PTE build 79270-pte now up

This is not a "wut" suggestion. It got a dozen likes when I first posted it and people were really into the idea. It's perfect for making the Kestrel relevant. Subs are balanced well with naval, but it's too easy to just spam bombers against them, which leads to people building Narwhals and Orcas instead. Making bombers unable to hit them would let the subs achieve their intended purpose of marine territorial control. A player who loses control over the sea would then have to invest in T2 air to take it back, something that's rarely seen in the current metagame.

It would increase the diversity of play and also work well thematically, as gunships in real life are often built to be anti-submarine, whereas strategic bombers usually aren't.

I don't
walls or not, I do not like this commander building consumption and resource production nerf, at all
if energy stalling was already likely early game, it's goddamn guaranteed now

The icon selecting issue has been bugging me since day 1... Uber plz.

Yes indeedy, love that. I do have more suggestions though @jables :
-Commander basic weapon will be terrible versus bots no matter what, but would be a little more reliable with a higher fire rate and proportionately less damage per shot, so damage stays same. Also, faster bullets.
-Commander torpedo is 180 to ship's 200, commander speed is less than ship, therefore can't they kite kill commanders with only 1-2 again?
-Radar has underwater radar ranges, but those ranges do not specify at the end of their .json line "uses_energy:true". Theoretically, they have this range even with stalled energy eco.
-Balancewise, t1 radar uses 150 energy. A single powergen can run a handful of them. Use 300 plz and ty?
-unit cannon buildable on water?
-Naval teleporter eventually?
-Dox cannot fire underwater. Grenadiers becoming amphibious would be nice as well with the same limitation.
-The underwater layer should probably be invisible to more things like classic rts. Anything naval should see it. Nearly all land shouldn't. A land structure placed in water shouldn't necessarily be able to. Orbitals or air or that junk shouldn't either. Feel free to bring back "sonar" at your discretion, but torpedo turrets already cover that alright.
-To synergize on that, this would require ENGINE PROGRAM but it would be REALLY NICE if bots became observable:underwater when they enter deepwater.

Thank you and good job with all of this! I have never been so happy to have my mods ruined before I even make them. (I was going to do celestial radar and commander resource nerf goddamit)

I played some games with Jonuz and @dreadnought808 in the new PTE. The new commander eco changes are interesting and I think I like them. Makes the early game a bit more important, and energy even more so. Need to figure out some new opening builds now!!

Link to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/FractalJaguar/videos

Jonuz and I played a third game that I didn't record, and two more but the spawns on two random planets had no fair spawns - no metal at all. So that needs to be fixed please @jables! Random planets need to have metal spots 'overlaid' onto the spawns.

Links to the three games I recorded.




I did not play very well at all in the last game!!

Loving the changes to T1 bombers, now they're actual carpet bombers instead of bomb chain guns

Terrible against Commanders, meh against most structures and naval, but shred blobs of bots and tanks more than before

First Impressions:

Celestial Radar:
Welcome to the orbital intel game! Active scouting in the orbital layer is now a thing. No more freebies, orbital noobs. You can't get by anymore just building a Deepspace and a few umbrellas. Nope. Now, you need to use scout radars and units to check other planets for hostiles, and you can't see a SXX coming until it's already there.

In other words, just like every other layer.

Commander Economy:
It still doesn't make sense to expand outside of your base (proxies, not metal). After thinking it over, I have to return to dox as the problem. They move too quickly, and it's really easy to take down an enemy building up a proxy early in the game with 15-20 dox. The units necessary to defend it (30 dox or ~15 tanks) would be better spent defending your base or attacking his, and you might give up valuable ground defending it. In other words, it's still a pain. Were they to move more slowly and be buffed in health as a result....that might fix it.

Regardless, the energy storage seems too low - but I could be biased, I've heard conflicting reports. But I have noticed a lot of power stalling. I've also noticed a lot of overcompensation with power and a ton of power floating. Anyway, trial and error. It just needs to sort itself out, I think. I'll play some 1v1s at some point to try it there.

Jigs:

I don't - what - why are you - *facepalm*
Someone must have fell asleep on the + key for a few minutes. The Jig nuke needs removed, not buffed. My Lord.

Bombers:

I find myself liking this change, but I'm skeptical. I think it might be too much of a RoF nerf, but I'm not certain. More testing is needed.....

Walls:

Someone came into our channel (in the Realm TS) and said HEY THEY JUST ADDED SHIELDS TO PA GUYS.
Naturally, I calmly ascertained that no one was that far off the wall.

Thankfully, no one was. New walls are awesome! Lots and lots of the things that were annoying have been fixed, like units shooting over them that shouldn't be. Or Turret Sniping.

Yay!

Now they might need nerfed.

We'll see though. I like it

Mex Cost:

You've made it slower for us to expand. Ok. Why? I'm curious. I don't understand what the problem -> solution tree is here.

Btw im Dreadnought

I still hate the Comm changes, it makes begining slower, mexes are kind of fine because stronger players have to take a little more time taking the rest of the map.
Love the new Random Generator, though i suggest a 'refresh' button so you can quickly cycle through planets so you can get that 1 main lava planet and its moon
Also something about symmetrical planets is that there is that they dont force a cross spawn, sometimes you can get several spawns and that can ruin the summitry of the map...

I just noticed....SO MANY COLORS!!!

Unless it was a mod that updated itself and imposed all these colors on us...

The comm changes are the first step towards something besides a rush everything build. Thank the lord.

EDIT: Are you sure that isn't a custom server?
EDIT2: I don't have those colors

Celestial Observers=deepspace radar? Fine. So it just a useless s** now... What a troll build?

My thoughts above in blue

Found a game crash.
This is probably not specific to this PTE though, and more of the problem of the highly unoptimized ghost build preview...
1. Have several T1 combat fabbers build separate (individual orders) overlapping minefields of fairly large size (a several hundred each)
2. Hold shift / toggle capslock to show the white build preview
2a. Watch framerate drop
3. Try to pan the view (I used middle mouse button)
Actually with enough mines built you don't even need to pan. Just viewing the overlapping ghost previews crashes.
4. 'Tis death for you
Tried twice to take a screenshot but once the game crashes it's nigh impossible to grab the screen.

So how exactly does the new celestial radar work?

You were playing on my custom server, thats why there were so many colors i am using burtcustards custom colors in it. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/i-like-to-draw-here-are-some-colours.63353/
(I know this because i saw you join it from the terminal window on my other monitor )

Yeee got me!

There has always been a *celestial* layer that contained all units in an orbital transfer. Unfortunately for those of us who want to balance the Deepspace radar, setting celestial to true also meant giving that unit complete orbital vision everywhere all the time.

Now that they've removed that particular property, celestial radar now lets you only see units in transfer as dots instead of the unit itself.

Which is amazing, by the way. Needing to scout to see things in orbit? No way! Heresy!

Anyway. Helpful notes:

The T2 radar gives more orbital vision of your planet than the Deepspace does, so building a deepspace in a single planet system is questionable, if not useless. The vision is slightly better than the T1 radar, however, so take that as you will.

Advanced and Basic Radar Sats are quite good at seeing things in the orbital layer. They are your best scouts, tbh. Also, umbrellas have good orbital vision so they can shoot at stuff - but you'd have to coat the planet in umbrellas to ever take serious advantage of it.

Players are still going to Rush. The rush is just delayed a bit. There is now more room for better build orders and larger time gaps which I am a fan of. Game is most likely back to paper scissors rock like alpha and beta.

How do you mean, with the rock paper scissors? Tanks destroy Dox unless you micro the living crap out of them, while bombers are great against armies but can't win the game for you.

What is the current timing (in the pte) for a 3 fabber build's second factory?

If it is a minute or so later, air > dox > ant/spinner> air > ant >/(=) dox (with micro).

i'm not sure you can do a 3 fabber start from one factory without stalling on something or other, I think you need to start with a pgen to avoid the stall but that is just napkin math and not tested.

There is definately going to be a decent time gap between the 1st and 2nd factories and I'm not sure you'll be able to go to full on factory mode either. With the change to commander eco then it is only slightly more efficient than a basic fabber at building so it won't make much sense to have all your build power on one thing (i.e. factory spam).

I think we'll see more exponential growth rather than rigid 1/2/3 fabber opening build orders