Please remove Bots all-together (Devil's Advocate)

wpmarshall · July 5, 2014

thetrophysystem said: ↑

wpmarshall said: ↑

thetrophysystem said: ↑

To also play devil's advocate, it is plausible to integrate bots with vehicle factory. As well as add a factory to naval for naval-light to compliment existing naval-heavy.
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Lets take 2 situations here
1. Naval Planet
2. Planet with bodies of water

In situation 1, why on earth would you even bother with bots? Air and/or naval and that's it
In situation 2, again, why bother going bots? Or even why both going naval at all? Unless there are large bodies of water and large bodies of land whereby the water is all connected and has decent resources while your base is a reasonable/safe distance away from the water, why not just play as per usual (Tanks +/ air)?

As for combat fabs, why bother using time and resources to build an entire bot factory just for a single unit when you can make a vehicle factory and pump out more units which do damage and cost less?
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For full naval planets, the same as bot vs vehicle on solid land planets, you have expensive per unit and slow moving unit type factory, and you have faster unit type and cheaper unit type factory. Obviously like tanks, ships will be more combat cost effective in armor and damage, but bots shouldn't be as weak as they are now anyway so I am assuming "balanced where bots are worthwhile". Also, I don't mean "bots", I mean "light naval", boats and ships with different roles and boats having bot roles while not being "amphibious".

As for planets with 30% water, 50% water, and 75% water, you build naval strategically. If the t2 ships are a pretty strong form of t2 artillery unit bound only to a pool of water, they still enforce ownership of your base and shell invading units. If there is more water, t1 and t2 ships can threaten most land establishments because of range to water and water's extensive access to much shoreline, meaning you can decide the game with naval alone versus a land player.

I like the direction of adding some lighter and land-equivalent roles to naval. This also assumes naval fabbers are as viable in speed and efficiency as land ones. I made a mod like this:

-it still has 1 factory but has viable light and heavy naval units.

-boat fabber is as fast as bot and armored as vehicle and has 2x bot fabber build range to comphensate for ship range increase to fabber's safety and to build deeper onto shoreline and of course is as efficient as land fabbers.

-Scout boat is now a missile boat, AA vehicle cost and health, 120 range, can fire on air land and sea, average AA damage with low land damage.

-Added a submarine model and named it "SeaBass: torpedo ship, naval only", has scout boat health and tank cost but has 150 range higher damage torpedos. The "role" is it is stronger as naval raiding but completely vunerable to land and sea as torpedoes can neither hit land nor air.

-For raiding, the strategy lies in unit composition compared to enemies. More sea bass beat other naval encounters of just raiding units, air beats those, more sunfish defends air better and allows for some land attacking.

-Those raiding units and fabber are the "conversion" from land to naval. The Bluebottle as I renamed it is still present, and is the current expensive-ish ship with 160-180 range and 2 cannons of considerable power. I even buffed their HP, they cost 3 sea bass I think but they can kill 4 and their cost to HP is even better which brings me to my next addition to "light" roles...

-There is a sub fabber model I added and named "combat fabrication boat", it has less range than fab boat and can't assist but can only repair boats and build mines (which now build in water). With durable ships, these things make ship combat slow but hardy and worthwhile, once established, of course because of cost scouting can be established in mass and earlier and 5-10 sea bass can threaten boats with focus still due to speed and massability.

-Then there is the "specialized" t2. The fabber again is the same changes to t1, bot efficiency, vehicle health, bot speed, naval range.

-The narwahl is in t2 now. It has flak, huge aoe, slow firing, 2 hits t1 air units. It is a vicious counter to bulk air. It has a machinegun with enough range to threaten point blank shoreline or directly overhead air that doesn't do too terrible much damage (uses gatling AA bot weapon). It has heavy cost per ship, making it an investment as well, not spammable to just "cancel out" t2.

-The stingray is t2, it has ammo system, can fire 3-4 missiles 2x faster than current stingray, then fire 1 missile every 30 seconds afterwards. Great for single hit and burst damage against leviathans and high health land targets, bad for sustained dps against multiple units.

-The leviathan is t2. Instead of firing 12 cannons at once, it fires 4 cannons in salvos of 3 repeatedly, lower damage a shot, much higher rate of fire. In range of a base, it will rain down onto the base all over, but the structures would take quite some time to actually die. Against other naval units and land units it can pressure and damage and thin out large armies excellently, and has quite a bit of armor against 3 bluebottles even. If rushed with a mass of light it can be swarmed, if hit with hard hitters like holkins or stingray it can be sniped.

-Ships dying leaving wreckage slowed down other slow ships. I removed all naval unit wreckage. Now ships don't impede other ships if defeated in moving combat.
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Erm...
Since when was Narwahl in T2? We're trying to talk about 'vanilla' PA here rather than advertise various balance mods.
As for the beginning where you talk about strategically holding water, where in a 1v1 scenario would you have the time or resources to not only get into a lake and keep it, but then also transition to T2 in that lake rather than just doing the same for Air or vehicles? Don't forget you win if you Kill the enemy commander, not if you survive for X number of minutes.

I'll reiterate, bots seem like a suicide unit which throws paper planes at the enemy doing paper-cuts of damage at best. Why on earth do they cost so much?

wondible · July 5, 2014

mjshorty said: ↑

well why do bots have to be just restricted to ground? cant we get like a T1 variant gunship that looks...bot like instead of they typical *makes sense design* of vehicles and aircraft? also, dox, i like the idea of dox being an all rounder unit like anchors and hit air as well as ground, similar to the change of anchor able to hit orbital and ground (now to think of it, anchor can hit very unit in the game, although luckily it cant move)
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Silly one-off mod. Would have been nice if they jumped, but they pretty much count as aircraft while flying - being immune to land while moving is probably a bit much, although they get absolute wrecked by fighter's range and speed, even though they can shoot back.

thetrophysystem · July 5, 2014

wpmarshall said: ↑

Erm...
Since when was Narwahl in T2? We're trying to talk about 'vanilla' PA here rather than advertise various balance mods.
As for the beginning where you talk about strategically holding water, where in a 1v1 scenario would you have the time or resources to not only get into a lake and keep it, but then also transition to T2 in that lake rather than just doing the same for Air or vehicles? Don't forget you win if you Kill the enemy commander, not if you survive for X number of minutes.

I'll reiterate, bots seem like a suicide unit which throws paper planes at the enemy doing paper-cuts of damage at best. Why on earth do they cost so much?
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Lol, and I am not arguing vanilla because vanilla is broken. Otherwise, we are arguing that dox being no contest to tanks is okay, naval being slow is okay, and nothing at all should change.

I am arguing, that bots can either be cheaper, or they can have more comparable stats to tanks as far as actually taking 2-3 shots to kill instead of just 1, or they need the same dps. Their speed is niche, but it costs them most their health and most their damage to have speed, is speed really that useful in PA? They need speed and at least half a tanks health.

And, I was arguing naval needs the same, because someone argued with me how that would make naval useful, and I argued if naval is too expensive to establish early and too slow to deploy where you need it then it won't be an equal citizen and the ONLY thing it is missing is raiding class units which shares the bot situation.

And, Uber said they want bot to be infantry-esque. That is currently making them overly weak. There are many ways to fix this. There is an amphibious bot, if infantry is going to be unique you could give it a flying jetbot. Could, not must, but there are many ways to do that. Mods even show that, how many options there are for bots and tanks.

igncom1 · July 5, 2014

I don't have a problem with easy to kill infantry so long as I can support them with tanks.

but then again, tanks have extremely quick turret turn speed and fire rates that makes it hard to flank them even with more durable bots.

Not that I am putting blame on any one thing, a mix of tanks/bots and new building HP currently make the bots what they are.

Please remove Bots all-together (Devil's Advocate)

wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

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Please remove Bots all-together (Devil's Advocate)

wpmarshall Planetary Moderator

wondible Post Master General

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flying_dox.zip

thetrophysystem Post Master General

igncom1 Post Master General

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