With the recent buffs to T1 vehicles, and with turrets and T2 units costing more, T2 units have gone from being amazing, to being sucky. Really sucky. No, I'm not using them wrong. To back up my T1 > T2 thoughts, I did a ton of experimenting with Mot9001. Here's a couple of fuzzy GIFs showing that Levelers suck against the same metals worth of Ants, and a group of Peregrines get wrecked by half-the-metal-cost's worth of Hummingbirds (looking back Mot shouldn't have been brown lol), proving that I'm not just looking at a spreadsheet to decide OP-ness. I'm also pretty good at the game Below I'll be writing about units that "need" balancing, that I think I have a solution for. Most of these are simple and could be thought of as "quick fixes", to get the game semi-balanced. I'm pretending naval doesn't exist, because it doesn't interact as much with the other units and IS TOO SLOW zzzz. I understand that PA is still in the very early, fuzzy stages of balancing, but I hope to point Uber in the right direction. T1 Vehicles - The best units in the PTE right now, by a long way. Recently got a speed upgrade from 7 to 10 (unit of measurement? no idea.) Suggestion: Reduce max speed slightly to 9. Ant (Scamper.. T1 tank): No.1 unit in the PTE. Reduce fire rate, from shooting every 2 seconds, to shooting every 3, that's a big DPS nerf from 42 DPS to 28. Inferno: Reduce HP from 1000 back to 750. Ants with 28 DPS would still kill them in a similar amount of time. Skitter: Had it's gun removed Got a speed boost from 20 to 25 in the PTE that no one noticed. Reduce build cost to 60 metal OR give it its gun back with reduced DPS. T1 Bots - I miss Dox I suggest increasing max speed slightly from 12 to 14, to once again make them the quick raiding and flanking units, compared to the slower-but-faster-than-they-used-to-be tanks. Dox: The Ant and Inferno nerfs I'm suggesting would make Dox a bit better again, hopefully kind of even with them. Make the guns on each side fire alternately please! Slightly shorter range could help differentiate them more from Grenadiers Grenadier: Too similar to Dox. Haven't tested enough but they probably need to be slightly more expensive because of their high DPS. They're currently not placed behind Ants in formations, but they should be. Boom: Pathfinding / attacking units is kinda broken. Halving the build cost to 45 could make them viable again until they (their attack/movement) gets reworked. T1 Air Hummingbird: Increase HP from 50 to 90 (so they 2 shot each other and air battles take longer). T2 stuffs As we all should know, EVERY T2 unit had it's cost pretty much x4'd in the PTE. The factories build rate was also x4'd, so the units take the same amount of time as before to build. This means that instead of being 3x (4x with air) the cost of T1 stuff, T2 is now mostly 12x (or 16x with air). This is such a big difference, that T2 combat units are not worth building in the PTE. 3240 metal cost for a Hornet that only has twice the HP of a 180 metal Bumblebee? Uhhh... I would like to see T2 units really change the tide of battle, and be scary, and give a sense of "eliteness". There are no "T3" or experimentals in the game, but if I was comparing PA to SupCom, I'd like to imagine PA's "advanced" units to be somewhere up there between SupComs T3 and experimentals, stomping over all the little units when used correctly - unlike what people seem to think here, that "basic" = T1, "advanced" = T2, and PA "has no T3 or experimentals". In the live build, the T2 units are clearly more than 3 times better than T1 units (I'd say around 6-9x), so they are great "value". I'd like to see them retain this "value" aspect when used correctly. These costs can be balanced out by their expensive factories (which delay the initial progression to T2, by the way T2 factories were only made a tiny bit more expensive to build in the PTE), and vulnerability when used incorrectly or caught with their pants down. I suggest that T2 factories stay around their PTE build costs (7200 metal compared to the live builds ~5500), BUT have every units build cost reduced to 3x instead of 4x their old costs. That would mean land units are approximately 9x T1 costs and air are 12x. Then the individual units should be buffed to be more than 9x the value of T1. One of the main issues I have with the PTE is the insane cost of running a T2 factory - my suggestion would reduce T2 factory running costs (while keeping same build speed per unit), hopefully allowing them to run more comfortably on T1 economy. A quick note on T2 buildings I like the current cost of T2 metal extractors and power generators, I think Uber was lucky when balancing these. Some stuff like the nukes and catapults are way too expensive right now, but that's not the focus of this post. T2 Fabricators Currently cost 4800, so have half the initial build cost / build power ratio of T1 fabbers. They are however, way more efficient energy consumption wise. I would like to see their price reduced in line with all T2 units like I suggested (3600), but they probably need more tweaks considering I think many T2 buildings are too expensive and if they were cheaper they'd get built way too quickly. Playing hunt-the-T2-fabber is annoying, so I'd like them to be better so that you can build a few rather than just have a few T2 fabbers and a million T1s. T2 Vehicles - Reduce max speed slightly to 9 to keep them in line with T1 Leveler: I'd like to see the Leveler as a really strong head-on assault /defence vehicle. Increase HP from 635 to 1050 (so they take 2 hits to kill eachother, tanks should be tanky!). Reduce turret rotation speed - so that they can be flanked more easily - remember "vulnerability when caught with their pants down". T2 Bots - Again, increase max speed to match T1. Slammer: Currently has 5x the DPS of dox but costs 12x as much. Costing 9x as much would still mean they're lacking in damage output, so I suggest DOUBLING it to 200/s. Increase HP from 400 to 600. A single Dox doesn't survive running up behind an Ant and then getting 1-shotted. The Slammer can be different in that it should be able to run up behind a group (or a single Leveler) and take a hit before dying. Basically Slammers sprint up behind and [redacted] in the [redacted] any unit that has a [redactedy] turret rotation speed. Or they could split into two groups. They can be different to Dox, because Dox are better at swarming high-damage-shot units like Levellers and Gil-Es. Gil-E (sniper): Increase damage to 600 per shot, so they still blow up buffed Slammers in 1 hit. Also stop them missing, please T2 Air Peregrine: Their role of "shotgun fighter" is pretty cool, where they can do tons of damage to bunched up enemies. Increase HP from 350 to 550. DPS is already crazy high but if it can be pushed further and then given a "reload" time after the first 10 or so shots I'd be happy Kestrel: I love Kestrels But they are much sucks in the PTE. Double HP to 480. That means it takes 4 150-damage shots from a Peregrine and if the Peregrine gets a "reload" then a massive group of Kestrels wouldn't get a wrecked by a single Peregrine in 0.01 seconds (BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE BAD PLEASE DON'T HURT MY KESTRELS) Hornet: Only has 200 HP right now, increase to 500 (cmon, I want them to cost 2430, that's still a lot!), so they take 7 Hummingbird shots to down - or a lot of Stingers. A conclusion type thing I hope you haven't fallen asleep yet! Feedback on some of the ideas raised might get me to tweak values that I've written down. Please don't turn this thread into an "advanced needs to be specialised" preaching thread, I want to nudge Uber in that direction, but there are enough threads on that already, and hopefully I was subtle enough with it
I agree with the general direction of your post. I can't comment too much on the specific numbers, though What I do fear is, that T2 units will replace T1 units, though. And some of these changes might lead to this, I am afraid. The Leveller might be countered by swarms of T1 units nicely, if it has a reduced turret turn speed (especially by Dox). But e.g. the Slammer...why would I build Dox instead of the Slammer ? Well..maybe to fight against Levellers...balance is complicated XD You already adressed this (Proof that I shouldn't comment on numbers.) PS: Something is missing there Edit: Maybe something productive: If T2 vehicles are as fast as T1 vehicles, they can easily kite them if they have a longer range (Levellers vs Ants). Same for Bots (Gil-Es vs Dox). While Levellers could be hunted down by Dox, Gil-Es can be microed away without any losses in theory. This makes them too powerful and promotes micromanagement (which is not that fun in this case..for both sides..one player can't use his units effectively without microing, the other is pissed off for obvious reasons). I think this problem might be resolved if Gil-Es had to stop to shoot (which would seem kind of right...a unit that shoots long range accurate and powerful shots shouldn't do so on the move).
Although I quite like your ideas for t1 I think a lot of your t2 points are invalid. None of the good players have started playing the PTE and you haven't played any competitive level games so I think a lot of your points are assertions with no basis as yet in evidence. Perhaps in 2 weeks after people start to figure out the best way to play this patch then yes it might a good idea to buff t2, however It's definitely too early to claim t2 is so worthless you should never build it and all competitive games will presumably be t1 units only. It's nice to check equal metal t1 vs t2 but your tests don't really show anything. It's pretty easy to tell t1 vs t2 directly will always favour t1. How about if you use micro though... Or perhaps for a more real world situation how about if you have a t1 force vs a mixed tech force, again using micro.
I've played a few decent games in the PTE (against Matiz, yourself, a few half decent players from the Realm like Mot), and whenever I tried to use T2 it made the games feel much more challenging. I don't know for sure what it would be like in competitions, but I think I know enough about the game now to see things coming. Me and Mot tried a bit of using micro and unit combinations, for example having a few Levelers behind Vanguards facing the Ants. We also tried a mixture of basic and advanced units, like 24 Ants vs a Leveler and 12 Ants. T1 units obliterated everything in nearly every confrontation. It shouldn't be the case that you have to use your T2 units "perfectly" just to get them to pay for themselves - especially when they also have to justify the large cost of the factory and other factors like having fewer (more expensive) units spread around probably means less map control, and less unit diversity so your stuff is more easily countered.
Uber uber uber uber uber... That system... it aint' gonna work. You know what happens when you try to make T1 useful in T2 without changing the stats of T2 to be in line with T1? This happens. The solution is generalists/specialists. Stop trying to go around it. At the very least play with it for a PTE or two. If we like it, push it to main and if people don't complain about how there's no invalidation and it is even less like SupCom and yada yada yada, then keep it. If you can't be bothered to come up with the stats yourselves I could come up with them if needed. I keep meaning to make a Wall of Text thread on the subject of balancing... Might be time to do it. @burntcustard While I commend you for trying to come up with this stuff, I think that this is simply an unworkable path and the solution is to GTF away from it, not try and refine it.
Here's my opinion: I strongly suspect that Scathis purposefully increased the price of T2 units beyond the point of economic viability for 'regular' use, and I think this is a fantastic idea (for now). Why? Because I think it will provide tons of useful information. I'm sure we'll still see T2 units used, but besides people falling for a noob trap it will probably just be sparse use of the specialists units. It will only be economically viable to use T2 units when T1 units aren't able to perform a certain task at all (when you can't just throw numbers at a problem). That means slammers and levelers will be pretty much useless, sure. Snipers, artillery and vanguards may still have their uses. I would love to see how often they will be used in regular matches given their current costs.
Vanguards won't be used either, as they now have less than half the HP/Metal of Infernos. You get more bang for your buck escorting Infernos with combat fabbers than you would Vanguards, which is pretty much the entire reason you'd build vanguards in the first place. Snipers maybe, but that's a big maybe. If the other guy isn't paying attention you can swarm them easily. Depending on the AA you might be able to bomb them to death. Shellers are in a similar situation, but their slower speed means that if you mass grenadier there's nothing they can do even if they are microing them. The only use either has at this point is killing the turrets of a turtle, in which case infernos with combat fabbers are a better idea in any case.
No it doesn't. There's no way anyone at Uber really believes that the current slammer is worth 15.55... grenadiers. It's ridiculous. It's obviously Scathis testing boundaries. If they were really in line with similar cost effectiveness, we would be asking ourselves "when is a slammer more appropriate than a few dox?". Even if it turns out that they fill the same role, if their costs were balanced well the answer would either be "in X situation" or "no difference". They may still prove useful in niche situations, mostly orbital drops.
Excuse me. I've been testing it quite extensively the past few days sir..... In fact, I'm starting a game right now. I'm still drawing conclusions. I'll get back to ya'll when I've made my opinions.
I'll say that I agree with the OP's observations and the suggestions for T1, but not completely for T2. I can't write a full post now, though because I only have 15 minutes to get ready and go to school.
All of this. Plus zweinstein said. A lot of things go into my opinion. I agree with burntcustard's observations, but he went on to say t2 should be cost effective, and they suck right now but let's not make them too good again just yet when we are enjoying their metaphorical absense. T1: Instead of speeding up the bot, nerf air speed down to bot +1 or +2. Leave bot speed. Nerf tank speed a little bit. Grenadier: nerf a bit, give it slightly longer range but the farther away it is the more chance of missing moving units, and a lot of damage with a low rate of fire. That way they can siege turrets and lob over walls and raid structures while losing to ants and dox alike at ant/dox max range, they may micro the ants and ants micro the grenadiers, but the dox should hitscan kill them. With high damage, 10-15 should instakill a single barrel laser, but they should have the range to nearly trade hits with a tower, maybe come just shy of it, but again, at that range their bombs won't hit ants before they move. Dox: Make direct fire, slightly shorter range, more hitscan, I can dig alternate firing, more steady dps but maybe not as high so 15 dox take twice as long to kill a single barrel tower. Ant: Can dig less health and damage Inferno: Can dig proportionally less health and damage. Bumblebee: survive an AA strike, make it 3 hit kill a fabber. That way, 2 can still kill a unit through 1 AA and multiple can still struggle through AA to strike turrets, making them more universal to use instead of not-likely-but-plausible fabber-snipers. Stinger: Make 2 hit kill bumblebees, survive 2 bumblebee missiles, slightly smaller range. Spinner: Make 3 hit kill bumblebees, survive 3-4 bombs from bumblebee missiles, slightly larger range, slightly more expensive, slightly slower rate of fire (both AA should trade a shot but bomber should reach before second shot so with longer range comes longer fire delay) T2: I like their current factory cost. There is MANY things I dislike about how HUGE their economy spending and t2 unit cost is (and those things are tied), so make t2 units cost quite a bit less, more than days of old, less than current pte. Honestly, fabbers can cost the same and have same output since they build first and assist second and are always a high priority target. Cata and nukes cost a lot of eco but they are pretty talented game enders so maybe they should be more tastefully used. I seen nukes used in PTE when a player establishes enough to be worthy of them. Gil-e: -2 speed and lock turret to the direction they face while making them waddle around to adjust that. Makes them clunky and unable to kite. However, that just means they must be pre set up and can't annihilate everything like mo'fo'ing Rip Van Winkle. EVEN WITH THIS, reduce the ROF 50%. Theoretically, can still follow up an army too, they kill their own numbers of things with one hit, and if a lot hit commander at once its pretty fatal even if they can't kite and do it. Sheller: Make the turret swivel so there is no reason it fails to engage and randomly cost someone a game, but in return make them as slow as vanguard. Still nice you will be able to flank-fire with these. Maybe make them slightly less hitscan like pelter. EVEN WITH THIS, keep ROF and reduce damage and splash a lot. They already do free damage out of harms way, they don't need a bonus because whatever they hit is with impunity, so they can really do ant damage and it is a bonus they can do ant damage and with a splash damage. Leveler: Right now they could continue being used behind ants, their range meets the ants and merge their dps line. They are already pretty strong at shelling the heck out of something. In my opinion they could always use 30% more damage a shot and 50% less rate of fire, use as a volley unit not a steady dps unit. Still wouldn't be cost effective but this is much better meeting a commander than ants, they enter range sooner and hit harder initially for a snipe. Peregrine: You know what, I am going to make a wild *** request here, why not make most of air like Ace Combat weapons and fighters? Want the shotgun peregrine, then make it rapidfire about an infinite speed (so it can attack 9 at once but if 9 come in at different timings then it can attack 9 in really short interval without wasting ammo) but give it ammo and limit it's ammo to 9 every 15 seconds and cannot fire till full ammo (t2) so it can be used in bulk hunting/clearing but not steady field combat. We need more air so we could also use another fighter with twice the range of normal fighters but same ammo regen (t2) to use as "land sniper but in air". We can get a fighter plane that flies a bit faster than most fighters and does weak damage to air and land at short range (t1), kind of like firefly but slightly better damage and slightly better health and can hit air but still the weakest air. Kestrels: should have sturdy health and low damage and steady damage. The perk is it can consistently damage a turret or tank from decent reach and soak up damage while dealing damage. When micro'd it can even be made to handle light AA and return to combat fabbers and get a patch to go back. If it can soak up a single AA worth of damage to over the course of 10 seconds kill an ant, 1 per 1 would be worth it, and if 5-6 AA are there you can trade some damage and raid over and over cost-effectively. Hornet: Keep damage and health so it can survive a one-way-run at a steep cost of trading with it, but retain it's damage to be enough to make an effective one time hit, so 4-5 can snipe an adv. fact, nuke, antinuke, ect, if it encounters antiair make it able to trade 1 per 4 antiair so it can still make it if in enough numbers. This means 12-18 snipe a commander pretty much instantly, and that is fine if they are one-way and dense antiair kills them anyway
Excellent overview. Thanks for sharing! To echo what stuart98 said... Can we please get a specialist build experiment?
Ok I'm in school now and I can go into more details on what I meant. First off I agree that 1 tanks should be slower and bots faster. Also somewhere in these forus I saw alovely suggestion for grenadier that said they should be slow firing, high alpha units that have troubles gittin other units. Now that we have our dox back I don't mind them missin as much as they missed when they were first shown to us. Concerning T2: I like it how it now takrs a while to het T2 rolling and how costs have increased, but I agree with BurnedCustard that they went overboard. As OP suggested reducing unit costs to 3x while keeping the factory cost where it is would be a great idea. But I don't agree with the fact that T2 should be cost effective. T2 should be the few but stng tier. If used alone It should be fatal to the user. T2 should only appear in places where T1 doesn't cut it. Also I don't think T2 and T1 should always have thes same speed. T2 tanks should be slower that T1 but proportionally stronger. T2 bots should be as fast as their T1 counterparts and T2 air should be faster than T1 air to warrant their high cost and vulnerability to T1 ground.
I strongly agree with the overall gist of the suggestions here. The PTE feels great, the t1 units are dominating the early to mid-game as they should be. But right now T2 has no purpose whatsoever. There is NO reward for the immense risk of getting them up. For all that cost you can flood your enemy with hundreds of strong t1 units. I think Burnt has the right idea - we need to inflate t2 a bit more in the ways he suggests to finally hit that t1 mass/t2 specialist mix. In the live build right now the t2 balance actually feels very good, excepting that it totally dominates t1. In the PTE build, the t1 feels very good (although the bots need tweaking as right now its a tank-only show), and t2 is totally worthless. It should be pretty clear that the optimal balance is somewhere in between the two. I think Burnt has some excellent suggestions to fixing this problem.
Good. This is exactly what I want. Now you need to support armies of Levellers with Ants. Fantastic. (To clarify, that was in response to this statement: Here's a couple of fuzzy GIFs showing that Levelers suck against the same metals worth of Ants). I would prefer that changes were not made to reverse the change that has caused the current situation.
To be fair, Burnt's been playing PTE with anyone and everyone, including some of the top players, quite a bit every day the past week or two. So he's not pulling this out of thin air. We've had about 3 weeks with PTE and I think it's a good time to give some feedback. T2 has clearly become totally useless, but the overall balance is much more fun.
So the only competent player at your skill level who you have played is Matiz, and he hasn't played as much as you and neither of you really have much experience yet. Perhaps you're right, that's fine. I'm just saying it's too early to say you already know the meta that will evolve over the top players playing for a couple of weeks. I think it's pretty clear Uber is doing what they have done for a long time now, they're testing the limits as aevs pointed out - really good or really bad. Seeing how that affects the game and then balancing somewhere in the middle. Perhaps no one will ever build t2 in a game, perhaps it will be built later game to support t1 units. Perhaps access to the compact and efficient t2 power will provide a need to get t2. Perhaps late game access to nukes will be needed. Finding where these changes fit then balancing inbetween the limits of t2 OP and t2 UP is just another iteration in balance as we've seen before.
Is anyone free for a really quick game right now? Are you able to repeat that experiment exactly with 1 Leveller and 12 tanks to 24 tanks? Look how many WhatIsTheT1TanksNameNow are killed by a single Leveller - no, that doesn't pay for the Leveller. Now look how much time is spent focus firing on the Leveller by the T1 tanks. Now add 12 t1 tanks to each side. My hypothesis isn't that 1 Leveller and 12 tanks will beat 24 tanks. My hypothesis is that the metal cost of losses will be better than 600:1800. My personal preference would have been that Levellers cost 7 tanks, and t1 tanks were fast enough compared to Levellers that Levellers could not kite the group indefinitely. I'm happy with the direction of changes in that patch, but I would really like to see the developers playing with movement speed/weapon ranges a lot more.
This is exactly what I meant. I think levelers would work as a better second row of ants. Especially with line commands, you can just use line command to double layer the tanks. I don't think levelers should be cost effective or work on their own. I think they should just multiply in a way you can't get normally and your willing to pay for. Like, get this, what if there was a new command, that area assisted, where 1 of each of a group assisted 1 of each of another, and thus you can do the following combos in linear: Inferno leading combat fabber, ants leading levelers, vanguard leading grenadiers, ect
That would be nice. You know how I keep on talking about expansion vs consolidation/width vs height? That's the way I would like to see T2 vs T1. Do I continue to expand my T1 army and just make it bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger? Or do I consolidate what I have and improve it with more unit roles? I don't actually have any issue with the pacing of T2 from 61250, from the point of view of military stuff. Arguably, economy stuff would have needed some balance. My issue with t2 vs t1 in patch 61250 was purely the fact that 3 t1 units were so inferior. I actually really like the way that the units work, for the most part, and would prefer to see changes made to costs, unit speeds, ranges, etc., rather than changes that change refire rate.
