You need to defend your expansions while taking them. Nobody ever expands freely across the map in SC2, expecting to have the whole map populated by the 15 minute mark. You expand slowly and defend it while getting a big force together if you are doing the immobile tank style. I experimented with a no-dox style and it can be seen working here: http://pastats.com/chart?gameId=226271 and also failing here: http://pastats.com/chart?gameId=226297 (in particular notice how I am not that far behind in metal income in either game despite it being more controlled) Having said that, on extremely open maps with very spread out metal (systeem x?), the fast hitting dox are extremely powerful, but that's no surprise. With dox giving you map control you can expand pretty freely across the map, but that doesn't mean you should. It's nearly impossible to efficiently spend the money >2 expanding fabbers gets you. Again referring to starcraft 2, zerglings give early game map control, but the zergs don't immediately take the entire map, it's still a gradual expansion. I don't think there is a single good player that doesn't expand at all and plans on winning the game with basically their starting mex every game (a la one base in sc2). Rushes are always strong when metagame is developing, and I see no reason to jump to balance conclusions. People will figure out how to defend and expand safely on their own without the need for drastic rebalance.
To be fair, you have to note that swiss round 3 has the maximum metal density (100), and by nature of being a metal biome with a specific radius, has lots of tight chokepoints. The tank strategy also requires that you move your commander out to cover one zone (because your tanks cannot cover everything), which is always going to leave you vulnerable to an instant boombot snipe. Commander walking brings us to the next point, which is that you are not going to spend near as much metal as your opponent. You can see it in the graphs. You reached a maximum saturation point, while i was able to continue expanding at around 6 minutes. So while i kinda half agree about your point in regard to sc2, i don't think it applies to PA that well especially when we have symmetrical factions. Even in sc2 you can harass or counter attack threaten with drops etc. which you should be doing otherwise the zerg just drones up and crushes you. You can't do this with tank play in PA.
Yes, as I said above, on extremely open maps the aggressive dox style will likely still be the strongest. I did waste a lot of metal, but I have not even looked into making the build efficient. Had I spent all my resources better, I would have had even more tanks etc. Commander walking does have something to do with that, but it just means overbuilding an extra fac or two at the start before walking, I just misjudged how much resources I would have. Protoss really didn't have any way to harass or counter attack a zerg in SC2 before HOTS. They would just sit and defend and get a deathball, I really do see the tank-dox matchup operating in a very similar way.
The current Meta feels like 6 pool or lose. Macro is less important. With this balance gone are the days of 40 t1 with 6 t2 facts with a nuke or long range artillery on the way. Multifront battles are non existent besides small raiding parties. Overall gameplay feels more like sc2. I hope it goes back to the way it was in alpha/ first part of beta.
Solution go back to alpha/beginning beta eco and return to lots of metal spots........ what was wrong with the way it started? I don't understand why they changed it?
Funny, it sounds like we need a Leveler. ^_^ What about reducing Dox range? It would substantially reduce the amount of DPS a Dox blob can put on a target. Compare that to a set of tanks and you might be able to mince a Dox swarm coming at you..
I've had this idea while half asleep: Make all t1 structures cost only 75% of what they cost now. Reduce t1 engineers build rate to 75% and their energy usage to 50%. The idea is that a straight buff to engineers alone (as in just reduce their energy usage) would risk stuff like mass supporting factories pop up again. So instead reduce structure build cost and fix the build time by slowing down the build rate of engineers as well. What stays is: Less metal requirement to expand all over the place and substantially less energy cost of growing your economy in general, to tip the economy balance into the direction of being limited by metal again, not by energy. It would also aim to make "metal per buildpower" the factor on which a builder is judged. So people would spam factories because factories cost less metal to get buildpower up and metal should limit the typical player economy. Metal limiting the economy is generally a good thing, as fighting for metal means fighting for map control which is where the fun is. So make expansion cheaper and cost less energy, while not changing anything about the units. They may require further changes as well, but personally I have a bigger issue with "not expanding" than with "using armies made up only of 1 unittype". I am not saying that nobody might be able to find a way to expand in the current balance as well, but I dislike the energy/metal balance since the beginning of time and changing that AND making expansion cheaper sounds damn good to me
I don't think SC2 comparisons are very apt. In SC2 taking an expansion is a big decision, while in PA expansion is a term we use but what you're talking about is taking tens if not hundreds of metal points. It's not a single significant choice like in SC2, rather it's an on-going process. SC2 is also designed to offer natural chokes and defensive points at expansions, something PA also doesn't do. It isn't designed for single points of contention, but rather sweeping battles across the planet. This meta has been around a little while now, and the only changes it has seen so far is a brief switch to favouring Bolos four factories in, before that was later abandoned. I know Clopse was very active in this area. I should also clarify that per the title my concern is not with all Dox play, but rather that it's a symptom of a wider problem. You could make Dox completely UP and it wouldn't bring back expansionist play, you'd just switch to Bolos. Well, you might see a little more successful expansion, tanks are slower after all, but the general style of play wasn't all that different with the single mega base and the Commander just pumping out factories.
Well, tbh, I'm not a huge fan of the 'spam a bajillion t1 units because nothing else is as effective'. What made the peewee less effective than the flash? I think it was partially the defensive aspect of the LLT - you could take out lots more peewees with an LLT than flash tanks. Problem is that Dox win by virtue of using up shots - I believe it's a single shot to take out a Bolo from a laser tower too isn't it? Makes it harder to defend your expansion. I mean, I get it, attack is the only option at the moment, but if you could attack and use that to give yourself time to establish defenses you can fall back to that are actually effective, it'd give you motivation to claim & defend that ground more. Anyways, ultimately the issue seems to be that the fabber has no chance to get out there and do its thing against waves of Dox / Bolo, so you're much better off investing in more factories and creating a wall of your own Dox to build behind. So perhaps, factories should suck 2x the energy they do now? It would reduce the number of factories you could build, make you divert more energy into fabbers to build power gens, and it would reduce that ratio of 1 fabber + 1 pg = 1 lost factory.
If you were buildings LLTs to kill peewees you were doing it wrong. Heck, if you were building any defensive structure other than an MT tower you were probably doing it wrong.
A word of caution... I remember plenty of people (including *some* involved here) being quite critical of the 'golden' balance you reffer back to. I'm actually not finding dox as powerful as stated. They are good and essential for early map control. After your first few factories however the game is quite open. Also dox alone? Dox + Air is stronger in my experience. There is an issue- a bot factory isn't a choice, it has to be in your starting build if you want to win. However I think the adjustments needed to allow vehicles as a starting factory are probably quite small. Also expansion is required, just at a controlled pace due to energy consumption- this is down the the fundamental way in which energy operations in PA (i.e. all or nothing). In TA:Spring they actually made one of the energy plants (the solar collector) cost 0 energy to build (but at a high metal price) to allow a player to balance out energy stalls. Other energy generators (e.g. wind turbines) cost a fraction of the metal and some energy, so were a better investment where your energy economy was in better shape. I would like something like this in PA, though unfortunately I don't think it's possible with the way the energy system functions.
I think I stated as such in my post. And let's not confuse things here, this isn't a post about balance as a whole, it's about the viability of expansion as a strategy.
Sorry I wasn't intending to get off topic. In relation to expansion, well I think we *do expand* in 1 v 1, though at a slower pace. I mean the earlier expansion game was too far the other way, I always felt it played like a 'metal map' from TA where you were limited purley by speed of execution. What has now occurred is a similar pace of expansion to TA, but limited by energy instead of metal. The end result is the same. Uncontested you can still run wild and expand like crazy, but in an up close game you have to be quite careful to make effective use of resources- so 1 expansion fabber is optimal. Maybe a good option would be to *drastically increase the health* of fabbers. They were always much stronger in TA. This would mean that it takes more than a lone early raiding dox to kill it- and gives the defending player time to rally troops to defend said fabber. It would also prevent single pass sniping of fabbers with bombers which is currently a bit too powerful imo.
