How can we make bots more useful?

Actually 40, because it has two weapons.

NO, this ruins the simulation aspect of the game, i would rather see other changes made.

I think you're exaggerating a little. We're talking about stealth, not cloak.

In today's build, until you have LoS on a boom you don't know what it is from it's radar blip. Waiting to be able to see the unit wouldn't change a whole lot during combat. The boom would be just as vulnerable to direct fire as it is right now.

It would just make it easier to initiate combat at the location of your choosing. Once combat has begun only beyond LoS weapons are directly affected by Stealth.

Also, why would the unit cannon be stealthed too? Booms in a unit cannon is a question that will have to be answered once unit cannons are added. Right now we have no idea if they can be launched. Whether they can launched or not is hardly effected by stealth though. Once the Boom arrives in your base the stealth counts for nothing.

I'm not a competitive player, but I am heavily into PA, and have thought about this a fair bit. Here is my opinion on all of the bot units and how I think they're useful or what I'd change about them. In red are the actual suggestions, the wall of text around it is context and reasoning. In green are some more major changes that seem reasonable.

T1

• Fabbers are fine, they should be identical to vehicle fabbers (while we're talking, build power wise I think everything in a tier should be the same, so 10 metal 1000 energy for air fabbers too)
• Combat fabs are too expensive, too high a value for something made of paper that doesn't do hundreds of DPS. I made a thread some days ago suggesting the cost be divided by 4, and the metal throughput by 4 also (so, cost 180, throughput 15/s). If you actually want to try something like that, go extreme and make combat fabs cost 60 and have 5 metal throughput (or, balls to the wall, cost 60 for 10/s throughput). People are likely to use them when the tactic doesn't rely on an easy to kill unit getting sniped, and it's less a case of 'yes or no', more a case of 'how much, from 0 to ...'. And make the stream blue while you're at it, I would say yellow but it's a little...suggestive
  
  Beyond using them offensively, they would also be used more as a general repair bot after attacks.
• Dox are not useful with their range and sight nerf. I would change dox sight to 140 and see if that helps them. You'd currently use boom bots as scouts despite their terrible sight, because early game you just need to know something is there. With a sight of 140, dox could reasonably be used to scout, possibly without giving away their location, and could move in to attack undefended locations instead of rolling the dice
• Boom bots are awesome, but suck against structures or groups of T1 units. Currently fabber harass and scouting is the majority of their utility. They seem to be at a sweet spot, if anything I might tweak the sight from 20 to 25 or 30 just because. They are a pretty YOLO tactic, you either destroy a force with some booms remaining, or lose them all and do next-to-no damage. I like it, introduces some nice possibilities used in tandem (but not in the same blob) with normal units
• Grenadiers seem ok. They're not really artillery, they have to get too close, but that's necessary due to being quicker than tanks. The ideal for me would be giving grenadiers speed 8, range 110, giving them more of an artillery and supporting role to vehicles. They'll get chased down if alone, that's good

T2 has a lot of speciality, which is great:

• Adv combat fabs need the same sort of changes outlined above for combat fabs, and then some. 6000 metal is insane even if the throughput was through the roof
• Gil-E being a counter to tactical missiles is very interesting. Hornet and Gil-E both costing 1200 with the same reload time isn't good though. I'd make Gil-E reload their anti-tactical missiles once a second, so a single one could handle an assault from 4 hornets. It's reasonable and necessary when you consider the hornets survive and can move onto something less defended
• Slammers are in a good place
• Bluehawks seem to be in a reasonable place. In some ways better and worse than sheller, hard countered by gil-e. I'm torn between a cost reduction of bluehawk or cost increase of sheller (*).

That is a problem, but I like hornets. Gil-E are a counter of sorts, but with Gil-E costing the same as hornets and having the same rof, it's more of a band-aid until hornets overwhelm.

My knee-jerk solution would be to re-introduce stingers, make them as quick as boom bots (aka quicker than hornets), but inferior in DPS per metal, and lower hp than spinners.

• Bots first would be a little more viable than before. You could defend against light bomber harass with enough stingers, although it would be more cost effective to go with spinners (which you would transition to when you got a vehicle factory if you went bot first)
• There's now a proper counter to hornets from the ground
• Optimal AA from the ground is a mix of bot and vehicle

We're tumbling down the rabbit hole a little bit here, but I'd go further: Use the current spinner stats as the stinger. Use the stinger stats as suggested above, as the spinner. Use a 'lighter' model for the spinner (it's weak and as fast as a boom bot after all). Use the old spinner model with a new unit, maybe AA and anti-tactical missile combo (or whatever). If another anti-tactical missile unit is introduced, then lower bluehawk cost instead of increase sheller as debated above (starred).

I really don't understand why bots are unable to fight against air. It makes bot first stupid, because ANY other factory built in its stead will beat bots. Dunno what else to say, having them as a supplement to vehicle isn't enough to make them viable. They're either going to be micro heavy as combat fabbers reclaim enemy units/buildings, or micro heavy when used to flank t2 tanks.

If bots are light raiders, i agree with Pendaelose's changes, stealth should be a thing on some of the bot units. However, here is a thought, if bots are a raiding unit that attacks unguarded expansion, maybe we are looking at the numbers wrong? You don't send large groups of 40-50 in a raiding party, you send 5-10. And a major issue with attacking defended stuff is when you send so many dox its hard to miss hitting at least 1.

Why not try this

• increase production time of bots (as to be not so cheap)
• Increase damage significantly (think inferno with legs) but keep the short range (even make it shorter if necessary)
• increase speed to outrun bomber aoe since we lost the aa bot
• make bots harder to hit
• make turret turn speeds slower as for a bot to outrun them when circleing
• stealth is a must.

The result is something too expensive to build in bulk (which is fine since we don want 50 bots grouped up right?) but strong enough to micro on raids in relatively open areas. You cant really attack a wall of turrets, but you could circle a single or few closely grouped turrets since you could outrun its turn speed. Your attacks increased damage means you are viable to attack small groups of lone vehicles if you can some how get in range. Thoughts?

Did I mention my favorite unit in the game is the Slammer, and that I can't use them because bots suck?

Don't be silly. Slammers are currently fine, and the additional cost is only 800 if you get a bot factory solely to tech up.

In the balance i suggested... (everything in the post is regarding the balance I suggested)

You could (and probably would) still use small groups of 5-10 for quick raiding and they could destroy mex or tear up some unprotected buildings then feint away before the enemy retaliates. The incentive to use lots of small groups is a result of their severe weakness to AoE and clustering 50 together will do damage quickly, but you risk loosing all 50 at once to just a few bombers.

However, bots still need to be cheap because if Tanks and Air can both defeat bots in direct combat then bots are too weak to play a meaningful role in combat. Even fantastic raiding does not justify a whole factory when that raid is easily defeated by absolutely anything and the factory offers nothing else.

Obsolete bots would mean we're only looking at Air VS Tanks. A balance with only two sides is unrewarding and stale, but it can be fixed by creating a soft RPS. Air > Bots > Tanks > Air makes a complete loop where every factory has value. Allowing bots to be built in bulk and giving Ant's massive overkill against bots means that even with their individually weak stats they can still win in a direct fight. A working RPS between factories combined with the early game means to build 2 factories means we have much more interesting early game conflicts using combined arms.

By themselves every factory would have a critical flaw, Bombers would lack the DPS to engage spinners, Bots lack AA completely, and tanks would be too slow firing to engage Dox. But you could mix and match them to great effect. For example,

Bot and Vehicle factories together.

• Ants would be able to protect your Dox from fast firing low DPS weapons like the reworked pelter or the inferno.
• Spinners would protect your Dox from bombers.
• By far the bulk of your raw DPS would come from the cheap and frail, but deadly Dox, but they need escorting to do more than a quick raid.
• As a mixed force they are slow moving than just bots, but offer huge DPS and strong survivability by pairing repair bots with tanks.

Vehicle and Air factories together.

• You rely on Ants for most of your DPS and destroying AA while AoE bombers protect your tanks from enemy Dox rushes.
• A mix of Spinners and interceptors maintain your strong air superiority.
• Infernos and bombers protect your base from Dox rushes while your main army is away.
• This pair would be flexible, but would need more coordination than all ground forces. The attack would move at tank speeds with air playing backup.

Air and Bot together.

• Your interceptors protect your Dox from bombers while your Dox deliver the bulk of the DPS.
• You would be weak against entrenched positions with pelters and AA, but you are fast enough to go around and chose a more favorable fight.
• Dox are already fast and mobile, with stealth they would be fantastic raiders. Aircraft are ultra-mobile and could be used to support your Dox at the last second so that you don't give up your stealth advantage.

edit:some words happened, and I enjoy formatting.

Hmm. Well maybe if we made bots a bit more durable, boost the weapons a bit, slow them down to compensate, maybe stick them on whee-OH WAIT.

You do not understand. A boom that chooses its combat location has already won. That's the entire function of the boom. It finds its ideal location and... you know. Giving it stealth represents a HUGE buff.

Please stop thinking this way. When a factory is missing some kind of essential utility against another factory type, then it needs SOMETHING ELSE to even the score. Allowing RPS like this is unacceptable.

I've already agreed in a couple places that other bots don't need stealth in the same way I feel that Dox need stealth as raiders. I'm certainly not arguing that Booms NEED stealth...

However, I'm still not 100% convinced that stealth on other close range units is that big of a deal.

The only thing stealth offers is that IF your enemy has completely failed to patrol his ground then you can attack without warning, but once the attack has started it won't give you any additional benefit. If you are attacking a completely undefended location then popping up on radar for 5 seconds first still won't give your enemy time to react. Stealth didn't give the boom that quick victory, an enemy not even trying to defend his territory gave you that victory.

No. I'm sorry, and I really don't want to be confrontational in any of this, but I simply disagree with you here. There is absolutely nothing wrong with creating rock paper scissors relationships in units, or even factories, and making sure that a factory serves a specific utility against another factory is one way to make sure that at least 2 out of 3 factories gets built.

A rock paper scissors doesn't need to be a collection of diamond counters, but if you want all 3 factories to be equally valid through the entire game it is unavoidable that some units will have a A > B > C > A relationship. The closest you can get to avoiding it in factories is if all three factories contain units that counter each of the other factories... it's still a RPS, but it's been flipped to individual units instead of classes of units.

"then it needs SOMETHING ELSE to even the score" doesn't ever work. It keeps failing in this build and all the other builds because at the end of the day winning in combat matters a lot more than being fast or having specialty units. The best you can get with that line of thinking is that we have an important factory (vehicles) and a factory that we build once we want a few specialty units (bots).

For both factories to be equally viable through the long haul of the game they both need to be NEEDED... not just marginally preferable under select circumstance.

edit: some words.

The problem with this is it means that you're forced into one playstyle.

Why is Zero-K the most popular spring game? Why is StarCraft as popular as it is despite having a UI that the dinosaurs would think ancient? Because they're very strategy neutral games with a wide variety of viable playstyles. Marine marauder medivac. Mech. Cannon rush. 6 pool. 12 pool. You can make just about anything work if you're skilled enough. Sure, some play styles may require less skill, but if you know what you're doing, you can make anything work. If this wasn't the case, StarCraft wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is. People don't like being forced into one play style, which is what you're doing.

I'm not saying that bots and tanks should be identical. But making both viable doesn't mean that they're both identical. There are ways to diversify them that mean that winning with bots means playing very differently than if you were using vehicles. This helps with diversity as it means that instead of 1 play style, you have 3. This makes the game more interesting both to players and to viewers.

tl;dr This direction will hurt the game.

You make me laugh, Scathis. I use mixed groups almost exclusively now. It's a waste of mex. Yeah, sure a large group of mixed units is better than pure ants (as it has been for a few months now)....but in a 1v1 or on a planet with little metal? Forget it.

It is exactly what i tried to say before but better explained.
The game has to bring tools, not instructions for use

Are you talking about the current unfinished and bad balance, or the proposed balance?

Since I cannot play the proposed balance, I'm speaking of the current teeter-totter balance with direct upgrades.

The proposed balance? Is that the one that does the following:

Make T2 a Strategic decision instead of a mandatory one
Makes Bots, Vehicles, Air, or Naval an equally viable start
Gives each player a variety of tools or options to use to fight every unit on the battlefield effectively and efficiently.

The problem is that you say that you can only start the entire game with one factory type.

What's so hard about building more then 1 factory type?

Have you tried a naval factory start?

Yea I have, the second factory I build is a Air factory, about 30 seconds later.

I don't get the issue with having more then 1 factory type?