Hello Commanders, We have a new PTE for testing. Balance Changes Fixed beam weapon collisions with structures, terrain and water surface Commander Can now build orbital launchers and umbrellas Icarus solar drone Beam weapon now collides with enemies, structures, terrain and water surface Orbital Launcher Cost decreased to 600 to match T1 factories Commander buildable Orbital Factory Cost increased to 6,000 from 3,600 Umbrella Commander buildable Anchor Beam weapon now collides with enemies, structures, terrain and water surface SXX-1304 laser platform Beam weapon now collides with enemies, structures, terrain and water surface Artemis railgun platform Beam weapon now collides with enemies and structures Omega orbital battleship Beam weapon now collides with enemies, structures, terrain and water surface Helios orbital titan Beam weapon now collides with enemies, structures and terrain Dox assault bot Speed increased to 19 from 18 Grenadier Vision decreased to 115 from 125 Storm mobile flak Removed underwater vision
All beam collisions changes are good. Commander: Can now build orbital launchers and umbrellas. Good concept, further would want them to build all the same buildings T1 fabricators can build since its annoying having to build a fabber and keep it with the commander. (maybe only exception is pelters because Commanders can easily com-push and pelter creep but even then im for pelters being built by commanders) Orbital Launcher: Cost decreased to 600 to match T1 factories No. No no no. Way to cheap, they are a good price now at 1500 and orbital gameplay should be a risk to commit to if both you and the other player start on the same planet and want to expand to other planets, the cheapness of this makes it inevitable, especially for gas giants and even on single planet systems it would be so easy to afford Arkyds and hermes for scouting and orbital fabbers to safely expand, something we only see in late T2 games on single planets before. Orbital Factory: Cost increased to 6,000 from 3,600 I don't know why this is considered compensation for an early orbital launcher but this allows players to build anchors sooner and the counter avengers to only be delayed. It also makes avengers even more dominant than they are now with the inherent sunk cost issues. Dox assault bot: Speed increased to 19 from 18 Its a Nik buff therefor I dont like it....jokes aside I'm personally not a fan of this and the role of fastest early raiding unit should be given to strykers while bots are more manueverable, have underwater capabilities and can bunch up more tightly for surface area dps Grenadier: Vision decreased to 115 from 125 I think grenadiers need nerfs in other ways, this approach may feel frustrating rather than meaningful. Storm mobile flak: Removed underwater vision: ok.
Dox and Grenadier changes look good. Would like to see a possible partial reversion on the last Dox acceleration change though. Curious to see how the orbital change turns out. In an alternate reality: Air Factory: Cost decreased to 600 to match T1 factories No. No no no. Way to cheap, they are a good price now at 1500 and air gameplay should be a risk to commit to if both you and the other player start in close spawns and want to expand to back areas, the cheapness of this makes it inevitable, especially for naval maps and even on land systems it would be so easy to afford Fireflies for scouting and air fabbers to rapidly expand, something we only see in late T2 games on land planets before.
This is a painfully dull and predictable thing to read, for a moment I thought I was reading from someone else.
Cheaper orbital launcher sounds good to me, I shall have to see what can be done with it. Dox speed increase. What is the main motive behind the increase? To make dox more prevelant early game? More speed more raid potential, more potential to pick apart their position early? What is the intent? Grenadier Vision nerf : To combat its prevelant use? Arent grenadiers the main unit to mix right now, so they're vision isnt really an issue if trying to make the unit more niche and less everything?
Only thing I really really dont dig is the orbital factory cost increase. Is this to protect noobs? If yes, its a mssive overkill. Thats half a new T2 factory's worth of nerf, it barss access to utility units like sollar arrays and T2 orbital radar, not to mention that without Artemis, Anchors are broken AF and can be rushed incredibly quickly by a pair of orbtial fabs. This is very very problematic deffensively, and at leat costly/annoying offensively. At this point everyone knows what i think of the dox buff, minor step in the right direction but not enough to make them a viable to strykers for neither raiding nor as frontline skirmishers Rest sounds fun, looking forward to playing intel games in the orbital layer. Ray weapons colliding with water might be a problem tho...
Giving comm more types of building only gives more protection vs comm snipes, if you want to go that way it is fine (reduces skill requirement for the game). Making a collision is a nice touch. The increase to Dox speed needs to be the same as Strykers before nerf, so they can snipe grenadiers, and that way we have a sure hard counter to grenadier/ant spam. 1 point of movement speed is too low a value to make difference in dodging shots. Grenadier vision nerf is a great balance, so to use their actually range you have to use more than just them, a really good move. Orbital factory change in value, not sure why and how it works units are still pretty expensive. Won't change anything besides the ability to get orbital units out faster, both players are affected by the same mechanics so I don't see a problem. If you are late in the orbital game (lower on bigger cost on the orbital factory) same issue with snowball remains.
-After playing it a little, really liking the beam collision changes, it only feels relevant for Icarus but it nerfs them in a way that I like. -I dislike the orbital changes, but I wouldn't be opposed to it being 1000-1200 up from the current 600 or down from the 1500 old version. (though tbh I just want it back at 1500). I also think it may need a small size reduction and health decrease. -I still don't have a proper feel for the commander building umbrellas+launchers but it does feel somewhat convenient so far. -The dox change has had no impact so far on my games. -I haven't seen a noticeable difference for grenadiers, you still utilize sparks, skitters and radar to make up for their lack of vision to range that they already had.
i can get the inclusion of the orbital launcher and umbrella to the commander´s buildoptions but the costreduction of the orbital launcher and costincrease of the orbital factory seem quite extreme .. though i can get the idea to delay snipes of the latter but as has been said, that early Avangerspam may quickly become a problem, especialy if gasgiants are in play .. so to compensate either dial back the costreduction somewhere between 800 to 1000 or avangers need to be more expensive .. maybe even both to reduce the early spam .. maybe add some sort of orbital mobile t1 counter to avengers similar to the spark against doxblobs? ... finaly there needs to be SOMETHING to be able to breach heavily orbital defended planets or Gasgiants ..
I think what may not have been fully considered with the change to the Orbital Factory cost is how that impacts scaling. Unlike the land, you focus almost exclusively on T2 for orbital, so the cost increase has a much larger impact on the ability to scale-up in that arena. Given that things like Umbrellas remain as accessible as ever I'm not sure that's a good thing.
I like the orbital launcher change. I think it encourages use of orbital radars even in single planet games. I think that the cost jump for the factory is a little much as the orbital units it can make are pretty expensive as it is.
