Doxes are Overpowered now (with VIDEO as PROOF)

The Overpoweredness of Dox Spam (with video)

You guys have done it. You have given us what we wanted: A Dox buff. But you guys over-did it.

I was playing a few matches using the new Doxes (amphibious + anti-air + twice sight radius), and all I did was spam them. Beats Vanguard rushes or any other unit.

OP because:

- When spammed in the hundreds, it literally eliminates all air units.
- When spammed in the hundreds, each Dox still takes at least 1 hit to kill, so most units which are strong powerful attackers have no way to fire fast enough against 1000+ Doxes.
- Because of the previous point, all tactical missiles, lasers, and single-target attacks are very weak versus huge groups of Doxes, eliminating Robo-artillery bots, Hornets, Tactical Missile defense, most tank cannon attacks.
- When spammed in the hundreds, these Doxes go through every pore, hole, and gap in the enemy base, and bypasses everything to kill off fabs and eco structures.
- Powerful scouting units nice thanks to sight radius.
- When used for planetary invasions, all you need is 1500 Doxes to flood the world, area patrol, and regardless of how many Vanguards or Levelers you have, they will get past all defenses from all 360 degrees direction.
- Amphibious per se is okay, but together with everything that the Doxes now have, they are OP.
- Creates so much lag that it prevents enemies from making decisions well.

...................Added Video.......................

I won my last EIGHT games, yes 8 games, with my team using largely Dox spamming (as in, 95% Dox spam, the rest being a mixture of just a few tier 2s and other units).

In fact, just 5 mins ago, I had this 4 vs 4 game which was hilarious. Our team had like 150 factories churning out Doxes nonstop, and we set many of them on patrol, which destroyed all their Mex until they were forced to enclose themselves in a very small area spamming like 60-80 turrets.

Here is the PROOF of the entire battle: http://pastats.com/chart?gameId=189796

(ADDITIONAL BONUS VIDEO: http://pastats.com/chart?gameId=189753)

At least, they thought they would pull through, but with all their external Mexes destroyed, their efficiency fell to 15 - 25%, while over the course of the longest, more gruelling 15 minutes ever, my team produced a rate of 150 Doxes every 3 - 4 seconds, and we sent waves after waves of units, so much so that not even their tactical missiles, Shellers, Vanguards, T2 and T3 laser turrets, with 40+ Bumblebees were able to handle.

Sure it took like 7000 Doxes in total, perhaps, but we totally wiped them out eventually, and I knew in my mind, that in all 4 of the remaining players, they were probably thinking at first that "yeah we can do it", but over the course of the most intense 15 mins ever, they were probably thinking then along the lines of "WTF, when are these waves of 150 - 300 Doxes ever going to stop?"

I love how everyone complained about the dox and then uber made a couple of seemingly minor balance changes and now it's all "DOX ARE NUKES"

Maybe RTS balance is a lot harder than we all think.

It's really not.
Well, it's not harder than some of us can manage at any rate.

Halving their cost wasn't minor.
What was is, tripling? their sight range wasn't minor.
Increasing their range by 60% wasn't minor.
Adding the ability to shoot air wasn't minor.

If you counter with doxes you're on the same foot. If something's op, you can use it in your own favour.
Grenadiers and levelers have a good splash damage and better range, use it against close armies of doxes.

For the record, I'm pretty happy about the direction Dox are heading in vanilla, i.e. more like alpha stats with some other abilities to differentiate them from tanks.

Sure, it's jacked way up to MAXIMUM FORCE right now, but that's just how the balance guy wants it done.

Uh, no. It was not a couple of minor balance changes. Uber lined up several irrelevant, but still major boosts (halved cost, amphib (and speed?)), and then went ahead and boosted the things that mattered (sight radius, range) – a lot. And it shoots air. And then the earlier changes became relevant all of a sudden. The result, of course, is an enormous change in the balance of that unit. This reaction then, comes as no surprise.

But I'm not complaining. Why? Because I'm glad they changed it, and I'm confident they'll tweak it down in a while. Like they did – finally – with the vanguard. And I'm going to enjoy the havoc in the meantime.

It isn't that hard. If something can't be beat, perhaps it adds something to the game that doesn't have enough tools against it? Dox are numerous but low health per unit. Each unit soaks a single shot then dies. So, the problem is, it doesn't balance out well enough with the vast majority of units that do extremely higher damage at an extremely low rate.

Solution, add more units with lower dps but more rate of fire, to quickly kill a lot of weak units fast. That will supplement the abundance of really slow firing units that do 4x more unnecesary damage.

Let me give one of many examples, where we add a unit that has rapidfire. Nothing in this game has rapidfire except the one unit it benefits in use against, the dox. What if a vehicle had rapidfire to counter dox, as a side role to tanks which dox just soak shots from efficiently:

Dox
Speed:17
Health:40
Cost:60
Range:80, Vision:100
Damage: 10, 1 shots a second.
Amphibious, targets land and sea (not air)

Skitter
Speed:17
Health:120
Cost: 300
Range: 100, Vision: 160
Damage:40, 1 shot a second

Ripper
Speed:10
Health:600
Cost:400
Range:100, Vision: 100
Damage: 120, 1 shot every 3 seconds.

I thought somebody else did the math and found that tanks still beat them handily?

Deathballed tanks beat doxen handily, I did find via maths.

Dox can just walk around the tanks and attack that other mex field. Oh, you're moving the tanks in a vain attempt to intercept? Let me take out that now undefended mexfield. Oh look, now the tanks are streaming in single file. Easy pickings.

Called it.

Mike

Ok, but wasn't that the point of the unit?

To avoid a direct attack and do some raiding?

Aren't bombers the best option to counter this?

Apparently not.

" Check your premises. "

*shrugs* well then I dunno, because to me, they seem to do their job handily now.

A little too well perhaps. And good luck hitting dox with bombers (well ok, if it's a swarm you will).

Yes, they do their job and a dozen others. The robotic workforce is replacing the previous generation of conventional workers.

Well, imagine the frustration if they had AA bots!


Ha ha ha, owwwww now I just feel bad.

But frankly, yeah the dox do their job, now we just need to under the counter.

Actually the dox can hit air now...

Problem: If it is a single dox, it can dodge indefinitely the bombers; If it is a swarm of dox, the dps will be too thick for bombers to reach.