Doxes are Overpowered now (with VIDEO as PROOF)

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by galactoid, August 10, 2014.

  1. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    [/quote]

    Oops, my bad, I actually meant a turret with high alpha damage for tanks, but the high dps still chews low health units up. :p
  2. Imsvale

    Imsvale Active Member

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    Yeah, you want to reverse those. :D
  3. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    Nope, dps still chews low health units, as it has more damage per second. Okay like- aps and dps are nearly the same thing really. I mean't to say that Alpha damage takes out units with high health whilst dps chews low health units.

    A unit with high alpha and low aps has low dps, a unit with low alpha but high aps can have a higher dps.
  4. radongog

    radongog Well-Known Member

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    I think they are done right now: They still are crappy in little groups, they are good in medium groups, fantastic in huge groups and OP in gigantic groups---that´s exactly like they always should have been!
    If a player is able to produce giant masses of DOX in little time, this player just deserves to benefit from this.

    BTW: Would be a nice thing to add artillary batteries to counter huge-group-DOX!

    Edit: After watching a few more replays, I´d guess that DOXes costs should be round 20% higher now...
    Last edited: August 11, 2014
  5. Clopse

    Clopse Post Master General

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    They could give a turret more aps with low enough dps so it handles dox well and tanks not so much.
  6. Turee

    Turee New Member

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    But shouldn't inferno be able to kill 4 dox per second? Doxes can kite the infernos but thats not good for defending. I would imagine that you can counter mass dox using infernos + levelers as doxes cannot swarm the levelers if they are protected by infernos... just guessing.
  7. Imsvale

    Imsvale Active Member

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    Depends how bad the overkill is, but the whole point of comparison of DPS vs. APS is the damage lost in overkill against low health units. So the effective DPS against this unit might be totally different. High DPS, low APS turret will get swarmed by low health units, wasting too much damage on each one. At least that's my thinking on the matter.
    Pendaelose likes this.
  8. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    No no no, you're thinking high ALPHA low aps. Alpha is how much damage it fires every shot, a unit with 1000 damage yet has to wait ten seconds to fire does not have high dps, it has high alpha damage and low dps.
  9. liquius

    liquius Well-Known Member

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    You're a little off from what most people understand about alpha damage. For most people, it's the ability to unleash high amounts of damage over a short period of time. For example, I could give a unit a high rate of fire and a large ammo capacity, but a low ammo recharge rate. This unit would have high alpha damage, but a low sustained dps. Damage per shot is separate issue.
  10. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

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    It's only a separate issue when you make it more confusing then what it has to be.

    Whether it one shot or one burst, they are both considered an alpha attack.
  11. Imsvale

    Imsvale Active Member

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    Okay, let's start over. High alpha, your alpha, is going to be ineffective against a lot of units due to huge overkill. I'm not sure how that's interesting in the context of Dox.

    High DPS (damage per second) with low APS (actions per second, yeah?) is not effective against low health units if the damage per shot either far exceeds the unit's health (one-shot) or causes a lot of damage to be wasted in the kill shot. Swarming with low health units will generally be effective against such towers.

    Low DPS is low DPS, that's just bad against an army. But sure, you'll take out that lone vanguard just fine if the burst (alpha) is still high.

    The point I wanted to make is that an otherwise equal DPS tower that has high APS rather than low, is going to be able to fit its shots more snugly in the unit's health, and have less overkill, and therefore more effective DPS against that type of unit. (Think EMG in TA.)

    We might be saying the same using different terms or different perspectives. :p
  12. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    I wrote a giant response but mobile signed me out and a lost it, but basically. High alpha, low aps = low to (no dps imo) and deals with tanks well, and low alpha, high aps = (medium to high dps) and deals with bots well.

    I also said that aoe deals with low health units well while precise weapons offload their damage on one target and deal with tanks better.
  13. Pendaelose

    Pendaelose Well-Known Member

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    Actually, as Dox have so little health you could use a very low DPS weapon with a moderate AoE and fast fire rate. Zero overkill, but it kills 10 dox as quickly as it kills 1.


    I would like to see the health gap between Dox and tanks broadened so that we can have a whole variety of "anti-infantry" weapons that are ineffective vs tanks.

    Rapid fire machine guns, burst fire grenade launchers, microwave emitters, cluster bombs, "sweeping" weapons, and a ton of other new toy options are out there to crush vast hordes of Dox, but wouldn't be very useful against just a few Ants. This doesn't just have to be a tank, every unit class should have an answer to swarms. Anti-Tank fighters and AoE Bombers could have completely different combat roles with different prefered targets.

    Now we would have a better reason to mix our army. 150 *anything* should not be a viable attack force without supporting units.
  14. kryovow

    kryovow Well-Known Member

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    The way Uber does balancing is ... lets say extraordinary.

    I dont like it. If the changes were incrementally the game still would be playable and enjoyable after balance changes. In this way the game will suck at least for 3-4 weeks until the next balance change.
  15. Pendaelose

    Pendaelose Well-Known Member

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    DPS is a well established acronym with a very specific meaning. Damage Per Second. It doesn't say anything about how fast the weapon fires, front loaded, alpha, sustained etc.... it's pure Damage Per Second. DPS as a single value tells you almost nothing about a unit or what it is effective against.

    APS (attacks per second) is a lot like DPS... by itself it tells you pretty much nothing about the performance of a weapon, just how fast it shoots. If you combine DPS and APS you can get an average value for each shot, but you still don't know the distribution of those shots. They could be at a single sustained rate, or clip based with a periodic reload delay.

    Alpha strike, or Alpha damage is also a very well established term. It doesn't mean "in one shot" but rather it means "up front" or "front loaded". This could a be a single powerful shot with a long reload time, or it could be a clip of smaller shots that come out quickly but take a long time to reload.

    Front loaded, burst damage, or clip based can have the exact same DPS as a sustained fire weapon.


    I understand the case you've been making, and I agree with the idea, but you're throwing your terms around in completely the wrong context and it's making your posts harder to read.


    In the case of Dox, we need APS more than we need DPS because the sum of health for a group of dox is still very low. We don't need DPS at all... we just need to spread the damage around. This can be via APS, AoE, or chained damage.
  16. Imsvale

    Imsvale Active Member

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    I'm not sure how low DPS anything will deal with anything but single units (assuming the shot damage is still high). Low DPS is low DPS, and once that first unit is down, the other 5 have all the time in the world to take down the tower. :p

    AoE effectively increases the DPS, as the damage is multiplied over several units (even with falloff). AoE is awesome (aoe-some? ohhhhh so bad).

    It's really down to the numbers, and this discussion is terribly abstract. :p
  17. Nuisible

    Nuisible New Member

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    Damage to air (new) + vision (new) + range (new) + cost (recent) + speed (old) = impossible to counter, unless you spam more DOX.
    Given the same eco, you can't spam the required amount of rippers to counter them (too much time required). Your few rippers will always get destroyed. Add dox never miss a shot, contrary to rippers.
    Same for bumblebees.
    Add you can't protect your eco, particularly mexes, as doxes are faster than all your units.

    I can't believe you did that to the game.
    Every game I do I see 1 or more players spamming dox.

    I will not play as often as today until you do something. I don't enjoy playing a game with 1 unit + 1 building spam. But, next few games I will play will be only doxes spam. Until you see what happened to the "balance".
    Welcome to the new world.
  18. Imsvale

    Imsvale Active Member

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    I'd like to challenge you on that front. Bot factories have 3 second rolloff time, same as production time for a Dox. That's 100 %. For a ripper, it's 4 seconds rolloff with 10 sec production. 40 %. This adds up.
  19. mered4

    mered4 Post Master General

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    Lol
    This thread - much ado about nothing.
    New players are using dox spam because they think it's OP.....when it's just a unit with a skewed technique/power measurement. Give it a week of people trying to spam doxen, only to be overrun by people going ants, grenadiers, and or t2 bots/ levelers.

    Levelers are quite cheap, BTW. And they have massive aoe :). *hint hint*
    vorell255 and Imsvale like this.
  20. lokiCML

    lokiCML Post Master General

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    This thread is loss in a unknown environment. We need a adult to guide it back home.:p

    First rule about balancing ignore initial responses until appropriate amount of time has passed. So they could actually gauge where the unit balance should be. So the way I think Uber does its balancing is by setting the unit at extremes of the spectrum to figure out where it belongs. Hence why people have the initial reaction of the unit is either overpowered or underpowered.

    Are you Brad?:confused:
    Last edited: August 11, 2014

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