Why don't we start directly in T2?

What baffles me the most is that a fix is so easy.

Just replace the peregrines, hornets, levellers, slammers, and leviathans.
And remove infernos.

Its a shame that all resources in this game is infinite. Because else that would help balance the tiers. if there was some resource used for t2 that was only finite. Like gas in Starcraft 2.

The problem atm why Starcraft 2 is always a turtle fest is because there is too much gas.

When you watch Starbow, where main and expansions only have one gas, suddenly the mineral to gas ratio makes it so players automatically harass and attack more, because its not just viable to sit back and tech to highest tier units.

The goal of any RTS game should definitely be to keep all units viable at all stages during the game. That was what made Starcraft Broodwar so fun. Even in lategame, you could still win with mass zealot, marines or zealings.

What could a third resource be? oil maybe or some other substance that is needed to make the advance units. That way players would also have to fight over those resources.

Make peregrines have a really long reload time, that way they clear a clustered area but against thinned out units they are bad. This specializes them

Make bumblebees have large aoe but low damage, so they can do splash damage all over clustered armies.
Make hornets have single high damage bombs that have a faster shell so they strike the ground quickly on drop, also with a longish reload time.

Make levelers have slightly less armor than ants, doublefire, and slower. If ants can survive 3 shots, they can survive 2 shots of levelers, and make levelers survive 2 shots, then levelers are literally as strong as ants against ants but are better at "leveling a base", and also stacking dps behind a vanguard.

Make slammers into grenadiers, dox into riflemen, and gil-e into snipers balanced by not leveling bases in one fell swoop like they tend to do, idk reduce fire rate and speed both a bit?

Leviathans, aren't those battleships? Give them huge health, slightly shorter range than a standard ship, and just a gun or two more than standard ship. Naval actually needs small fast ships as well, and the scout and fabber be one of those, move at least as fast as land bot.

Make infernos faster than ants, have less health, same dps, very low range, they can be used to flank and encircle and then close that circle to choke out an enemy army encounter when aside ants.

Bonus: Vanguard having radar is neat. This increases range of the army it is apart of. It should have reduced vision in exchange. This slightly nerfs solo vanguard, and gives perks to using a skitter scout.

Also: Third resource isn't this game's shtick,

I don't like the state of Advanced economy and units either. I miss the days of early beta with massive armies of Ants and Doxes. Those games were amazing.

Advanced as a whole needs to be nerfed majorly or PA will be entirely about getting to advanced first – especially if Advanced gets a buff.

Right now there is absolutely no point to building basic units when Vanguards, Levelers, Peregrines, Slammers, Gil-es, and the like are so insanely better than basic units.

Advanced eco needs to be nerfed so advanced metal extractors put out 7 or 14 metal and advanced power plants put out maybe... 1,000 or 2,000. Advanced Units then need to be majorly brought down so they're very much specialized units. Get rid of the Vanguard, Leveler, and Peregrine. Change the Slammer so it's a grenadier. And nerf the other advanced units. Keep the Hornet, so the Peregrine is a strategic bomber and the hornet is a carpet bomber. One is for sniping specific targets and the other is for taking out armies. Nerf laser defense towers and/or increase the cost so early game raiding is valid again.

That'll take the game very far to making all units valid at all stages of the game and give us our early raiding and massive armies back.

I like most of what you said here.

I wouldn't get rid of the Vanguard per say, I'd just give it the Infernos damage output.
The inferno I would turn into an inaccurate rocket T1 tank for a quasi artillery unit.
Leveler... I don't know. Love the way the tank looks, but with levelers as they currently are T1 tanks are crap.
Maybe make their turret track really slowly, so that they are great for shooting things that don't move, but aren't so great otherwise? *shrug*

I'd like the Leveler to be pushed down to T1, which would essentially give you some options for "teching up" within T1 itself. The ant could be a faster, cheaper, and somewhat weaker rush/assault tank, and the Leveler could be a slower, higher DPS and slightly higher armored tank for use defensively or against a more well defended area.

It seems T1 is becoming "vanguard factories" or "anti-air factories" and the most viable solution is to just go T2 outside of some map control considerations.

I think the most insidious problems are,

• commander attacks are too powerful, they are essentially more effective then nukes at tacking out T1 armies; they should just be really damage spongy or fast not damage dealing; at this rate they might as well make comms throw nukes into space. You didn't build a turret or something to have your com go to for protection and have no army to speak of? well maybe you really should lose, since you very clearly chose the "lose" option
• there's no mobile artillery for T1, this is silly, especially with the whole assist mechanic; being able to react slower then a rock moves in a desert to an attack is really stupidly balance for the amount the attacker has invested in his/her attack which may include scounting and map control. Player A making every decition possible correct and Player B sitting on his ***, then defeating player A's attack is weak design.
• walls are just completely imbalanced towards all of T1 land units; and if 1 wall isn't enough well 2 walls will probably do the trick
• T2 from 1 factory is just outright better at everything than T1, except vanguards, from a duzen factories
• T2 tangibly costs as much as T1 if not economically much cheaper due to T2 eco

Or we can get rid of one of them and have whichever one remains have leveler stats.

Less is more.

I have to admit that I've just about lost faith in Scathis' balancing ability. Sure, he can balance T1 in a vacume and T2 in a vacum, but he doesn't seem able to make them balanced with each other.

Not sure why we were thinking that this wasn't the case though. I mean, this is the guy who [im]balanced SupCom that we're talking about.

Anyone up to help me balance the game post server tool release?

I am planning to play with the balance, but mostly for singleplayer reasons. Hoping for ai modding the most.

The current state of the game is nothing more than a T2 rush. It really is disappointing. Just watch any of the livestreams in the past week and you will prove the point. Even Meta just rushes T2. He uses that strategy because he knows the game better than any of us, and he knows that massing T1 will accomplish nothing.

I feel the game would be far more interesting if T2 was a collection of support units like radar jammers and field repair bots. Mobile artillery etceterra. The primary mass of your army should be the T1 units.

T1 is being shut down arbitrarily to prevent the early T1 rush. What has been forgotten is that if two players work to amass T1 the defender already has the advantage because he can both, see the attack coming and he can build while the attacker travels.

The zergling rush was a problem in SC1 because, unless you were also playing Zerg, there was no effective counter. In PA this is no longer the case. All players have the exact same tools to work with. There is always a counter. All that is required is good intel.

I'm not a good player by any means, yet I've been saying this too?

Early base rushing is when you march 3 units into the opponents base, and rip it apart. We have the commanders gun to stop that eventuality, you have to march a greater number of units into his base. Rushing does not need removing from the game. Doing so is detrimental to gameplay.

That's a common misconception, but your metal and energy output is a function of time. And time is finite.
Yes, the game can go for an infinite amount of time. But at any one point in time, your metal spending is finite.

I see where you come from, but I disagree.

Of course. I don't think we'd be the only ones either.

My quoted post doesn't reduce the roster any further. How many units would the t2 factory be able to produce with those taken away? Just 2? 1 of them is a fabber? Really? Pfft, the inferno and vanguard might as well be morphed into a balanced t2 part.

I don't think it is too difficult to get this game balanced the way scathis invisions. I just think he is going the wrong way about it the wrong way and seems to be over complicating things in the tests we have seen.

Dropping t2 metal output and reverting the turret costs to double would see drastic changes in how the game is played and how much more important t1 is.

I would love a build just to try this out and see how much better the game becomes.

Having turrets cost energy, weakening the peregrine, and allowing 5 t1 bombers take out most t1 buildings are minor things that could improve the game.

All sound good too. The turret would have to cost steady energy, as in when built it constantly drains energy. That way, it doesn't suprise shutdown your power, you know how much energy it costs firing or not. Having to provide that, well that is just the cost of a turret.

I wouldn't mind having to build 1 power 1 metal for regular build, and if using heavy turrets build 2 power per metal, or build 1 power per turret.

Weaker or diverse peregrine and stronger bumblebee would be nice.

+1 to this whole thread. Keep in mind that this has been brought up multiple times in the past and the devs have actually responded to it.
Apparently people who think that every unit should be viable at all points in the game are reading too much into the devs saying throughout the whole development process that "every unit will remain viable at all points of the game".


Here is my theory: Scathis is comfortable balancing based on what he knows. He knows FA. FA was a fantastic game for funzies, but when you tout that all units will be viable throughout the game, you darn well better not include obsolescence.

Please, devs, look at this thread. Understand it. You are making a game that has the potential to be THE BEST RTS ever made. Please, get the balance right. Basic vs advanced in this state is calculus.

Here is where you should start:
1) All units should cost within 50% of each other and be the same size--just to get your metric going on balancing everything together and not in 2 separate states.
2) Get rid of advanced economy buildings until you can come up with ways to make INTERESTING differences rather than 3-5x the stats of basic.
3)Make advanced factories smaller to match the size of basic factories so that you aren't convinced that advanced should be bigger than basic.

Hypothesis: What if what Scathis is really trying to achieve is to reduce the amount of units in the average game?

Since performance would be awful if we actually had the massive battles we were promised, this might not even be too far fetched

There are many great suggestions in this thread and I fully support it.

T1 units should be the basic fighting units that always form the backbone of your army throughout the whole game (in the beginning you have dozens, in the end you have hundreds). T2 units should enhance those unit's combat effectiveness by other means than pure damage (stealth, drones doing fake attacks /wrong radar blibs, slowing, etc...there are many great suggestions already...) and in some cases enhance your ability to overcome certain obstacles (maybe you could only assault a heavily fortified base under heavy losses (but you can !!) with T1 units but there are some base cracking T2 units that are weak in actual unit to unit combat vs T1 units..so they are only useful in conjunction with T1).

T2 economy should not be a necessity but instead a very costly investment. You only build T2 mexes on areas that you expect to be able to hold for a long time (they could take like a few minutes to actually pay off) and then they provide a boost to your economy that pays off if you actually manage to hold that territory for a long time (no exact numbers here but more than 10 times the output of T1 is crazy !! ...even 2 times would probably be too much...depends on the initial cost).

This would also reduce the annoying bounciness of the economy we have right now that makes it impossible to prevent metal from being wasted just because a group of engineers moved on to build the next power plant.

Come on, Uber...these problems are very important and not that hard to solve. You tried to go your direction and it doesn't seem to work out that well (judging from how you play yourselves in the livestreams).

How about you try our approach...please ?

how about we start with access to both t1 and t2. then we just have to really change the stats of the advanced (like large damage, low health) to make it balanced.

There's something that occurs to me, and has always troubled me about the issue.

Great RTS games have technology, right?

There's some kind of research "tree"

If T2 is made too basic, there's no research tree at all in PA, in regards to units.

On the other hand the thing about research trees is that you make your basic units better and give them more functionality.

Currently PA's research tree isn't offering the other.

I guess, I understand why the developers would like army teching, but army teching is not present in PA.

If this is true then he's going about it completely the wrong way. My post in another thread:

If you thought T1 spam was crazy in the past, wait until a 4x T2 economy modifier goes in! (not saying it will, I know its just an experiment...)