About the upcoming PTE balance changes

So there's tons of stuff we hope to push any minute to the PTE stream, including a lot of balance changes. Brian has already summarize a lot of them.

It's important to note a couple of things: While they represent many hours of academic analysis and thinking, and experimentation in the test environment, they are still probably broken. We already found two broken things and fixed them: bomb bot damage was too high, and T2 "bombers" were using energy unintentionally.

We crashed many different scenarios of units into each other while working on this. Sometimes it was completely one-sided and we were like, "Yup, infernos find bomb bots delicious". Sometimes it was meant to be close (metal for metal). Still, there's nothing like actual play to figure out the holes in a plan. So by all means, play the PTE build. Fire some tactical missiles out of bombers, the new advanced bot unit, and the modified catapult. Shoot some down with the sniper bot too! Post observations (rather than rants) and discuss new strategies, new counter strategies, and new counter-counter strategies.

We may not react right away. For one thing, we're still mid process, and for example we haven't really done anything about naval (those poor bastards). Second, there will continue to be discoveries as this comes out, and we will be eager to see what else can be learned.

Anyway, this build has more unit diversity, better balance between t1 and t2, and some new units that to us just feel fun. We hope you enjoy it!

Speaking of which, is naval going to get some attention sooner rather than later?
Specifically the submersible side of naval?

Yes and no.

I've been playing the PTE build a lot lately. Unfortunately it seems to be pretty unstable, but it's a lot of fun!

Experimenting with new units can make for some fun surprises.

Cool and aw.

Just wondering, but do you guys have an opinion on what the role of naval should be in the game right now?

Is there anything specifically you want naval to excel at, compared to other units? I know I would so they actually get used.

How about using the t2 fighter model as a super fast spy plane that can be used for late game scouting?

What, you mean ~15 45m units was too few to take down an unprotected commander. Such madness ;^)

Scouting should always remain a T1 thing.
There's no need for a T2 scout, T1 scouts are already fast and have enough vision to see what needs to be seen.

But t1 scouts have a hard time getting to the middle of a protected base.

sorry if this is a noob question, but what is the PTE build?

Then you don't have enough scouts then.

Either way, someone should be able to reasonably protect their base. It's their base after all.

Want to see what's in it? Go blow it up with units!

The playtest environment. It's where Uber pushes changes and fixes so the community can try them before pushing them to the live build.

The middle of a base is the last thing you need scouted, as it's probably been scouted early game.
Late game you want to scout expansions, proxy bases.
If you want to scout the main base for threats (nuclear or otherwise) you have to send some gunships in or use orbital radar.
After all, scouting for nukes is done to make sure they're destroyed before launch, why not just send an attack in and, er, kill 1 nuke with 1 swarm?

how to play the PTE build?! i wanna halp

If you don't know, chances are you've been playing PTE this whole time.
Unless you're playing through Steam.

that must be it, i am on steam

Ah, then you download the Uber Launcher here (click the link for your respective OS)
Open the launcher and at the top where it says "stream" it should be at "PTE"
If not, use the drop-down menu and select it, then launch the game and you're good to go.

On the launcher, there is a drop down.

also, you can copy pte into steam and swap it in names with your steam commonapps PA folder. Steam will launch from the correctly named folder, whichever folder you make it.

thanks guys