im always harassing, attacking, and building units while expanding. You can do both and still win. A skilled turtler that has hardend expansions and goes ob the attack is tough to beat.

That's called playing defensive. Turtling means staying inside your base and never attacking.

If you're attacking, and building defensive structures, and protecting your base and stuff. Then you're playing defensively and intelligently. Not turtling.

And I was strongly disagreeing with this claim: "Turtling with t2 mex trumps map control and expansion"

Easy brian, i was just asking.

Metal seems to be so abundant (at least at the moment) that it never really becomes a limiting factor to production or growth. 4-6 core t2 mexes + a paltry handful of expansion mexes provides all the metal you'll really need.

It's simply too easy right now to secure metal income, and there's such a lack of things that really stress that income. That's probably more of a problem with the # and concentration of mexes per planet right now, but I do feel like map control needs more emphasis in the resource game

Half the point of the post was that it's no longer "powerful". T2 should not be "better" it should be more specialized. T2 could give more resources, but T1 needs to remain useful. Durability was only a tiny fraction of the suggested changes. I also said T1 should be capable of defending itself, T2 should require power to remain active, and that the income of T2 should be reduced until it no longer invalidates T1. These are differences that go well beyond simply scaling the health down.

I kill turtles all the time. It's fun and easy. But the point of this thread is that once you have t2 mex, you can allow your expansion to grind to a halt.(But don't!)

I think t2 Eco should not allow that. T2 mex simply need a nurf.