Build 77337-pte now up

You can safely make air fabbers more efficient now. They're still very much a noob trap but now their mobility benefit is gone if we can just send fabbers in pelicans. Air fabs are easier to kill but cheaper than bot fab+pelican, so it is probably ok to make them a little more efficient.

Errrr... wont this make the runaway eco in T2 even more silly?

gg orbital gameplay.

- jig explosion damage and radius reduced
- basic comfabs can build walls
- umbrella cost reduced by 400
- orbital fab can't reclaim anything, even orbit-orbit.
- premade systems moved from load_planet to own file. I think it was around 80% of the diff. ;^)
- major overhaul of game lobby (new_game) system selection - drop-down of some premade systems

In 5 weeks since I last played (holiday abroad), I think this is the fourth PTE build? And everything screams of dramatic improvements.

@jables - please pass on the message: Uber are Awesome, We Love You Long Time

No, because T2 fabbers remain as efficient and the structures retain the same costs. T1 fabbers however are cheaper, and power is also cheaper, which should see either T2 appears sooner, or greater T1 expansion early on.

But like... T2 power gens already payed themselves off in a ridiculously short time, and now they're magnitudes cheaper than even that. It looks like once you reach T2, power just kinda becomes irrelevant, because you're drowning in it.

I hope it turns out how you theorise though.

t2 power is not cheaper. It has less health. Maybe you missread? They dropped the health. Not the metal costs.

It was health, not cost m8

While they are tinkering with T2 power...I wish they exploded with a mini-nuke style explosion. That would counter-balance their new fragility.

The naval targeting orbital is awesome. Looks so cool seeing those missiles flying straight up. Took forever to kill an orbital factory though.

Initial impression:

Combat fabbers are super powerful. (YES YES YES)
Pelicans are useful, but they have limitations and counters. The primary counter is to build a lot of air, and the secondary is to dox spam and chase down the expanding engineers before they get up any serious defenses.

You don't really feel the energy changes until about five minutes into the game, at which time you say WAIT A SECOND. I have spare energy! Let's build lots of fabbers to expand with! I like this. The folks I played with liked it. It's fun.

I haven't delved too much into the orbital side of things, but since these same changes were introduced into the orbital balance mod a while ago.....good decision.

Reservations:

The Commander really needs his energy and metal regen nerfed, and his storage adjusted to compensate. I'm thinking 1800 metal and 40k energy or so. That way, we eliminate the constant rush that is a 1v1. Inject some thought into it, along with more fabricators.

If we can get the commander economy fixed....that would be amazing.

Wow reading those notes set my brain on fire. So many new combinations of things to try!


Typical it's the week before I have 3 exams really.

Well this'll probably make me lose a lot.


More... : (

Please, base_missile_turret.json:

"target_priorities":[
||"Air & Bomber",
||"Air & Gunship",
||"Air & Transport",
||"Air & Mobile"
]

And then after this I don't think the Pelican needs the HP reduction.

I disagree with the Dox change because I think the Dox / Ant balance was really good already.
Okay that's not entirely true, I like being able to see what's killing my Dox, but they will be a teeny tiny bit OP compared to the tanks. The energy plant HP reduction also helps to make Dox OP (probably, need more testing), because I can kill more stuff with them in an enemy base instead of just the metal extractors.

I don't think the Grenadier change was enough of a buff. I would like to see it have more HP.

This isn't new to this PTE, but CSGs should be wiped out by a planet smash.

Seeing burning trees in a water filled crater is a bit... odd

As for balance, I still feel the combat fabbers range is too small, they tend to get put in the back of the army, far away from the infernos/vanguards who best benefit from them.

I'm digging the drop down box system selector but I'm going to miss the "generate new system" button. I've clicked on that button more than any other button in the game.

WOW,WOW!

I should change all my tactics after this update=)

BTW trees, rocks, etc. are called features in the planet files. I (at least) only use CSG to refer to 'brushes' the permanent terrain alternations like mountains, plateaus, and cracks.

I really like this idea. It makes focusing on attack them more of a tactical choice.