Ok, so hear me out before you go "No that is really stupid it would just encourage turtling"! Back in Beta/Gamma we had a period when walls and defenses were absurdly OP and games easily turned into turtle fest. I am not advocating that, but I think that balance has changed enough where a slight buff to walls (decreased build time and cost, increased hp) and turrets (slight hp buff) could actually make t2 much more viable even in 1v1s. Right now T1 balance is actually fairly good, especially compared to gamma/beta. Units mass up nicely and handle both raiding and straight-foward attacks well. Armies start as dox heavy and transition to mixes of tanks and doxs, with doxs flanking around and tanks being mainline offense/defense, and bombers serving surgical strikes. We could still use a little unit variety at t1, maybe even a slight cost reduction to bombers and a buff to grenadiers and infernos particularly if we buff defense. But anyway here is the reason I think this could work: right now t1 just completely and utterly decimates defense structures. If it were a little easier to throw up walls and turrets, and more worthwhile, then smallish-to-medium t1 groups would need to flank around to be effective. Early game wouldn't be quite as hectic as you could put up defenses in sensitive areas and focus on flanking and raiding maneuvers. T2 is already buffed in such a way that it overwhelms defenses totally. So early game would be about maneuvering and base building and you would then have to decide: do you continue pumping mass into t1 until you can overwhelm the enemy defense, or do you tech up and strike more surgically? TLDR: the best way to bring t2 back and 'nerf' T1 might actually a very slight buff to walls and defenses.
Oh god I am not a smart man. Totally messed up my first poll. Treat the bottom options as "disagree" and "strongly disagree"
Haha, I think I can agree. Right now I don't even know the state of defenses, as nobody builds them, which I assume means they're absolutely terrible. Defense buff ubr pls. (But make them use energy to fire)
Maybe differentiate the SingleLT by giving it more ROF and the DoubleLT more damage. So the first is more useful against bots and the second against tanks. Buff in HP would be welcome too.
Better idea: Reintroduce larger planets and improve creation of bottlenecks. Seriously, T2 is still in the game. Just not in your average "gg in 6:59" match. Buffing walls? Uhm .... no. At least not decreasing build time, in no way. HP could be boosted a lot, but build time is already way to low, seeing how easy it is to build them right on the battlefield. They don't really change the map, they are just being used to boost turrets HP currently - which is a shame. What they could really use, is a non-linear gain in HP during construction, say let HP only grow to 1/10th while under construction and add the other 9/10th once finished so they are not established while under fire. Personally I would even like to see them with full shield mechanics (you know, 30 second charge sequence after construction, mostly for being impossible to speed that up), with damage still being proportionally reflected to the actual HP. T2 just needs more time to fully unfold, both due to resource requirements and the overall increased range and decreased speed - compared to T1. But it's useless unless there are already locations fortified enough to justify the tech up. These locations need time to develop, even more so since micro is overly rewarding so that players usually don't put much thought into playing smart with the map for the first few minutes.
Perhaps combat fabers could build walls too. It seems to fit inside their unit role, as a front line fabber.
I agree! Wait no! I mean I agree! No, I uhh.. I... I..... Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh Totally agree on defense buff. xD
it would certainly help to reach t2 more easily, but it would not fix the core issues I see, which are mostly about energy/metal balance, as I've described so many times
Walls don't need buffing O.O Defensive structures in my opinion do, a tiny bit, or units need to be made worse.
Or at least made useful enough that you actually require the siege counter to efficiently beat them. But don't tanks now shoot towers behind walls now by aiming for the gun?
Making walls bigger could help a lot. Quadruple the HP, triple the size (slightly increased height and triple the width, but not depth!), quadruple the cost. So you cant just shoot a hole in it that easily. Fortifying towers themselves could probably work as well, especially the larger ones. Don't buff the fragile T1 tower, but the T3 tower could use a significant HP buff.
I think turrets, particularly t1, need to cost slightly less and be slightly stronger. To go along with this, grenadier and inferno also need slight buffing. This brings us back to a much more dynamic t1 game.
well, probably they don't need cost or damage buff... insetad a Turning rate buff, and a range nerf on the Dox and T-1 tanks could be a good idea... but while we have that get a range buff to the grennadiers
Agreed on the turn rate buff: A ridiculously large massed horde of Dox is nigh-impossible to kill due to sheer numbers and the turret becoming confused/unable to retarget quickly enough between shots.
Turn rate buff might be interesting but I can't shake the feeling t1 in particular needs to be slight cheaper or tougher. I think i'd prefer cheaper.