So I just finished a huge FFA on a 1000 radius planet and there are two issues that I come across balance wise. How on earth can I save my army from getting nuked as soon as I get close to someones base? I love big army's. I love big army's clashing into eachother and giving me some good visuals of the pure carnage that is happening. In the mean time I'm trying to split my army up to flank my oponnent to do some more damage. His army is splitting up an falls apart slowly but good. The above situation is unfortunately really rare. As soon as my army gets close it gets nuked. How do I prevent my army from getting nuked? No I'm not going to create a line of anti nukes because thats not a good solution. We need some kind of moving anti nuke unit. Second problem: Earth seeds contains some nice lakes which is pretty fun. Unfortunately when you need to pass a lake your army gets shredded by leviathans. How do I counter leviathans? Air is a no go simply because of narwhals orbital is kinda clumsy to counter it quickly so I would need to use nukes? Are levi's a bit OP because of that range and splash damage. land units can't even come close to them.
Did you try build anti nuke launchers along the silkroad? Those are dirt cheap i thought. With the current anti-nuke to nuke cost ratio, mobile anti nuke unit would be overkill i think. But hey, anti/nuke cost ratio needs to change anyway to get the more dynamic gameplay you are talking about. The levi thing is annoying problem for sure if you can't get into the water yourself. The holkins are pretty expensive and vulnerable (cost twice as much as levi). I solved this problem in battleship mod by turning t2 fighter into anti missile plane and increasing tac missile bomber range. Doubt that we will see much effort from uber being put into gameplay design and balance now adays though. Probably tied up fixing other stuff (hopefully?)
I second what elodea said, Anti-Nuke Launchers are incredibly cost effective and having a network of them on the way to the enemy base will greatly improve your chances. With 10+ fabricators you can assemble one along with its missiles quite quickly too.
Antinuclear much more efficient nuclear and it usually more than cost of any army. If you have an army of more than cost of the nuclear just divide it into two or three. The second problem not in units, this is a systems problem. Must not be systems with complete domination with water units, differently all based on fact who first build leviathan.
While I do agree that anti nuke launchers are cheaper then nukes its still of a hassle to get em build. I mean I need to send in a couple of t2 fabbers and basically proxy my way up to their base. An anti nuke launcher isn't going to cut it. You'd need umbrella's around it and a lot of AA too and protect it from ground attacks too. On big FFA's it sure is a **** ton of work which I don't like (I want to attack). I don't want to turtle my way up to there base. It also shows when you want to invade other planets. Many times I lost big chunks of army's because they nuke the tele that was streaming in my troops. I'd love to have like an option to just get a safe spot with a mobile anti nuke launcher. The thing on big FFA planets with some lakes in it is that the gameplay basically transforms into lake hopping with naval because of the range of leviathans. Its so easy to turtle up in a lake and get a strong defense (or use it as offense).
All this sounds like "I hate nukes". Mobile antinuke make nukes useless. Until opponent building leviathan, you can take all land (not in leviathan range). Consequently good planets must have metal on land > metal on water.
I'll just touch on everything here as I rage against someone who hasn't done their research on FFAs: if someone has built leviathans in a lake, kudos to them for thinking ahead. However, it's a HUGE advantage to you because if you just go around their entire metal investment is worthless. If you can't go around, wait for a chance to go around by killing everyone else first. There are so many options here it's insane. Teleporter via air or orbital fabber, SXX war of attrition or SXX snipe, nukes, planet smash, etc. If your army is getting nuked and you aren't winning the metal war, you either have full T2 armies or you have already lost. Seriously. I am that guy. If I can spam out nukes fast enough to both harass your base and nuke incoming armies, then you've already lost. You just don't know it yet. The point is to stop the enemy from getting to that much eco. And don't give me that *but it's an FFA!* BS. If I can do it, you can do it. Mobile antinukes would make nukes completely worthless at the only job they can do well late game - punch through antinukes to kill a comm. If you have mobile ANukes, you could pile an almost infinite number of ANukes around the commander, thus making him invincible. The current ANuke launcher is rather large and people don't usually stack 10-15 of them on top of eachother Alpha, I think you need to play more FFAs. Your experience and questions here are those of a pure 1v1 player coming onto the FFA scene. You can join the master race if you like - just don't bring your assumptions from 1v1s into FFAs. It's a completely different ballgame. /endrage Stay awesome Alpha
But I'm not a pure 1v1 player. Where did you get that assumption from? I've played a shittaki ton of FFA's with some of the best FFA players in PA for a long time and frankly the last sentence I find on the edge of rude and arrogant. It has nothing to do with the thread. Even B8factor which I think was one of the best FFA players admitted that nuking gets kinda stalematey from time to time (Source). Same goes for the naval. He even avoided making lakes on big FFA planets because its hard to properly counter it. Teleporter through air gets nuked which means you need to build a proxy first Orbital fabbers wont work. You'll not even get the chance to create an anti nuke so boom there goes tele. SXX definately works on FFA games with multiple planets. Should have mentioned that I'm mostly talking about single planet FFA's (1000 +radius). Orbital in that way is mostly used defensive I think. However going around the lake gives the opponent valuable time to properly respond to you're land force. Besides that it also means that my precious army is getting more and more out of position and thus I need to make more precautions so that it can safely get from point A to B. Also naval doesn't need to be that costly. three levi's and some narwhals can eat up an entire army easily. Sometimes you can't choose that easily. If you're being pressured by that player constantly then you pretty much know that you have to take care of him first or else he'll backstab you when you put him on hold. Hehe you're right Kisel I definately won't lie. I do like the satisfaction of annihilating someones base with a huge army and thus I avoid building nukes in most of the FFA games. I don't hate em but I'd love to have a proper mobile counter for them so that my huge army actually can do some damage. Why would it make nukes useless? Balance wise there could be some things done to make nukes still useable with having a mobile anti nuke in the mix? Right now the only way to actually annihilate the other one efficient is with your own nukes. I mean you can proxy your way up as elodea said but its such a hassle on big maps. Its easier to get your own nukes and just out nuke the opponent then trying to send in an army towards him and thats something I just find a bit sad. It always means you need to build an anti nuke and other defense (proxy) to make sure that your army is safe. Gonna Quote some wise words of B8 post. So basically I find gameplay lacking on the big army front. I can't do it the way I want it to do. I need to proxy my way up so that I can do some damage with a huge land force and the same goes for countering naval with land or an air army (its almost impossible against good players). Mered solution is basically avoiding the lakes which comes to my point of lake hopping on big FFA planet.
Meh, as far as i can remember b8factor wasn't the best ffa player, he just teamed up with another player and never attacked eachother and always dubbleteam everyone. Super obvious and pretty lame to do game after game after game.
