Economic Meltdown.

The changes made to the game in the last big balance pass have damaged the gameplay, what use to be a fun game is now boring, dull and slow due to the changes mainly due to the economy regression.

PA is too slow now, it doesn't help that dox are slower, air blows up due to the developers not being creative enough to just remove the assist command so they no longer stack easily. Sure the unit balance was never right but uber never really ruined the economy enough for anyone to care, now its much slower and looks more like a game of risk due to the need for map control and how slower it is to expand.

We're yet to get a reliable & powerful enough planet designer, currently as it exists theres alot to be desired

There could be another reason for the drastic change, the game might run so much better because of how much slower it is to field a large cpu crushing force. uber might have done it just so the costs of the servers are cheaper because the game doesn't appear to be selling that well.

The only hope is really is for the game to be fun and enjoyable to play & watch not snails duking it out. Starcraft & Generals will forever be the greatest multiplayer RTS around mainly because they were not bugging and had a almost perfect balance.

>Generals
>Greatest multiplayer RTS
No.

I'm not overly happy about the latest eco changes as the early game feels crazy slow in all the matches I've played so far. My opinion may change over time, but as of now I just don't like how slow it feels early.

Also I am happy that this game is not Starcraft or Generals. While they may be decent games, calling them the best is definitely subjective. I am infact happy that this game wasn't designed around Starcraft. Heck even generals as even though they are the same genre, they are NOT the same games.
I don't know if this comparison is adequate, but what you are doing here is basically comparing a game like quake to battlefield. Both shooters, but play completely differently

I kind of like the game a lot more as it is now. I am in the throes of playing against 1 absurd ai in the battlefield system and at the moment I own 3 planets and the ai own the rest. I am slowly but surely chipping away at the ai and have had some great battles wrestling and holding onto the planets that I own. It's a fun game now that the save game feature has been added.

Just to break it down, we are down just 10 metal and 1000 energy. That's 1.5 mex and 1.5 energy plants roughly. We also have 500 extra metal and 25k extra energy storage.

Metal extractor costs 8.5 seconds to build and energy 20 second. So we lose roughly 50 seconds. Which is the 500 metal storage extra and if you start off building energy you are just down 5k energy at 1.5 energy plants or 17k realistically.

So your argument is basically that the 17 seconds are slowing down the game making it boring.

I think you forgot the part where commander uses 2k energy and is also spending a significant ammount of time building pgens as opposed to factories .

it's better now.

Can't believe people pop up who liked the old balance more. Well actually it has to be expected. No matter how horrible balance is somebody will come to like it and then oppose progress

The playerbase is shrinking at nextlvl speed. Im not sure if its because of other big rts titles or because the current balance. 1 thing is for sure, we can't scroll anymore in the lobbylist.

Well I still prefer the old economy balance. Don't feel this particularly ads anything in particular except that you need to think a little more about your opening build. If I was to complain about anything is that on the small ladder maps, walls and turrets are way way too strong at the chokes. But on bigger maps not so much. Less chokes on smaller and more on the bigger maps could resolve this I suppose.

Well, we definitely needed a change from the old balance and there were improvements to be had from this. There's a chance this new balance has turned out to be slightly overdone though.

I don't see at all how it should be overdone.
We now do one factory and then economy. That's a reasonable thing to do. I don't see any issue with factory mex pgen pgen mex factory as the normal opening. If there are issues that lead to the issues you see then they are not on the economy side, but rather on the balance between units. I mean what would be the middle way between the old balance and the current one? 1.5 factories before economy?

If as you say everyone builds the same way then why bother, the only plus side is that you have that little window to expand for 30-40 seconds more before they reach you. That's why I always build a dox first to try hit that window. You can still be raided but enemy raids come at a risk due to commander one shotting bombers and dox.

So you get 30 seconds to chill now whereas before you hadnt. I don't mind if people used these 30 seconds to scout the enemy so they could react to what they build but that is still 3rd factory territory.

It's better then mex mex power mex factory.

but
I liked it when my commander actually produced enough energy

Slow is better.

"Enough"- more like too much!

You began the game wasting energy, you had excess even when having a factory running and needed a power storage.

Nonsense, even with the old energy rate, it was extremely easy to stall energy in the first minute or two.

I present you the solution to the issue of stalling energy:

The problem was that I stalled energy trying to build energy, now, I stall energy before I even start building energy.