Just had a go with the Grenadiers. I like them. They're fun. I think they would work quite well with Doxen if their refire rate was lower but their DPS was the same. So they hit harder, less often. More of an engineers and assault classes from Battlefield kind of feel. At the moment it seems Grenadiers protect Doxen from turrets and units. I think it would be neat if the roles did not overlap so much. I think the idea of having Doxen, armed with lighter, more rapid firing weapons, and the Grenadiers, armed with heavier, anti-armour weapons is quite a good one for role diversity in different situations.
Grenadiers don't protect Dox very well right now.. Not sure where you were going with that. Still, making Grenadiers and Dox different like you suggest would be good
I've only played one game with them so far, and I had pretty good results mixing them in with sniper bots. I can't wait till they make it into the non PTE version.
Dox are currently pretty useless, especially since tanks were buffed and the grenadier was added (which is pretty much a straight upgrade to dox as it stands, and a massive one at that). Grenadiers will probably need tweaking, but dox are definitely in need of a buff (and/or cost decrease) too if the rest of the T1 units keep their current stats.
Grenadier should cost more and dox should run faster, do less damage but direct fire while Grenadier does more and some aoe higher arc slower fire rate to have same dps.
Well what I was observing was that Grenadiers weren't preventing the Dox from dying, but it seemed like the Grenadiers were getting the kill more often than the Dox. To put it another way - This is what I meant. Currently Dox are inferior to Grenadiers. So the Grenadiers purely seem to be protecting the Doxen from nothing in particular. In this case, I would prefer that Doxen and Grenadiers were similar enough in cost that you could be building 1 Grenadier to 1 Doxen (as that gives you more flexibility with your army composition) and that their combat values were tweaked to achieve other stuff.. I'd rather not discuss how bots and vehicles interact. I'd like to have quite a focussed discussion on Grenadiers and the way they act as part of unit composition of bots.
I think if their alpha damage was higher they could even be allowed to miss moving units and even have less dps for their alpha damage. Their alpha damage letting 10 of them pretty much do lethal damage to flimsy structure, two passes over a more sturdy turret (no walls will save it), and even with protection be even better and quickly assist bringing down t3 turrets, makes them plenty good enough to not directly engage armies or do stable dps. Basically, make them ground bumblebees. Because right now, just as an experiment, they turn the game upside down. Lines of walls no longer protect turrets, if these are built you were better off wadding ants in pockets around your base (now we have a line command for that). That is good, that they hard counter a formerly unbreachable strategy, it shows their utility. They just don't need so much strength, they have less stats than ants but can micro up to more than make up for it. Also, if they were miss-y/crappy against units directly (but can still assist in damage blob-vs-blob), then that would give a reason to use dox, which are also flimsy but can direct fire and fight unit to unit. It would be nice getting some bot variety like we now do tanks. Seeing infernos and ants makes it quite QUITE less bland than alpha was, seeing dox and grenadiers would be fairly fancy looking.
I think its definitly cool to have some more units in the game that are absolutely different from eachother. Looking at it like that and i totally love the grenadier. Also gives this game to option to go to Zero-k-like firelines where a blob of direct damage units send to attack is going to cause only your first line of guys in the blob to shoot, because the 2nd guy and everyone behind him would otherwise shoot his mate in the back. Then a unit composition with mixxed bots makes even more sence because then the first line is direct fire (dox) and the 2nd consists out of AA (stinger) and indirect fire (grenadier) and medics (combat fab).
I think Uber thought that walls never meant to be used to protect turrets (see my topic explaining that walls currently behave like shields) but more to give time to players to react to a threat by slowing down the enemy, and should be placed way out of range of your turrets. Maybe the grenadier is only here to "force" you to re-think your wall placement strategy.
I think its fine that there are some units which shoot over walls and some who don't. Creates more unit diversity and strategic options in the end. It was also the same for TA where I simply loved dragon's teeth and how units worked together with them.
I like that. Make them less accurate and give them high alpha. Makes them excellent at breaking defensive lines, and less effective against units. Keep the Dox and Grenadier in two different roles.
In the game against brad I played yesterday on the PTE, I got absolutely ANNIHILATED by grenadiers. There was no stopping them AT ALL. They marched over everything, infernos, vanguards, gill-es, turrets, artillery, levellers, you get the idea. 20 of them even managed to out my comm in about 1.5 seconds. I think they need a nerf. But I also agree with most of the ideas here, making them different from the Dox is definitely a good thing.
I had ants. I had at least 50 of them. All dead. It probably didn't help that we were playing on a jungle planet, and that the bots just shot over top of the trees most of the time, but the AOE and damage of the grenadiers just wrecked everything.
Yeah pretty blatantly obvious that they are unbalanced. So balancing was a matter of defining roles for them.. Really not sure what you mean by alpha damage in this context. Lower damage per second, higher direct damage per shot. Oh... alpha damage is direct damage right? I.e. not splash and not damage over time (poison effect)
Generally in my experience its about damage done in as short of a time as possible, for PA anything that does high damage in a single high technically qualifies for High Alpha. Long reload times tend to also be a big part of High Alpha weapons because it allows for more Damage. See the SupCom Titan VS the Percival. Mike
I would be very careful going with high alpha guys... Just pointing out that it's very easy to micro in and out of range.
Well there is more things to consider that just the damage and range. What about if it was High Arc? What if Grenadiers were slower? What if it was slightly Inaccurate with no splash? What if this, What if that, you have to be careful to not settle into "tunnel vision" and end up focusing of a couple of specific aspects and ignore the other still very relevant aspects. Mike
What? That is exactly what I am telling the people here wanting a unit based on high alpha. It is a bad property to design around when there are so many other options like simply reducing projectile speed like i mentioned in the other grenadier thread. Bottomline is this. Out of all possible options, high alpha damage is the worst to balance around. Things become binary where situations are either OP or UP. I can make them slower and have a higher arc, but what if i just spam grenadiers so it doesn't matter? What if they are so slow, they become pointless? What if i spam high hp units to buffer them so they become OP? No splash, or highly inaccurate? Then why would i bother building them in the first place when there is no consistency or reliability? If the stars align and everything hits, is that good, quality strategy or luck? What control does the player have over the situation if at all? Locking yourself into wanting something that has a high alpha relative to everything else, and then balancing around that only causes volatility within the design.. because it is inherently volatile. If you hit, it hits for alot.
