Current state of metagame.

Hello!
I've played a lot recently with a lot of top players and I want to share my thoughts about current patch because there is a lot of misconceptions that I believe might influence future build negatively. Those are opinions so naturally it will lead to debate but I base them on pretty solid facts and these facts might not be widely known. It touches balance but I wanted to discuss patches/unit design as a bigger picture.

Misconception number 1: Turrets are overpowered.
That's not the case really, maybe only partially. At the begining I thought they are way too strong and they deny any kind of t1 play and they are totally silly. I was wrong. Yes, obviously turrets make heavy T1 play less prevalent and situation looks different to what was in previous builds. But players have figured out how to circumvent the problem. The key to maintain heavy T1 mobility play is to prevent turrets from getting up. It's not that hard actually and makes sense. If you want to set up a forward position you have to commit engineer which costs 200 metal, then you need to build the turret that is at least 150 and you need coverage of units that support it. And 1 turret might cover 2-4 mexes but there is always angle to hit a mex with doxes. Engineer that is constructing turret does not move towards new metal extractors and does not construct any new mexes so that's another economical cost. You need advantage over opponent in certain point of the map to establish turret there, yes you will be able to do it very close to your base because of walking distances but with any bit further on the map it gets more and more difficult. There is beautiful synergy between T1 Air and Doxes, you use air to scout where the engineers are and then you move in with doxes to intercept engies. The same situation goes to random air fabbers that construct turrets, if you let him do it, it's your fault you should have patrolled the area with air fighters.

The most important factor that decides about strenght of turrets are the maps. If map is as small as Winter Duel then indeed turrets might pose problem because if you make catapult in your base you can reach his base with it. On ~600-650 size map if you establish turret player can just go somewhere else with his T1 and not care. Another thing is how mexes are spread out if there are 7 mexes close to each other then yeah turrets are pretty important but still before they get up there there should be a fight of units there. I'm only talking about T1 stage, T2 absolutely crushes turrets.

Misconception number 2: T1 is useless.
Oh man it's not. Recently the result of a lot of games that I've played have been decided in the T1 stage. We just have to learn to use T1 differently than we did in previous patches. It's no longer a tool that will allow you to kill opponent. But It's the tool that allows you to cripple your opponent heavily, sometimes to death. Currently I observe heavier and heavier emphasis on T1. T1 land is perfect for harrassing, a single dox can change the outcome of the game if he kills 2 expanding engineers. 2-3 doxes behind your base killing unprotected metal extractors is extreme pain in ***. 2 Airscouts can kill expanding engineer in no time if only you have air superiority. T2 vehicles simply cannot catch up with doxes, they are too fast. The key is to not let your doxes die, if you provide air support this should not happen as you can just run away from a problem.

T1 Air seems to be on the rise recently too, I've started to make 2 T1 Air factories recently and it still feels too little. I've seen guys assissting their air factories with engineers etc. The thing is that it's simply not efficient to cover your far away expansions with static or bot aa. And you need air coverage, else you don't have vision for your doxes and you cannot protect your engineers. Recently I think dox armies with occasional T2 support to take out turrets is nice. Doxes are surprisingly good meat shield in many cases. Especially shellers dramatically overkill, if you have small number of units, they are awful because instead of shooting at precious T2 units, they shoot at doxes. This applies to Sniper bots as well.

Misconception number 3: Vanguard is overpowered.
It definitely is not. It's strong unit with its uniqueness and it's great. It can be easily countered if you micro your units. If you have 30 Vanguards and I have 5 levellers and 5 shellers, give me enough space and I will not loose any unit and kill them all. Obviously it requires a bit of space but you get what I mean. If you kite vanguards they are awful in the battlefield. 2-4 of them as tanks in front of army is best what can they do. Obviously it all applies when you scout and prepare. If you suddenly have 15 VGs at peripheries of your base then you deserve to get half of your base wrecked. But it's yours and only yours fault. They are extremely slow, if you didn't have any radars or air scouts in their way, you messed up. If you let them big ball of VG's roll into your ball of units, again, you messed up.

Drops. As I've stated before countlessly I believe they are absolutely great. It's hard to defend them, but it is not impossible. I've showed this in recent KOTP vs Godde. My defence wasn't perfect, his drop wasn't perfect. It's alright. If you have T2 air you are able to defend the drop because of splash damage. If you have no T2 air then it's tricky and hard but if he has T2 air and T2 land, then if you don't have T2 air by yourself, you probably messed up. Land AA is decent support to this but I don't think it's only support, you can't rely on this. A cloud of fighters renders drops useless. I've heard an argument that if you fly from one angle you can concentrate enough fighters to break through cloud but I don't think it's actually applicable because of splash damage and support of land aa which you should have in your main base. They are high risk, high reward technique and we need such things in PA. And yes, they are indeed very high risk too. In both games where Godde dropped me, he ended up very behind in economy because of the fact that he did it. There are some other things to that too, but I think it was the main reason.


Biggest misconception: This patch is strategically dull.
Oh man no. It's beautiful. Seriously. You have so many options right now. All of T2 factories are viable as first factory. Depending on spawns and playstyle you can start with T2 air, T2 vehicles, T2 bots and it's all viable. There are appearing finally some reasonable timing attacks like VG drop at around 11 minute mark. You have constant brutal fight over planet that does not stop for 30 minutes and it begins at 3 minute mark.
You can choose T2 air as first and then you have good map control and you have ability to perform very strong vanguard drops but you have vulnerable T2 air engineers to make T2 eco and you have very small presence on land so strong T2 veh +aa bots punch can kill you.
You can choose T2 bots and be relatively weak in direct fight of masses of units but you can harrass excellently because of their speed. If you micro your units heavily you can put up a decent fight vs Vehs though. You can safely make your t2 eco
You can choose T2 Vehs and have huge power in direct fight but you have not enough mobility, which one do you choose?
Or the best - you can combine them all, find proper order of everything, find proper combination of what suits your style the most!
How much emhpasis will you put on land t1? How much emhpasis will you put on t1 air? How much emphsis will you put on T2 air, t2 bots, t2 vehicles? How much will you sacrifice to turret up certain location? How much will you sacrifice to sneak the nuke? Can I pull off 4 dimensional attack where I first soften him with Orbital laser, then I snipe critical things with aircraft, nuke the position and then roll in with my main ground forces? These are very interesting questions. There is tons of more that there are in this patch.

Conclusions:
There is nothing broken in this patch and there is still a lot to discover. In previous patches we just massed T1 a lot, I believe right now relation of T1 and T2 and turrets is almost perfect. We harrass each other intensely at T1 stage and then we transition to T2 at around 8 minute mark.(is it rush really? imo not). If you make it earlier you will suffer heavy consequences. I haven't followed videos of the new patch too much so I don't exactly know what will it bring but I've seen plans on changing dox to grenadier. I'm a bit a afraid of this change because dox right now is one of the most interesting units in the game. It serves pretty nice purpose in early game of harrassing, claiming map control, it has very nice micro potential and it's fast. Dox, Firefly, Vanguard, T1 AA bot, SniperBot, Sheller, Gunship, Drops, Nuke, Turrets, Radar are right now in perfect spot and I really hope they will not be changed. What we should focus now on is making other units as unique and interesting as these. We don't need revamp of this patch, we need polishing of this patch. Things like ant, slammer, orbital laser, inferno, T1 bomber, boom, combat fabber should be improved to allow them to have place in what we currently have. And we have awesome things.

The game has changed, adapt.

Idk, I think this patch is not broken. I still have fun playing this patch, it doesn't end too similar each game, its not all just t2 although if you tell billie mckiddo that t2 is overpowered ofc he is going to rush it every game so we are seeing t2 rushes more often because 99% of players will read whats OP and mindless throw their game at it hoping for easy-kid-wins.

I got bored and actually tried playing with amassed t1. When you amass a t1 army, start getting shellers, then you just hit the turret and flood the base, still works like a charm. There is such a narrow margin to clear the turrets before the enemy just starts nuking your army, but it works nonetheless. If they hardcore t2 rush? Just use kestrels, as OP and generic as they are, if you spam air hard enough they can't just not expand and nuke and still have enough anti air to survive, you could even build air on reaction to t2 turtling.

If there are any problems with a build, and you are bored, folks, you can easily arrange an arbitrary rules sort of game. Set up a game where everyone uses only t1 and no walls. I promise you turrets are defeatable with a horde if there aren't walls involved.

You know what I bet? I bet t2 would be more balanced, if someone in a game made an agreement that nobody that game builds t2 MEX. Then t2 would cost too much to be go-to and people would have to limit them. But, you would still want a few gil-e and shellers and vanguards and peregrine and pelican. You just wouldn't rush it or else it would be harder to rush without economical benefits.

This patch is definitely broken. xD

So if someone rushes T2, I should also rush T2?
Anyway, building Kestrels is never wrong.

I mostly agree.
The biggest issue I can think of right now imho is the massive disparity between t2 air fighters and t1 air fighters. The moment a player has t2 air no t1 air player ever can fight back anymore. It get's even worse when you have t2 air vs t2 air since the splash damage mechanic and very low hp o values compared to dps result in crazy 1 second fights whose outcome is not always predictable. I don't oppose the idea of t2 fighters, but I think they should not be outright better at every single thing. Somewhere I read the idea of having them slower and high ranged or the like to make them somewhat different. A unit that is an advantage to have, but that won't make t1 fighters completely powerless.
Unlike land units, there I accept i.e. that a t2 tank is much better than a t1 tank, because on land you can't just fly around the whole planet in a few seconds. You can have a t1 tank force that is totally valid locally somewhere, that is near impossible with air.

The kestrel issue also stems from this. If there were no super t2 fighter that obsoletes any number of t1 fighters you can possibly have the kestrel would be much much weaker since even a t1 air player could stop it by mass spamming t1 fighters.

Also t1 could be used a bit more. Yes it is important even now, but only ever for raiding. Even on very close spawns you won't be able to t1 rush your opponent and directly kill him. Imho if a player rushes t2 very fast he should be prone to t1 attacks on his main base, not just on undefended expansion-engineers.

One of the main reasons why so many people dislike this build is because of the way they play. An unbelievable number of people only play FFAs. In FFA games, there will always be someone that gets lucky enough to have the time to sit back and just build up massive defenses. This means that pretty much every game ends with someone being hard to kill with t1 units, and everyone else starts claiming that (lasers/gunships/nukes/whatever) is overpowered.

Nice post! I'm very to the game and I never played RTS for real before but I'm already have much fun with the actual game. I agree with you on almost everything. If you got swarmed by an army of gunships and you don't have any anti-air defenses so you messed up hard instead of T2 air being op.

turtle t2, and mass kestrel t2, is still two different things.

And really, kestrel t2 is still supportable by t1 amassed army, if you just happen to have 1 lying around.

You are a better player than me so you definitely know more about how to use which unit and therefore I won't argue about that.

But I want to point out one thing:

The game is supposed to be fun.
And it isn't fun for me the way it currently is (and at least on these forums I am definitely not alone).

Which means the game has failed to achieve its purpose for me if it stays the way it is.

And if the game has changed into something I don't like, I don't have to adapt.
It's a game. It is supposed to entertain me.
If it doesn't, I don't adapt.

I stop playing it.

And if too many people do that, the game is dead.
Therefore, (if I am not part of a vocal minority) the game itself should adapt.

This is too one sided based solely on how you play the game. Goddes drops were good. You just outbuilt and outplayed him. This doesn't mean vanguards are balanced just that you played better and he made some bad drops.

Turrets themselves are not op. It's the time it takes to build one and the coverage of t1 radar that makes them a better choice than t1 mass spam.

1 dox behind someone's base is a pain in the *** if you don't protect your fabbers. Which you should and what we have done before. But again this is just lazy play by us nothing about t1 being great.

To say there is no strategy would be idiotic but the current build has dramatically reduced your options during a game.

Best builders are winning. No strategy involved in just flat out out building the other player.

I kinda like the way things play right now - the powerful turrets mean people can actually set up a defense and concentrate on another area of the map for long enough to not feel tedious which encourages positional strategies, something which is important on round maps imho.

However, before settling down too much I'd still love to see Uber experiment around a bit more- maybe they can still come up with something even better.

I would agree except for 1 thing.

nukes need some love. badly.

right now nukes are the "I win" button in WAY too many games. Yes they can be countered with micro, but that is a problem in of itself.

the proposed anti-nuke changes in one of the experimental builds I think will really help with this.

The problem I have is that T1 Turrets are too easy to build. If you build radar and have a decent economy going. I can respond to a horde of T1 units coming to my base with a swarm of fabbers with ease. After the horde is dead I place them back where they started.

It is boring as the defending player but it works, and works nearly every time with little need to plan ahead. Then since your opponent spent a lot more on his T1 army than my T1 defenses, I hit T2 before him and switch to T2 extractors at which time I don't need to expand much anymore.

I have not played the game in 2 weeks, it just is not fun anymore.

Still check everyday for a patch.

Are you serious?

There is absolutely nothing broken in this game?

Have you ever played with Peregrines? Or used 4 fabricators to quickly spam out turrets to kill 100 attacking units? Or used 5 gunships to destroy an entire base?

Let alone the T2 rush race. First person to T2 is almost guaranteed to win.

Those are just the first three broken elements that come to the game.

I'd also like to add that games are usually strategically interesting and fun for all skill levels.
Just because the best players can have a fairly even match, doesn't mean that it works out that way in random public play. If average players aren't finding the current balance fun, there's probably a reason.

Matiz plays at a very high level and is the current King. I suggest you watch more games between skilled players in 1v1s before jumping to conclusions like that.

The first game in this video shows some really good high level play where both players used every weapon available, including the ones you said are broken.

I think to have the right idea here. The game is actually pretty balanced right now, but for some reason the less experienced players just can't have fun with it. It's a real problem, but I'm not sure what the actual issue is. Is it too heavy on micro? Do weaker players only ever do one thing at a time and have trouble managing multiple bases? From my experience playing against random people in lobbies, most players just sit in their starting base and never try to expand. That's an issue we will always have with any balance and something every other RTS has seen too. There will always be players that sit in a small base and build up powerful weapons instead of actually playing, and it is definitely a boring game to play if both players try this. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

In addition to that, like you (@matizpl) said T1 dox are great for raiding and I agree, they have always been so. But how about T1 tanks and air? T1 Vehicle factory is used exclusively for 3 things: scouting and spinner harass, most efficient building of T1 fabbers and getting T2 Vehicle factories. T1 tanks are supposed to be what you use for frontal assaults before T2 and they are supposed to support T2 tanks, not be replaced by them. With curren turrets and walls they are just outright useless. Turrets themselves are still a bit to strong, but once you realise that building a wall around them takes 5 or 10 seconds and the wall has 6k HP then you really see what T1 tanks are useless. T1 air is good until T2 air enters the field. Then it's over. Vanguards are op just because even one can melt the commander in like 10 seconds. I don't mind them killing units instantly, but having your comms sniped because 1 slipped through is just crazy.

Patch being strategically dull is really not the case, but here are far fewer options than in the patch before.

Also al otf of your counter arguments are based on the fact that the game can be turned by micro. While micro isn't bad it shouldn't be a requirement to counter something or make it viable.

I can all but guarantee that I've watched more PA gameplay than you.

The game most definitely has flaws and broken elements. Matiz is simply good at taking advantage of those flaws.

7 things that are wrong with the current metagame:

T1 is becoming useless later in the game.

There is too much emphasis on air battles.

Assisting is too important, and a pain in the butt.

Orbital is boring/not challenging.

There are too many obvious choices: Build anti-nukes, build umbrellas, build peregrines...

Overlapping roles in T1 and T2. That is not creating variety.

There isn't really much importance as to what to build. There are no real unit combos, except vanguards and air transports maybe. "There is no real metagame".


Let me elaborate the last point by making a comparison to another rather famous RTS:

In Starcraft 2, I look at the map, which race I'm up against and what I'm playing.
For example as Zerg, I could decide to go 6 pool, or 8 pool, or quick expansion, or the usual gas speedling build to harass my enemy's expansions. I could decide between a quick layer, for more options, or go roaches and storm their front door. Maybe I could do a double expansion quickly, or rush for mutalisks. Or I could do both, and delay my mutalisks. Or maybe I'd want to go burrow roaches and banelings. Hmmm banelings, I could bust their front door open with those, or would I rather prefer doing something completely different and tech up to other units like infestors, and try to hold on until I reach that point? Static defenses could help there, maybe some speedlings to distract my opponent while I do that. Oh wait, I need to adjust my buildorder again next game... Oh wait, I didn't even take into account what my opponent is doing, yet... He's rushing me with marines and tanks? I better have lots of speedlings, banelings and roaches at my disposal, and delay my expansionism in favor of deflecting that attack. And if I win I will either have the economic advantage, because he went all in, or the unit advantage, because he tried to fool me with this attack and expanded himself, in which case I would have to claim my advantage by destroying his expansion. But maybe he will manage to deflect my counterattack at which point we'd be even again... But what if the attack is a bluff, and he'll pull back in the last second? Then I would've wasted a lot of ressources into units and not into expanding my economy, which will give him the advantage... Oh my god, what should I do?

THAT is strategic depth, my friend. That is how a good "metagame" looks like.

Now compare that to PA.

Well I should probably build some doxes in the beginning, or I could just rush some T2 factory. I should expand a lot and get T2 eco as quickly as possible. I can't wait until I have the eco to build nukes...

See the difference?

Make T1 ground more than just an expensive, micro-heavy low-payoff harassment tool. (Related: don't make defenses incredibly strong and a magnitude more cost effective in comparison)
Don't have so many metal spots within a few meters of a spawn point and don't have metal spread evenly everywhere on the map, so that combat over resources actually occurs and is somewhat focused (yay metal sliders ).
Don't make T2 eco so much better than T1 eco.
Don't make T2 units the be all end all, especially air units, which are currently too useful in my opinion. Giving AA turrets considerably more range would certainly help there.

But this is all just a hypothesis, we can't really know what changes will be fun and what won't until they've been tested.

Oh man yes.
And let me explain why.

Ever hear of "dominant strategy"?
To put it simply, it states that if you have an ultimate method of achieving victory, you're ALWAYS going to use it.
In PA's case, the dominant strategy is using T2 and nukes.
This is not good.
A strategy game should NEVER have ANY dominant strategy. Every viable strategy should have a chance at victory .
Yes, some may have a higher chance, but never should there be such a stupidly high victory chance difference between strategies, and currently there is.

THAT is what makes PA strategically dull.
Simply having the choice between the different types of units doesn't make things interesting, because the game is ALWAYS a samey race.
This is why I've been playing more against the easy AI than playing with people, because playing with people always comes down to the same **** unless it's a comm-box map or something.