Even though this is probably going to get warped due to a patch any day now. T1 Turret 300 metal T1.5 Turret 600 metal T3 Turret 900 metal As much as I Like defensive structures to prevent attacks and raids. I don't think they should be so cheap that they invalidate attacks. There is another issue of cost that makes them a little to valuable against T1 is their quick ability to be erected. It doesn't take more then 4 engineers 10 seconds(assuming a resource tick a second) to get 1 T1 turret and 1/3 of a turret up by the time T1 units storm a base, and if radar is available, even less time. The set up time to produce defenses is minimal to low which is absurd for any level of strategy game. This is where the conundrum of how do you slow down defense buildings without making their costs astronomically high and also make the defensive tower a valued asset when really defending. The use of a streaming economy really prevents time with being a factor. As much as I like making 100 ant armies, if it only takes 4 T1.5 turrets to fend it off with little preparation... then its a real let down of an army if you ask me.
But seriously. I very very much agree. There's no point in building basic units, which are very well balanced on their own, because 2 fabricators can beat 100+ basic units by spamming out some laser defense towers. Lately I've seen players win because they build nothing but fabricators and spam out defensive structures – even in the tournaments. Laser Defense Towers are just waaaaaaaay to cheap.
Funny how we have come full circle. Games were getting won by artillery creep with very few units. They make adjustments and suddenly units are back in town. Then a few more adjustments and we are going back to artillery creep once again. Base defenses however are only 1 part of the puzzle, Aircraft and nuke are the other factors in artillery creep coming back.
No, it's mostly just base defences. I play games against the AI where I don't build anti-nukes. The game still relies on static-defence. Land units just die too often to base defences, you need Gil-E's, Shellers or some sort of bomber, at least, to snipe the land defences so that your land units can actually do their job. I find Gil-E's and Shellers are ok at doing that, but they aren't as excellent as they could be, particularly if the AI starts defending against them. And then, here come aircraft. Aircraft are fantastic at dealing with base defences, because only two structures attack them. But at that point, why wouldn't you just saturate the opponents base with bombers , gunships and scouts, rather than bothering with a land army. In my last game, I spammed out Catapults, I got the catapults to snipe the base defences, and then, and only then, was I able to get my bots through the defensive line
Maybe one answer would be to reduce factory/pgen cost, and significantly reduce the metal-rate of fabbers? This would increase the build time of defenses using a given number of fabbers, and simultaneously nerf the power of assisting. Any problems with this approach?
There has been zero indication Scathis wants to change this. I really wish he would give us a more updated status though. It has been a week since the last main-stream balance livestream playtest
