Make the pelican T1

Make the pelican T1. Make the pelican T1. Make the pelican T1!!!!! Please! Seriously! It's utterly useless at T2. There is a ton of consensus the pelican needs to be T1 again. It was originally moved to T2 as a temporary fix for commander rushes, which are not a problem any more. Bring back the pelican and with it, some of the most exciting gameplay this game has seen. Just do it @jables!

Yeah the issues of T1 pelicans are *probably* resolved thanks to the following other related changes:

- Commander now has AA
- AA prioritisation (pelicans should be included as a priority target imo)
- Reduced Uber Cannon Damage commander to commander
- Increased building health effectively reducing commander damage vs buildings.

All this will greatly reduce the power of a fast commander air rush. It may still be possible, but if it can be countered (i.e. have a high risk of the rusher loosing his com) then it's probably ok.

@jables I think this would be a great thing to try out in PTE. I understand why the pelican was moved, however given all the other unit transport options available later game it would make more sense at T1 and might be ok now

yes.

this really needs to happen.

There is still the Inferno drop that might be too powerful.

I'm not too worried about that - as shown in the excellent Godde vs. matiz KOTP match, drops are well countered by awareness and anti-air interception. In fact it would be great to see Infernos actually getting some use.

Also back then the commander didn't have as much eco production. If you pick your commander up right at the start now instead of building, you waste tons of resources.

I just put a T1 Pelicans mod on PAMM. It makes them buildable by the T1 air factory, doubles their cost from 45 to 90, and sets their group-preference to back, so that your fighters should end up in front of them and they're less likely to get killed.

Clicky here to install the mod!

Burnt custards mod which did this made gameplay so much more interesting. He balanced the pelican hp, cost etc. really well.

For good implementation for vanilla, they need to be able to carry multiple units though, with units having different transport sizes. One unit only is a clunky issue

Just going to point out that the mod up there ^ doesn't effect Pelican HP. I have a bigger air mod in the works which increases their HP as well, and I think it works in that because air is slightly more important (so you have more AA, so Pelicans are weaker), BUT it could make them OP in vanilla games, and I wanted to keep that simple mod simple.

I personally like the idea of Pelicans only being able to carry single T1 units, and requiring a big T2 transport to carry T2 or commanders or big groups of T1 units.

This thread should be for @tvinita

If he/she hasn't already seen it yet...

I'm still skeptical. I'd also rather see economy fixes before we start throwing units around. Let's not muddy the waters with more changes that aren't super necessary

Economy changes and T1 fabricator changes are confirmed for the next update.

Show me the source!

Pelikan should not be able to transport the comm but yeah they should add it but problem is you will get raided five times faster

It was in Twitch Chat =c

THE BEST KIND!

Which stream? I might have been there.

Awesome, will be playing with this mini-mod ASAP. I think once the unit cannon is properly balanced it will effectively fill the multi-unit transport role Elodea is asking for.

@tvinita has made changes on it.. we'll try it out on one of the next PTE builds.. (probably not the very next one, but the one after)

You guys are the best.

If the pelican is changed to be t1 I'm positive it shouldn't be allowed to carry the commander. I've played matches with the pelican in t1. The commander has simply to much build and fire power for it to be allowed to moved so quickly. This means that in the first 30 seconds of a match you can gain a monumental amount of map control with very little downside.

You would think a fighter can counter this but the fighter is so much more expensive than the pelican than you can move a commander across a map before you can get a fighter off a factory. This has the effect of being able to determine a match in the first 30 seconds. This game already has a huge snowball effect and this could turn a lot of matches into an avalanche.

This was really exemplified while I was playing Fields of Isis. Where choke points are essential which can happen on a lot of maps. The first thing one of the enemy commanders did was to move the middle choke point effectually gaining 3/4 map control. It was a very short match. It was a great strategy but it was not at all conducive to fun game play. The match was decided at that point and no one had the units at minute one when we saw him to uproot him.

Even if we had both moved our commanders to the same choke point first thing all that would have happened is that the one who landed first would have shot the other pelican destroying a commander meaning now that is only determined by chance.

Also the eco lost in that 30 seconds isn't enough to deter this type of move or balance it.

I will also add I'm not entirely sold on there being a transport unit like the pelican. It can lead to some sneaky strategies which I usually like but it does seem quite powerful. I need to play more games with it before I say whether or not I like it for certain.

I'd like to see filled pelicans be priority number one for anti air even ahead of bombers. This would be a nice counter to inferno drops. I'm not sure whether or not that could be done easily but empty pelicans are no threat and should be ignored till last.