I think most people will play this build the same way. Will be mass t1 and loads of fun with the occasional t2 units to take out pds and support units. This will play great but as people have said will leave a lot of units inefficient to build. It's like when peregrines were useless and people never built them. Same concept now zaphod. The gap is so clear that players will see that 10x is much better than 1y. Think the meta will have a nice mixture of build and harass with loads of t1 armies all over the planet and the timing of the t2 factory for t2 Eco, which will support more t1 Spam and the factory will then used for the support units you prefer. Don't think we will be seeing much t2 factory spam and t2 air is more risky as t2 fabbers are so fragile and t1 air being better. Pelters possibly with turrets may be the best defence against t2 as the pelter just needs to hit a couple of shellers to pay for itself. Would love to see it released for the weekends tournament.
I think Clopse is probably on the right track. Also, the player that starts t2 first, has to have an advantage over his enemy, and has to build it as slow as possible, then i suggest making 1 or 2 workers. Reclaim the t2 factory with combat fabricators (it won't win you the game if you make T2 units of any kind and it gives a good boost in metal to build up T2 metal). Then just rapidly keep expanding on T1 factory's, probably vehicles because then you will have most value out of your metal. I also think Uber is letting us ''test'' something without making the value's near the point where testing is giving interesting results. If you just look at the numbers, its totally not weird that the player that makes T2 loses. Also, the player that makes dox loses and so does the player that makes toomuch turrets. To me, for some real testing, the buildefficiency of T2/orbital shouldn't be a huge amount higher then the commander, this means it wasn't adjusted and therefor im not even sure why we are testing. If you look at the value for metal for an T1 bomber and a T2 bomber, do the same for T1 tank, T2 tank and T1 raiding bot, T2 raiding bot you don't have to test anything to see that T2 should ONLY be used for T2 economy and transport aircrafts. If the numbers already explain everything, there is no need for testing. The Gap is clear. Uber should make a serious balance test build, give serious info about what they did and make a serious document for all testers of what they want to see tested because otherwise your results will be the exact same as what you think will happen when you read it on paper. T2 is too expensive and totally not worth the metal.
So how about you guys remedy that. Make a tournament in the PTE and don't give away any prize money to be fair. That will have 2 results: 1. The top players will play a lot more of PTE and try to learn it. 2. PTE will get a lot of showcase and it will help @metabolical and @scathis, probably a lot more than (semi)controlled environment tests.
I would do one this weekend but there is a pace tournament on. Hopefully this PTE is released. Be fun.
Late to thread, apologies have only read this initial post so far. I haven't absorbed it all and will need to review it again. However I must take a moment to commend you on how well you presented your information. The inclusions of recommendations and reasons for those such as "so it take N shots from enemy X" is great.
I'd like to reiterate on something we said on the last live stream and several times on the forums... We have not started combat balance yet. What's in PTE is about pacing and economy. The next phase is looking at costs vs power of the individual combat units. It's coming. I promise! That said, the feedback is good. But chances are the health, damage, and speed numbers are going to drastically change over the next month or two.
I played a few PTE games yesterday and it was awesome. It is definitely going into the right direction. We had tons of fun.
Aww..... I made pretty much this post back in January That's kind of the thing. I'm not happy with T2 economy. I am happy with T2 pacing in 62165. I know you guys keep saying that. But the pacing of the T2 factory is fine. A 10 minute race to T2 factories is fine - in 58772 we frequently saw armies of 50 units or more rolling into peoples bases at the 10 minute mark. A small number of Levellers could change the tide of the battle slightly, but not significantly. The issue as I see it is the combat balance. If you were to race to T2, in 62165, you could build a single Sheller. And that single sheller, backed up by your defensive turrets, would totally invalidate the attack by the t1 army. It's always been combat balance that is the issue. T2 has always been powerful compared to T1. But it took the build where turrets and walls were dirt cheap and highly effective to actually make ignoring t1 completely and relying on a race to T2 a valid strategy. TLDR - The pacing issues have been symptoms of the combat balance. The two are linked closely. The economy issue is another thing entirely. I'm not happy with this idea of "When you upgrade to T2", not "If you upgrade to T2". The "pacing" is going to be completely messed with with different starting conditions (number of players, allies, size of planet, etc.) Even in the PTE I've seen a game where a team of players was able to race to T2, get out some Shellers, and therefore completely circumvent the "T1 stage" of the game.
Scathis, if this is about Economy then you probably have seen that the orbital fabricator and most T2 factory's have an insane buildpower efficiency. This means that making energy is very important on T1, but on T2 its a whole lot less important wich leads to easily defendable bases without wreckable economy's. Also, isn't the commander supposed to increase build efficiency by being the efficient builder? Then there comes that T2 in general is so expensive that you can't actually make or use it without dying. This also has something to do with the HUUUUGE metal consumption of the factory. It will quickly drain all your metalincome and your super important T1 factory's will stall because you switched on your shitty T2 to make a desperately needed T2 engineer for T2 metal that you needed while making the T2 engineer. I really like T1 fighting, T1 killing and T2 rush to be a HUGE risk without all that much reward if you don´t have T1 and some mapcontrol. At the moment, the numbers are working against this whole idea because the T2 factory is almost useless, that shouldn´t be the case in my opinion. I think T2 should get more and more rewarding depending on howlong the game is being played. For example in 10 minutes its a littlebit to early to have ideal results, altough it might be possible, while 15 minutes will make a balanced T2 build while fighting and 20 minutes is a little toolate because your opponent might be sitting on T2 mex for a few minutes or somethingl. So feedback on the economy i´d say, increase energy cost per metal of everything thats more efficient then the commander. Make the T2 factory more easily managable so that making 1 worker doesn´t take half your eco. If you want to speed up production, assist it with workers, like we do in the stable build i don´t see a problem in that. Also make the T2 units worth their metal, otherwise you only see T2 mexxes and no T2 units. Im not saying buff the units, just make the price more right because otherwise, its impossible to even TEST it in a normal game.
