The Drama-Free "Doxen are... almost... Completely Fine" Thread.

In fact, I experimented with Doxen with a friend yesterday.

- For 100 Levellers vs 1500 Doxen, the Doxen would actually win with a lot remaining if they attack from the sides. I think they won with a sizable amount left even after charging head-on.

- For 100 Shellers vs 1500 Doxen, the Doxen will cakewalk them without losing many, if macro'ed well to evade the shells.

- For 100 Hornets vs 1500 Doxen, the 100 Hornets all die, with like 85% of the Doxen remaining.

- For 300 Bumblebees vs 1500 Doxen, most Doxen remain, the Bumblebees go down like flies, literally.

- For 100 Kestrels vs 1500 Doxen, the Kestrels did die faster if they do not move. If the Kestrels move, it was harder to hit them, but all Kestrels still died if they rushed head-on over 1500 closely-packed Doxen like flies.

- For 200 Bluehawks vs 1500 Doxen, same as Shellers.

- For 50 Vanguards vs 1500 Doxen, the Doxen won, mainly because of the Vanguard splash nerf, and the Doxen's range advantage if they are closely packed, and charge head-on with no macro.

- For 200 Orcas vs 1500 Doxen, the Doxen would win with amazing ease. Yes, they shoot from underwater.

- The only unit that kills Doxen with ease is the Slammer, in which 100 of them can really obliterate a large number if charged head-on, but that changes if the Doxen surround and destroy from all directions, but still with great loss.

- Ripper spam also does very well against Doxen, way superior to that of Levellers since they kill in one hit, and are cheap to produce. 400 Rippers vs 1500 Doxen = Doxen die.

- Against a base of 15 Holkins, the 1500 Doxen will largely die if they charge head-on, but if they are macroed to evade the shells, the Holkins die.

- Same against 50 Pelters.

- Best defence versus Doxen right now = T2 and T3 lasers, due to their high rate of fire. In fact, T2 turret spam is the most economical, since the extra damage of the T3 still takes down Doxen in 1 hit, but are way more expensive, and only adds 50% fire rate.

- Doxen spam, apparently, is one of the best defenses against Anchor spam, as they soak up damage instead of important structures, and are cheap to replicate.

So I've been doing some tests. 10 minutes worth of gameplay (against pacified AI). How many units can I pump out in 10 minutes? Or rather, how much metal worth of units? Dox against Rippers and Infernos (~2.5 Rippers to 1 Inferno).

After preliminary rounds of testing*, I've already come to a realization. First, what we already kind of knew: If you're building dox, you will be spending extra metal and time on factories (see #27), as well as energy plants to support these extra factories. But not only extra. So much extra in fact, that after 10 minutes, I don't have the 50% higher production power I need. I'm actually very close to the same production power as the tank player. That means I haven't been able to churn out equal metal worth of bots as tanks. I've made only about 2/3 the metal worth of bots relative to tanks. The leftover metal is not as easily utilized as @liquius suggests in #28. I have so much more metal sitting in infrastructure, that my army on the field is far inferior in terms of metal.

*Random planets, different each time. I will do more tests on same maps, but I couldn't help myself because a strong trend was emerging, and what is said about more factories and energy plants will hold. Only the exact numbers are yet to be determined, if they're even that interesting.

In numbers

You won't have 1000 Dox (~45k metal) against 187 Rippers and 75 Infernos (@wondible in #18). You won't even have 750 Dox, which is arbitrarily the 1000 minus the 250 (roughly) that survived the encounter (meaningless, I know; it doesn't work like that).

Against 4000 factory-seconds worth of tanks, you will only have 4000 factory-seconds worth of bots, not 6000. That's not 1000 Dox. That's ~670 Dox you now have against those 187 Rippers and 75 Infernos. Or rather, that's 30k metal worth of army you have against his 45k, because you needed so much more for infrastructure. And possibly other challenges the tank player does not have, such as a harder time managing metal income.

You will not have equal metal worth of army in that time.

All this is based on pumping out units with the idea of sending them head-on into the opponent's army, as per @wondible's test in #18, and there it loses out. It does not take into account more effective, smarter use of Dox as actual raiding units. It does not take into account what you can do to your opponent with the Dox you produce, vs. what the opponent can do in return. It is simply showing that, in 10 or so minutes, your bot army will be 2/3 the metal worth of the opponent's tank army. And I believe the extra metal mostly goes into more infrastructure that the tank player does not need. Is that balanced? Is that enough to still be advantageous if you use your Dox correctly? Time will show. But this is much closer to the kind of gameplay balance we're looking for, and certainly not as OP as a lot of people think.

I've only looked at land balance here; bots against tanks. Anti-air and amphibious capabilities have been ignored. Amphibious I believe is broken anyway, as long as bots can run as fast underwater as on land and use their normal weapons, and ships are made of paper. So silly I'm not going to bother.

More numbers

After 10 minutes, I had about 37k metal worth of tanks, and 27k metal worth of bots. There was some variation, but the difference was large and consistent. I could not for the life of me push past 27k for bots, regardless of planet. 10 minutes of gameplay seems to eliminate enough of the randomness seen on the planets, at least to a point. I invite others to try the same. Would like to see the result from someone with more precise and optimized builds.

Summary

I'm not saying Dox aren't OP in some respect, or even in a typical land game. I think they're still very strong if used right; maybe too strong. But the balance question is far from as clear as a lot of people think. It's not just about matching equal metal worth of armies. But it's also not just about seeing who can produce more, and then charge head-on ignoring tactics, like I did here. The Dox is still intended to be a raiding unit, and as such it is very strong. But much of its advantage might come from the sheer nature of raiding, and not as much from the stats or OP-ness. Dox make raiding easy. And they have many, many strengths that this test does not take into account at all.

Question: What happens after 10 minutes?
In high-level play, after 10 minutes with such a large difference in army, I think the game is over. It should be over. But we'll see how that plays out in reality. Maybe the Dox still dominates.

Question: Do you have too much free time?
Most definitely.

TL;DR

Equal metal worth of Dox against tanks is not gonna happen in a real game with equally matched players.

What time of game where you playing? 1v1?

A mix of all kinds.

- 3 vs 3, about half of my past 11 games.
- 1 v 1 v 1 v 1, a quarter of my past 11 games; about 3.
- 2 vs 2
- 2 vs 2 vs 2
- 4 vs 4 (had one of the most absurd Doxen spam in this game. Over 7000 Doxen constructed in total. 3000 remaining at the very end.
- 1 vs 1

Mostly land + water worlds. Small to moderate system. 1 - 6 planets.

1v1 on a single planet start dox rush indeed is powerful. Outside of this if the game gets into a middle to late game and by this I mean people get orbital and/or t2 factories, the dox are still good but mixed armies will beat them every time.

If you need more proof of this come play some games with us on the Realm server.

I overall think most people are over reacting to the changes.

If you play any one who doesn't know about the changes or a new player of course you can beat them with a dox rush spam.

That person in the pic must be one of the most intelligent people to have ever lived.

If you examine the size of his skull, it is about 50% taller, resulting in 50% more brain mass.

Doxen advantage is largely in the early to mid games.

I have had a mix of both. What normally happens in mid-games is that if a single teleporter can be landed on a planet, it is all over if 1000 Doxen rush in.

In the very extreme late-game, I do agree that no amount of Doxen can stand up against armies of 300 tier 2s heading straight at an enemy base. However, the key to a successful Doxen strategy is to prevent the enemies from reaching that stage in the first place, by constantly harassing and demolishing their economies.

This is why I like your threads. You see things very objectively and you analyse them on many levels and relate it to your experience. I have known a great many smart gamers around, but few can ever approximate to your prowess at analysis.

Marry me <3

The beginning of the game has changed. Maybe this is what people are complaining about really. Once people understand that dox are good again you won't be stomping everyone with this strategy.

I have a lot of games under my belt with these new changes because we started playing it as soon as it was out on PTE. From my experiences with a good number of high level players in FFAs and Team games dox spam will not win you the game. In high level 1v1 I would expect that if both players have practiced their build and know about all the changes I would think the game will make it past the early rush / harass stage.

My fellow tester speaks the truth. Again and again, dox are proving to be the zerglings of PA, but no good against an actual army of tanks, except in certain situations.

this is why we have the Bomb bot

wait man... just to know everytime you said "macro" you meant "Micro"?
because roughly
-Micro is the deep(in unit) management that you saw in SC...
-Macro is the Wide(entire forces and eco) management that you can saw in games like SupCom

Yes, he meant micro.

How do I know this ... muhahahaha.

This is because he and I are one. No not literally, as in ... we are one in the sense of being part of the world soul, just like you and me are one too.

Is the World Soul a Dox?
If the World Soul is a Dox, then the World Soul is Brad.
That means I'm Brad.

AWESOME.

Yes. You and I are one.

And anyway to fix Doxen, do these:

- Remove its anti-air capabilities as a start.
- Maybe increase its cost slightly to 55 ... no wait, don't think it did do much.
- Reduce its range by 33% (so it is still 50% better than last patch, but not twice) - this is the main issue; the range makes it very good for spotting and taking out Mexes, and evading damage too easily.

This I disagree with. People often ask why basic units can't at least fire at Air units.

We don't have AA bots, and people moaned about that too. Now people moan when the Dox has AA.

I think Dox could be less accurate/Air units could move faster rather than simply removing the mechanic at the first hurdle.

As for the rest, I'm sure there will be some tweaking required.

Opps, forgot to add: add back the AA T1 bot.

I think other significant reasons as to why the Doxen seem overpowered this patch is due to the nerfs of both the Vanguard and the Sheller. The Vanguard would have been a very good counter against large numbers of Doxen, but with its splash reduced to 25% of its original area, the Doxen cannot be stopped.

I'm happy with vehicles and bots having different AA tactics.
It's different with Tanks because of their high damage, slow turn rate and slow fire rate. We would be peeved if all our tanks were facing the wrong way, missing potshots at a few aircraft.
Dox can miss most of the time, deal low damage, turn quickly and fire quickly. They don't need AA support.
I like this diversification.

I've yet to have my base overrun by Dox. They're pretty ineffective in straight confrontations with diverse armies. and the Sheller-Vanguard nerf is good news too because whole armies aren't getting splashed out of existence and micro intensive Vanguard drops are less effective.

They're certainly good at raiding.

But as we know, Scathis and Meta typically take things to an extreme so that they can find both ends of the spectrum and then find a happy balance. So my advice is just to wait