I was thinking one could swap the vision range on tanks and bots. Tanks being the tougher with more firepower, could be balanced by having reduced vision. Bots, then, could all function more as scouts with some lighter weaponry (perhaps complementary in some way). Grenadiers already lob AoE mortars; maybe dox weaponry could be tweaked. They'll also have the increased speed, retaining their raiding potential (though in a formation, they'll sync their speeds anyway). Might have to remove the scout vehicle to make this work. And voilà, that might be all it takes to give both a role on the battlefield. To me this kind of makes sense, as bots are the more humanoid of the two categories. Think of them as lookouts for the low-down tanks. One could build on this further by introducing radar bots and various other functionality if Uber so desire. Tanks bring the hurt; bots bring the tech.
That sounds like it comes close to enforcing a "mixed force" style of army composition, with neither bots, nor tanks being self sufficient. If that's the road you want to tread there really is no point in separating the two factories at the start. Just have them all built from a "land factory" and have done.
Not necessarily... 2 vehicle factories make lets say 75 vehicles. 1 veh 1 bot make 37 vehicles and 75 bots. The vehicles being superior in brute force is balanced by the fact that the bot group sees them earlier and gets a few snipes in. It's not necessary to have either one, just a different option. More micro on the bot group side may prove advantageous, where as the vehicle factories built in a proxy base close to enemy would prove a devastating ambush. Dynamic option, not necessity.
Why should it be that a person spamming 100 (insert t1 tank name here)s would be as powerful as a diverse force of artillery/scouting/ambushing in the first place. AND It almost sounds like YOU'RE insinuating that bots are self sufficient?
I always liked the balance between the Shellers and GIL-E back in the T2 rush period. Shellers were the iron fist, great for simply pounding an enemy into submission, but they were very slow. The GIL-E could move fast and keep you on the back foot, crippling your economy and putting you into a defensive stance you couldn't recover from. It wasn't perfect, the Shellers were a little too easy to get to critical mass stage, but it's that kind of balance I think makes the choice between vehicle and bot exciting, you get pros and cons with both and they allowed for very different styles of play.
I don't think that a single unit should be self sufficient, but an entire factory type? That is something I'm very much in favour of. Of course I wouldn't want them without flaws that other factories can exploit, but certainly not completely missing key roles. You must not know me very well.
W Well upon reflection. I do see what you mean, and I agree. If you go purely with "tech" on bots that doesn't make them self sufficient either since they would have to be accompanied by tanks to do any real damage. And if a self sufficient factory is what we are going for which I like that idea as well , they need firepower and not tech alone. Maybe I don't know you well, but I like your logic.
Lots of us have different goals for the balance. At a minimum I would like to have a reason to build the bot factory. At the moment the units that come from the bot factory don't provide any strategical value over building more vehicles or air. This is the balance issue I would like to see corrected. Many of the suggestions in this thread could correct that. Take vision and AA away from vehicles and give it to bots would def. go a good way there.
Meh, heritage and sense of variety, reasons alone in my opinion to keep them apart. If you don't want variety, why bothering making different units at all in a game? Just stick with a basic tank and that's it. Absurdities aside, I think we like variety. We like our tanks and our bots, but right now, the bots are feeling neglected. In the suggested environment, there's nothing stopping you from using orbital or air to do the scouting; it doesn't have to be the bots. Bots would be no less sufficient than they are now; if anything, they're better. Tanks have only slightly less utility, and right now, they're being over-utilized anyway. Doesn't sound so bad to me. But yeah, this is one possible approach. A different approach is to have tanks and bots be different flavors, but otherwise equally viable each on their own (or together).
Sorry, it's just my personal preference to not have an enforced large-scale strategy thrust upon me. without an effective means of damage that would make them viable (though different in operation) as a front-line unit when compared to tanks, bot factories would feel far too limiting to me. By making bots "tech/raid only" you reduce the variety contained in an entire factory type, which seems wasteful to me.
Unfortunately, the The forced large-scale strategy is go vehicle or be annihilated.. It should be... one type counters the other. If vehicle is the prominent ground force, air should counter it, if air beats vehicle, bots should beat Air. It's the ole Rock Paper Scissors which has managed to survive in popularity this long, there may be something to that... And I guess the questions arises, does uber want each factory to be self sufficient? Doesn't appear that's the route they are going currently.
I still view that patch as the best PA has had yet because of how many useful units there were. Levelers were great for taking out vanguards, the shellers vs gil-es thing was excellent, vanguards weren't too OP and had quite a few counters. T2 air was a little out of whack as hummingbirds were near useless, but kestrels were easy enough to keep in check and hornets were a fun unit to chew up armies with. The only units that weren't useful were slammers, spinners, and to a lesser extent ants. Since then, the T2 was awful patch: 5 units useful: Infernos, grenadiers, bombers, ants, stingers. The Vanguard patch: 7 units useful: Vanguards, shellers, hornets, hummingbirds, bumblebees, infernos, ants. If we could have 15+ or so combat units being useful again, that would be great.
Fair enough, but this sounds like an accurate description of the current state of bots. I thought that's what we were trying to change. Nah, not only. An extension of what they're already doing, to make them more appealing/useful. Although the impression I have of bots right now is indeed raid only, and with that, you're right. Regardless of intentions, I'm pretty sure the intended result is not bots being simply unused. But I have to say I much prefer the "different flavors" approach myself.
My favorite patch was when t2 was *apperently* underpowered, they kept their roles from before, except they were inefficient per metal cost compared to t1, however they didn't slowly lose their worth by losing damage as t1 does when it's picked off. I still used t2 mixed into my armies, a slight cost reduction would have been nice, but a rash cost reduction made them OP once more.
You rarely obtained t2, there was nearly no times where you didn't smash an enemy with enough t1 to use t2 with. I liked that t2 UP patch the most so far, yet my issues with it were still that t2 units were way too powerful put against t1 ones you simply had to baby them for their expensiveness though, and that t2 eco plunged your arse so you had to accept the fact that choosing t2 is choosing to stall no matter what. That is solved, the same way OP t2 is solved: Just make t2 a little weaker. If they are stronger than t1, make them marginally so, make the "reward" less big and make the "risk" less big, make t2 strength weaker and make t2 cost less. That makes them feel UPer without making them guranteed to servere crash eco. There are so many things they could do to balance, I am not worried yet, people put balance on the pedestal too much. Modders can make balance. Uber can make balance. I am convinced a undetermined number of monkeys at a computer could. It all stems on balance ideas. We could make bots t1 and vehicles t2 and bots t2 and vehicles t3 kinda sorta. We could make bots stronger through more roles. We could break down and give bots a legitimate combat unit and maybe AA too. I am sure the balance we see, is not what is on their ultimate board of balance. I am sure they still intend on bringing back bot_aa.
