Hey hey, had heaps of fun grinding out games today and it's left me with a few points about certain parts of the current design and balance. The good parts outweigh the bad and there are alot of very welcome changes over vanilla such as orbital balance and stingray range. But there are also a few points i'd like to get attention and discussion on. 1. Carriers Problem Targeting wreckage causes it to spawn drones which you can then use to attack any point on the map with effectively infinite range. I suspect this also happens if you target trees. It is really really imba and the number 1 balance issue right now imo. Suggestion You could just remove the ability to target features that arn't enemy units, but that doesn't remove the underlying problem. If you engage a carrier and lose, the carrier player now has a bunch of drones they can send all around the map to kill mex everywhere. It's also very unintuitive and jarring that the drones cannot be launched unless an enemy is very close, and then those drones are able to travel incredibly far. Suggest a rework of drones such as reducing speed, increasing hp decay, reducing damage, increasing metal cost, and decreasing the carrier's build tool power. The overall goal being to bring down the drone's effective range from planetwide. I think this unit's implied range needs to be constant and intuitive, decreasing much more in effectiveness the farther away you go. So i would increase the carrier range value (circle indicator) to match that of the actual drone range. The player should also be able to manually launch the drones. Whether they will be very effective for metal at max/long range should be a more meaningful player decision. I believe that with the right drone stat tweaking you can make manual launch a viable and balanced feature that encourages diverse compositions instead of pure carrier spam. Although i admit it might be unwise to do things without seeing how submarine/hummingbird compositions work into this picture 2. Angel Problem This unit is incredible with its anti missile interception. While it might cost alot, that doesn't stop the problem from occuring once you reach this timing gate. It's so powerful that there aren't any proactive counters against it, leading to very strong potential of air snowball. There is also the flow on problem of this causing t2 bot to become suboptimal because you need the t2 vehicle flak to counter against angel and t2 air. T2 bot provides no mobile solution against angel. Another curiosity is that the angel does not intercept stingray (t2 naval) missiles. I don't know if this is a bug or intentional design to make sure angel is not overpowered in naval games, but i think angel should be statically nerfed and stingray missiles intercepted. Suggestion Suggest adding an energy ammo storage/buffer onto the angel, with energy drain being greater than energy recharge. This makes angel a great unit for providing burst power in a considered engagement, but unable to provide that level of power for sustained periods of time. One problem is that gauging the energy level is unintuitive because of UI restrictions. If so, perhaps the best solution might be simply to shift some of the unit's function away from missile interception and into unit repair, with metal cost adjusted to reflect it's new power. Angel should also select as an air combat unit 3. Icarus Problem Icarus cannot anti-harass. It's low speed and hp results in it being quickly sniped by dox, and more commonly it's simply unviable against the dox/hummingbird builds. For the same reasons, Icarus cannot harass either. If by some miracle the opponent does not build air and his dox is out of position (very uncommon), your icarus will quickly cap out in terms of the ammount of damage and dps it can do. I feel like the player should be much more rewarded if they are able to get their icarus into such a position against all odds. The energy production is a nice mechanic, but because the unit's harassment utility is very unviable the less efficient metal to energy ratio makes Icarus not worth building. That air factory build time is better spent towards a hummingbird or bomber. Suggestion Suggest making icarus not strafe when attacking a target. The strafe negates it's one advantage over a bomber in that it can attack from outside the range of anti air turrets without having to flyby over it and get hit. Also suggest increasing it's speed, increasing either it's energy regen or energy buffer/storage for damage, and changing it to select as an air combat unit. 4. The bot artillery Problem This unit doesn't use energy to make dox, which results in a large early game advantage that is prone to snowball. While it costs 150 metal more than bot factory + 1 pgen, and the dox is 15 metal more costly, the lack of energy requirement means you are able to use that spare energy either to a) not build that pgen at all for better unit timings, or b) get extra fabricators expanding metal e.g. the fabber building pgens can go get metal instead and will be protected by the greater number of dox. Over time this might turn out not to be an issue as the meta adapts, but i think it's worth raising as a point of concern to look at. It seems to me atleast that if you are going for a heavy dox build, it's better to build bot artillery than bot factories. That might be a bit unintuitive for new players for example. 5. Manhattan Problem One shots commanders. Most likely unintentional, but worth mentioning i guess. It doesn't have the at_commander damage modifier that the nuke has. 6. Dox Dominance Problem Spark/grenadier composition doesn't seem to do very well, and spark/dox composition doesn't work very well against tanks. They both fall flat compared to building pure dox composition instead, which means that my main unit of choice from bot factories will most usually always be dox. It's not a bad thing to have the other bot units fill specialised roles to some extent, but i'd like to also be able to use them in a viable way as a main composition. Suggestion Two possible suggestions for spark. a) Increase spark speed and hp slightly so that adding them into your composition gives your dox more effective tanking buffer. Two shots from tanks is in a good place, but i think spark could be more tanky against pure dox compositions. b) Increase their range to between 80-100 so that it is greater than dox but less than tank, while at the same time decreasing their rof. This makes the spark a supporting unit that allows dox/spark to fight better, especially against tank. Regarding grenadier, the biggest problem is the 'not attacking at max range bug', which isn't really a balance variable but still an important factor that is contributing to this unit being quite unviable currently. 7. Hoover tank Problems The Hoover is a bit expensive, and the increased speed is not entirely worth it. I love the idea of a faster light tank alternative in the tank line so that it isn't ultra defensive, but i don't think it's quite there yet. On the flipside, this unit seems to be really powerful given the right map (e.g. forge). Maybe too powerful even? Or maybe air builds will become common in order to deal with sneaky hoovers. Suggestion Possibly look at decreasing cost a bit to 200 to make them more competitive against normal tanks, increase speed by ~2 points, and decrease hp to make them less effective against bot compositions as well as feel lighter. 8. Ares Problem Seems like the best choice out of the 3 titans due to it's range and fast turret speed. I think it's contributing to the vehicle line being a favoured choice over bot. It's not really that big a problem in competitive since you'll hardly see it, but i'm thinking in more casual games. Suggestion Maybe decrease hp and turret speed a bit? It certainly doesn't need that much hp with the way it's being played in the wild with all the kiting. So if you do manage to get ontop of it, you're better rewarded 9. Sniperbot Problem The t2 bot factory doesn't have as strong options as the t2 vehicle factory. Sheller beats sniperbot, leveller beats slammer, ares beats atlas, vanguard beats locust. Sniperbot used to be the defining feature of going t2 bots, where you could beat out shellers with excellent micro. It also had really good composition synergy with cheap dox, which made the unit interesting (unlike pure sheller spam). Suggestion Really small change: increase weapon yaw rate as well as turn rate so that they can kite and micro more effectively against shellers and other units. 10. FFA Bounty reward Problem I think it's too high at +0.5. That's really quite alot and can lead to very big snowballs where a few players quickly pull ahead and beat out everyone else before a final showdown. I found i couldn't even spend all the metal i was getting quick enough. Suggestion Reduce it to ~0.2 and/or make it a customisable ammount. 11. Locust Seems like a fast and low hp inferno. Suggest making it give you some % metal income from it's attacks. The metal value per hp damage is a bit unintuitive and not really apparant as a defining feature to the player, so the unit feels kind of bland (although it looks pretty awesome). 12. Manhattan Boombots counter this pretty well, but i still think it has slightly too much hp. Too many units are required to kill it, thus increasing the cost. It's got more than enough hp to perform it's function of breaking through fortified areas already i think. Anyway, congrats if you read all that. Like to know if you have anything to add, or if you think i got something wrong
Good posts, though: - I disagree on the "lob is better to spam dox". Yes you can make dox probably a tiny bit more effectively. But since it costs as much as a factory plus a pgen you could have also made a factory and a pgen. So you don't get an energy advantage. You don't get a pgen at all unless you make an extra pgen. So I think if you try to use Lob to spam dox you'll get a few more, but you lock yourself in as you don't have energy. It's a hard dox all in? - The bounty factory can be modified.Try editing it. It's even possible to set it negative
Putting too many ideas in one thread makes them quite difficult to discuss. I think you should post them as multiple threads. I agree and disagree part of them. For Manhattan, I don't think it get too many hp. It is a very slow unit, and he must walk from his base to yours. If you have the map awareness, it is not too hard to intercept it by land units.
not read it all yet but at the Hover tank.. It costs more, but, Has more health, deals more damage and is faster than an ant and quite substational at that. So much more that I prefer hover tanks over ants on every map type but I will need to test more.
Hoover Tanks? So basically military grade vacuums? Sorry... @rivii Drifter and Bolo both have same HP.
The Drifter has the same health as the Ant, but more damage and speed. I've yet to test metal v metal comparisons of Ants and Drifters, but its on my list.
I deal in numbers, Colin. I'm wondering if Drifters are better than ants vs heavy targets, such as bases and other tank armies.
In this instance, ant spam is an overwhelming advantage over drifter spam against dox. More bullets downrange = more dead dox. That's just because you can build more ants with the same metal.
I want to say that Clutch seems imbalanced. It looks really nice but the 2 sides should be more similar.
Just pointing out that this is misleading. Drifters actually kill Dox and Ants (and lots of other stuff) slower than Ants would kill that stuff, despite technically having more DPS, because Ants have a very conveniently multiplying damage number (84 * 3 = 252), and Drifters have a slower RoF.
Yeap, the Drifters overkill bolos by 110 damage on the third shot. That's a lot of wasted dps when it actually fires slower than the bolo.
I can't agree with you at all regarding the sniper bots. It already starts at the idea of "kiting artillery with snipers", just the idea sounds plain wrong. That's just not how a sniper works, not at all. What defines the sniper, is the first strike ability. Place it close to obstructing terrain features, tell it not to move, and just wait. It excels at picking of individual units with almost zero risks of being damaged, except when facing artillery. Or you just use the ability of being able to snipe past any defense with pinpoint accuracy. Which is no less dangerous if used properly. There IS something wrong about the Gil-E though, it's lacking on the range side - there is little motivation to place the sniper in elevated position, even though the unique projectile behavior would predestine it for that. I think this could actually be considered the biggest weakness of sniper bots given the new maps. Plateaus are just made for non-ballistic units, as they give a much longer line of sight, at least for a SINGLE(!) rank of units placed on a ledge. And yet the Gil-E is hard limited to a range of mere 180, despite of placement. That's only a total of 2 shots for a total of 700 HP possible against an Leveler closing in. The range and DPS of the Gil-E just don't match its role. Increasing the range (only weapon, not vision!) from 180 to 220 would give the Gil-E an 10 seconds head start against Leveler, just enough to deal out 3 shots for a total of 1050 HP, including turret movement. 50% increase in effective damage dealt from a mere 20% range increase, even when not kiting. When kiting, that is a guaranteed kill if at least another 80 range units of runway are left for kiting, as opposed to 120 range units as required before. So the Gil-E can be deployed 30% closer to obstacles without loosing the kite option. Also almost 70% more reaction time when going up against Levelers (10s vs formerly 6s) which is nothing to laugh at!
Interesting post on all the issues you see. I noticed that a few of the listings you mentioned, discussed dox and their impact in game. Because the unit roster was limited in PA, having a unit that is capable of doing "everything" was a good idea*. Personally, I think that the dox have too much versatility. Dox were the unit you could efficiently raid distant metal and assault a base with enough of them. This duality of dox was its strength. If enough dox were made, they could do anything due to their quickness. With this larger roster, dox still appear to have a strength over other units based on your post. Why hasnt the suggestion of "nerfing" dox been brought up? Surely, more skilled players will have an explanation for this. In essense, does the current game have a favoritism in heavy dox usage? Should units be versatile, or should they have specific roles? Personally, I think that the dox have too much versatility. *NOTE: I play strictly casual and multiplayer only. Never bothered with 1v1 so my opinion and perspective may be askewed on this matter.
Problem i see with dox is that player skill needs to be added into the equation. Dox excel when you kite, split, raid and dodge with them. Which is on one side not that hard. on the other side it is micro. If a person doesn't have the skill to do it (without sacrificing much of the macro and all other things) than the dox blob will just get massacred by gren/spark/ant. When the player is skilled enough to micro them. they jus destroy everything, raid you on all sides etc. They are cheap and fast and requires, next to air, the most babysitting.
i already found i'm wrong about some stuff =D. Air seems very strong now like before the aoe damage was first put in, but not that strong on the new platformy maps as much as the old ones. I think coz the platformy ones are pretty small in size. bot lobby not as powerful as i thought hoover is not as strong on forge as i thought. Air builds are ok against it. Also liked reading what you guys posted.
That sounds like a cool change. Bots are so cool, but there really isn't much motivation to use their T2 atm.
Hold on Elodea. I haven't seen anything about vacuum units or anything, why do you keep bringing it up and where can I find it?
