An Overview of the PTE Changes So Far

• Bomb bots are more powerful, and extremely fast. But they have very very little vision.
• Doxes are faster than they used to be, putting them into the raiding and flanking role. Ideal for hitting outlying metal extractors.
• Slammers are amphibious! They can walk underwater and shoot torpedos as they do so.
• Balance and cost changes to advanced units. Advanced factories still cost the same, but advanced units are cheaper and some have been altered or completely repurposed.
• The Leveler now deals more damage and has more health, but a really slow turret turn rate. Making them excellent tank hunters and devastate buildings, but can be flanked with ease.
• The Hornet now has a long range tactical missile that can outrange defenses.
• The Stinger has been removed and a tactical missile launcher T2 bot has been added.
• Sniper bots can shoot down tactical missiles.
• The Hummingbird now has more health, and the Peregrine is removed.
• Aircraft explosions have changed and look awesome.
• The Catapult now has less range (barely longer than towers), higher rate of fire, and doesn’t use the ammo system.
• Orbital has had some changes. Things are all around cheaper and more efficient.
• The basic radar satellite now has an increased vision radius. So it has the vision radius of a T1 radar. Very valuable.
• Shellers have been given a buff.
• Bumblebees have also been given a buff. They’re stronger than they used to be and carpet bomb. They can destroy multiple fabbers in one pass.
• Looks like area patrol is still broken on the PTE.

Server crash! The commentators then talk with the players about the match and fire up another match.

• No naval changes yet.
• Changes to T2 units to make them less expensive and all around more balanced for their cost.
• Vanguards have the same DPS as they did with the flame. But they fire Uber cannon shots. Making them deal lots of damage against single targets.
• The new T2 bot is kinda like an artillery bot, with tactical missiles.
• T2 factories can build T1 units, really fast.
• Meta talked about the bug with smashing a planet that has planets smashing it. Essentially, they cut corners to get to get to the beta launch and have bugs now. But they’re going to have planets continue orbiting the sun when they planet they’re orbiting goes to smash a planet.
• They’re gonna change the way you launch planets. We’ll be able to select the Halley and click attack, like you do with units. Except it’s a giant planet smashing.
• The range of Umbrellas is a bug. They’re supposed to be able to out range Anchors, but with how ranges are drawn, they don’t quite work. It’ll get there.
• The Teleporter has a lot of health. Not enough to withstand a nuke, but still very tough.
• Nukes are very expensive. The costs are going to change, but just don’t know what those exact changes will be.
• Performance improvements have been made! The never ending quest in improving performance.
• They’re working on the UI lag problem!

After the second match ended, the casters talked with the players about the match.

Sounds good! Some things like turn-rate, amphibious capability and unique attacks units giving units more character and niche roles. It's awesome seeing things coming together.

One minor thing we still need - some way of engaging Anchors from the Ground/Air besides Umbrellas. Currently massed anchors stop armies in their tracks.

I think the idea is that when facing a heavy anchor defense, you have to choose between going around/hitting elsewhere, or amassing enough Avengers to overwhelm the anchors. A heavy anchor defense represents a major investment in holding a position - it's not supposed to be easy to break.

Anchors aren't a major investment though.

Quite.
Also that's a bit like saying the only way to overcome Air is with Air, or Land is with Land. The more these different layers interact the better.

5 PTE Anchors cost 18K metal - by mid-late game that's fairly affordable, but it's not that hard to go around. If they try to start building multiple Anchor clusters to defend a wider area, then it soon becomes cost-effective to amass a big blob of Avengers to overwhelm each Anchor cluster one at a time. I suppose things become hardest when they already have a big blob of Avengers themselves to support their forward Anchors - perhaps you might have a point there.

It's about having multiple options and counters on multiple layers as well, rather than just Avenger-Anchor Orbital combat and what's cost-effective. I don't think 'just go around' is a good motto if we want to avoid turtles either.

PA is going with the Wind of Change

Really liking the direction they are going with unit roles! I'm not sure I like what they did to the Catapult but we'll see. Can't wait to see what they do next.

I think what they did with the catapult is really weird. When have you heard of an artillery piece that can go longer than a tactical missile?

And why are tactical missiles easier to reload than an artillery shell?

The catapult should have longer range and lower rate of fire and the Holkins should have shorter range and higher rate of fire.

Removed original constructive post because i got jumped on again.. brilliant

This is the part of development devs don't usually show us.

And your post is kind why they don't show us that often.

This.

Balance isn't something that Uber can wake up and finish. They need to constantly tweak it for the entirity of the development process.

If you don't want to be apart of the balancing process, then wait for the game to be finished. This stage of the process is normally behind the scenes and people never even hear about some of these unit changes.

Also, if you don't like all of the constant changes, play on the live build. That doesn't change as often.

Let me clarify the umbrella range question with a crudely drawn picture.

Currently the umbrella draws its range on the ground using its actual range. But since it only targets the orbital layer, you can get units where the orbital leg (the line drawn from orbital units to the ground) shows a point inside the range, but the unit is actually outside the range of the umbrella.

The current proposal is to draw the umbrella range by projecting its orbital range down to the surface of the planet, which would be a more accurate representation of the effective range, and make the leg of an orbital unit always indicate whether it is in range of that umbrella or not.

We considered drawing something on the orbital shell, but the shell is hard to interpret visually, and now that we have the orbital leg, ranges can be well expressed on the planet surface.

Also while I agree that subs and the UC are more important than balance especially now that uber could just implement, say, the RCBM, I really don't know that Meta or Scathis could contribute that much to the development of those features. Might as well have them doing what they're good at.

Subs are going to be critical to balancing naval. I really hope they add that soon.

Subs>Battleships/Battlecruisers>Destroyers/Torpedo-Boats>Subs

• Sniper bots can shoot down tactical missiles.

Does that mean catapult missiles too? Hmm, might not be that big of a problem since the reduced range.

And I don't mind them balancing this now, when new units are added they can simply be adapted to fit the good balance that they are making already. And there are probably not going to be much changes to land based units after this balance. So only naval balancing is left for later with a possible addition of submarines.
And I love to follow their thought processes with balancing so keep up the good work

Love that unit roles are starting to become more defined, particularly happy we've got amphibious bots, always loved the surprise attack and pincer potential.

Keep going uber!

Totally agree. Also I believe they should remove the homing for the missiles (unless it's already been done, I haven't messed with Catapults in a while). This would keep them regulated to a more anti-structure role.