3 Factory Start! on PTE Air only

I actually quite liked the power struggle beforehand

But if the income is this high, doesn't it automatically mean that you have to start factory first? I'd much rather see a balance where in starting eco or starting factory is both a strong opening.

Or commander rushing....

holy moses! what??

he just showed it. He builds storage then 3 air. If the enemy goes veh, with storage the AA is insufficient in time and without it doesn't keep up.

bombers are just more effective at crippling enemies on startup. And its mainly thanks to commander income filling first structure storage even as he builds it, if the storage ate eco to build and then so did fact, there be no reason to storage first and/or would require eco first to even fill storage as its built.

ask for theory crafting, I don't have problems with competitives, I just hope that guy he played logs back in someday, and that the balance abuse isn't taken as intended balance.

So, I just tried this a couple times on the current live build, albeit in a relentless galactic war, and it worked quite well. Basically I did a standard 3 mex 1 power start, then my first air factory, and then more power and mex, and worked my way up to three or four air factories, never building any fabricators, until I massed a set of bombers and flew and killed the enemy commander (or two in one case). Yes there are other factors like I had one of the economy boost (build arms I think) that further lowers energy cost.

Actually, I just did it again in a regular skirmish game against a relentless AI because I didn't like the way GW might have swayed it. Yes, it works. I got up to 4 air factories, the last I put on fighters just to buffer. I went in with 4 fighters and 24 bombers and sniped the commander.

So the point of my first question of, "how is this different," was not to say it wasn't interesting, but to isolate whether this is something specific about the higher income commander, or just has to do with the strength of air right now. Since it is the same whether or not you commander has high income or not, I feel it has more to do with air balance than with commander income.

Make sense?

Excellent analysis.

The main change with the commander income is to remove the first 35 seconds of the game. Although, the energy may need to be tweaked...

But this change doesn't suddenly make rushing many times better or anything.

This change removes the boring opening seconds and makes it easier for new players who aren't on the forums reading up on what't the most optimized opening build. Just start building a factory. Easy and intuitive.

I believe that the biggest difference is the speed in which he can get an effective force of bombers. If he can get a higher ratio of air-to-vehicle in the PTE, then the extra income is an issue. However, if it's still the same ratio, you are correct. If two high level players actually test this to see if it doesn't change, then you are correct, Meta.

It's interesting because both sides have real data (for once), yet neither side has any conclusive data.

I'd imagine you'd want to start out by trying the easy changes first no? To that end tweaking the way you enable Factory first would be my first step. I'd do a drastic change first, like making it so that Fac First is enabled prurely by storage instead in "resource Generation"and see what results that brings.

Mike

I'm not so concerned about a crazy all-in strategy as I am about this much extra income changing the whole early game. Instead of focusing on expansion it will be better to put a lot more of your eco into attacking as early as possible with large forces. I often win multiplayer games in 10-12 minutes and 30 metal income for the commander seems like it would bring the average game length down under 10 minutes.

The length of the game isn't as much of an issue for me as the reduction of focus on early expansion. Quicker games means less time to expand, so I worry it will just become base vs. base. Of course the only way to know for sure is to test it, so don't take this as a complaint. I'm just looking for the worst-case scenario to search for holes in this plan.

I think the commander should have a powerful homing missile, so he can defend himself against air rushes better, or just make his main weapon aim better.

I dislike how the commander cannot handle air as simply as land. 10 t1 can kill what 20 land cannot.

doesn't use hotkeys= probably not playing competitively.

I feel like people are forgetting this is a first pass at commander base eco.

rekt

No no no no no.

Meta, you were so close.....but you missed it.

The problem isn't JUST with the strength of T1 air - it's the fact that you can build tons of units out the get-go.

Tanks have the same issue. You can amass a critical mass of tanks to rip through an enemy base in the same time it takes you to build those bombers.

That, in my opinion, points to an eco balance problem.

If air is as powerful as land or even more, then it's essential for the commander to have a proper defense against it. Something needs to be done :O

I agree Meta, there are two things being discussed here.

1) Starting eco and starting build order.
2) Bomber balance.

Aircraft have a bunch of advantages over other bots, vehicles and boats:

1) They have is they can pass impassable terrain.
2) They are fast.
3) They can see lots.

But there is one other advantage that I see if rarely talked about, They can stack!

With a large enough swarm of bombers all on top of one another you can get passed AA defences and deliver a snipe. This isn't true with any other unit type because other unit types cannot increase their density beyond a certain point, this maximises their firepower. Bombers are different, because they stack you can always, no matter how much damage they deliver, how weak they are, how slow you make them, always stack and deliver a fatal blow in one go.

Sure sometimes that's not the most economical way to play, but it's often the easiest as it requires little micro, it also forces your opponent to exclusively build AA rendering most of their defences useless at attacking.

I believe bombers need to change, not in cost, not in strength, not in vision but their AI needs to change, they need to be an area bombardment unit. They shouldn't stack when all targeting a single unit, they should fly over the targeted area in formation and carpet bomb a wide area, weakening everything around their target.

This will balance bombers in two ways.
a) damage will not be focusable on a commander or important building for a snipe.
b) bombers will be more spread out when attacking a base resulting in more of the enemies AA coming into range and making each AA more effective at defending.

It will also have another positive consequence, t1 bombers will actually have a new and unique roll in your air force. Gun ships can be focused snipe craft while bombers will be like artillery of the sky doing AOE damage to blobs of tanks or defences without AA, weakening them for a ground invasion (just like bombers should be).

It's the speed in which you can do it thats the factor not the fact that it can be done on any build. also i got 3 factories running off the commander only with no economic buildings

Um, I'm going with: No no no no no.

If I can build that fast, you can too. It's always a mirror match. So we can both have armies. It actually makes it interesting at the beginning, you can take a risky macro approach, a more balanced approach, or a risky early all-in.

But I strongly disagree with the idea that our equal economy causes an imbalance because you can build an army when the other side can too.

The issue I (and probably Mered) have with that is the way it puts the focus on attacking base vs. base right at the start instead of expanding to take map control, putting up factories all over, and then fighting a huge war on multiple fronts. An early game with less units roaming around is one where it is a lot easier to get extra bases up before the fabbers get killed.