Current Unit Balance

This is a topic to address current unit balance for any to look at, i realize this will bring about some controversy, but nonetheless, here is how it is

Pelter Meta

This is the current most optimal build to the game. This means that whilst other builds are usable - especially in surprise/hidden attacks - most strong tactics revolve around a particular set of units

Pelter

Its true, that a pelter has its flaws compared to a mobile unit, it cant move, so any built cannot assist in aggressive/defensive moves outside its range. in terms of defense, this means that a pelter built on one side cannot defend you from the other side, and likewise, if one is built on both sides, one of them is doomed to be useless against a double strength attack from the other side. However, if something has enough numbers (statistics) it will be used despite its flaws.

Does the Pelter currently have the numbers? It does. Say u have a pelter in 4 corners of a square base. This enables the player to have a large base, but his defense is cut in 4 in exchange. An army costing 10x the pelter cost attacks the pelter, and the pelter still wins on average (yes, heavy micro may make it lose, but the same could be said for the defending player) that shows that the material put into the pelter was way worth the effort.

Not only that. The Pelter is Outperforming other units in their ideal situation. When it comes to defending metal outside the main base's perimeter, pelters, along with missile turrets serve a better defense than a roaming response military ready to deal with harrassment attacks from any direction. This doesnt mean to build a large defense for every metal spot, a single radar with a pelter can defend an enourmous amount of aggression for a very small cost. When the pelter is a tad too expensive for this early on. There is a Cheaper Alternative (Find ~CA).

Finally Pelters are being used as a primary attack unit. Rather than a annoying, special tectic.

Missile Defence

The Missile Defence is a cheap unit that isn't too out of balance. in terms of fighting air, they are mediocre and are built for convenience - (as it should be) - however their performance vs basic units is exceptional for its cost. Primarily, their only problem is that they serve as the (~CA) Cheaper alternative to the pelter defence, as well as providing anti-air support for when such defence is built.

Catapult

Catapults are currently a heavy zoning unit, and a big counter to pelters. however, due to their abominably high damage, they are zoning ground units a tad too well, able to hit and kill any unit except commander in a single hit. Though they seem grossly overpowered at the moment, this is affected more so because.
A. They are designed to kill pelters.
B. If Pelters guard them, they are essentually unkillable, meaning they are free to destroy entire bases unopposed.

Holkins

Holkins can be built to deal with catapults, ending the range war. But they are a very poor counter, with (sometimes) the capability to be stopped by walls, and they very ineffective against anything else, once compared to the catapult.

Air

Air goes mostly unmentioned in my above statements. Air is strong, but has very cost-effective counters. AKA a prepared player can easily deal with them. Air-to-Air Anti-Air is good for dealing with small raiding parties, and surface-to-air, is good at dealing with large parties of air if you cannot compete with the air player in terms of resources.

In conclusion. Air is about the correct strength.

Land Units
Land Units as a whole is grossly underpowered, they are getting outperformed by pelters in their best areas. They have some very few uses. such as cleaning up completely undefended metal, assisting commanders, and making use of a hole in the enemy defences.

(i am not including land fabricators in the underpowered area, they are still amazing)

Dox Vs Tanks

Believe it or not, if u run an army of doxes into a same cost army of tanks, the tanks win. However, this is useless information. Doxes are a far better unit purely because they are faster than tanks, a skilled player can make up for the inaccuracy of a tank, but they cannot make up for the mobility Doxes give. Being strong is a useless asset if you cant get past pelters, at which Doxes do a better job.

Sea

sea is good just cas land is weak, but even still, Bluebottle and narwell range could be turned down a notch
Stingrays are still too strong tho, because they are mobile catapults. Give them radar and there is no escape

Nukes + AntiNukes

These play a role just a bit too early, raising the cost of both of them is an apt solution, and the anti-nuke needs to be slightly cheaper and/or have more range

How can you even bother with unit balance when there simply is none with the current unit roster?

You're overrating pelters quite a bit while disregarding an obvious counter to the pelter which are bombers. There's no pelter meta you speak of, there are quite a few counters to pelters and I would encourage you to find some for yourself.

There's no reason to think of pelters, catapults and holkins as specific X > Y > Z counters. It's not like the only way to defeat base defenses is to build longer range base defenses.

I think the 'pelter meta' you speak of is much more in relation to bad players, who play the game with one concentrated base and don't adapt their strategy. As has been noted, bombers serve an excellent counter, and pelters use up resources that could be spent better elsewhere. Good radar coverage and at least some air should be able to stop a pelter creep effectively.

Air beats artillery. The AA-Turrets currently ingame will die en masse to T2 bombers. Fighters escorted bombers vs ground defense = dead ground defense.

This. ^

There will be a time to talk and debate heavily about unit balance.

That time is not yet here since we barely have any units.

They are going to add more units? I was kinda starting to worry the roster seemed a bit sparse.

100`s My child!!!!!

THINK OF THE MODS AS WELL! THE MODS!!!

They will be adding lots more.

They currently have over 100 units planned.

I sure hope they have more UI upgrades planned. =p I don't think I'm going to like scrolling through the unit bar they have now to find the one i want to build.

@OP I stand by this as the most in-depth discussion to date on unit balance, given what we know so far.

If you haven't time to listen to the whole thing that's understandable, but there are a couple of timestamped notes in that thread where key points were discussed on how the community wants balance to be approached.

I will also add my voice to the chorus of confusion over the concept of a Pelter Meta - currently we are in the reign of the Dox Meta, whereas before we were slaves to the devastating Ant Meta.

I think now is the time to talk about balance. Uber is actively filling in the roster based on how they perceive the roster is imbalanced and as they have said previously it is very much an iterative process. meaning it is based more on what they currently perceive to be important rather then some master roster. So if you think there are wholes in the Roster or if you think the balance could be more interesting between a set of units by all means speak up. because now is the time for these types of changes.
If you wait until a month before release, Uber is going to be much less interested in overhauling the balance and more interested in tuning the existing balance.

In a nutshell, Yes it is hard to critique the current balance but now is the time to propose large balance changes just like this.

I think we need a new AA-Turret, something that can stand up to more than a bomb or two from the T2 bombers, and some more AA-units from the higher tier factories.

You would probably like to read this thread in full.

Mike

Can't, just errors.

Ah then you're not a backer.

In short we talk about AA a lot.

Mike

You could post some things from that thread here. Because I am not seeing many arguments. =p

Point is the only thing right now that can really act as a counter to air is more air, which is kind of boring.

The thread has 90 posts, it's not exactly easy to summarize. Rest assured it was discussed from many different angles.

Mike

That's not very assuring at all. It wouldn't be particularly hard. And you're not exactly offering up anything other than "it's been discussed".

Right now the only anti-air in the game is T1, other than the T2 fighter. EVERY OTHER type of unit(Anti-ground, anti-ship, anti ground/anti ship towers) has a T2 equivalent, whereas Anti-Air does not. There's no T2 vehicle anti-air, no T2 bot anti-air, no T2 tower anti-air, and no T2 ship anti-air.

"it's been discussed" just sounds rather.... I'm not sure obnoxious is the right word, but I guess it's close. Arrogant maybe?

It's really hard to summarize because we cover the topic from different angles, and everyone has different opinions on those topics and we don't really get to make any final decisions of course, add to that that the whole point of the Backer forum is meant for stuff that's generally not meant to be shared and it's hard to say if the Devs want thier comments they've made there shared.

This is compounded by the fact that many users use the Backer's Lounge in the exact same way as General Discussion, so we have tones of topics that don't need to be in the Backer's Lounge in the Backer's Lounge, not much I can do about it really because I brought it to Uber's attention early on and no changes were made.

Mike