Changed my mind: Doxes are wonderful, not useless

I don't have PAstats installed to replay the video at http://pastats.com/listgames?listpage=1 , however, out of curiosity, I just played a game where I decided to spam Doxes for fun.

However, this time, instead of them being the useless assault bots they were, they were ironically very useful. I just wish I had the video to show (see if you guys can find it there: Testinginator 6 player game on 2 August 2014. Someone else might have PAstats installed).

We had a 3 vs 3 (non-shared army) game (small moon base; around 400 radius I think), when I spammed factories right from the start, and had them all built Doxes ad infinitum.

Before anyone else could have a sizable army, I already had 50 Doxes built and I sent it to Orange's base, where I used hit and run to destroy about 10 metal extractors, and about 3 fabbers.

Before he could retaliate, I pulled back the army, and another 50 Doxes were ready, and it stormed Yellow's metal extractors (about 4 - 5). I then pooled the 100 Doxes together to attack Orange from the North and took out more metal extractors and energy plants (about 6 since he rebuilt the metal extractors).

By this time, my ally to the West of Orange (Light Blue) has already started attacking, and Orange's eco efficiency was only at 30%, while Yellow was at 50%. My other ally east of Yellow (White), then starting attacking him, and another enemy (Pink).

Then I sent another 200 Doxes to attack Orange in the south to wipe out about 5 - 6 energy plants. When his army of infernos started to retaliate, I just used my Doxes' superior speed to out-run them and destroy them, then I sent another 100 Doxes to the North of his base while he was distracted, to wipe out his fabs and factories (about 5 - 6 fabs, and 3 factories, with 2 - 3 metal extractors). By this time, Orange was so weak that Light Blue wiped him out, together with the help of my Doxes.

Then by now, I had 300 more Doxes in my base. I used them to storm Yellow's energy plants and metal extractors (about 10 in total), until he only had a small base left. He tried to attack me with 20 Aventails but was repelled with my 400 Doxes in my base, then White and I attacked together destroyed Yellow.

The point being: Doxes, contrary to my expectations, are not useless. We just have to use it the correct way. The 3 rules of using Doxes:

Disclaimer: This strategy works largely on smaller/medium-sized maps. Its effectiveness goes down on larger maps.

1) Always attack early in swarms, before the enemy can build up defenses or an army.

2) Always DO NOT attack upfront. Doxes are not meant to kill enemies upfront. They are meant to out-maneuver them using their speed and turning rate advantage, to out-flank and destroy them.

3) Always use Doxes to attack metal extractors first, then aim for fabs, then aim for energy plants, then factories in the end.

4) Always send multiple waves. One for distraction, the rest to attack the enemy's resource generators.

5) Always attack nonstop. Do not give them a chance to breathe.

6) Dox rushes are not a substitute for victory, so if you try this, make sure to have allies to build up a real army to storm the enemy base. The main purpose of Dox rushes is to simply reduce the enemy's resource efficiency, and buy your allies time to build up an army to stomp them.

7) Dox rushes are wonderful for having a positive eco efficiency. I had about 15 bot factories in this game, all churning out Doxes, but even with only 2 fabs building power plants, and another 2 fabs building extractors, my commander could continue to spam factories nonstop, and all my factories were churning out nonstop Doxes.

8) Never leave your Doxes unattended. Always use them to strafe the enemy. For this strategy to work, you need to focus 100% on manipulating your Doxes, which means that if you are attacked, or have no allies to back you up, then GG.

What you're describing sounds a lot like where Doxes were during Alpha/Beta. Used for raiding and flanking and hit and runs.

But they also weren't so weak with such little vision and range.

Right now the main issue with Dox is their vision and range. They normally get destroyed before they ever see what destroys them, and they mostly get destroyed before they get a shot off whenever they encounter any form of defense.

The range is indeed short, but you can pre-empt where the enemy extractors are since they are always built on top of metal spots near the enemy base.

Also you can roughly predict when the enemy will retaliate in response to this harassment, and you can send in another squadron in another direction to attack while his armies are distracted.

Most importantly, in the early game, no unit can out-run the Doxes. I had my Doxes out-run and destroy a few of the enemy infernos without them even touching me. The key is to focus on the Doxes 100%. It is quite demanding on attention and focus, but if done right, the enemy shouldn't be able to touch you.

The main issues to worry about are laser turrets. However, I have found that even 100 Doxes can easily zerg 4 - 5 laser turrets while moving. You will sustain a loss of course, but in large numbers, Doxes can be lethal. I had around 100 Doxes chew up 50% of Yellow's Commander in that game.

...........

Edit:

Anyway, my advice to all is to try it! Let us know how it works!

By the way, the main issue with this strategy, unfortunately, as many players in that game noticed ... is the severe lag.

Towards the end, I had 600 Doxes, and the game was starting to lag immensely (not helped by this patch, which in my opinion, ruined performance for me).

GJ man, always cool to hear some dox succes storys.

Well, I just had another game, and I did manage to replicate the same success against a player ... until I got rushed by Doxes myself by the very player whom I had rushed in the earlier game mentioned in this thread.

My base was totally defenceless except for a commander, and when I tried getting my commander to move up to Uber cannon them, they just ran away.

Another dox success history:

Build a bot factory, area patrol the planet with dox, profit (I saw someone do that and just copied it. Well I'm not playing the top players but for me it usually has a positive effect).

Pros:
- No micro needed
- Even late game, the dox will find unprotected mex and bring them down
- When you see something important on the planet, like a fabber, you can grab nearby dox and micro them
- It is non-stop scouting for you, you always see where the enemy wants to expand
- Distracts the enemy, he has to place some tanks or laser towers near his expansion and fabbers
- You just mix it into your build and don't have to change the rest of your strategy. You can still compete with vehicles and air because this is just a side-tactic

Cons:
- Maybe you could do something better with the metal?
- Some dox just run into defenses or they waste their time running around the planet = wasted metal
- If the enemy scouts it, he can easily counter it by sending tanks along his fabbers or sending groups of two tanks to important areas
- It is a long term strategy because the dox take so long to kill the mex and you have to build up a critical mass of dox to control every area

There is an issue with Dox patrol though. While this works well on smaller maps, the problem is that the Doxes can become so fragmented and rarefied that each one of them individually do not pose too much of an obstacle to anyone. Each Dox also does very little damage, and can take like more than a minute just to destroy a Mex.

The other issue is the opportunity cost involved; while you are setting your 50 factories to Dox patrol, that time spent building Doxes might be better spent building an army of Vanguards to crash through the enemy's defences.

I have tried mass Dox patrol, but on larger maps, where focus is needed, as there is more time for people to develop defences, the strategy may not work as well.

I just use one factory (the rest of my strategy is just standard) and can live with some dox getting stuck or taking a minute to kill a mex. Like I said it is a long term thing .

This is still an early scout tactic because the enemy is simply whree the dox are not. Once they stop serving their purpose they can crank out fabbers instead....

I have tried this with Boombots spam too, but unfortunately Boombots work well only if clustered together in large numbers, and their line of sight is too small.

The only complaint I got from spammin Boombots is that it lags the heck out of servers. I once had 600 Boombots patrolling the entire planet and sim-time got reduced to a crawl for everyone.

I don't think that this strategy will work well in higher-tier play, since I can also spam ants from the start, and then just kite, or build turrets right off the bat and rush for T2. But who knows.

Just gonna leave this here:


They literally do nothing to tanks any defenses whatsoever makes them useless...

You also said it yourself that dox rushes won't win a game, and to sum up the role of every unit in a nutshell is to win a game. If this strategy can't actually win you a 1v1 by using dox, that makes them quite useless cause I COULD be putting that metal towards tanks rather than wasting my time with bots.

That is a video of a group of unmicro'd dox against micro'd ants. No they dont win that in that way no....

This is not a game about damn micro, I should have to spend my time babysitting dox, and the point stands, dox suck.

Even IF They attempted to flank the tanks could have easily kited as well making them do no damage once again.

4500 metal vs. 1500.
To be fair, that's a lot better than when it was 9000 metal vs. 1500.

Basically you're using bots to outmaneuver your opponent (which could always be done), but because you can now have twice as many as before, they actually do enough damage to structures to be threatening.

There's two issues that mean that video isn't useful:

1. The Dox stand in range and have several killed before even attempting to engage.
2. The Dox owner gives them an attack order, causing Dox at the back to have a hard time engaging, and also means as the tanks move away the bots fall out of range again once more reducing their effectiveness.

On top of that, as the point of the Dox in the balance is clearly intended to be raids, I would think a video of Dox charging head long into tanks and losing is what is supposed to happen right now. The argument is whether they're capable of performing their raiding role.

Almost every unit in the game works more effectively when micro'd correctly. I totally disagree therefor that this is not a microgame. You can also clearly see that players that are like top 10 in the ladder also have very high avarage apm. Macro is obviously also really important. But if you got your engineers and commander at work usually you are steering around military units and controlling your factory's. If you make a bunch of dox and use them like that you should have made tanks ofcourse. The video shows players how to not use your dox and if you start controlling your armys and make sure you dont do it like this but still try to do something you will probably be able to kill some extractors, engineers, individual tanks or very small groups of tanks, spinners, inferno's without ants, and you will be able to make your enemy respond to it, he might trow down defences for example. You can distract armys of tanks, a commander, bombers and if you got some vision (radar, or air/vehiclescout) and attention you will have some succes here and there. Enough to make a difference that leads to a win in my experience.

Bots are teh paw-er in TA, man!

Oh jeezm would love to see something like that, well the slammers are powerful like that to in a way, but not as much.