42 Bots vs 14 Tanks

The bots took 1 tank down to half health and 1 tank down a sliver of health.

Granted, the bots were standing out of range for a little, but even if they rushed in, they would have destroyed maybe one or two tanks.



The issue with bots isn't their cost. The issue with bots is their vision and their range. Even if you have a hundred of them, they get destroyed before they even see the enemy.

I understand that they're supposed to be for raiding. And that's fine. I miss the raiding doxes of Beta. But the current Doxes are so weak that they die at the first sign of any resistance.

My suggestion is to give them their old range, vision, and cost, and bump up their speed slightly. That'll make them excellent for raiding, not super good at attacking defensive lines, but not completely useless at the first sign of any defenses.

(edit, note that this was on the PTE)

Oh wow, I haven't played the stable much, I knew there was a problem..

But god.

Edit: One of the reasons I screwed up during that tournament, haha.

In PTE dox cost has been reduced to 45, so there's that. The cost ratio of tanks to bots is 3:10 with that balance, which is around the ratio in your example.
Oh, and tanks are meant to counter bots, so there's also that.

I'm gonna go make a few tests myself and post a vid here when I do.

That game was on the PTE.

And what counters tanks?14/42 is close to 3.1

I know, it's also around the same as 14:42.
And it's pretty clear in that example that the dox are left in the tanks' ideal range for some time.

And if you want to counter 14 tanks, 42 booms are probably going to get you better results than 42 dox.
(Well, besides the whole 'not working right now' thing.)

more tanks.

News flash, T1 bots are absurdly underpowered. in other news, the sky is blue.

So. Vehicles counter bots, and Air counters bots. (HARD.) So what do bots counter?

The devs want the dox to be a raider. It could work, but ther's two problem with it right now:

- If someone make just one single laser defense tower then you're screwed.
- If you want to keep them alive, you have to micro them.

If they can solve these problems, they could be fine imo.

The dox should counter expansion / eco by raiding, since they're faster than vehicles. I don't know if their speed is enough to make them better raiders and warrant building them, though.

going bots is pointless....raiding is all good and everything, but the best defense is the best offense when the enemy decides to send all his tanks at your base, no bots can deal with a line of tanks, in fact every bot gets one shotted by tanks, oh and as for raiding....also useless now because radar is great, you can pull back your fabbers (if you are smart) and dox will take ages trying to take down 1 mex =P there needs to be a front line fighter

No. I need to bet on it first!

YO HE GOT LIKE 2 SHOTS OFF DOXES NEED TO BE NERFED MAN.

DAMN ITS THE END OF DAYS

The problem is easy enough to solve, just give them cloaking.
Not only does it make sense logically, it'd just work well for the unit.
You could even put in diminishing returns so it doesn't become overpowered.

Example: 1 dox has 11 seconds of stealth, and every 10 doxen takes off one second.
So a 10-dox battalion can get in an expansion for 10 seconds, raid, pillage and all that good stuff, then get out before the enemy can even see the attackers.
Or on the flip side, a 50 dox battalion can cloak for 5 seconds, mosey on into the front lines of a base, appear at the back-side of some turrets and provide some distracting fire while your tanks break through with their more powerful guns.

Just a thought.

Eh, are you advocating stealth, cloaking, or both?
Also, that timing thing seems like a very specific, rather odd special command mechanic. Not a fan of those.
What constitutes a battalion anyway?

Giving dox (permanent) personal stealth from radar might help with raiding, and I don't think it would overpower them even with their current cost, but cloaking from vision is almost always a bad idea.

It's an interesting thought.

A few thoughts on that.

I'm still fairly opposed to cloaking armies. It's a micro intensive mechanic and will require a lot of other tweaks and balances. Although that's my personal feelings on cloaking.

And even then, all it takes is a Vanguard/Radar/Radar Satellite and then they show up on radar.

The other concern is the snowball effect they would create. If I lose power and radar goes down, then I can't do anything to defend. All it would take is negative power, and now I'm defenseless. No ability to recover.

Slightly unfair to the dox - 46 or 47 Dox would be equal metal, and a few can matter since so many die getting into range. I had 20 walk away from one such encounter, but eight tanks was a more typical result.