42 Bots vs 14 Tanks

I'm not denying it. I'm pontificating.

It sounds a bit overpowered, but who knows, worth a try.

I think a HP buff is in order for Doxen.

Raiding = Speed/Low Damage.

So long as they're fast and do low damage, they're raiders. But they need enough HP to reach their targets.

A high-range, low-HP, fast bot is a job for a Sniper, not a Dox.

Dox should not be one-shotted by Tanks/Defense towers if we want basic Bots to have any use besides raiding undefended Metal spots (which Bombers would do a better job of anyway).

But your ant can't go in 3 differnet directions. And need to react to his harass as his faster units get to your base quicker. A scout plane or veh could have you chasing him around the whole start of the game.

42 v 14 is not a good harass battle or test group. Group your
dox into 5s and you have 1-2 ants v 5 dox. They are raiding units after all.

It's taking a bath.

But if the enemy clumps his tanks.....

Then they lose eco on every side. You can't have your cake and eat it too .

Also just to clarify, i don't think pure dox vs pure tank is realistic. In combination they would be far more powerful. I also think people are not realising how many dox you can actually swarm out at 45 metal. There are some very aggressive timing advantages. I have 3 dox on 3 sides by the time you only have 1 tank.

Well then you destroy all his expansions. The idea is to make them good at raiding only and not for battling. So you may have one bot factory producing raiding units and fabbers and 2 factories producing ants. The risk you are taking is that your raiding units do enough damage to cripple or stall his expansions while using the time it takes for his ant blob plus defenders advantage to survive.

Works in theory but I haven't tested it out yet.

Elodea, pls explain how you think that is possible, or helpfull?

Edit: Typo in someones name is lame.

I know it is not adressed at me but can you explain the question a bit better. What are you referencing? I pretty much explained how I think it would work in the post after and looks like he has the same view.

The question is double, how is it possible to be sofast in being ahead with bot start that you can find and surround an enemy with only 3 dox while the enemy doesn't even have his 2nd ant out and how can you make those 3 bots pay for themselves against 1 tank?

I understand that doxes have 20 speed in pte? If so, why would you EVER fight vs tanks? With the unit that is 2x faster than tank, I could kill 3/4 of your mexes and not even get touched by any tanks.
I'm big fan of boosting unit speed in PA, it will make game way more intense which is good!

Well, finding people and guessing the right spawn is pretty easy on most standard maps. There will always be non-standard lava maps, naval maps etc. though i guess. Mostly i talk about just standard moon since you can more easily compare builds with each other without inteference from map factors.

Sorry, what i meant was 1 tank in position. You got a 2nd tank probably rolling out, but means nothing since it's not guarding anything useful. Then for every tank after that, another 3 dox are popping into your zones. You will be on backfoot playing defensive for nearly whole game if you go pure tanks. You cannot build infernos, which will leave you vulnerable to boombots too probably i think.

You cannot make aggression unless you want to leave your fabricators/mex undefended, and so you cannot check your opponents expansion, which is the definition of map control. If you are forced to build laser turrets, that's kinda what the bot player wants to try and make you do.

If you are pressured and cannot return pressure on your opponents macro, that is really really bad sign in PA because there is a weak tradeoff relationship between macro and unit pressure unlike other RTS games. Like, your opponent isn't trading off alot of macro to maintain his contain on you, and can do both pretty decently. Because you can't pressure him, he can take risks you cannot and just matiz crazy expand everywhere since mex is pretty cheap. The same relationship is true with tank vs tank currently, which is why the meta has evolved to alot of early tank timings imo.

So that's how they should be paying for themselves - pressure on fabricator expansion, force defensive tank play, and zone control the map.

Why would you ever fight tanks?

Well, since they have such a small vision radius, often they'd get destroyed before they even see the enemy.

But also, what's the point of a Unit when the only thing it can do is destroy an unguarded building? If literally the only thing it is good at is unguarded metal, then all I need to do is put a few tanks or laser defense towers at my metal expansions and I'm golden.

I'm all for niche and specialist units, but having the Dox only be good at destroying unguarded buildings is just ridiculous.

I know you are really good Elodea, but i sooner see matiz's point then any of yours, because the bot can be toofast for the shell and speed is really good in general. In the end, this is the PTE we are talking of, i would not make more then 1 mex, i would not make engineers, i would not make energy, i would make vehicles. They got good range, good damage, good health and their speed is not terible. Big weakness is that shell can be dodged endlessly, but then you need to see it coming.

I believe your 3 dox wont do anything because there would be nothing usefull to do, unless you see shells coming and be able to dodge all of them and kill of the ants contstandly while dodging the commander. Its a weird fight that shouldn't even be fought. Sending more and more and more groups of 3 however sounds more usefull, aslong as you keep up with the insane micro needed to do a bit of damage.

I believe what actually going to happen is that the 3 dox die when they attempt to do damage and if the vehicle player plays it properly he can do the same back to the bot player, with vehicles but later and better. That is, unless the bot player very soon makes vehicles of his own while making wins with bots vs vehicles atleast a couple of times.

Imo, what you are saying is that your scouting and raiding with dox and if you see a shell entering your line of sight you dodge it and you found the target and you follow up dodging everything incoming while starting to send all dox to that location constandly microing them all into dodging everything till you are in range and start dealing damage of your own, to vehicle factorys and ants. This seems odd to me but okay i underestimated you before and i was wrong then aswell.

I think what we are trying to get at here is that you literally have to have everything going your way for early dox raids to be super successful. Not only do you have to play perfectly, your opponent has to walk into it multiple times - which I think we all know from experience cannot be counted on in any match, 1v1, FFA, or team game.

Most build HP is far to bloody high for the dox to be useful.

And even then the other bots are only barely good at their own jobs, tanks have every tool needed to fight a battle, and have ranged superiority.

So either we need more potent and divers bots, or worse tanks.

I think if you are really really good its not so weird to do it a couple of times and by then it can already have decided the match even if you can't keep up endlessly. The point is, to how far can you keep up with that, i tried and i decided practising that was not worth the time for me (maybe because i suck, maybe because its insanely difficult). If you don't know for sure you succeed you are definitly behind with doxrush.

I don't think you are grasping what elodea is explaining. All matiz was doing is pointing out the obvious. It's much easier to harass with dox than to defend dox with ants. This is me now stating the obvious but I am just reiterating what elodea was saying. He is not talking about 3 dox against 1 ant as such but say 3 groups of 5 dox running through all your expansions killing all your metal. You will need to invest more time and resources than just 5 ants to defend against these.throw in a scout veh ( these have the same 20 speed? Or 25?) and these groups should be safe from any numbers of ants.

So maybe dox are a safe bet, easier to manage then air and cheaper. You could expand straight to his base and then the dox are not so useful as your ant streams can kill dox quite easily. against heavy macro players they will be a pain to deal with. As I said worth a try and test before we jump on op or buff bandwagon.

I only need 1 scout now and then on your base to see if and how i can attack, for the rest im spamming vehicles. In a realistic scenario nobody makes metal or energy as first buildings. I feel its pretty easy AND safe to make 2-3 vehicle factory's and be fine against almost anything else. I supose dox are also usefull in taking down scouts so if you catch it you are ahead with dox, but thats also a mistake that shouldn't be made if your keeping an eye on the scout.