How do I beat Vanguards?

On mobile so I can't link ATM, but Matiz would probably beg to differ on the effectiveness of hornets against Vanguards given the last KOTP against Clopse.

Erm, not really.

It takes one hornet TWENTY SECONDS to kill one vanguard (a little closer to 25 due to the slow projectiles, actually)
An entire army of vanguards will tank through that, and hummingbirds will most likely be sent to shred the hornets to pieces.

EDIT: changed the numbers to be correct.

Pretty good doesn't equal a hard counter.

My only issue, i think, along with everyone else is the obnoxious speed that you can pull one out early on in the game, so their incredible damage against buildings, and their ability to shrug off lots of tier-1 damage, makes them an invincible siege force and commander assassin.

If you are prepared fully for an enemy to rush tier2 into vanguards as pretty much the first thing they do, you can beat them, but it comes far, far closer than it should, given you know what they are going to do in the first place. (as pointed out by this thread, its so close, most people cannot do it).

It bugs me to say it, because its already so painstaking to build, but i blame the too-low cost of the tier 2 factory

Edit: Fixed grammer

I still think there should be a tank destroyer unit in this game, but thats just me. The vanguard needs to be nerfed.

And I think that should be the job of the leveller.

Hey yeah a tank destroyer would be really cool. However from what I understand from WYSIWYG multipliers vs vehicles etc aren't going to be in the game so how would the unit achieve this without multipliers?

Burst damage, the leveller can totally own tanks in a single shot, but the reload time means that 3 or more tanks can simply roll up and destroy them.

That or dox in the back-door if their turning rate was slow.

The sheller already kind of serves as an anti-tank... tank. It's just that the vanguard has 5000 freaking HP.

I streamed and made some videos of some alternatives for fighting vanguards. I thought you guys would be interested. Obviously mixed armies will complicated this, but it's just food for thought as opposed to a definitive "answer".

I think it could be fine, but I think the Hornet's missiles shouldn't get stuck in wreckages and other structures. They miss their target a lot of times. :\

It's great that you made this meta, unfortunately vanguards still completely invalidate T1, and if you stick a vanguard in a pelican, you just bypass every one of those units you just showed...

I appreciate the videos and I'll be watching them as soon as I can. May I ask how I can run simulations like the one you're running with unit selections etc? Or is it developer only?

No offense meta but, throw some sniper bots in there with the vanguards and they are unhindered by missles. The vanguard is just too strong for one unit.

It's an easy thought exercise, what is the most obvious feature of a Tank Destroyer? Usually it's a big gun (emphasis on "Tank Destroyer" after all) and we can kinda figure out the rest from there. For example it's safe to say that the unit's movement stats would be subpar compare to other tanks because bigger things tend to be more awkward to move. Think of two cardboard boxes, they're both empty but one is 1'x1'x1' and the other is 5'x5'x5'. The 1' bot is easy to move around while the 5' box, is really awkward to try and lift or move around simply because of it's size. Speaking of size, the Bigger gun probably needs a bigger hull too, so we suddenly have a unit that has a big gun and is pretty big itself overall that can't move very fast or maneuver very well.

The exact stats fall down to balancing and there are lots of little variants one could do even within the framework I established above and even that is only one of several different "High Concepts" one could use to fill such a role.

Mike

The hornets video is as unrealistic as possible, but you're most definitely aware of this.

The catapults video brought up a good point, who would have that many catapults?
You replied with "well who would have that many vanguards?"
To which I reply, WHO WOULDN'T?! Who wouldn't have MORE vanguards? They can be built in like, 5 seconds and provide more punch than a thousand doxen.
Typically stationary defense isn't built much because it isn't worth the metal invested. In a real scenario there would've been MUCH more vanguards and maybe even Gil-Es providing anti-missile defense.

Same for the missile bots, Gil-Es almost invalidate those things sometimes.

You could compare units using the equivalent cost thing all you want, the truth is though, that equivalency is almost never found in a real game.

Yes but then, with burst damage, surely Dox would die to them too. Or do you mean they quickly kill a few units then there's a pause, so the faster bots would be able to close the gap?

But with a big gun surely the tank destroyer would be good against bots too.
EDIT: Nevermind I appear to have answered my own question about how the tank destroyer would work when quoting igncom1.

Yeah, good at killing few units, bad at killing many.

It'd be good against individual bots, but not 50 of them at once. Think of it this way, imagine it had a gun that could kill any mobile unit in one shot......bbuuuuuuuttttt only fired once every 10 seconds. Assuming that, what's the better value, killing six Dox (540 Metal) a minute......orrrrr killing 6 Vanguards(6000 Metal) a minute? Just because a unit can kill something, doesn't mean it's good against it you know? There are lots of factors athat need to be considered beyond just whether or not Unit X can kill Unit Y.

Mike