Leveler Turrets, seriously?

This has been in the game for ages now, and I still have no idea why except for adding tons of unneeded micro into the game

Leveler turrets turn something like 3 or 4 times slower than their hulls, and they almost never bother turning their hulls to aim at something, and instead even turn away throwing their shot off even more, so half the time the things are in combat they're just trying to turn their slow as hell turrets to aim at the enemy

They'd actually be a decent to maybe even overpowered unit for their metal cost (cost 4x as much as bolos but shoot twice as quickly, have 4x as much health and have over 10 times as much dps at 120 meters? yes please, too bad they shoot their two guns at the same time for more overkill than needed) if you didn't have to zoom all the way in and check where their turrets were pointing and then tell them to move into a direction that will make the turrets face the enemy every time they got into a fight, but now they just spend most of their time being useless

I mean if you wanted them to be vulnerable to flanking, at least nerf their hull turn speed to be at most the same as their turret speed (preferably lower so if the tank is turning right but the turret wants to aim at something to the left, it'll turn left slightly faster than the hull is turning right) instead of just making us have to micro the hull in the correct direction to help the turret actually shoot something because the hull massively overpowers the turret

yes its a pain, and i was never sure why Uber added it, they never explained the reasoning behind it and levelers have turned out to be one of the least used units along side grenadiers, advanced combat fabbers and sunfishies.

If the turret rotation speed was decent, even half the speed of normal tank rotation (which i think is fine enough) they would be VERY deadly as their damage can nearly one shot everything but even more impressive is the rate of fire which can take down hoards of units as well as large units.

But because of a simple rotation speed mechanic the leveler is pretty much useless lol

Even with this change I'm not convinced they would be used very much in game. They'd still be outranged by Gil-Es and Shellers so the likelihood of them getting into range isn't that great. And the Vanguard is a better meatshield of a unit. Overall I feel as if the Leveler currently occupies a niche in the meta which isn't very useful.

Hah you should check out the T2 gunship if you want to see a better example of that

I don't think the Leveler is gunship level bad, and kiting with inferior dps and barely higher top speed works great until you've run all the way to your base and all your buildings and mex fields youve retreated past on the way back are gone

It takes a sniperbot or sheller 12 seconds to kill a leveler assuming they never miss and never stop firing, and they cost twice as much metal, meaning in the time you kill an equal metal's worth of levelers you will have to have been retreating back to your base for the previous 24 seconds, which is a damn long distance, especially when you consider it takes the Leveler one second to kill four times its metal worth in either, without having to worry about being almost instantly killed by T1 bombers or dox. Mix Inferno's into the front to tank just as much sniperbot and sheller fire for a third of the price and you have a free trip into the enemy base (assuming your damn guns point the direction they should)

I just want to point out that if Levelers were given decent turret speed and a HP boost they'd be great as front line tanks.

My mod has them with ok turret turn at 60. Just for good measure, slowed their unit turn speed to 60 but it makes them kinda turn wide...

It also has them with less health, but more shot damage. I also like them firing from opposite barrels instead of together.

That way, they work as second line tanks. Tested it too, 4-8 tanks and a leveler beat out 8-12 tanks. As long as the leveler has something else to take a bullet for it, it quickly dirtnaps enemy tanks one by one.

Why are people that post such good stuff suddenly upcoming with such bulls***?!

Take a note: The Kestrel IS ONE OF THE STRONGEST AND MOST AWESOME UNITS IN THE GAME. Note over.
If you don´t think so you simply haven´t seen their full potential. Believe me, that´s the truth!


OK, back to the topic: The leveler Turrets always remind me of the way the Leviathan handled its Turrets in earlier builds: Turning to infinity, but never starts shooting!
In other words: They have to be changed, AT LEAST give them a better aiming-AI. But in terms of consistency, I´d suggest simply giving the Leveler one of the "latest" Leviathan-turrets!

They were made slow as a counter balance to prevent them from replacing the bolo entirely.

They're goddamn T2, you want them to replace T1 but have a high barrier to entry or the game will just lag up with tons of T1 units or instantly switch to T2 as soon as the match starts

If you seriously want this feature kept in, which doesn't even do its job if you micro, then make the hull turn slower than the turret instead of the other way around

Units shouldn't lag the game out.

T2 shouldn't replace T1.

Micro was supposed to be the weakness of the turret, as well as it's saving grace when under pressure.

Turning the turret fast while the unit turns slow undoes the entire point of it.

Frankly, the unit is more then fine as it is, mother units are however more useful.

Say what you will, and there was no contraction there, the unit can both be good and have other units be better then it.

/agree

Leveler micro to get them facing the right way is stupid. Turrets should turn at least nearly as quick as the unit rotates. More HP would be nice too.

Yep, it is a bit redundant. Levellers need some love @jables! They're not particularly tanky, as tanks go, and the turn rate for their turrets is excruciating and annoying!

As far as whether t2 replaces t1
Vanguard > Inferno
T2 fighter > T1 fighter
Slammer > Dox
T2 CF > T1 CF
Kraken > Barracuda
Leviathan > Orca

And yes when the Leveler gets in close to sniper bots it will destroy them quickly but if you have a mass of say 100 sniper bots how many levelers does it take to wipe them out if they start from outside the range of the sniper bots. Not even talking about the possibility of sniper bots being moved back to kite the levelers.

The fighters are not entirely cost effecient, just interplanetary. Neither are CFs. Krakens do something entirely different and otherwise are just expensive barracudas with the exact same power. Slammers do something else, particularly naval and damage, while dox just cheap and super speedy kill fabbers and amass.

A lot of units just depend if you want to spend the extra cash, they are usually better but not cost effective.

As it stands, why would I even want to bother making Levelers when I can make Shellers instead?

I can kill entire armies with a handful of shellers. If I focus all my T2 production on shellers and protect them with Bolos, I can do far more damage than my opponent can with nothing but levelers.

As they stand, they're already a pretty bad unit, but having a horrid turn radius as well makes them even worse.

If you want to argue that they're there to soak up damage, I can do the same thing but even better with Vanguards.

T2 combat fabbers actually isn't better than t1. Who even builds a t2 cf?

Anyway this is all due to bad balance, the original idea was to have t2 be filled with niche units, the leveler being something of a tank hunter with its higher health, slower speed, and more punch.

Pinging @tvinita as well! Can you tweak this for a PTE experiment?

EDIT: nm, new PTE released this very minute!

Hot damn they kinda did it

Hull moving twice as fast as the turret instead of 6 times as fast (apparently I underestimated how terrible it was) definitely helps, It still needs a bit of micro, but hey whatever it's not nearly as bad

They added some splash but I couldn't notice even with dox standing right beside each other (maybe better if they're assist move crowded like the 1337 players do). I don't know if the splash effects the unit that's actually hit by the shell as well but it did seem like they took down factories even faster than normal