Covering all the bases in one fell swoop.

In this thread, I'll be covering every aspect of gameplay - from nukes to t1 AA.

AIR

Air is still very undynamic. Whoever has more T2 Fighters wins, every time, hands down, especially right as T2 starts hitting the field at 6-8 minutes. It remains this way the entire game, because your t1 AA cannot be everywhere at once.

I like t1 air balance. It's fantastic. T2 air balance needs work.

My solution:
Remove T2 fighters from the game completely OR replace them with torpedo bombers. Make T1 air relevant again.

BOTS V. VEHICLES

Bots are for scooting around the map and your enemies defenses, while vehicles are for punching holes in them. I like the t1 balance the way it is right now. T1 AA is a great way to cover your army against air units. Keep it that way.
T2, however, is way outta whack. GIL-Es rofl stomp everything on the field if microed properly, but fall quickly to Shellers. The thing I have with them is they make t1 completely useless, because it suddenly becomes a micro game. Whoever micros best wins. BIG THUMBS DOWN. T2 vehicles are also really slow. Can we get a speed buff for them?

Vanguards are just....ridiculous. I think everyone can agree to that. They do their job so well, 3 of them will take down an entire defensive line easily. Without micro. Just point and shoot. And God forbid one gets air dropped next to anything valuable. It's like a cheaper, faster nuke.

My Solution:
REMOVE Gil-Es and replace them with something else. Maybe improved Booms or something.
Also remove the Vanguard OR the inferno. One of them has to go, just as either the Leveller or the ant need to just leave....or one needs to be changed in a big way.

NAVAL

Naval in ponds in just a dumb idea in this patch. It used to make sense before their speed was nerfed into the ground. Now it doesn't make ANY SENSE whatsoever. You gain little defensive advantage, slow fabbers are easily picked off by air due to their slow speed, and their expansion speed is just awful.

My Solution:

I actually have two

1) Increase naval speed again. Please. I dont even know why it was reduced in the first place. Large maps with water are a pain because of naval sucking. Also, increase the speed of the Narwhal relative to the Orca, and add back the orca's old range. Reduce the size of the Leviathan to 4/5 its current size, and reduce the price of T2 Naval in general.

2) Increase naval speed. Increase Orca range back to before it was nerfed. Reduce the size of ALL SHIPS by 4/5s, and make them all cheaper, so we can fit more of them on the field. Keep the speeds even for narwhal and orca. Increase the t1 fabber's speed to be as fast or faster than land fabbers.

ORBITAL

Before we go any farther, ground units assisting orbital units is a no-go. I shouldn't have to say why this needs to be removed. It's common sense.

Units

The Anchor and the Avenger.

Better known as: The Orbital Frigate and the Orbital Fighter, respectively. It's a much needed dynamic for orbital fights, that will keep things interesting throughout the game.
Changes:
The avenger is fine. I like the way it is now.
The anchor needs the following changes: RoF DECREASE, DAMAGE INCREASE so it can one hit Avengers, make each gun (there are four) independently targeting. Add in an inaccuracy factor somewhere. Keep the speed the way it is. Suddenly, you need avengers to defend your anchors, so the anchors can attack the enemy sats and not get overwhelmed by fighters. And, so the anchor is still really good at punching into an orbital layer for a foothold.

Satellites

SXX: This thing is just TOO EXPENSIVE for regular play. Can we get a price decrease, please? Say, down to 10k metal.
Radar Sat: Worthless except for cheap scouting to see who is where. Can we please either make this thing a ton faster or just make it more useful? Like a bigger radar range?
Adv Radar Sat: I LOVE this. It's perfect. Don't change a thing - except make it a little more expensive.

New idea for a orbital->ground satellite: The Microwave Satellite.

This satellite gathers energy from the central star, then unleashes it in waves upon the enemy over an area. It could be either a short burst thing (like the SXX) or more prolonged over time.

Any of these would be easily countered by the umbrella. (lol)

HALLEYS AND NUKES

The big 'SPLOSION weapons of the game. Or, part of what makes this game just AWESOME.

So, Halleys are manual now. Which is kinda weird. In my book, at least. I say no one halley moons, because you can literally put down a teleporter, an air factory, send through one t2 bot and ten t1 fabbers, and a few minutes later, you can smash someone's precious planet.

I like the way halley's work right now in game. They are rare and interesting.

Nukes, however, need a change. For one, nukes and IP nukes need separated. IP nukes need a massive launcher with an awesome model IMHO.

Anti-nukes are horribly binary right now.
Changes I want to see to ANukes:

ANukes should be a *railgun* that fires high velocity projectiles to shoot down nukes at a range. It should be ENERGY BASED, and require a cooldown before firing again. This cooldown should be such that it can easily be overwhelmed by 2-3 simultaneous nukes fire at the ANuke itself. Cost: Around 10-15k, with 5000 energy a shot. (ish). It should be costly to just spam them.

This will keep people on their toes with where they send nukes. It will make it more difficult to successfully nuke someone who is prepared.

DEFENSIVE TOWERS

Return laser turrets to their previous costs of 300 for x1 and 600 for x2. It should be about 1200 metal for the x3 turret.

This will bring back t1 into the fight and prevent spamming of defenses early on.

That's my take on this patch's balance. What do you guys think?

I overall agree with many of your points, but will comment on them.

Agree, could see T2 fighters being changed to be like T1 fighters, but for a different use, but yes agreed.

The snipers are kinda silly, but you could have a charge up time before shooting a target, while still, so that you effectively cannot kite with them, but must move them into appropriate static positions to fire from.

And I do kinda love the impact of vanguards, and would love to see the inferno kinda buffed, while the vanguard changed into something else.

I do kinda like their size, as on most medium to large sized planets they fit rather well.

Speed, range are of course important.

But I do feel like navy needs to be flushed out more, as their is little strategy to a actual engagement.

Indeed.

Im not really a fan of actually keeping a actual fighter in the orbital layer, and would prefer more slower moving anchor like units to duel from long range.

That thing is too expensive, and not to mention I DO NOT like having to build them with a builder unit, and not a factory, very silly.

I feel like the radar sats could be changed to fulfill different roles, such as a line of sight sat, and pure radar sat.

Giving them both a role, where one might be better in situations over another.

Agreed.

Personally really, really want asteroid fields to make a appearance, to test and implement the whole premise of shrinking the battlefield with continuous bombardments.

Id prefer to nerf the cheap T1 turret, and increase the cost of the other two.

Giving players a cheap disposable turret to protect expansions from raiders, but solid X2/X3 turrets to fortify a location with.

Combine T2 air with Avengers. Make them an air-to-orbital unit. Can only interact with one layer at a time.

Ok, but what will that solve?

Why do we need that?

It would help with invasions where the defender has locked down a planet with air.

@mered4 I like most of your suggestions (especially the anti-nuke railgun), and here are some of my own.

• Gil-e's should either not be able to fire while on the move or have greatly reduced accuracy.

• Radar Sat should get a big vision radius, but with little to no radar range.

• Anchor should not be able to have vision on ground.

• If Peregrines and Avengers are not combined, Peregrines should have long range, slow firing missiles. Hummingbirds should get rapid fire, short range gatling-guns style weapons. Peregrines can hold an area better, while Hummingbirds are used to intercept/attack.

• Vanguard gets some kind of short range AoE weapon, like a shotgun or grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the flamethrower, but longer range and more suitable against blobs of units.

• Inferno HP and speed slightly buffed.

• Bumblebee should be a slow carpet bomber and Hornet a fast precision bomber.

• Add a T1 rocket tank and grenade launcher bot. Both should have slightly bigger range than turrets. The rocket tank fires short, inaccurate bursts of rockets and the bot fires a steady stream of grenades.

It would help with invasions, it removes the almost-completely-useless Avenger, it removes the overpowered Peregrine, it allows for more orbital units like that orbital bombardment we want. Anchors still need a bit of a nerf and Umbrellas would probably need to be adjusted but all in all I think it would be a good move. If everyone still wuvs the Avengers, we can just make them the orbital bombers.

Increase turret cost, get rid if AOE of t2 fighters, increase vanguard cost. All of the no direct upgrades will just ruin this game play. The game plays great as it. Just a few tweeks needed.

Increasing land and veh aa range is a bad idea. It works perfect right now. 1 aa bot that costs 90 can get t1 bomber down to 5hp or so in a bomb attempt at that aa bot. If it attacks anything else in the range the bomber dies. Build 2 which kills anything that gets close or make them twice as expensive with better range/ dps.

The vanguard is the single most exciting unit in this game, from a spectators view. They are counter able but I think they should be a little more expensive so it's a decision to make or risk them with some kind of drop.

Remove the inferno and nerf the Guard to something inbetween how the two are at present.

The Gil-Es simply need an energy cost to fire and an HP nerf.

I like all of your other ideas though.

The very short range of the vanguard is actually very entertaining for the viewers. We shouldn't change that.

AIR

Peregrines need changing, I'm not sure what, lots of ideas and I like most of them:

1. Remove the AoE
2. Remove the Peregrine completely
3. Improve differentiation from the Hummingbird by lowering the RoF but keeping the AoE

I need a reason to build bombers. Bumblebees get used for early fabber kills, and that's about it. Hornets have been rendered irrelevant by the Kestrel, but really I think its been rendered irrelevant by the game. Bombers should be for striking a key target and not be expected to make it home, but right now bombers are about as good against mobile targets but simply not as cost effective. Make them cheaper to be expendable against nuke launchers and such and they'll just be used in place of the Kestrel against mobile blobs. Make the Hornet cheaper and change it from carpet bombing to a single bomb like the Bumblebee and then maybe it'll see some use.

I think air is fundamentally flawed because everything dies instantly and fighters are so fast you can't really launch surprise attacks and then escape, you simply must have the bigger air force.

NAVAL

I think naval T1 needs a speed increase, I don't know about T2 needing it. I like that naval feels different, but T1 is worthless. I'd like to see Orca range return, I only worry it will lead to ponds that you must colonise to control the area, which is how it used to feel I think.

Both fabbers need speed increases.

LAND (mobile)

The GIL-E is simply too fast. It should need something to keep the enemy at range rather than being completely able to do it itself. They also seem to be really unreliable in hitting things. It can fire through terrain, which is really counter-intuitive, but on the other hand without this it couldn't play with the Sheller.

I would like to see Sheller shells made slower so they're still great against static defence, but less the be-all-and-end-all of mobile fighting. Then when you've done that go sort out whatever it is that makes them unreliable as hell at actually shooting.

Return laser towers to their previous costs.

Increase the Vanguard cost.

Get rid of the Inferno. Replace it? I'm not sure I like the idea of T1 artillery.

LAND (static)

T2 MEXs are way too good for cost. They should be less cost effective than T1 to continue to encourage expansion, while still providing you a means to get more metal when pinned.

I like the nuke in 1v1 play, but I don't think it scales well for team games. The larger the game the less useful anti-nukes are. I don't know what the solution is. I think unlinking anti-nuke missiles from building the structure is a start so you can put up several and then decide where to focus your efforts on getting missiles up.

Dare I say that I think radar might be a touch too good. You can put it in really safe positions right now because of its range which almost completely removes any kind of surprise attack by the enemy. Used to be radar had to go into risky forward positions and you were in danger of being blinded through quick strikes or bombers. Should have a range about half-way between where it is now and where it used to be.

ORBITAL

All I know is anchors make avengers pointless.

Basic satellite is useless. I like the idea of simply having one satellite be radar and one be vision, but neither be huge in range.

I don't think it's that the SXX is expensive, I think it's that it takes too long to build one. More powerful orbital fabbers would give you a reason to own that powerful metal economy.

Sorry that I am not going to quotes specific parts, I am typing on a touchscreen.

Bombers need to have better flight paths when attacking. Currently, they make a good initial strike, but are mowed down by Peregrines/Flak because they make very tight, slow turns in groups. They should come in fast and make a long, high speed turn on the second, third, etc attacks.

For you mobile land part, I mostly agree, but I would want to have some kind of difference between the Vanguard and the Inferno like in my above post. T1 mobile arty like in my above post would be nice.

I agree with radar being too good. Very little energy and metal for a huge amount of Intel. Reduce the range slightly for T1 radar and maybe 15-30% decrease for T2 ground radar. Not sure about Advanced Radar Satellite, maybe increase power usage.

Anchors should be changed to be less effective against large numbers of Avengers. Maybe make it have single shot damage, but low RoF?

SXX needs a big decrease in cost along with possibly reducing damage to balance. Right now an SXX is only useful against players who have no idea how to use orbital.

Overall, you have some good ideas Quich.

I like the microwave sattelite. Like a really weak large area health creeper.

Also, I desperately need a hotkey to toggle show terrestrial.

One halley moons are fine imo. Besides, that is how the host wanted the system to be.

How about taking down a nuke costs 250k energy and drains 25k a second? That way an anti-nuke takes 10 seconds to recharge at full speed. 5k energy is nothing, there needs to be an actual cost to anti-nukes, and the immense drain could make for some interesting and non-binary play. At the least you should be able to briefly stall the players economy, which itself might lead to interesting possibilities.

If implemented like this:

• Make them buildable by orbital or T2 air
• Interact with one layer at a time
• Replace peregrine and avenger
• Maybe make it half as strong as peregrines are now (or whatever it takes to make them dominant in air but inferior to anchors)
• Transition to orbital (for free) by firing from orbital launcher, or for now do the silly ascension the astraeus does
• Transition to air at any point

Then it solves a lot of problems:

• The counter to T2 air isn't just T2 air (which is dull as hell)
• The alternate tech route to get air-to-air is interesting. Some players will go one way some the other, giving the game more variety
• If you're not going for kestrels yourself, the counter is cheaper than the thing being countered (as it should be)
• There is some way to soften one layer if you're strong in the other
• It encourages the use of orbital. You could even see orbital as a side benefit of getting T2 air-to-air (with the current meta), and if you're at that point why wouldn't you build some radar satellites and other junk in orbit?
• You can get eyes on the ground of other planets easily (but then can't leave unless you establish a base there)
• You can make use of them in multi-planet even after you control the entire planet. As it stands you patrol a planet with kestrels only to defend, this way you have to patrol with both, and have the option of being offensive with them

I don't agree with needing orbital launchers to get it into space. It would take way too long to do it. There's nothing wrong with what the Astraeus does for an air/orbital unit.

But the astraeus only does that because the docking with the launcher and firing hasn't been implemented, last I heard anyway.

I really, REALLY like your antinuke idea.
In fact, a lot of your ideas here are pretty spot-on, although I don't think replacing the Gil-e is a great plan, the Gil-e, flawed though it may be, CAN be balanced, it just needs to be less beefy and fast.

Not going to comment on all the OPs points, just a few...

Haley's should fix themselves once "mass" is factored in. As moons/asteroids that only require 1 Haley won't do to much for damage and those types would also be the ones that you can destroy ( in theory from the Kickstarter Trailer ). That said I think moons/planets by default should take more then 1 Haley to move. Asteroids would be were the 1 Haley movable come into play. I'd imagine these wouldn't be much different then a nuke, and yes a Haley can be built quickly but between all the things need to get a sizable work force to an asteroid and the limited resources of asteroids I see them as a ..." oh their entire base is fully covered by Anti-Nukes, time to grab an asteroid I don't need ".

Something I think would help as well is have 2 levels for moving a planet/asteroid. First level is what it takes to fire the object off, but not aim it. Basically you have enough thrusters to launch this planetary body into a collision course with another planetary body. The Second level would be to Aim it ( Small one might only require 1 to move it, but 3 if you want to aim it ). With Mass impacting how much damage they do and how many Haley's they need. People wouldn't just go after the quick ones all of the time due to them not being an " I win " Card anymore. Obviously really large mass planets wouldn't care about the "Aim" level as they are now kill everything on the planet, but even then that stage is impacted by how large of a planetary object your slamming it into.

I keep making a sales pick about Vanguards and infernos so here it is again

Vanguards are fine hp/radar wise, it's only their damage that needs to be toned down. Bring it down to current inferno levels ( at least to test and see ). It will still have a very solid roll as meatshield and mobile radar for armies.

Inferno, drop the flame thrower and instead give it inaccurate Rockets, who drop a small napalm patch as a secondary effect (besides direct missile hit). Increase it's range to make it a T1 Artillery unit, napalm patch damage will be weak but will add up over hits or with lots of infernos. Hps/speed remain the same. This gives T1 an artillery without stepping on the shellers toes as both artillery units preform their jobs differently.


And Naval...

Definitely needs speed increase and fleshing out. I'd still like to see the Leviathan have 1 AA on it. Something that large with "zero" AA is unbelievable to me. Once subs are back in the game we will also need a Ship to either be given the ability to detect subs or build a new ship that can. Who perhaps has depth charges or something to deal with subs.

I'd also love to see some unique buildings for naval (more then just sonar and torpedo). Perhaps do to all the water for cooling a special power reactor?

I still find it odd that an advanced Robot species with nano tech and plans that can fly forever would ever bother with boats....

Subs make sense but your normal style WWII boats doesn't. Not saying I want them to go away I always loved Naval combat in games like this. Just that I would like to see Aircraft make a bit more sense in the games context.

Boats are water tanks. That's why.