I have been playing PTE a good bit. And I have to say the new effects look awesome. Great job uber. I also applaud the changes to the beginning of the game. Being able to build a factory right out of the gate is a welcomed change. Also allowing the commander to target different layers (addition of AA missiles and torpedoes) seems appropriate. I also love all the changes to planet smashing. We can now smash larger planets in to small ones. If we take out halley's they now stop planets. There are now incidental planet collisions. But I still don't understand what is happening with bots. I don't see a reason to use them first or exclusively or even at all. Lack of Scouting: When we start the game the one of the first things we need is to scout. Planes have one of the best early game scouting units. The skitter out of the vehicle factory is also decent. The navel factory has a scout boat as well. However, there is no vision or radar unit for the bots. Lack of Anti-Air: It is important that when you are threatened you can defend yourself. Air obviously has the fighter. Naval has an anti-air ship. Vehicles have the spinner. However, bots have no way to shoot air. Amphibious: The slammer can go under water. This is fairly unique, especially since subs aren't in the game at the moment. The only other unit that can do this is the commander. However, this is so environmentally situational that it doesn't provide much benefit. Also because slammers get wrecked by navel entering water can be quite risky. Anti-Tactical missiles The sniper can shoot down tactical missiles. This is a unique ability that no other unit in the game can do. However, as useful as this can be their aren't enough tactical missiles in the game for this to be much of a game changer. Long range: The blue hawk not only looks amazing but can fire quite far. Only problem is the sheller (vehicle) can fire further. Early game: In PTE bots don't get as wrecked by air early on because of the heavily buffed missile turret (triple the turn radius, double the health, costs less, increased range, faster fire rate, and increased damage) The commander can now fire anti air missiles as well. So the threat by air isn't so punishing early on. However, vehicles flat out still on bots in pretty much every way. So if you go bot first and your opponent goes vehicle first you are probably going to lose. Vehicles: In contrast lets look at vehicles. The skitter is a scout unit with good vision, high mobility, and radar. The spinner is excellent at taking out air. The ant / reaver / t1 tank is a pretty average unit but is actually great at raiding. The inferno is great for taking out buildings and soaking up damage. The sheller while a little slower than the t1 tank puts out high damage. The vanguard not only soaks up a large amount of damage, but is currently a game ender with only one - two shots destroying a commander. And the sheller has amazingly long range and damage. Vehicles have it all. I don't see really a single weakness with them except for maybe their speed in some cases which can quite easily be compensated for with teleporters and pelicans. Air: Starting air in PTE is a little problematic now. It isn't that it isn't viable it just that it is so easily countered by the commander and missile turrets that I see little advantage to doing it in a 1v1. In team games having one player go vehicle and one air is seems idle. Mostly because the scouting with air early on is so good. However, all in all I am mostly happy with air and think there are little to no changes that need to occur. I'm not saying bots are completely useless I just don't see much case to use them. Can your army be benefited by adding some of these units into the mix? Sure! But for less costs you can add more of what you already have without them and accomplish the same results.
I actually think its good how it is. If you fly a single plane over a commander, it shouldn't survive. Also the main reason for the change was to help against air being over powered early game.
I actually think this was a good move to make sure air can be powerfull but still not overpowered. I do think air needs more attention tough because fights can become pretty dull if the terrain doesn't allow groundforces
Scouting: Both vehicles and air have a scouting unit. The costs are 75 and 60 respectively. Both have the same vision radius, the air one is obviously faster. Why don't the bots have a vision/scout unit? Why are the vehicle and and air so similar if we are truly striving for unit diversity? To be honest I'm fine with them having the same vision radius. But I dislike that bots don't have a single unit capable of doing this. If we want them to be like infantry and to be good raiders this seems essential. Building: I neglected to talk about this earlier. The air and naval fabers are quite different in their metal output and energy usages. However, the vehicle and bot faber are exactly the same. To go further the bot and vehicle factories output metal and use energy at the same rates as well. This doesn't make sense to me. Shouldn't the bot faber be the most efficient (especially considering every other advantage has been taking away from the bots) Shouldn't the bot factory take less energy at least? Diversity has been one of the reasons given for taking the AA bot out of the game. I don't see diversity here at all. Bots like Infantry: Id like to see bots that can capture structures and units. Hacker bots. The modders tell me this isn't currently possible via modding. But this would give bots real viability. The bot could shoot a red nanite spray that would hack the unit / structure and change it from enemy control to your control. The ability obviously shouldn't work on a commander. Id love to see guerrilla warfare bots that can hide maybe via cloaking or something. I'm sure there are many other ideas out there. The point is there needs to be a viable reason to use bots that actually has strategical value over the other types of units.
Is anyone really forgetting those missle bots? I killed a commander in no time; they can usually take out some vanguards too. I'd like to see the AA bot back into PTE. It's the only thing wrong with bots. Missle bots have range and aren't as buff as vanguards but with a lot of them they can be better than vanguards. sorta like catapults on wheels; bots have range but they need vision. a few tactical bots can take out a whole t1 tnak army easily and destroy form t2 tanks before going down. Everything else is fine to sum it up. give bots better vision and AA and we'll be good. it'll be pretty nice if Snipers could be AA for the only ground and air unit in the game.
That is more a problem with the sheller (and all AoE weapons) being too powerful at present than with the unit/design. PA should look back to Dark Reign for the solution to this, lower the damage artillery shells (and other wide impact weapons) do dramatically; their splash damage will still do the business but you'll need a few more for the same murderous effect, and with this simple change Tac-Missile units with their homing single target slaughtering missiles will both shine and be differentiated from artillery platforms. As for the state of bots, I do agree it is deplorable and their line of sight woes are only part of the problem, thought it would make a pretty big difference. Also raider units need to see... Though I actually like (sort of) the missing aa bot; It's saying this is not a game where you choose bots or tanks or planes, it is a game where bots, tanks and planes (and boats sometimes) are all needed... it wasn't that way before and it could become that way soon.
I still dream about units having different penalties/benefits on various terrains and biomes. Tanks could be faster in the open, while slower when crossing a dense trees area. Bot should be highly maneuverable. Therefore faster on difficult terrains, able to climb cliffs, and designed for a better guerrilla warfare in abandoned cities. Oh, abandoned cities... Now I'm really dreaming
Sucks that I'm not home for a few more weeks to test bots. I think with the speed increase dox are much much stronger than a lot of people seem to think. Vehicle scout is 75, would you build a bot scout for the same prod or 2 dox for 90? They also don't need aa cause 20 speed is enough to doge air attacks. The ability to begin with several fActories also helps with the balancing side.
That is EXACTLY my point. You don't need bots. They don't really bring much to the table. More vehicles and planes always provides greater results.
The comments I have made here are a reflection of testing in PTE, not the stable build. Yes the dox was changed slightly more speed and cheaper. But it is only one unit out of the whole set I am talking about. Bombers still own them, unless you micro them. They aren't an effective scouting unit because there vision is so low. The scouts from the vehicle and air factories are just that much better and cost less. I agree the new factory changes make things better on this front, but the question is why would you build a bot factory when you can have two vehicle and one air? The bots don't give you anything really that you can't get from the other two.
Currently I agree, Bots are not nearly useful enough at this stage to warrant co-existence alongside vehicles; how are grenadiers in the PTE btw? i used them a lot in stable and they still pwnd stuff in a combined arms environment, it is almost justification enough to build bot-factories just for them and the ever useful medi-bots, or several strings of them for booms.
Totally liking where you are going with this Vorell , i seem to have posted something about this in the wrong thread previously. IF bots will be inferior to vehicles on the battle field give them utility! Like you stated previously, Hacker Bots, AA Bots, Jammer bots, Scout bots, Efficient build bots, Long Range Artillery T1 bot... Let them make the unit cannon... ect... If they don't have the raw muscle that the vehicles have, make them a strategical build with many facets. The commander is a bot for god sakes, his race should be far superior in the ART of war, and let the vehicles do the heavy lifting..
Instead of having a separate bot for "hacking" why not give that ability to the combat fabber? The commander is more of a mech if you ask me.
I had to check if this was in fact a new thread. Because there are so many about bots already. I list the same suggestions each time: 1) simple buff the stats on dox and bluehawk 2) give scouts and AA to bots and other weaponry to tanks 3) make bots and naval buildable by commander, while vehicle and air requires naval/bot fabber to build. No cost increase, just order of aquisition.
If a Commander is a mech because it is controlled by humans than the bots are also mechs, so... Bots are mechs mechs are bots commanders are bots. And in reply to the tank commander; Johnny 5 on short circuit has tracks, does that make him a tank?
