We have this thing called the Dox now.....

Hmm, then why is no one using them? Maybe no one has tried it yet? Or maybe the single-turret could use a rate-of-fire increase? I really can't get any more specific than that, unfortunately, as the game isn't working for me atm.

Up their price to 60, remove anti-air capability. Their naval is pretty alright, their movement and everything else is pretty alright.

If left the same, lower their movement speed a little bit. They are 20, too extreme, make them 18-17?

...They make water maps almost useless if there is enough land to build a factory on. I might have missed something here but please tell me their ability to pull jesus stunts and walk on water will be pulled??! I know the lava thing is a bug, but do you intend on keeping bots ability to walk on water? Hope not. Just had a lovely navy wiped out by the typical 300 bots

In the PTE the dox go *under water* and can only fire their weapon in *very shallow water* so they aren't really a threat to naval any more.

Slammers still are though as they have torps!

Wait.. so did they used to walk ON TOP OF water? I need to find out how if so... my hover tank in Statera might finally be able to cross water!

I'm usually not the one for strong words, but the new Dox metagame is complete and utter bull****. Every single game is Dox spam. Every. Single. Game. And multi-planet games suck just as much because of the Halley bug. Crashing 4-5 times per match due to my other graphics card wasn't as bad as this nonsense.

My balance "suggestion": Find a middle ground between the old and the new Dox in regards to its stats. Less damage and less speed, for example. Or give basic laser towers some kind of splash damage - not enough to tickle tanks, but enough to melt through a small force of Dox ... Doxes .. Doxi ... whatever.

I think most people are overreacting with suggestions. What I would do: Slightly reduce visibility. Skitter should still be the best land scout, seconded by Dox. I would increase cost by roughly 30% and maybe remove amphibious of the first too steps don't cut it.

Here are my reasons:

To raid effectively a good vision range is requires otherwise you are always bumping into your enemy (who has radar vision) and not achieving anything. Second of all something in bots NEEDS to shoot at air, otherwise bot's first isn't viable and you can raid with tanks slightly less effectively. Third of all: For that they do, dox are extremely cheap. Too cheap so this is where I'd hit them the most. Amphibious itself make then unique form the grenadiers so I'd leave that in unless it's exactly the thing that makes them OP.

PTE build

Grenadiers are largely pointless IMO. Why were they included in the first place? To shoot over walls? Everyone knows (everyone who has played a good few times!) building walls is a last resort, and if your opponent has resorted to building walls you've probably gone T2 anyway. Get rid of the grenadier and have some sort of EMP device that immobilises Dox. An EMP bot perhaps instead of the largely useless bomb-bot. Cheap to make and effective against hoards of F*****g Dox!

The game really sucks right now unfortunately Bot factory, bot factory, bot factory...ZZZzzz

TLDR i would just half the cost of everything else...because more units means more destruction!

after watching kotp #9 where both sides used dox (well in round 1 and 3 for the most part) i thought it was AWESOME because they had so many units so early on! and that fights where raging everywhere and there was a lot of mayhem and destruction early on because THERE WHERE SO MANY units because of the cost reduction.
It made me take a step back and go...now that kind of scale applied to tanks, fighters, naval units is the kinda scale i want to see in PA while keeping buildings expensive and strong and showing how much you want to spend on developing your base.

But we already did that once! And I do not want a Starcraft thing where everyone has like 50 units and runs around for 10 minutes with their head between two massive muffins blaring weird Korean music!

This game is supposed to be about Strategy and macro, so I'm all in favor of slowing it down a bit. Speeding up from this point would make the skill curve much steeper than present. I liked it when the top 25 were all good at beating eachother - and the top couple guys were just better at beating everyone else more often.

.....whaaaaaaaat..........?
im not sure how to work through that kind of biased view on just a small ramble but lets see....
when did we already do that once?
this game is about strategy and macro...just look at how the economy is set up...its a mess of getting 2 balance beams to stay level; build power, amount of fabbers, use of factories and assisting becomes quite insane to efficiently manage
the pace of the game would still be the same since the buildings still cost the same amount of resources, you just simply get twice as many units out of them (minus roll-off time)

Dox are super close to being balanced with ants. I think scathis knows this and that is why he only slightly increased their cost. Everyone is over reacting, kite the dox with your ants and see how the battle works out for you. I love when I see a player go all dox. Of course I need to build them to raid as ants only build gives the dox spammer too much map control and free expanding until a point.

The bigger the map the more dox you will need. This is just moons, and water maps. Ants are much better on lava, metal planets.

Mostly because of the irresponsive dox bug and their own willingness to get stuck.

Yes, especially since speeding up the game wouldn't really cause what he's saying.. slowing it down actually would, we created a mod sometime back. Four times unit health. The game became entirely about micro.

The vanilla balance is not about strategy and macro. It comes down to who can issue orders faster and your ability to be aware of what is going on all over the planet. Your level of skill is strongly tied to your ability to micromanage units spread out over the planet(s).

A strategy game should come down to decision making and responding to your enemy. You ability to micromanage units will be advantageous, but it is only loosely tied to your level of skill.

Vanilla is point and click?

Nah its because there are choke points on these maps, so your 50 dox become lines of 5 or 6 instead of 10+

The same should happen to ants and they can't be so tight clustered and they are too slow to go around so im not sure altough i've seen you play great games with vehicles this patch.

If you forget, Uber halved the cost of all units back near the beginning of this year.

Sure, macro. Just take a look at the dox wars. There's a certain bar for entry before strategy comes into play. The Zaphod Limit has gone UP, which is almost never a good thing. Seems to be a lot of micro bro.....

I didn't say anything about their health. I'm thinking in terms of cost.