Making Dox and Slammers Faster

The important thing is to just not allow fast anti-air units that would travel with the slammers. You would need to either support them from the air layer or hope that they go unnoticed, but they would be a really strong unit if you get t2 bots first and start raiding before the t2 air goes up.

Moved to balance discussion forum

Watch the final of the clopsey tournament.

Godde & (someone) vs Cola & Clopse.

At one point, Zaphod says "at this level of play, constant micro is a necessity with Gil-Es".

If constant micro is a necessity, why not put it in the individual unit's AI and let the CPU handle it?

that has my undying support. +1 to someone who makes a UI mod doing basic left-right clicking for all bot units.

+1000000 to someone who can do it (it is not currently possible to do something like that in a mod).

Well I don't mind the computer handling repetitive easy tasks that are done the same way every time.

But unit micromanagement isn't the same every time, it looks the same and has the same goal but it's never done in the same manner, it changed based on the units selected and the units you are fighting.


And towards my point, there will always be this kind of micro when people what to do it, so you either change the unit or automate the game so you can't do it any-more.

And is rather not turn PA into a movie because of the micro you can do, id rather make micro at that level more time expensive then managing things at the strategic level, so that players will prefer not to get involved like that at all (At that level of play) they would rather micro a army, then a individual unit.


I would say you need to adjust the sniper bot, then make units play on their own accord. This isn't zero-k.

I get where you're coming from.

Personally, I'd rather be making more strategic decisions. Like changing army compositions, setting up flanking manoeuvres/two-pronged attacks etc.

Being able to leave units alone for a few minutes without worrying that they'll do some truly stupid stuff, so I can be doing more important stuff.

I get where you're coming from. I just feel that those kind of decisions should be "should I retreat or advance this army", not "dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge"

Very true.

Id prefer it if units like snipers couldn't move while attacking, and so could only "dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge dodge" as a defensive measure if the player wanted to do so.

I feel like the key is to both allow micro, without allowing it to massively increase everything a unit can do (such as hit and run snipers).

That kind of stuff is better left to the fodder units like the dox, who are easily dispatched in large numbers anyway.


Or something along those lines, proportional trade-offs for the micro rather then the current direct advantage.

What I truly want to see is Dox and Slammers made useful again in fights, as currently they are not.

In hyper competitive battles, or in general?

Yes.

And I do mean yes. As in, why on earth couldn't they be diverse and competitively balanced?

The competitive side of games always finds a reason to not use something over something else.

The average player will use what the game tells them is good for a situation, the competitive player wise use what is actually good for the situation.


Its not exactly great for diversity when people who play who win a competition will only use one or two things.

I don't believe it's possible quite frankly.

I saw a player use fireflies for a commander snipe.

I don't think competitive players will avoid using anything. They will just use something. At that rate, if something is genuinely balanced, I don't see why they wouldn't be used for their purpose. As long as it isn't Call of Duty balancing, where they claim to give 1 gun damage, 1 gun rate, 1 gun spread, but really they made 1 gun with damage and everything and 2 other guns that are garbage and in fact don't even have the best rate/spread claimed in their stats, and the kicker at the end is the gun with the spread ends up being that higher damage gun somehow.

Idk what their stats are based off, but I highly advocate balancing games/PA off real stats and roles. There is no excuse for something supposed to do more damage but doesnt, or something being better health per unit for higher cost and being less health per cost than more of the cheaper one. If players can count the numbers mathematically, how can balancing not take them into consideration?

Well I agree that the balancing shouldn't lie to you.

But I honestly don't see what can be done for the more diverse units to actually have the competitive players use them all.

Especially considering meta.

Meta is part of balance. I mean, if t1 units or t2 units are more cost effective than the purpose of the unit itself, it is a form of balance failing the game. You can always adjust eco numbers so that units are useful.

I think t2 should be less cost effective, but their role should make them useful. You can either build 100 dox to swarm a turret, or build 4 shellers to kill a turret from safety and 85 dox to swarm the base.

I am unsure is all, and that is all I can really say.

Planetside2 usually makes a lot of things, and then individually buffs and nerfs until they have a balance of situational use. If it is the best at one thing, they make it only work on one thing. If it works on 2 things, they make it a little weaker for each. If it works on nearly everything, they make the damage fairly generic.

At least, that was the plan. They do that annoying thing some devs do like Call of Duty, some of their choices in balance make sense, others follow the pattern of being exclusively useable while leaving other things useless. Which I don't get it, planetside2 players are hard to cater to, that much I see. I don't get why they don't buff everything in an area it deserves, and nerfs them in areas they dont, and if they have multiple areas just wean some power off of both.

They have some things good, but one or two things are nerfed to useless, one or two things overshine which renders a few things in their category useless, and the more obvious the fix is the more obvious they nerf something unused or buff something that didn't need the range or whatever.

Wait, I just noticed this is the slammer/dox thread, not the t2 effectiveness thread. This is all starting to bleed together. The sad thing is, there are enough roles to make 2-3 dox and 2-3 slammers, if some weren't very useful at least we would have 5 more units ingame and a better chance some of them would be used often. Maybe that is the best plan, make grenadier-dox, gunman-dox, short-range-brawler slammer, rusher-slammer, and armored-slammer?

More unit diversity the better, plus more bots!