The Results of Powerful T2 and My Suggestions on Fixing It

Please note: that this thread is created in talking about current unit balance – no speculation or theory crafting about upcoming unit balance is included.

With current unit balance and defensive structure balance, advanced units are simply the way to go. Advanced units are better in every way. They have more dps/health/range/etc per metal so that there is no point in building basic units aside from pure cannon fodder once you reach advanced.

This is the "pitfalls of SupCom" as has been mentioned on other threads – advanced tech is always better than cheaper tech. You're wasting resources by building basic tech since they're weaker metal per metal than their more advanced counterparts. This means the game is all about a race to get to advanced and building more advanced tech than your opponents. It's the reason why we don't have experimentals and megabots, yet we run into the same issue that those create with our current advanced units.

The current balance of powerful advanced units makes the game binary and a race to advanced and has no chance at recovery.

It's something that has been brought up in quite a few threads and has several threads created on the topic.

So that's the issue, here's my suggestion

What I propose is lowering advanced so it is much cheaper both in cost and what it produces economically. Along with that, I propose lowering advanced units in cost and overall effectiveness. This will result in a major rebalancing of all the stats and repurposing the the roles of quite a few advanced units.

Factories should also be cheaper made, increase the rolloff time of factories, and make factories more energy efficient than fabricators. That way it makes more sense to build a ton of factories rather than a bunch of fabricators assisting one or two factories.

Leveler
Make it a unit dedicated to killing things with lots of health. Keep the 120 range, increase the damage per shot, and lower the rate of fire. This will make it not the greatest at killing units due to overkill, but excellent at killing buildings and defensive lines.

Sheller
Currently, the sheller is more powerful and cheaper than the Pelter. That's messed up. The Sheller should have a range reduction, accuracy reduction, and overall dps reduction. It needs to be a dedicated anti-defensive line unit. The Sheller should be incredibly inaccurate while moving, but rather accurate when stationary.

Vanguard
Let's just get rid of it and keep the Inferno. Maybe even move the Inferno up to advanced and give it a very slight buff.

Peregrine
Just get rid of it. The rate of fire is just insane. A lone Peregrine can kill... what... 20 Hummingbirds? Let the Hummingbird be the king of the sky. But even though I'm saying let's get rid of it, let's keep it and make it unrecognizable from the gattling gun that it currently is. Let's make the stats the same as the Hummingbird aside from costing a little more metal, but give it the ability to fly from planet to planet to aid in invasions.

Gunship
Add in the ammo system, decrease the speed, lower the health so it's inline with basic air. Maybe reduce the dps? Difficult to speculate on dps since the ammo system would be a big change and very well could be enough. The gunships would have to retreat to recharge and wouldn't be the never ending deathball that it currently is.

Hornet
Maybe lower the AOE and DPS a little, but all in all, the Hornet isn't that bad. Just lower the health inline with basic air units.

Generic Anti-Air Changes
Make all ground based anti-air units and structures focus their fire on bombers and gunships, then target the fighters.

New Aircraft: Torpedo Bomber
This should be added in. Right now if you lose a lake, there's pretty much no way to get it back – and we don't even have subs back. Adding in this unit isn't too big of a deal right now, but it would still be extremely helpful to invade enemy occupied lakes. It'll be imperative when we get subs, but that's a different topic.

Slammer
Currently the Slammer is just a direct upgrade of the Dox in every way. Let's specialize it. Not completely sure on this unit... maybe turn it into a grenadier? Keep the health and give it an arc. This makes the Slammer excellent at attacking defensive lines since it has the health to take some fire and the arcing ability to shoot over walls.

Gil-E
Make this unit a lot slower and lower the damage per shot. Make it so it can one shot any unit in the game (aside from the commander), but doesn't have as much overkill. Also, make the unit incredibly slow. Think of it as a sniper. In real war snipers don't sprint towards the enemy firing. Possibly even make it so it can't shoot while walking, and give it a range boost to compensate. That makes the Gil-E an EXCELLENT defensive unit, but not the broken offensive unit it currently is. Again, specialized role. Right now Gil-Es plus stingers are a nearly unstoppable force with no overly valid counter aside from sniper bots. There's simply no point in building Slammers right now because of how powerful Gil-Es are in large groups.

New Units: Advanced Anti-Air Vehicles and Bots
Let's not make these two units the same so we get more diversity and increased strategic decisions. How about make advanced anti-air bots have homing missiles that have long range and half the rate of fire as the Stinger. Then let's make the advanced anti-air vehicle shoot flak. These stats would need to be balanced

Naval
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure on what I think should be done with these. I don't think I play with them enough to give specific suggestions. I do think that all naval units should be sped up to be in line with current vehicles. The Orca should get a buff and the Leviathan and Stingray should be nerfed. Maybe lower the rate of fire of the Stingray's air missiles.

Basic Units
Along with this there should be some changes to basic, but these changes would be minor compared to the advanced changes. Basic is pretty well balanced all things considered – you know, aside from walls and defensive towers. There's also plenty of other units and structures that could be added, but that'll make this thread way too long.

That being said, Great Job Uber so Far!

Balance is a moving target. Changing one aspect of the game sends ripples through the entire game and changes must be made. They've done an incredible job making an incredible game so far and I can't wait to see the finished product.

That being said, they've brought us along for the ride as beta testers and these are some of my suggestions as a beta tester.

These suggestions I'm sure have lots of flaws but I believe are a great starting point to making sure all units are valid at all stages in the game along with bringing back beta's large armies.

End rant. *deep breath*

So. What's everyone else's thoughts?

*spot saved*

I need my keyboard for my reply, phone sucks for this.

Yes, great idea

Am I really the only one here who likes the sheller as is?
Yeah, it's powerful but I don't think it needs a damage nerf, maybe just an HP nerf?

I actually prefer the idea of removing the inferno and keeping the vanguard (vanguard looks cooler, mobile radar is nice)
A way to make it a bit more balanced in my eyes, however, would be to lower its DPS to about half of what it currently is and reduce its HP to about two thirds.

Yes. Just yes.

I'm still unsure on an ammo system for them, it'd balance them, but would it do better than halving their DPS and greatly reducing their HP to the point where 2 hits from a T1 AA missile would kill it?
Probably, but iunno.

I really don't think it needs any change to be honest.

Can't agree with this more.
(also from now on I'm going to skip any that I simply agree on)

Torpedo bomber? What would it do?
Like, would it be naval-specific bombs?

The Leviathan should be less insanely Armageddon causing.
Like, 6 artillery shots is just silliness.

I agree with your general concept and many of the specifics. It would be a good starting point.

In addition I feel the role of orbital should be scaled back to tactical and intel gathering. There is no need for orbital to reflect the same implementation as ground. I think counter orbital should be ground based.

no

My general feeling is that it's OK for advanced to be stronger than basic, but not on a per-metal basis. You can have a bunch of Strong T2 units, a Horde of T1 units, or a mix of both. T2 should be stronger one-on-one, but you should be able to outswarm it. Also, I don't think the vanguard should be removed, it should just be changed to be different from the inferno. I think it should have a slow-firing shotgun weapon, or some other short-range AOE attack that isn't too strong, making it more of a support tank (because of the radar) than a frontline attack tank.

I honestly see nothing wrong with T1 being cannon fodder, and actually if used right it really isn't, of course you need T2 to rid of high defenses but T1 is still very useful. However I do agree with emraldis on the fact that you should have two options: 1. Horde of T1, or 2. Smaller amount of more powerful T2.

I like the majority of your suggestions, along with the general premise of scaling back T2 a lot in general. I would even move a number of advanced units to basic, to flesh it out and provide more depth so people actually want to use it (for instance, nerf the Sheller and Leveler down to T1). Then you could put in more context specific stuff in at T2, like an artillery piece that fires more frequently but is incredibly weak and inaccurate, requiring T1 support to not be quickly torn up etc.

I like the Vanguards, but would definitely nerf them a bit from how strong they are now.

I'd actually like to see Slammers move towards the bot equivalent of the vanguards. Slow them down, tank them up a bit, and give them a pretty close range electric/charged particle shotgun that's somewhat strong but also carries a chance to stun units (except for the Commander). I'm sure some people will say that's not WYSIWYG/unintuitive, but I'd really like to see the stun status effect make it into the game, and it would certainly differentiate it from the Vanguard. Maybe it could just stun all the time and do minimal damage, but I feel that may be harder to balance.

Other than that, pretty much agree with everything you said.

I like the general approach. In the specific, following your own pattern.

Leveler
A sort of King Tiger tank the Germans had at the end of the WW2. Yeah, I would love to have those, keeping the T1 tank a more anti-tank unit. And making the T2 tank a specialized anti-bunker / long range double barrel cannon. It makes pretty much sense. In every war you see big slow tanks taking care of big structures and small fast tanks taking care of the big tanks.

Sheller
Same page here where shellers should be highly inaccurate when moving. But this may be already enough of a penalty. Otherwise they could keep a range close to a Pelter. Obviously they should also cost more than a Pelter, 'cos they can move.

Vanguard
For a game that promised a specialized T2 tier, we see at the moment way too much direct upgrades from T1 to T2. However, perhaps a better solution would be to convert the Inferno in something else, and keeping the Vanguard, with some fixes specially in its production cost.

Peregrine
I totally support the idea of expanding its capabilities so that it could reach other planets. Perhaps only in the same orbit. At least it worth a try.

Gunship
They could be slower and more fragile. They also need their own icon, so you can spot them easily on the map, even before they start moving. Because confusing them with fighters can be pretty expensive...

Hornet
T2 Bombers can pretty much stay, but they are a direct upgrade from the T1 bomber. What about making of a T1 Bomber something similar to the A10 Thunderbolt? An Anti-tank flying plane.

Torpedo Bombers.
Big yes.

Slammer
I'm not so against it. It should be able to compete with the Vanguard, and be much more expensive. A sort of mini-mega-bot. After all we already have the Vanguard which is a mini-mega-super-flame-tank.

Parenthesis
I still envision the introduction of terrain modifiers for units movement, where bots and vehicles behave differently on different terrains, and not just bots being faster no matter what. Then we could have one element more for balancing and creating variation.

Gil-E
I'm afraid that empowering this unit and extending its range will make it over powered, specially in defense. But it does worth a try to impede them in firing while moving. As sniper units, they should have a penalty in accuracy at least if moving.

Advanced Anti-Air
I specially endorse the introduction of a Gatling Gun, able to shot down Catapult's missiles. A counter to Catapults is definitely needed.

Naval
We need Subs and Air Carriers. Subs could be of two kinds. T1 - primarily anti-ships, with very limited anti-air capabilities. T2 - Tactical Nuclear Subs, units able to deliver a mini, short range nuclear attack. With a very high reloading time. Plus anti-ship capabilities. If so, we also need to add an anti-sub capabilities to one of the T1 ship.

Dox vs Grenadier
Grenadiers can be a cool addition. But it would be sad to have it at the expense of the Dox. Keep the Dox!

T1 vs T2 Eco
I add my two cents on this. I fear as well a T2 eco and production so more expensive and highly performing than the T1 counterpart. I would experiment a build where the two eco are kept closer. As well for the performance of t1 vs T2 units, so that to not invalidating T1 entirely.

But they already are planning on...

Ah I see what you did there, you cheeky little...

Really? Call of Duty gave me the wrong impression then. Looked like they were trying to be ultra realistic too, such an oversight if that was mistaken... /sarcasm, I agree on that change.

Actually, I agree on gil-e, but grenadiers would really flourish as a t1 role, except there also needs a direct fire role as well, and also that just depends on how turrets/walls are balanced. They are about to get nerf, but still.

Also, no mention of economy? No complain on how it is? No complaint on what it will be even though its been deemed taboo on speculating new changes? Anyway, I think new economy will be better than current build economy, and will buff t1 so no need to nerf t2, and I would personally prefer t2 economy being nerfed to x2 t1 economy at most and costs being adjusted to proportion except t2 units price actually going up a slight bit.

Heres my broken record again..

Inferno: Change to fire inaccurate Rockets, becomes T1s Artillery unit.

Over all I like what you purpose, at the very least I'd love to see this put into effect and let everyone play it and see first hand if they like it or not. I feel the mass majority out their would indeed like how this would balance out things.

Moving to Balance Discussion

Can we just think very realistically here?


In the next patch, 12 Alleged Tanks will cost the same as one Leveller.

12 Alleged tanks have more speed, more dps, more health and more bankable targets. The Leveller only has more range.

I like theorycrafting as much as myself. However, in this particular instance, I think that we have to wait for the next patch to land, because Uber have made changes that will affect the game.

What I mean is, take the Leveller. Compare it to 58772 Ants, where 7 Ants = 1 Leveller.
It does 500 damage per shot. 7 Ants did 294 or so. So the Leveller is already better at killing structures. It was the extra range that made it strictly superior. If it had had the same range, it wouldn't have mattered much.

In this upcoming patch, 12 Ants cost 1 Leveller, and the Ants get a speed boost. Unit vs unit, I believe that will place the engagement firmly in favour of Ants. Nor does it need a rate of fire decrease - it is going to be torn to shreds by 12 Ants, because it can't kite them indefinitely any more.


The essential issue is that lowering the cost of Advanced wont' fix the overall problem. The overall problem is that there are many advanced units with too much basic unit role overlap. The roles themselves to be well defined.

I appreciate it's a good starting point to make them all the same tier, give them their roles there. I quite like the current sense of progression, however.

Sry, but....

You are theorycrafting yourself
Because the whole point of these balance tests was that they were NOT final. So we have absolutely no idea whether they will actually be in the next patch. Therefore we can still discuss the game based on the current balance.
We know there will be changes and we know which issues Uber wants to fix. But we don't know what exactly those changes will be. (Maybe all of our rants actually had some effect ?...who knows..)

But I agree. Uber certainly got our message and at least I will mostly wait to see what Uber does for the next update before I turn to making further suggestions on how to fix certain issues as the situation will probably be completely different after that patch.

I did mention economy changes, I just didn't go into much detail since my suggestions are rather simple.

"What I propose is lowering advanced so it is much cheaper both in cost and what it produces economically."

Like I said, didn't go into much detail.

The economy should be reduced drastically. Advanced metal should produce 7 or 14 metal each. Not sure what Advanced Energy should produce, but it should be reduced. Subsequently, the price of all advanced buildings should be reduced.

I also think it's be pretty cool if Advanced Metal Extractors had a gun on it. Maybe a small gun that isn't as powerful as the single laser defense tower.

This post said I was not making any theory crafting at all about the new balance changes.

I think that the economic impact of advanced vs basic should be minimal. Having those structures with integrated defenses would be a much better choice than 2,3, or 4 times the production.

Ok yes, I am theorycrafting about the contents of the patch. But that is all I am theorycrafting about.

Uber did make the t2 vs t1 problem even worse than it was before by shifting the ratio from 7:1 to 3:1. So an increase of that ratio is logical. As a solution, I think that increasing costs of T2 is very very valid.

Ignoring the contents of the patch, I will re-reply to Brians OP.

Hold up.

Why is that advanced units are better in every way?

They perform the same role, and they

However, it is proven that Levellers perform quite badly against groups of Ants. Ants have the ability to focus fire on one target, distribute fire between multiple units, and distribute their health points between many locations (meaning that Levellers overkill on them a lot)

It isn't actually that they have more dps/health per metal. It's that advanced units cost too little for the superior numbers of the basic units to be put to good use.

On the other hand, increasing the costs of advanced units, while leaving all of their other stats alone, will result in no rebalance of any of the other stats, but would make quite a few of the advanced units fit roles that complement, rather than replace, the roles of the basic units.

A very important question to ask is what roles should the different units have?

Personally I think that we should have an "anti-riot" unit at T1 (although arguably that is the laser turret) and I don't think the inferno fulfils this role sufficiently against ranged units. I would rather see such a unit be implemented at T1, priced appropriately. If you were going to do that, I don't really see why you wouldn't simply move all t2 units into the t1 factories and scrap the advanced factory completely.

Moving, for instance, the Sheller to t1 would require modifying of the sheller's stats so it wasn't completely OP, THEN having the additional issue that now you don't have a counter to defensive structures.

I think there's probably room at T1 for a rapid fire unit or a longer range anti-structure unit. I don't think you should have to tech-up to siege a base.

To be honest, I'm more concerned about the roles of the units, and less concerned about where advanced fits into the picture.


As a quick note on Uber's process - this is what I don't understand.

We had an issue where T1 units were less than T1 defences (the overpowered Pelter), because T1 did not have a counter.
So they nerfed the pelter.
Then a little later they buffed defences so that now t1 units are less than t1 defences, because T1 does not have a counter.

I agree with how the Leveller could be balanced in terms of stats but I don't agree with the increase in cost.

If advanced costs a lot more, we create a need for the T2 economy being a significant increase over T1 which I disapprove of (already mentioned my reasons often enough ).

Instead, we should have the differing roles but keep the costs more closely together to avoid that huge jump and balance accordingly.

Generic point -

WE DO NOT NEED T! ARTILLERY

More specific point -
In addition to this, t2 metal needs to be equal to that of t1 metal.

And the energy plants need balanced too. T2 Energy needs to be less efficient than t1. In general, t2 needs to be less efficient than t1, because it is more powerful in general.

The only problem with this is that t2 eco will let you pump out t2 units twice as fast as t1 units. Weird synergy, I know, but it will make t1 cumbersome and unnecessary after a certain point.