Current state of metagame.

Really? I found it quite interesting. Fills the silence from the devs.

I assume that at Uber they're working hard to meet expectations for the forthcoming release.

It would make little sense to publish a build right now that's too close to what the game will be in the end. And for end I mean at the end of May. There will likely be improvements after that, but that's entirely an other story.

On the other hand, assuming the balance is still in progress and they are experimenting various solutions, it would bring us nowhere to play now with a build that's far from what the game will be at the end of May.

Also, cleaning up from bugs an a temporary build would take away precious days of work that they desperately need.

My guess is that we will not see any new build until version 1.0, which is gonna be the 23rd of May. And do not ask again what why how on shock... the release date has been linked hundreds times on this forum. Google it.

Anyone who argues "Unit X is not overpowered because a little bit of micro makes it easy to deal with" is completely separated from the purpose of the game. "1 dox can change the game". "[30% of the basic units get used]". Sorry--these things show signs of "I like winning" rather than "I like playing strategy games".

The part that makes me sad is that these things which each COMPLETELY counter what the devs said about this game in the past is argued, yet there are some people who agree with him. Why? Skill? Come on.

This same outlook on the state of a game argues that noob-tubes are fine because everyone can access them. Asinine.

Playing strategy games and winning are not mutually exclusive.

And noob tubes are more then fine, especially against snipers.

I`m with clopse on this one, until a massive census is made with everyone's builds and experiences in mind we cannot know for certain whether anything is broken or not. For now we all have opinions not definitive facts

Gonna put forth an opinion here.

I disagree with a lot of OPs statements. Now I'm not the best PA player, but I'm certainly not the worst. I win the majority of my 1v1 or 2v2 matches. I love the game's single-planet play. I've been playing since alpha in July. And I can tell you that this build is totally broken. In fact, it's so broken that I've stopped playing the game, because my attempts at doing a creative strategy is usually destroyed by an enemy t2 rush.

In terms of turrets and t1, the problem I see is that they pretty much nullify t1 land completely. Watch any competitive game, and you'll see pros counter any t1 attack with a few fabricators building double laser turrets a few seconds out of the t1's range. The argument was posed that t1 is mostly used for harassment, but I thought they were supposed to be the backbone of our armies, not simply "harassment units". Harassment is the realm of specific units (such as dox and to some extent hummingbirds and fireflies), not the entirety of the delegation of basic units.

The peregrine as everyone here pretty much agrees with is really goddamn OP. Not much to say there.

Vanguards are actually pretty ok. Drops are simple to defend against, with the exception of multi-planet astrei drops, which can sometimes bypass Anti-orbital defenses to defeat enemies. Vanguards themselves are specialized units which can be countered relatively straightforwardly, but can also break undefended areas down and help form a meatshield wall for your shellers and levelers.

The biggest problem is that t1 becomes easily invalidated by t2. Once you have t2, you have no incentive of building t1 again. You just build more t2. There's no incentive to build 3 basic factories when a single advanced factory is more viable, and you can afford it relatively easily.

Did I just watch the right game?
I didn't see any air fabbers (they were there, of course, but I only know that because T2 air factories appeared), any t2 bots, any orbital units, or any transports. T2 bombers were only built as a hopeless last resort and the t1 phattiuucs were just there to soak up an extra hit for the levelers.

I skipped the first three minutes because I could. I figure, if you can skip three minutes and all you see at the three minute mark are fireflies and fabbers, you haven't missed anything.

In my opinion some of the arguments of the forum were misrepresented in the OP. But the rebuttals said all I had to say

Also, if I am not mistaken, about 10 minutes into the clopsey finals, gil-e did beat shellers. This looked to be due to the projectile speed not being good enough on bot movement, along with the sheller not moving fast enough to avoid gil-e.

So, it could happen.

Well, after radar temporarily became 1 sided and gile stopped microing, shellers did get a 5 kill, but still.

You are comparing PA to Starcraft which have had a relatively stable balance for years and besides that, it is only your personal opinion which Matiz obviously disagrees with. The metagame of PA isn't stable and there might still be map/planet specific dominant strategies out there but I haven't really found them. In a way, the metagame of a game could be considered as far as the top players have analysed the game. You can still have your own metagame against friends with different skill levels or in separate communities. The balance in PA will always be fair as both players have access to the same units. The utility of different strategies will of course change as players discover the strategic space of the game, find counter-strategies to the current dominant metagame strategies and when the balance changes between patches.

Link.
In a way you could criticize PA for the same thing if only top players can experience the metagame and the strategic play of PA.

Why do you give up instead of performing creative strategies that involve t2?
Yes, I agree that it might be bad for PA if there are no effective strategies that doesn't involve t2. But PA can still be strategically deep without game-winning t1 strategies.
In a way, saying that the balance is broken because you can't use t1 exclusively to win games is like saying that the balance is broken because you can't win games with only Fireflies.

The reason I think that it is bad that t1 got such a small utility, except for harassment early game, is that it amounts to a huge learning curve.
A new player has to learn how to reach t2 before he/she can actually execute any effective game winning strategy. They have to learn how to eco, expand, defend against harassment and transition to t2 before they can effectively reach t2 and if they fail at any of those tasks before they reach t2 when their opponent is successful at those tanks, they will simply be rushed down by a superior enemy t2 force, whether it be a Vanguard drop, a gunship rush or Gil-Es.
In games between me and Matiz where we can match each others progressing to t2 it becomes a strategical balance of map control, eco, air control and proxy factory production where t1 harassment and map expansion is essential to the outcome of the game.

Godde your last paragraph gets it in one.

The discussion on the forums isn't actually 'T1 is useless'. Of course you can get into a winning position using T1. You can then act on that winning position without upgrading to T2.

The issue is a chess analogy. It's possible to get into a winning material position without using many pieces. But the game doesn't end either way until you have checkmated the opponent.

The issue with regards to T1 is not that it's useless, but even after you find yourself in a winning position, it is often much cheaper time wise to go the T2 route to victory.

It feels like an artificial lengthening of the game.


The other thing about T2 is virtually every strategy game, the ''counter'' to a player investing resources in 'research' is to invest in military and attack them early. Those cheap basic units form a fairly large group.

In fact in some games, the front line players are never able to spare the resources to build anything else but the bread and butter units, so it's the eco players who end up providing specialist support to armies.

That's really the way it should be. That's the way it is in PA. But the bread and butter units should not be as far down the tech tree as they are.

I agree on allot of the OP. I've been finding T1 is more useful than I realised.

There are still things that need looking at though (particularity orbital which I think most would agree on).

The main balance problems in my mind- T2 fighters are probably too strong, although I've managed to prove it is possible to win against a t2 air rusher with T1 ground- just make lots of aa tanks and patrol them around + include them in ground formations. The main issue with the T2 fighter is it's that bit too strong against T1 air.

The other thing I think needs looking at is vanguards in relation to the old vanguard drop. I lost a game to a single vanguard the other day (which in of itself wouldn't have been a problem) except due to the way it happened:

I had massive map control, and a huge resource advantage. Due to the strong defences I hadn't been able to break into my opponents base so I was building T2 land + T2 Air + nukes (just to be sure!). I had fighters patrolling my base and defence turrets dotted around, I had radar and was flying scouts over him and as I had it all locked down I was focusing on finishing him off. Next thing I know *somehow* he's got a vanguard next to my com (on replay I proved via astreaus- I'd killed his orbital lab but he'd got one out before it died that I missed). My commander was in the middle of my base assisting a t2 factory.

First thing I knew about it was the warning that my commander is under attack, I click on the notification to jump back to him and he's already down to 50% health. The uber cannon does nothing to it, and boom I've lost.

Ok- I know I could have stopped this if I'd got orbital myself, however I think that 1 unit should not be able to kill the commander that quickly. Had he dropped several in, and surrounded me then fine- that takes some skill, but dropping in 1 relatively cheap unit shouldn't be a game winning option. I mean it takes 2 nukes to kill a full health commander!

The solution isn't to massively nerf the vanguard, but to buff the damage of the uber cannon so it can kill 1 vanguard (now before people scream OP at me- the updated Uber cannon is going to have a much longer cool down time between shots so this could work well). That means that you can't just sneak a single unit in for an instant win, and will give the player an opportunity to save the situation (which is half the fun imo) rather than look on helplessly as their entire army is defeated by a lone unit.

I actually greatly prefer shared army 2 v 2 play for the above reason- it gives you a second chance. Other than the issue of how strong the vanguard is against the com- I think the unit is otherwise fine. It's excellent for breaking into walled turtle fortresses to allow your other units a way in, yet in the field it's easily defeated by shellers or Gil E, or pretty much any unit with micro due to it's short range.

No, you can't. Actually I don't think I have ever lost a game where my opponent didn't go t2 in this patch and winning with only t1 really sounds hard to accomplish against a skilled opponent.
The decisiveness of the t1 stage can of course vary depending on the proximity between the players and the resource distribution.
If metal points are scarce then it increases the time it takes to reach t2 and it is more important to expand which also increases the impact of early raiding.

In my games, t1 rarely decides the outcome of the game. Sure it happens that I completely fail at harassing my opponent where my enemy quench my expanding and just rush me down with t2 vehicles from proxy factories but if my opponent focus too much resources on his proxy factories there is usually room for me to get out some t2 air, harass his expansion and proxy factories with gunships or go for a commander snipe with gunships or a Vanguard drop.

Mm... I'm not sure what you mean here. I think that the bread and butter units should be in the basic factories. T2 should not outright beat T1 in my opinion which it in many cases does in the current balance.

Or you can just fix Astreus so that it can't drop units from orbit. Dropping units from orbit sounds like something for the unit cannon.

I am torn on the whole commander snipability thing. On one hand it ends the game more decisively without drawing out the game too long, makes comebacks more possible and makes games more exciting both to watch and to play. On the other hand losing the game because you forgot to put up some AA near your commander, forgot to make an orbital radar or just didn't watch your commander carefully enough can be frustrating.

One balance design can be that sniping the commander early game is hard while it is much easier lategame. Of course as army strength grows as the game progresses while the commanders strength doesn't, this naturally makes commander sniping easier as the game continues. Of course you could also have expensive assets like laser satellites that excel at taking out single targets which in turn excels at sniping expensive targets such as nukes and anti-nukes and even sniping the commander lategame.

This does not fit with Meta saying that they hope to release the new build this week, it does not fit with Sorian saying that they couldn't release a new build because they are still stabilizing the server, it does not fit with Garat saying that they are actively working on a build, it does not fit with Sorian saying that the patches will start flowing again soon, it does not fit with Garat saying that it has been longer than he likes between builds.

To put it short:

There is a slight chance your theory will be proven to be wrong.

I personally don't like commander 'sniping' as a way to win. What I mean by sniping is having an easy way to kill the commander whilst bypassing everything else (e.g. a single vanguard drop). If you overwhelm your opponent in any layer and kill the commander with a sizeable force I don't really count that as a snipe (so if you get a force of T2 fighters and gunships, and can push past their air force and keep them alive long enough to kill a com despite ground based aa- that really isn't a 'snipe' in my book). It's the same with a powerful ground force. A large group of t2 tanks, headed up by vanguards that push past a defence line and get to the commander isn't really a snipe.

What I think needs looking at though is these 'tricks' that people are using to invalidate playing the game. The commander should be able to either deal with such tactics (like a full health com isn't killed by a single nuke for example), or be able to hide so you can't find him without first seriously hurting your opponent (e.g. destroying a players energy to uncover a cloaked com).

I just don't really get the attitude of players who rush for the easy win. The current commander is just a bit too easy to kill in a few too many ways in my opinion.

Hi, really enjoyed reading your post but just wanted to say i kinda disagree with your points and this is why. Not to say you arn't accurate in alot of ways, but i think you are missing things too, which leads to wrong conclusions.

1: Turrets are overpowered.
If the counter to something is to either entirely avoid it or prevent it from being built in the first place, to me that definitely signals a balance issue that needs to be rectified. That kind of binary power mechanic is something you should only find in the late game e.g. halleys or other 'super weapons'. The metal/time effectiveness ratio between turrets and t1 units is undeniably out of whack, with walls being crazy powerful just adding to the problem. Dragon's teeth took longer to build if i remember correctly.

Even in higherish level play, it's mostly about who can get the t2 out first and in the most quantity - mainly because they break reactionary turrets. Otherwise people would be seeking t1 timings. Which they are not.

T2 is literally a requirement if you want to get good timings to push and win a game (which is the entire point from 0 seconds). Radar/stinger assists + reactionary turrets are just that good. Whether cost is an issue is reasonably debateable, though time to build is definitely too fast. It's also very easy to micro fabbers to spread when power building so that bumblebees become cost inefficient. To me, that doesn't speak much about 'strategic variation'.

Just because the impact is felt less the higher you go doesn't mean there isn't a huge problem in virtually every other skill level segment. I think it's very dangerous to the health of the game to suggest that turrets are otherwise. Fixing turret power would have hugely positive ripple effects to the issues with t2. I would even suggest that turrets consume energy to fire so you actually have a material opportunity cost unlike currently.

Trying to fix the t2 issues without addressing turrets first is like shooting a moving target in the dark. You'll hit your target eventually, although it won't be a clean shot and you could have just turned on the light to begin with.

2: T1 is useless.
Yes, t1 is not useless in and of itself. t1 air and dox harass gameplay is indeed one of the gems within the game right now, and mixed t1 and t2 forces will most always beat out straight t2. Fireflies in particular are incredibly versatile and flexible.

However, this isn't an issue you can simply brush aside on that basis alone. You shouldn't need to be a good or great player with top level control just to simply be able to viably use t1 units. This is really a case of skill creating utility where the actual design core doesn't facilitate or encourage it.

Low accessibility to 'fun' is never a good design premise.

3: Vanguard is overpowered.
Drops are absolutely broken design wise, if not balance wise, because they dictate way too much power to air superiority over land power. Gameplay at any point in time past 11-12 minutes is basically whoever has more peregrines, has the option to hit an i win button with very high probability. Not only does this tie back to the issue of 'strategically dull', but the risk to reward is absolutely bonkers out of whack. It's basically nuke/anti-nuke gameplay but at a much earlier stage of the game.

If your opponent has consistently snowballed air superiority from the first hummingbird, or you have chosen not to go t2 air, you are essentially forced to push and win very quickly sub 10 minutes in order to get under any kind of potential drop timing. If you don't end up getting dropped, then your opponent is also doing what you're doing or is just bad at taking advantage of the flaws in the current game.

You don't even need to drop vanguards ontop of commanders. Can drop them out of air defence and drive them in from multiple points. Huge force multiplier, incredibly small risk/reward.

It's a complex issue that i think stems from several sources

1. Peregrines take too much punishment and shoot slightly too fast. They absolutely eclipse t1 air like no other t2 unit does over their t1 counterparts. It's like peregrines and kestrels have been balanced.... solely around other peregrines and kestrels. They stand out like bright pink aliens even as t2 units.
2. Loaded pelicans are too fast.
3. The dropping player always has the option of local air superiority due to initiative. Especially when you're only looking to punch a hole in a patrol circle to create 1 second of free air time.
4. Astreus should not instadrop from orbit, or land into the orbital shell with such precision. Just send it to a nearby planet and then back again for what essentially ammounts to precision teleporting vanguards with no counter. Vastly cheaper alternative to ssx.
5. t2 mex

This patch is strategically dull.
The nash equilibrium of gameplay seems to come down to t1 air/dox/stinger harassment, into ~4 t1 bot fab + sniper bot push by 8 minutes latest. I just don't see any other build that is as efficient power for time and cost. Ofcourse the higher the radius, the more that power shifts to air and sheller creep, but at 500-600 radius, bot pressure is pretty dahm powerful. Sniper bots only being necessary in order to kill turrets (yup you guessed it).

Yes, there are a heap of different strategies, but what's concerning is they tend to boil away the higher the tightness of play becomes. Once more people start actually becoming good at microing against shellers, they will fall out of favour, and so following will the already rare vehicles first.

Slightly faster/mobile ants and spinners could help resolve the obvious disparity between bot vs vehicle. But as is, I don't see vehicles as being particularly competitive against bots.

Conclusions
The current state of the game is quite problematic i think. I wouldn't say completely broken, but there are definitely major issues that should be resolved before going forward with feature development and 'discovery' as you put it. I don't admit to being the best player and knowing all the variables and answers, but i do strongly believe the timings in this game could be much better paced than as currently.

One thing i will agree with you 100% about is the change to dox attack being a big "eh, i hope that doesn't make it past testing".

Orbital combat is a waste of time so in one sentence i'll say, I always gg out rather than spend 2 hours spamming anchors and air fabbers.

Wow very impressive. You should post more.

Eloquently put my dear watson...

Vanguard drops can't bypass AA better than gunships can although if the enemy sends gunships at your commander you atleast have a few seconds to react with your fighters before he dies compared to if he managed to drop a Vanguard right next to it. The cost of a Vanguard drop is cheap though and is good against buildings if you can just find 1 angle where they can drop without being shot down by AA but then it is not commander sniping anymore.

Rushing for the win is how you play to win. Anything else is just suboptimal. Those 'tricks' that people use to 'invalidate playing the game' as you call it just means that people don't adhere to your definition of 'playing the game'. If the developers agree with you, they will probably change the balance so that those 'tricks' aren't viable or less viable.
About "Rushing for the win". If you know that you can win. Why wait?
If you are not sure that you can win then it is not rushing for the win. Then it is just taking a calculated risk as a failed commander snipe is more likely to put you behind rather pulling you ahead.