#Enable corforge (T2 Cortex veh combat engineer) without Scav units?

1 messages · Page 2 of 1

ancient forge
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Conceptually, I think the support vehicle that can fight fits Cortex better.

earnest osprey
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taking forever to kill with anything other than a dgun is also a cortex thing though

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i was initially all for printer, but as of recently i've come to be quite torn between the 2

rustic eagle
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The forge was a menace before the damage nerf

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Now I'm also torn between the two

ancient forge
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Incidentally, with the cortorch backburnered for now, what do you guys think of making it a T3 unit that literally just crushes stuff?

earnest osprey
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i do think "same cost/bp ratio as t2 con" is the exact perfect value for a butler that also has an ok-ish weapon. Whether specifics of other numbers for either unit should be tweaked further is up for debate

ancient forge
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Point at enemy porc and let it fly

rustic eagle
earnest osprey
rustic eagle
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/give cordemont4

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But make it a little less wimpy

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Two demons barely beat a Razorback so actually I think that would be fine

earnest osprey
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there's also the question of what scale we're talking about. a hulking, slow, expensive unit that can plow over a bulwark? a shiva-sized unit with decent speed that can run over popups and other things smaller than fusions?

ancient forge
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I was thinking simply a scaled up cortorch with similar speed as now, but just smashes through buildings. Like how the marauder goes around defenses, this thing would just go straight through them.

earnest osprey
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i forgot that i was going to reply to the beginning of this message. i feel like existing tiger projectiles hit wreckage frequently already, but if a wreck is a problem you can technically also roll over most kinds with the tiger itself to turn it into debris, at least in theoretical scenarios. laser tiger wants to be at point blank if possible for more laser damage anyway, may as well clear obstructions in the process

earnest osprey
ancient forge
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lol, for sure

earnest osprey
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would also be extremely hard to balance well and to make wysiwyg, which i know the core team values highly

rustic eagle
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What is WYSIWYG again?

earnest osprey
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"What you see is what you get"

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Things being intuitive

mortal flume
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Maybe I need to play with it more, but how often does this happen? In most cases you're cleaning up a very inactive battlefield. Rez boys can swoop in very quickly in large numbers and mop up the field, and radar invisibility is a pretty strong defensive ability.

In terms of repair, rez bots provide the same BP, but are way more maneuverable. Hands down rez bots beat the printer here.

A bot lab is 620 metal and each rez bot is 110, compared to the printer at 330. Once you've made 3 printers, it's barely break even with making 3 rez bots, and every printer you make afterwards is a straight loss.

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The printer should have something more over the rez bot to give it a reason to be made. It feels way too slow and clunky. Extra range on rez/repair and higher speed would help quite a lot.

earnest osprey
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personally i feel like i end up in a lot of situations where both sides traded most/all frontliners they had in an area, but there's a leftover couple of artillery units, or a fight was won but everything i had left was too bruised to clear out some leftover porc that would deny the field from rezbots

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as for the frontline repair, there are a lot of games where i stay t2 lategame and pump out tigers to bodyguard allies' t3, and they're constantly taking minor damage that would wipe out a pile of rezbots with aoe

mortal flume
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Idk if it's possible to give extra range to just the repair and assist beam, but trying to repair or assist with more than 2 of these things feels really bad. I played two games where I had 2-3 printers assisting 10-12 tigers, and these things couldn't move around to repair at all. Rez bots would have taken care of that no problem.

earnest osprey
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i think any buff to those ranges would also need to buff reclaim range? i'm not sure

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i will say that when printers were even slower than they are now, i had to beg someone to stop retreating with their karg so i could catch up and repair it with my printers

mortal flume
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I don't think they would be OP at 60 move speed (isntead of 50) and an extra 25-30% range on their beam.

earnest osprey
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i very rarely get votes for the modoption to pass in lobbies, so not too much testing ends up happening in real scenarios

mortal flume
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Gotta host your own and be the boss.

earnest osprey
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yeah, i was going to host one today but kept getting sidetracked, but the night is young

earnest osprey
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at least a few people feel strongly that the damage dropoff and inability to fire over each other makes tiger change a net nerf

worn grail
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where are the stats on the core engineers (wish they were labeled butler style instead) i also wish they made t1 armed mexes

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wish my old old thread i made on core butler never got deleted hah

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literally was this exact thing, i just dont know modeling and was ltold modeling was the hold up at the time

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at the time it was arm veh- engineer......... arm kbot- butler........ core kbot-engineer..........core veh nada.......... wanted to really keep it symetrical with butler style purely at the time was my thing/O. i love the flame tanks def needed.

pulsar anchor
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cool all those new engineers and tanks !! dont worry about them being included in the main game or not too much. there are ppl who like experimental stuff, they run games always with that turned on, and appreciate ur work and efforts a lot. love the new fire tiger tanks and cor engineer options ~ thx much :)

earnest osprey
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printer has slightly more buildrange than a normal con also

earnest osprey
# pulsar anchor cool all those new engineers and tanks !! dont worry about them being included i...

as nice as it is that a decent number of people like experimental settings, most high-level lobbies want to use default settings, and currently playing cor t2 vehs with default settings is borderline griefing your team depending on who you ask, in addition to just being extra clunky due to lack of combat engineer/assist unit. that's why getting at least some of this through to default settings is something we're focusing on

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and back to the subject of high-level lobbies, a single person said laser weapon was op because the damage number on the unit card is higher than a normal tiger, and that's pretty much the only other feedback i got from ~5 matches in a 15+ lobby

sudden comet
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laser weapons always have higher unit card DPS due to fall-off

earnest osprey
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i know

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i explained, but the person who said it left before i finished typing the explanation in the lobby

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and then someone else said "these units are dumb" and the majority voted to turn the setting off

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went into the night optimistic about getting anything useful out of anyone because there was talk about the weaknesses of giving tiger a laser

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after that, basically nothing

sudden comet
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😦

earnest osprey
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i'm only 24 OS +/- 4 depending on the week, so useful feedback from a variety of the regular 30+'s either after speccing or playing matches that have the units is something i'm trying really hard to get a decent sample of. Unfortunately, it's mostly either "they suck (refuses to elaborate)", "core vehs doesn't need them (i play arm exclusively btw)", radio silence, or "these units aren't default and therefore i don't want them in my matches" with very rare exceptions

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when torch was in there was a decent amount of "torch is a meme unit"

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In my matches at least, and from my perspective, results largely lined up with nunyunuymi's. Majority of the situations where i built forge and printer, aside from them helping upgrade mexes or using them as mobile bp to spread out my fusions, i probably would've been better off just biting the bullet, building a t1 botlab, and escorting rezbots with my units

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Laser tiger definitively feels better due to not needing to worry if t1 units will slip past due to missing shots or all deciding to target the same tick, but purely from a balance perspective i can't say whether or not they're stronger

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Almost any fight in which i would need every ounce of a tiger's dps is also one where i'll be wanting to stay at their max range, potentially in a tight space where they can't split enough to all get clear shots over each other with their lasers

worn grail
# earnest osprey

forges model, "field butler" make it make armored t1 mexs capable, and be able to build light mines/sweep

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150 buildpower

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maybe get crazy and make anphibius

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engineer

earnest osprey
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If it were just a unit for scavs, that would be fine. Actually, we recently had to nerf its weapon because it could almost trade evenly with other t2 units at close range

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Trying to figure out the best ways to make it useful while still being acceptable to people who don't like the boat being rocked

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I'm not sure how often in t2 it's a good idea to build a t1 exploiter or if it's a buildoption forge should have with vanilla settings, but it would certainly be neat

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Generally by t2, any mexes you can easily defend should be made t2 ASAP, and any you can't defend will die the same whether they're a normal mex or a t1 exploiter due to most t2 units outranging them

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It also probably shouldn't be a straight upgrade compared to a twitcher, and adding things to the buildlist pushes it closer to being that

worn grail
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In defense; at higher elo you use your engineers to push with your spam or when you have t1 spam that cracks through with that early t2; you push with engineers/reclaim but also cap mexs as you go in; most of the time/alot of these maps have high capacity mexs more middle so capping them even for a temporary time is huggee even as t1; you wont want to push a t2 con up that far at that point... plus the engineers speed. Say ATG/SS prime examples and even good for noobies/lower elo to learn to utilize. IMO no constructor should be able to kill a unit unless its reclaiming; non of the other 3engineer/butlers do and no constructors do. I think that brings in a tad of edgeyness people dont like tbh. Slim down to one engineer thats refined and i think keep the tanks; maybe make one tank shoot AA like the lightning tank persay. Ive only seen the tanks a few quick times but focused on the engineers when i saw them

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Personally i think butlers in ARM should be able to make the emp t1 mexs as well

earnest osprey
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Later into the game on atg, you likely have a fusion economy + 6-12 t2 mexes, making temporary t1 mexes a nice little bonus rather than a gamechanger. You would also likely have a couple of twitchers/consuls/butlers max, plus a bunch of rezbots, because rezbots are drastically more cost-effective reclaimers than anything else. Engineers(twitcher+consul) are primarily used for building fiends/hounds on the frontline and hounds on the frontline or setting up a set of con turrets faster than a t1 con can. Butlers get their value from being semi-closeish to a con turret's bp/cost, making them good for directly assisting a t2 con (hence the title of assist bot), or just building wind farms on maps where wind is better than fusion for armada. People don't want cor to have a twitcher-like unit in both t2 labs, so we need a butler-like unit that also feels like it fits cor. The challenge is that butlers usefulness is directly tied to its cost-effectiveness per buildpower, so it's hard to make a balanced unit that has the functions of butler while also having an additional use-case

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Cortorch is on hold until we figure out whether lastiger should replace regular tiger, and printer+forge are competing for 1 assist vehicle slot. There is no intent for both of them to be added to default settings together. At the moment the only "new" tank is a tiger with the weapon that might get attached to normal tiger

simple panther
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That would be true but apparently only the female lioness hunt, still with pack hunting though

ancient forge
still tiger
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heat tiger turret turn rate should be adjusted to match other beam weapons

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also probably needs reduced beam time

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twice

earnest osprey
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should we just ignore the people trying to say heat tiger is already OP?

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it does seem like most people who use it into mid-late game agree that it's overall weaker than base tiger, while the people who disagree generally haven't

mortal flume
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It's way stronger against t1 and low-hp t2 compared to the regular tiger, but weaker against armored t2 and t3. Depends on how it's used.

earnest osprey
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the turret turnrate is a major limiting factor when spam spam starts getting close or when you need to turn them in the opposite direction the turret is trying to rotate, ending up with a fraction of your normal rof either in either of those situations

waxen sundial
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just conceptually the laser tiger sounds very op to me, but I haven't played with it. seems like rushing 2 of them would basically invalidate all t1

earnest osprey
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arguably it's still a net buff if you're building them to protect other things behind them, but for a purely tiger push/defense it seems to be a nerf in a decent majority of situations

earnest osprey
earnest osprey
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Heck, assuming it's a veh-favored map/lane, you probably have a ball of enemy med tanks to clean up when you t2, and plasma would also be better vs those

still tiger
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corforge flamethrower is very "scav-like", way too large spread and low damage

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though the model looks great overall unit is meme

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laser tiger has too weak damage per hit imo, i'd reduce fire rate and increate damage instead

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probably nerf to range is also fine

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currently it looks very weird

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i expect something llike large incisor

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but its currently way far from it

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also i don't think build menu fits corforge.

rustic eagle
still tiger
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better make it better fighter or faster reclaimer, else its role is unsure

still tiger
rustic eagle
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hmmm that is very true

still tiger
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or twoshot

earnest osprey
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itanthias nerfed forge's damage a couple of commits ago because it could win an equal cost fight vs tigers if they were point-blank

still tiger
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it will at least looks good, not this teeny-tiny yellow laser weaker then T1 incisor lasers

still tiger
earnest osprey
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fair

still tiger
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just give it fiend weapon

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or popup

earnest osprey
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i've been saying from the start that forge is intended to have too many roles than would be possible to properly balance, but i've been coming around to it a bit, though it definitely isn't perfectly tuned

ancient forge
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I think forge should be a utility unit that also happens to have a gun, rather than a combat unit that also happens to be able to build. It doesn't have to be good at combat, the fact that it can fight at all makes it unique.

earnest osprey
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if it's too strong of a combatant, why build combat units that don't also have a buildlist? if it has too much bp for its cost, anything else with bp is irrelevant, but if it's not good enough at either, just spend the metal on a mixture of the units more specialized

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unique doesn't make it worth making though, and that's where the dilemma comes in

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if i want a butler, i'd rather all my investment go toward it being good at providing bp and making windmills. if i'm making a tiger, it getting a small amount of buildpower+a small cost increase would be a nerf because i would be better off with a cheaper tiger and a rezbot

ancient forge
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And if it's a tanky butler with a gun, it can be balanced toward being a tanky butler. BAR isn't balanced by algorithm, a weak secondary ability doesn't automatically make a unit more expensive.

earnest osprey
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if it's a tanky butler with a gun that isn't as cost-effective as a butler and the weapon is weak, you build con turrets/t1 cons + more fighting units instead

ancient forge
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Then it's overcosted and should have its cost reduced.

earnest osprey
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so then you should never build con turrets or never build fighting units because forge does 1 of them better while providing additional functionality on top

ancient forge
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You have an odd all-or-nothing sense of cost-effectiveness.

earnest osprey
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cost-effectiveness is entirely binary

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if there was an alternate con turret that had 15% more hp and cost only 2% extra metal, it would literally never be built by anyone

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even though it's technically more versatile

ancient forge
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But it isn't a con turret. Con turrets really are binary, because they can't move.

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Would people build a con turret that cost 25% more but could move? I bet they would.

earnest osprey
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but we're comparing it to a butler, which can also move

ancient forge
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Yep, now what happens when these things start getting shot at? Now we have to consider the entire rest of the game.

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What's shooting at it, how many of them are there, do they have vision on it, can it kill enough of them quickly enough to not die, does it have a friend to repair it, and so on.

earnest osprey
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then i'd rather have 3 butlers defended by a tiger than 3 butlers with weak guns, particularly when they're going to go back to not being attacked for 95% of the match, while the tiger can continue performing its role of fighting

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putting a forge in a position to be fighting almost always means it's in a position to not be using its bp, and vice versa

ancient forge
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That's why I said make it a utility vehicle first. I don't understand why you think that the gun has to make it cost more. That's not how balance works. It should be cheap enough that you want to build it and expensive enough that you don't always build it. Cost balance begins and ends there.

earnest osprey
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it's kinda like adding an alternate firemode to a unit that's a strict downgrade to what it currently has. by sending a good assist vehicle that happens to have a weapon out to fight on the frontline instead of continuing to assist, you're toggling off the equivalent of its good firemode. at that point, why is the bad mode even in the game? even if the price of the unit doesn't get raised with the addition of the weaker mode, it's just kinda...there, and serving no purpose. it wouldn't even be a nerf to remove it

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i listed a bunch of potential use-cases for forge's weapon a few days ago, but in real matches they just don't come up

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printer is basically a buffed forge, because it's a bit better at nearly everything other than shooting compared to forge, and forge's ability to shoot is almost entirely irrelevant

wanton cloak
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Probably what makes the Forge fall short is the inability to repair things while moving.
So it cannot follow your army while repairing them.

And it has a very specific anti-infantry weapon. So it has a hard time fronting for veh arty because anything else coming in to push it, such as T1 tanks or heavy bots or Fiends, are not stopped by it.

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And I think I need to give +25 E production to the Printer.
Butler with +12 E production makes its real cost much lower. +12 E is worth 38.8 AFUS metal equivalent.
So the butler is just 171 metal for its 140 buildpower.

Printer with +25 E production (80.8 AFUS metal), brings its real cost down to 249 metal for 200 buildpower.

earnest osprey
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A larger issue when it comes to a frontline repair role is competition with just building a t1 lab and making rezbots, rather than competing with butlers

earnest osprey
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Combined with the bp cost of anything t2 or t3, using something other than a rezbot to repair a unit takes an extreme resource investment and/or an extreme amount of time

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When i make a line of forges or printers mixed with tigers and order the engis to repair even while the tigers are just sitting in place, the amount being repaired is nearly nonexistant

earnest osprey
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There's also the issue that if you're trying to build porc on the frontline, the blueprint is often the target of the opponent trying to stop it from going up, rather than the cons. No amount of printer durability stops enemies from deleting the the resources invested in the blueprint with indirect fire

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I don't think any of us really considered that in t2, bp for repairs needs to be in the thousands the be significant, and something that can use its bp for construction as well would be very difficult to balance for both

wanton cloak
earnest osprey
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yes, but 1/3 the price in graverobbers also heals 92/sec, which results in a t1 botlab almost instantly paying for itself by comparison, particularly with how quickly they can move between targets, even if you're bleeding some of them

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even if a forge had better bp/metal than a con turret, it would still be somewhat questionable for frontline repairs compared to rezbots, and i don't know how to address that if we want an assist veh that's useful on the frontline

wanton cloak
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Rez bot = 110 metal.
Printer real cost with +25 E income = 249 metal equivalent.
So 4 Printers is better than bot lab+4 rez bots, by repair buildpower alone.

And assuming you make the printers early (to assist T2 mexes), that +25 E income is worth 102 metal Fusion equivalent, and is worth 123 metal AdvSolar equivalent.

So with that E income, a printer is actually a better source of buildpower than con turrets in a pre-fusion economy (with the 123 metal savings from an advSolar you did not need to build, you get 200 durable mobile buildpower for 207 metal).

mortal flume
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That way folks can choose between having a more defensive, less APM intensive unit to repair and reclaim on the front, instead of managing large clumps of fabrege eggs.

earnest osprey
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with the significant +e income boost, it does bring things more inline without managing to completely invalidate con turrets, as would usability from speed and range buffs. a rezbot ball would still be very much superior for mobile, focused repairs as soon as you start wanting to have repair bp in the 1000s, but printer would likely remain decent enough to at least mix in at most stages throughout the game

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would, without a doubt, skyrocket cor vehs from least comfy lab to get t2 rolling with to most comfy, but it's not like cor vehs are op atm anyway

earnest osprey
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would probably be safe to make forge semi-comparable, though a bit lower still in bp/cost, since its weapon is also an "oh, that could potentially be semi-beneficial on occasion" function

earnest osprey
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as long as people don't find it upsetting that printer is exceptionally close to a con turret efficiency-wise, it'll close enough to a rezbot as a repairer not to be painfully overshadowed by a t1 unit

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the only other solutions i can think of would be to give a unit independent repair and assist bp values, which i have no idea whether that's even possible, or to make 1 of the engis unable to assist construction and just make it purely an armored/armed rezbot so it can have at least most of the bp/cost of a normal rezbot, while the other gets an armored/armed butler role with something like the currently existing stats. i assume both of those options are far less likely to get anyone's approval, so the e income + a bit of range + speed seems like a far better idea

earnest osprey
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my brain is saying if forge keeps a weapon at the strength of its existing one, whether or not it's the exact same weapon, factoring in that if it's fighting, it's probably not actively using its buildlist or bp and vice versa, it could maybe get away with being a few percentage points less efficient bp/cost than printer while still being usable? that would likely result in it being sprinkled in as part of a composition, and mobile construction assisting when necessary/someone's feeling lazy, but not as the entire backbone of your eco or frontline. The line to tread with anything eco-related is just so fine due to the extremely binary nature whether something will pay for itself fast enough to be built rather than the most efficient alternative

earnest osprey
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i realize that i'm frequently contradicting myself in this thread between exchanges with people. It's part realizing or accepting that a previous person's point was correct or at least closer to being correct than my existing stance, part trying to see both sides of every suggestion/playing devil's advocate to test how sound an idea is, and part finding from personal experience that the hypothesis didn't match the outcome at all

mortal flume
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Been trying to get these units turned on in the pro lobby. I wanna get some experienced players' opinions.

simple panther
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I imagine it’s going to be more difficult to do so unfortunately because they likely wouldn’t use something if it’s not considered to be vanilla

mortal flume
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Eh I've had decent success, but on top of that the experience players kinda never touch t2 cortex vehicles cause they're not meta.

quasi condor
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too many armada enjoyers afaik

simple panther
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Ah. That would be even more reason to test for it, seems bots are just more developed overall since they’re always the ones to do winner

simple panther
mortal flume
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People play armada vehicles pretty often actually, whistler spam is in meta now. We gotta get them to try cortex vehicles tho.

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I do wanna make a comment on laser tigers though, they are not visually distinct enough on the battlefield. Can we do something with the model to make it more obvious what they are?

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Maybe something like adding a stronger red/orange tint to them.

simple panther
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Hmm? I thought the barrel difference was significant enough. Ntm you’ll find out soon enough if you’re on the receiving end of it

mortal flume
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When they're clumped up with cannon tigers they're pretty hard to tell apart. Like yeah, once they fire it's obvious, but if you're just scouting or getting vision it's a bit harder to tell.

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Not a huge deal, but most other units are pretty easy to distinguish in the middle of combat.

earnest osprey
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the people in one of the pro lobbies had it turned on for like half the day yesterday, but there was almost never >1 t2 cor veh player per match

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that was also before newest printer buff though

urban ferry
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it's probably mostly bias due to how cor vehicles is without them

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it's hard playing something you're not used to

earnest osprey
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and a lot of people think their value as a human is decided by their digital matchmaking points, so can't play something off-meta

urban ferry
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It's easy to make the game unranked, just need to convinve them to meme

earnest osprey
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bigger issue is that usually whoever does play cor vehs doesn't give any feedback, nor do the people they were playing against. at least before this printer buff, the only feedback any players gave was "building the engis almost never seems worth it" and either "heat tiger way too strong" or "heat tiger is a nerf". there have also been a not-insignificant number of requests for for a mini tiger with a laser to be added instead

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but that would be getting pretty close to the "reskinned jag" which others feel should be avoided for the sake of maintaining asymmetry

quasi condor
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i couldnt convince a lobby to rehost for the alt-tab fix today, while there was no one in queue so everyone could just rejoin. its hard to convience people to do anything, and enabling extra units is almost impossible.

mortal flume
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I have a lobby up now if folks want to hop on and play with these units.

earnest osprey
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It really seems like heattiger in its current state is better than normal tiger as a supplementary unit to finish targets off/deal with spam, but worse as something to mass, and there are a lot of situations for cor vehs where the best answer to a situation is mass tigers. In the end the balance difference isn't major, but it would primarily be a balance change made for the sake of aesthetics, which a lot of people wouldn't like. As for printer, i'm personally happy with its current state but nunyunuymi still feels that they trip over each other/obstruct each other/are generally too cumbersome to effectively function as butlers, and therefore aren't worth making

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As usual, little or no feedback from most everyone else despite the modoption being enabled for a solid 10+ matches

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I've pretty much stopped building forges and heattigers when modoption is on, because right now the heattiger is quite good to have mixed with your normal tigers, but that doesn't reflect something that will ever be an option in default matches. Anything forge could do, i'd rather do with printer or a t1 con/rezbot with an escort

mortal flume
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You should probably just enable these units by default and turn the mod option into a disable option, and go from there. The pro lobbies refuse to turn these on and it's hard to get feedback from the other lobbies.

And I know I have a pretty harsh opinion of the printer, but it's just one person's opinion. Maybe others will find a better way to use them and I'll come around to it. Either way, just having the extra option in the game, even if it's not mind blowingly strong, is a good thing. Cortex t2 vehicles main problem is lacking options.

earnest osprey
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Having people who feel a unit is useless heavily weakens the arguments of people who don't want the units to be added because "muh ts". It's far better to add an undertuned unit for testing than something like a pawn launcher

mortal flume
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Yeah I tried to make that argument in the pro lobbies too. These units aren't useless, but they're not OP either. They fill niches that cortex t2 doesn't have options for, and have plenty of reasonable counters. Tryhard lobbies just tend to be a bit stodgy.

earnest osprey
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a certain >60 ts player insisting both that cor vehs is "strong, just not meta" and fishing for reasons to call new units OP really doesn't help with persuading people who're in the lobby at that time that their arm units aren't being indirectly nerfed by turning the modoption on, but everyone's entitled to their own opinion

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even if he said like 2 days later that cor in general isn't viable for 60+

mortal flume
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🤷‍♀️

earnest osprey
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high-level players often don't like to need to learn new things, while others thrive on opportunities to do so, partially depends on gaming background and partially depends on skillset, and i shouldn't be speaking poorly of respected members of the community in general

wanton cloak
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I kindof want to give the arm players something new to play with too, but armada already has an abundance of units.

Only thing I could offer is Fire/Lightning ships to both sides. and perhaps a T2 wall popup turret to both sides.

...Arm T2 fighters are the weak ones right now, I could electrify them...

waxen sundial
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......emp fighters?

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jk lmao

earnest osprey
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chain lightning fighters. ez. takes them from being obliterated by t1 fighters to obliterating t1 fighters depending on the numbers

mortal flume
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This isn't the thread for it, but navy/sea could do with an overhaul.

wanton cloak
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Took the "brimstone" fire I tried earlier in the thread, stuck it on a ship

mortal flume
#

Let's start a new thread for ships/navy changes.

earnest osprey
#

very technically speaking, supporters can counter dolphins, it just usually doesn't work out that way because of naval unit mobility. and an effective porc counter to hover raids would be a godsend as someone who plays cor navy on strait. or just naval porc that didn't feel like a complete waste of resources

#

pretty sure there already is a thread for navy changes

#

and i think both the things i said are in it

#

also think someone on core team said they don't want to have more t1 naval units than are already in the game

wanton cloak
#

...How OP would it be to give a seismic detection radius on the corprinter, for spy sweeping?...

waxen sundial
#

tbh that sounds reallly good since core veh is the only faction without cloak

#

might be op tho

mortal flume
#

Seismic detection and/or anti mine field.

wanton cloak
#

New idea.
What if Alligator got the heat laser?

The feedback above makes it sound like a heat laser changes the character of the tiger too much, but alligator is used infrequently enough a new weapon type would not affect it as much.

narrow escarp
earnest osprey
#

that would be a unit that would be perfect to call Salamander

mortal flume
#

That would probably be fine. Tbh I almost never use alligators, it's either poison arrows or garpikes.

#

But if we want lasers to be the anti-spam option, are laser alligators even gonna be strong enough for their cost?

wanton cloak
#

Jaguars weight in at 330 metal, corcan at 560, and are still considered anti-spam

earnest osprey
#

though now i have a desire to joke about "cya laser, alligator"

wanton cloak
#

I would also give corsalamander a very high EMP resistance

mortal flume
#

It would also solve the minor issue of unit readability in combat... pretty hard to mistake an alligator/salamander for a tiger

rustic eagle
earnest osprey
#

would also likely need the turret rotation buff that heattiger would benefit a lot from

rustic eagle
#

The incinerator ray bot from legion t2 lab also needs a turret rotation buff... No idea where else I could have mentioned this since it's an incomplete faction anyways lol but yeah seems like slow turret rotation is a feature that needs to be looked at for both (maybe all 3) factions

narrow escarp
#

The best buff tigers could ask for is letting them drift due to their massive weight and speed (they fail and flip over after doing a driveby)

rustic eagle
earnest osprey
#

people keep having ideas in this thread that seem such perfect and, in retrospect, seemingly obvious solutions for things we spend so long debating

#

laser alligator/salamander just makes so much sense

mortal flume
#

Hey if we can turn unused units into useful units, that's a plus. Maybe we can turn the t1 frigate ships into the fire/lightning anti-spam ships.

wanton cloak
#

Augh. corseal model barrels are off-center

image.png
earnest osprey
#

additional reason to tune its visually, it needs a fix anyway

#

win-win

wanton cloak
earnest osprey
#

it shall be glorious

#

are you tweaking other stats or keeping what it has, just as a heat beam?

wanton cloak
#

Shrinking it a bit, to a 330 metal cost.
So the DPS and health will be shrunk a bit.

Making it a little less E expensive.
Double turret turn rate.
Give it beefy paralyze resistance.

Raising hitbox to cover the turret too [like the pounder] (which as a side-effect will block these units from firing over each other)

mortal flume
#

While we're at it can we give the poison arrow 4 more speed? 😛

wanton cloak
worn grail
mortal flume
#

Make them slightly more viable on land, and because that would make their speed 55 which is a round number and I enjoy round numbers

earnest osprey
#

my guess is so it can stay in front of banishers or quakers

#

darn

mortal flume
#

And yeah, that's part of the viability

earnest osprey
#

i thought it was a good guess, but yeah a poison arrow amphibious assault takes an eternity to get to its destination

mortal flume
#

I'm fine with their underwater speed tbh, that's a bonus. But they're not very viable on land now, and cortex doesn't have meat shield options for banishers and quakers.

earnest osprey
#

tiger is the meat shield

mortal flume
#

Basically, I never see them used outside of amphibious sneak attacks, so maybe a small speed buff will make them an option on land.

earnest osprey
#

tiger has >80% of the hp for <70% of the price

urban pond
mortal flume
#

Yes but just on-paper stats don't mean much. Having more concentrated power in one unit is useful. Cost and hp/stats don't scale 1:1, which is why units like the Jugg have high cost but low DPS for the cost. There was a pretty good post in the Cortex t3 thread about the karg stat boost and cost increase.

earnest osprey
#

i assume it comes down to splash damage?

mortal flume
#

What's the starlight or pulsar damage, 2k a shot? A tiger can take 4 shots before dying, a poison arrow 5. On paper, the tiger's metal to hp ratio is better, but surviving an extra shot might be more useful.

wanton cloak
urban pond
#

the barrel isnt that important
what is however
is the turret

#

the size is done for freindly fire issues @wanton cloak

earnest osprey
#

i feel like they're both effective meat shields that have minor advantages depending on the matchup, and i feel that tiger currently is favorable a large enough chunk of the time to make poison arrow usually not worth bothering with outside of amphibious things, but i'm not at all opposed to the idea that a 4 speed buff could shift things toward poison arrow being more worthwhile to consider

urban pond
#

@wanton cloak btw as a side note
hitboxes should avoid rotations that are on the Z axis

earnest osprey
#

salamander + poison arrow + tiger might be pretty effective to mix together with these changes, actually. poison arrow as a mini tzar less prone to friendly fire, as an anchor which can reduce the buffer area skirmishers can safely poke from, salamander to focus on tick spam, tiger for general-purpose tiger things

wanton cloak
urban pond
#

if so then you have my stamp of approval

wanton cloak
#

I can make it dig 1 unit deeper, like the corgator setup

urban pond
#

do that
also make sure to comment in the unitdeff at the colvol size line
for adding that the hitbox is defined in collisionvolumes.lua

earnest osprey
#

i still think forge could safely be given 20-40 more bp and 10-20 e production, due to butler benefitting a lot from speed/bot maneuverability, small profile, and arm's significantly better wind turbines + marginally better t1 converters

#

just mentioning for the sake of potentially squeezing that into the pr salamander gets thrown in with

wanton cloak
#

Forge is having an identity crisis, like the arm webber.
Inability to repair while moving makes it hard to provide that field engineer role, and the weapon is so hyper-specialized to anti-infantry that it cannot fend off T1 tanks or fiends that rush your banisher and artillery line, or fend off those units from a front-T2-con-mex-upgrader.

Heat ray/laser, with the increased damage at point blank, serves the anti-rush role better than the weapon I put on the forge.

Overall, without some gadget wizardry, it is too clunky to "drive" a combination engineer/combat unit.

earnest osprey
#

i know at least ambulatory cortex wants to lean hard into making it a utility vehicle that also happens to have a weapon, and i somewhat agree. further buffing the cost effectiveness of its bp would make it a moderately effective unit for frontline repairs, but also allow it to contribute to holding off a rush of spam on it/whatever it's repairing

#

the weak-but-still-present weapon helps with allowing it to somewhat compete with rezbots for being a worthwhile investment on the frontline without needing its bp to nearly eclipse con turrets in efficiency the way printer currently needs to

#

making something efficient for repairs while also efficient for construction assistance when rezbots are 110 metal for 200 bp and 78 speed and stealthy is just really tough

#

forge could arguably do it better than printer, though, due to the weapon providing some amount of value when you send it to the front to repair rather than keeping it back assisting construction

#

i personally very much like printer, more other people like forge, so they're both worth trying to get a wider array of feedback on by potentially temporarily making default, but forge could use a bit more in the way of bp efficiency to get it closer to being both numerically worth making to assist your t2 con, and something that isn't blown out of the water as hard in efficiency by rezbots on the frontline

#

a pinch more speed for both printer and forge so they don't fall behind even banishers and quakers likely would help as well with their ability to maintain "uptime" repairing

mortal flume
earnest osprey
#

once you have a fusion economy/if it's a particularly windy printer is still worse cost/bp than con turret

vale totem
earnest osprey
#

rezbots having double the bp/cost of a con turret is a significant factor in the difficulty of finding proper balance for something both intended to be a useful repairer and a useful construction assistant

wanton cloak
wanton cloak
#

Alright, Salamander added. And the modoption is updated.

#

2172409 is the version number/hash

#

So when the modoption is enabled:

  1. Corprinter is added.
  2. Alligator is REPLACED with salamander
#

Key Salamander facts:

  1. cheaper than alligator (with reduced DPS and health to compensate)
  2. faster turret turn rate
  3. uses a heat ray
  4. Very EMP resistant
  5. same movement properties as alligator
earnest osprey
#

This has the added bonus of making it less weird for incisor to be corgator

urban ferry
#

does it need reduced dps considering the weapon is now a laser instead of plasma?

#

usually laser weapons tend to have higher DpS because of damage falloff

wanton cloak
#

It got the same 133% buff the Heat Tiger laser got from the transition from cannon to laser

urban ferry
#

ok

earnest osprey
#

It also has fairly high range, so you can argue that it's often firing at things close enough for the dropoff to not kick in too hard

urban ferry
#

what's the firerate like again?

earnest osprey
#

Sligtly slower than tiger

#

scratch that, sala was given tiger's firerate

mortal flume
#

Oh damn, this unit feels good playing around with it in cheat mote.

#

Small nit, can the printer description be updated to include the E production?

earnest osprey
#

are there any other cons that list their e production in a way different than how printer does?

mortal flume
#

Now that I think of it probably not... but that would still be useful to have for all units.

#

I surprise quite a lot of people when I tell them the aircraft carriers produce 300 e

earnest osprey
#

were you in the pro lobby about a week ago when mbt realized that t1 cons are more cost-effective bp than con turrets due to e production if you're on t1 solars, and half the lobby started making 10+ t1 cons for the next 10 matches?

mortal flume
#

Maybe? Sounds familiar.

earnest osprey
#

unit energy production would definitely be nice to have clearly visible somewhere other than the little spot above its current hp value when it's currently actively generating, but that could also be its own suggestion thread

mortal flume
#

I have a lobby up with the salamander and printer if folks want to ttry them

mortal flume
#

Okay, the salamander feels pretty good. Not the strongest at pushing, but works well in surprise attacks still and against t1.

earnest osprey
#

also amphib complex still has alligator instead of salamander

rustic eagle
earnest osprey
#

we've finally done it lads, had it enabled for about a dozen matches and it was 99% people saying nothing and 1% people saying they like the units

#

rather 99% saying nothing and 1% saying they don't like the units

earnest osprey
#

These are the important questions

simple panther
earnest osprey
#

Big progress will be from pro lobby's feedback, but last i checked they aren't even playing in a lobby on a recent enough update

#

The fact that the only "new" combat unit is a replacement for one that everyone forgets exists + the fact that it's only 2 units total makes it more palatable i think

mortal flume
#

Good luck with that. That lobby has essentially become a stand in for a matchmaking queue for folks to climb the OS ladder.

earnest osprey
#

I get them to turn it on like half the time when i'm there after i beg enough, depends on who's currently playing

#

Usually a max of 1 other person plays cor vehs (more commonly 0 other people) and there's nothing constructive said, but it's something

wanton cloak
earnest osprey
#

We had to fill the lobby by playing strait and i was navy, wanted to use sala somehow

wanton cloak
earnest osprey
#

Also, because of the range+rof+fairly low damage, it might be one of the best tick spam counters in the game while remaining somewhat usable but unimpressive vs anything with fairly high hp, exactly as we wanted it to

mortal flume
#

Unintended consequence of it being a laser, is it's actually pretty good for raids, at least on strait. It no longer gets blocked by plasma deflectors, and high rof + range + accuracy makes it easy to target down critical structures with Set Target mode.

earnest osprey
#

Honestly i always forget amphib gantry has lower tier units, since cor's is so niche even compared to arm's amphib gantry

mortal flume
#

Imo navies need to have a t1 and t2 "all terrain" factory/gantry where amphib units and hovers are merged. But that's more of a discussion for water overhaul.

earnest osprey
#

The amphib labs are pretty odd as a whole for various reasons, but yeah a discussion for another thread

mortal flume
#

After playing with the salamander more I think they need a slight damage and/or range buff. The laser dropoff damage makes them truly pathetic at the end of their range. They were hitting for single digits. Combined with their low HP I'm worried about their ability to actually deal with spam.

earnest osprey
#

Single digits total for a shot?

#

Or just individual laser ticks

#

In one of my forge games i could set up 1 per tick spam path and they would never get close

mortal flume
#

Gotta test some more but it was against thugs. I know those are tankier but it didn't feel right. It was doing less damage than t1 missile trucks.

They are good against trickle spam but I'm worried about what would happen against a clump of t1 spam. Jaguars have some decent AOE to deal with that, but not these.

earnest osprey
#

I just got off for the night or i'd do some dedicated godmode testing, will do some tomorrow before i harass the pro lobby

granite jackal
#

I think if heat salamander works decentl against T1 i like this direction. I think the only disadvantage cor might have now is with tiger being strictly worse than bull, but it's going to be hard to beat tremor range

#

i really like printer as a front line reclaimer too, very durable

mortal flume
#

I've started mixing in poison arrows with my tigers and it performs pretty well.

#

It's underrated.

granite jackal
#

doubt, i think getting a goli is better if you need that sort of firepower

#

poison arrow is only good for amphibious invasion, even then it's a bit sluggish

mortal flume
#

But a tzar isn't slow? 😛

#

I am pushing for 55 speed on the poison arrow tho

granite jackal
#

tzar isn't for amphibious invasion.. you might want to mix a tzar into tigers to keep other tanks farther at range

#

as you push

#

go back and forth with the tigers because that's how you micro tanks, and push the tzar forward at the same time

earnest osprey
#

I think main advantage of poison arrow over tzar is that it's less likely to blow up half your army if a tick gets close

#

Tzar generally better, but poison arrow not necessarily unusable

granite jackal
#

if the new salamander is useful as promised ticks shouldn't be a big deal anymore

earnest osprey
#

They shouldn't for sure

#

Cor vehs have aoe to deal with infantry balls, just lacked something for infantry streams

#

Much safer to use heavy aoe units if my experience was more generally representative of their performance vs spam than nunyunuymi's

mortal flume
urban ferry
#

They're worse at fighting but better at raiding and better at being a meat shield for vehicle arty and banisher/starlights

earnest osprey
#

Tigers get the award for "most versatile meat shield that doesn't make you feel bad for melting someone's computer" and that's an important award to me, if not anyone else. A pile of bulls with no support>>>a pile of tigers with no support and at least i hope nobody would attempt to argue otherwise

still tiger
# wanton cloak Ship sample

its waaay to much for one ship, should be 1/10 of those effects imo, imagine 3-5 of those ships, rip any pc

wanton cloak
#

Alligator replaced with Salamander for the underwater gantry and amphibious complex

quasi condor
#

tried out salamander feels good against spam ngl

rustic eagle
#

pogger

earnest osprey
#

I didn't get to test quite as thoroughly as i would've liked, but here's what i did find: 1 sala can hold off 1 lab pumping ticks at max speed indefinitely (they never get close enough to return damage). This appeared to scale linearly with each lab requiring 1 additional sala. For pawns or grunts pumped at max speed 3 per lab are needed for the same effect. 2 salas can almost do it for grunts, but oftentimes a grunt will get a single shot in before dying. If rushed by a ball and not micro'd, each sala can handle roughly 15 ticks fairly consistently, or 5 pawns. Not cost-effective, but with micro, kiting would likely drastically improve those numbers, and the scary things for cor vehs until now were the streams and stragglers that survive your other units' aoe, which a few salas neutralize very effectively

umbral heath
# mortal flume I'm not sold on a unit being designed to be useless for everything except amphib...

I tried using poison arrows on land in the past, and I liked them quite a bit. The faster projectile speed compared to the tzar is especially nice. However, I'd consider their extremely high energy cost to be a major turn-off for any normal usage. You're looking at almost triple the E cost of a tiger and more than even the tzar. You're deciding between a tzar, or a bull which has higher health and range, but less damage and maneuverability for a way higher cost. It pays quite a lot for its amphibious capability.

#

Aside from that, I played 2 games with the heat tigers/forges/printers yesterday, and I very much liked the accuracy of the tigers, something that current cor veh really lacks

#

even outside of countering spam

#

the forge I think is a very neat idea - I liked the unit when I found it in scavs, and would love to have a mex builder that isn't a snail. It does not need to be strong at combat.

#

I'd think of it more like jaguar/marauder AA, not essential, but it's there as an extra

#

I'd say it does not need to have less bp/cost than the other combat engineers/butler either

#

it's not like you can choose to build either of those anyway as cor veh

earnest osprey
#

Notes:

  1. wrecks in general are prone to being larger-than-normal problems due to their overall low dps. The standout example was pawns and grunts basically always leaving wrecks if killed by salas, and will take multiple shots to clear while salas are trying to hit the next target if that target is directly behind them.

  2. Compared to tiger, Increased turnspeed+turret being fast enough to not be almost completely disabled while making a u-turn makes it much more capable of maneuvering to skirmish, but the dps particularly at max range is low enough that i highly doubt it'll even become a major use-case for them, let alone something that becomes problematic

willow frost
#

Lingering AOE damage?

earnest osprey
#

@umbral heath your feedback is much appreciated, but unfortunately your lobby wasn't running the most recent version of the modoption, which only includes printer and the new salamander. Forge and heattiger are currently sidelined while we focus on trying to just make sure sala and printer are as well-designed and well-balanced as possible in addition to, combined, successfully fixing the most glaring problems with the lab at present

wanton cloak
#

I set the vision range to be 5 larger than its range.
But the rendering of that vision does make it seem a bit shorter

image.png
earnest osprey
#

Welp. I'm dumb. I'll edit out that bullet point

umbral heath
earnest osprey
#

Fair

#

Wanted to make sure people coming into the thread weren't misinformed on that front, sorry

#

The sidelined units certainly aren't fundamentally bad, just would be much more difficult to properly tune + convince people they should be made default

wanton cloak
#

Your comments were good 😄

umbral heath
#

I'm trying to like the printer, but I do feel like the ability to make t1 eco and radar/jammer on the spot is rather... absent, combined with its higher price. Especially since you still want to somewhat protect it and avoid being in enemy line of fire, even if it's more armored. It is not radar invisible, unlike resbots, after all

#

You could say it's way too chonky for it's own good

earnest osprey
#

Can always just stick a t1 con near the front for radar/t1 mexes, since they're similar speed to forge anyway. Forge doesn't really give an option to more quickly rebuild mexes unless you happened to lose all your t1 cons and not all your forges

umbral heath
#

Yes, but that assumes you keep your t1 lab, which I see no other reason to do other than to get t1 cons. In comparison to bots, they get to make both cons and res bots, as well as the always useful pawn/grunt

#

meaning they have a bigger incentive to keep their t1 lab

earnest osprey
#

I feel like a common situation for me is, "i have my tigers holding a line where they're being peppered by weak/sporadic long-range fire, i don't want to give up the ground, but i want to repair 'em"

#

Printers don't mind getting hit by that artillery while rezbots would die en masse to shots aimed at the things they're repairing

umbral heath
#

the problem with that approach is that you are losing health from shelling while gaining life from repair

#

you gain nothing in the end

#

it is better to pull back and repair while not being shelled

earnest osprey
#

I pull back, the enemy artillery can switch lanes or push forward

umbral heath
#

at which point printer is just too expensive and too large to easily repair large clunks of tigers

umbral heath
#

that is just how arty works, you either rush and kill them, or they tickle you to death

earnest osprey
#

Not if the repairing is faster than the damage eating

#

If a bunch of sheldons are sitting in porc, i'd rather they waste their time taking years to kill my tigers+printers than go shoot at something that can't take the same beating

#

Usually i'm doing the same back anyway. If i pull my tigers back, i need to pull my slower arty back too, and that's a lot of time spent, particularly if it's a tremor they're protecting

granite jackal
#

Played a couple games with current version of changes and I have to say I think it works out pretty well. I think maybe printer should get to build mexes and basic radar, but otherwise cor vehicles feels pretty playable now

earnest osprey
#

Running away from fights is for armada anyway

umbral heath
wanton cloak
#

1 printer healing a tiger can outheal 1 sheldon.

earnest osprey
#

Time is a resource like anything else and printers help with forcing an opponent's units spend that resource in a not-particularly efficient manner

umbral heath
#

You can only squeeze so many printers into the healing range of a tiger.

#

I'm hosting a lobby with the setting on, so I'll try using some extra printers in a tiger ball

earnest osprey
#

I probably have quakers firing back, a banisher getting in position, or a tremor that needs to rotate its turret and out-poke them. Tigers are the meatshields, and printers are preservatives for the meat

umbral heath
#

hopefully I'll run into sheldons

earnest osprey
umbral heath
earnest osprey
#

The tigers are

umbral heath
#

I can't help but feel like you're imagining some hypothetical scenario where you have more units and resources available than the enemy.
If you both have equal amounts, and you build a 50% split between tigers and printers, you will die to sheldons rather quickly. You won't be able to waste much of their time this way. If you build more than just tiger/printer, you are reducing the amount of meat shield and repair you have, meaning that if you cannot charge them with the tigers, the sheldons will only kill you faster.

#

fun fact: the arty can't even shoot over printers

image.png
#

they just killed themselves

#

I feel like this might need some adjustment

#

they are just way too big

image.png
#

Don't get me wrong - I like the idea, but healing units that are actively taking damage just doesn't work in practise on a large scale. There are some cases where it works, most notably in t1 bots with thug/rezbot, but even then we are looking at low dps, low amounts of units and very efficient healing in the form of a rezbot. The printer costs more for the same BP, is bigger so you can't fit as many in one spot, and is at T2, meaning the damage output is also way higher.

earnest osprey
#

I'm talking about a situation where the enemy porc'd up and i invested in units, and where i don't try to make my printers clip into my quakers that should be a good 100+ range behind at least

umbral heath
#

if your quakers are 100+ range behind your printers, then either your enemy can shoot the printers without your quakers being able to shoot, or your whole army is in range of the porc, therefore taking damage from more than just sheldons

earnest osprey
#

...quakers have >500 more range than tigers

urban pond
#

That’s way too small

#

Or

#

Make the printer smaller to better fit its movedeff

umbral heath
#

you're not fighting quakers with tigers in this

#

it's quakers tigers and printers vs sheldons in porc

earnest osprey
#

yes, the tigers are being shot at by the sheldons, the quakers are out of range of the sheldons

umbral heath
#

whiiiich means you are taking damage while the enemy is not

earnest osprey
#

the quakers are shooting at the sheldons while the sheldons are only in range of the tigers

#

that's the point of having a backline and a frontline

umbral heath
#

the quaker's range is higher than the sheldon's, but it's not high enough to be 100 units behind your repair line, which is presumably behind your tiger line, and still be able to shoot at the enemy

#

they have exactly 65 more range

#

on another note, I quite like the salamander

#

it is a very nice addition

earnest osprey
#

i don't understand what we're even debating anymore

#

glad people like the salamander

umbral heath
#

printers are still useful for repairs while you're not actively taking damage and for reclaim, without needing to make a separate lab for rezbots

#

I do think it would be a great idea to allow them to build butler stuff

earnest osprey
#

okay, hypothetical scenario which hopefully is specific enough to not possibly be misunderstood: i have high-value mexes on the frontline which will be destroyed if i retreat. neither side can safely take an engagement with their frontline units on territory held by the other, and both sides know this. enemy is starting to build sheldons/hounds/any other t2 skirmishing unit. the enemy has a radar jammer. i needed at least a few frontline units after my t2 con in case my opponent was preparing to commit to a frontal push, so i made some tigers. my frontline needs to be intimidating enough to prevent a breakthrough, but i don't know what units are currently coming out of their lab. i am starting to produce quakers as a response. the 3 things my tigers are existing for are to dissuade a frontal assault, to buy time for my quakers to get in position, and to be shot at so i can see where sheldon projectiles are coming from to aim my quakers when enough of them arrive. 5 tigers and 2 printers in a line, particularly with the printers set to repair, do that better than 6 tigers would for the same price.

wanton cloak
urban pond
#

Or is the issue related to the veh arty

#

One of the 2 is an issue

#

Probably both

#

Lmao that spellcheck

wanton cloak
#

veh arty are using a plasma cannon projectile, which still has a fundamental engine bug that causes friendly fire.

A model size too big just causes visual clipping

urban pond
#

The visuall clipping issue is on my todo list

#

Becuase every unit clips

granite jackal
#

Anecdotally I would say in one of my games the printer's HP allowed me to keep reclaiming and have my reclaimers survive, and it made a world of difference to my eco and ability to counterplay. I don't think there's a world where printer's purpose is healing frontline units under fire from other T2. You could however use them behind the front line, to repair units you've pulled back, or to assist in building things like jammers or other statics. Unit has definite utility like butler

#

I think letting it build T1 mex and radar would be a great addition

wanton cloak
granite jackal
#

just basic T1 radar

urban pond
#

The unit clipping issue is something that is going going to be done at a much later time
I still have a ton of hitboxes to go through

wanton cloak
#

I can get arty to fire over printers just fine (assuming the arty is aiming high for long range)

image.png
granite jackal
#

sometimes a printer is the only thing left over after an engagement and being able to plop down some vision would be really awesome

wanton cloak
#

...wait...
Is this more gravity bullshit?
DSDR has high gravity, and therefore units need to aim higher for a same distance shot

urban pond
#

That should be resolved

#

And not map makers choice without good reason

wanton cloak
#

I should add just standardize it for all arty.

#

Dagnabit

image.png
granite jackal
#

@cosmic stirrup IMO if we add current version of printer and salamander to the game we can reinspire some interest in the cor T2 vehicle lab. I think salamander replacing gator is a really good approach to ensuring we aren't adding too much or making huge changes either. Printer is useful enough to build without being OP for its role, Salamander fills the asymmetric niche of being a different type of amphibious vehicle while also being somewhat effective against T1 spam.

urban pond
#

For the visual clipping just make sure to show a ton of printers next to each other

#

The rest of the units are a mess anyways

urban pond
wanton cloak
#

Time to learn engine compiling.
This level of trajectory prediction error is NOT ok.

image.png
vale totem
#

what exactly is that visualizing?

cosmic stirrup
sudden comet
#

I don't have a large sample size with core t2 veh but I don't think I've seen the old alligator used even once... 😦

earnest osprey
#

I made alligators a couple times from amphibious complexes when i was learning water, didn't know how to capitalize on a naval victory on strait, and assumed it must be better to build the t2 raiding tank than the t1 raiding tank without actually doing a direct comparison

#

Never seen someone other than myself make them though

#

They aren bad, but they do feel difficult to justify making over something else

#

I think if you liked alligator you'll probably like salamander even more, but i couldn't say for certain

#

I'm aware that i'm a highly inexperienced clown compared to any of you who actually work on the game

worn grail
worn grail
umbral heath
earnest osprey
#

i'm guessing that's what makes plasma prone to friendly fire? just ignoring gravity with its prediction if we're interpreting it right?

earnest osprey
urban ferry
#

Alligator was the medium amphib tank right?

earnest osprey
urban ferry
#

If so then i tried to (unsuccessfully) use them in an industrial revolution game

earnest osprey
#

the naming is a bit weird since the garpike is closer to a brute than an incisor, but yeah alligator is the one classified as a medium amphibious tank

granite jackal
#

Printer wasn't given a build list to differentiate it from butler more.. the idea is for a highly specialized unit like what is in theme for cortex.
I think it could use just that little touch of extra utility to make it good as a front line reclaimer and recovery unit

urban ferry
#

Give it the ability to make DTs and LLTs

granite jackal
#

forge was always intended to be an all-around engineer and so it had a build list

urban ferry
#

Allow it to make thugs

#

It'll sit there and tank the shots while body blocking for the thugs it makes behind it

earnest osprey
#

...do you ever want thugs when you have t2?

urban ferry
#

The ultimate "fuck you" move

#

Meme value

ancient forge
#

There could be some value in allowing it to build grunts. Opponent is tanked up against slow heavy units, then suddenly gruntswarm.

earnest osprey
#

this is all leaning toward "major buff to printer" stuff rather than qol like t1 mexes and basic radar

ancient forge
#

...true

urban ferry
#

I'm just thinking what a cor, tanky, slow frontline reclaim vehicle wants

#

And what it wants is a way to either defend itself or apply pressure

ancient forge
earnest osprey
urban ferry
#

Rather than giving it a weapon, i opted for allowing it to make weapons in the form of LLTs as i think that would fit it more than making sumos for example

earnest osprey
#

if printer could "print out" grunts and rezbots, that would be a massive buff to cor vehs since they could just skip out on rebuilding botlabs in mid-lategame, but we don't even know for sure if cor vehs will need more buffs once current printer and sala are added

urban ferry
#

My suggestion is again just to let it make LLTs and DTs, maybe thugs, and maybe solars

umbral heath
#

what about T1 veh cons? not as op as allowing it to make grunts/rezbots, allowing them to actually "print" some unit

earnest osprey
#

t1 mexes, solars, basic radar would be safe qol that wouldn't alter balance of the unit majorly, llts and particularly dllts would be nice but also start bringing it closer to twitcher/consul than butler, grunts/rezbots would be really nice but a pretty large buff, thugs seem like a meme if made post-t1

ancient forge
#

Actually, what if the printer could build printers?

umbral heath
#

grey goo

earnest osprey
#

3d-printed 3d printer let's go

#

i kinda like the t1 veh con idea. with that you could give it a buildlist of 1 unit, then just have it assist the t1 con that it built, effectively giving it the full t1 con buildlist indirectly

#

i think a t1 con is ~7% more cost-effective in bp in a fusion economy, which is also worth noting unless my maths are off

earnest osprey
wanton cloak
#

T1 veh con. +10 E = 41 m fusion
T1 con BP-only cost = 145 - 41 = 104
104 m per 90 BP => 1.15 m per BP

granite jackal
#

Again the reason printer didn't come with a build list to begin with was by concept.. it's highly specialized for its role as is in-theme for Cortex. I'm not sure I want to break on that theme idea, and printer is pretty useful as-is, but I think letting it build T1 mexes and T1 radar would help enhance it's most useful role as a frontline reclaimer. When it's done being the last surviving thing on the field, cleans it all up, then it can slap down a couple mex and radar to see if opponent will push through area again. Maybe a better name instead of "Printer" would be "Vacuum" (just kidding).

willow frost
#

Surveryer or scavenger is a better name.

earnest osprey
#

I've been a fan of printer as-is even before the earliest buffs it got, just don't wanna completely shoot down people's opinions for adding minor extra functions

mortal flume
#

I think I've come around a bit with the printer as a front line assist, but not as a reclaim and repair unit. I think it still falls way behind rez bots there. However, 2-3 of these paired with a t2 vehicle con makes it pretty easy to set up static defense and utility near the front line.

worn grail
#

persoanlly i just dont get this "need " to make printer so psecialized..... IMO overthinking it. arms ven engineer (consul) is literally the core kbot engineer (freaker) they literally build the same stuff essentially minus comando for core and arm can make all terrain; like those are the only differences in the units they make- 1 makes an all terrain otehr makes a commando niche unit. otherwise they make the same ECO units, same radar/jammer/same stuff........ WHY not just make a butler style veh unit to bridge the lack for core. why make this unit that now enters into the game (extended healing ranges) making rezzers when no other can. i think ur walking a line where just start simple.... when i first made a thread people were 50/50 now seems like we jumped into it being way more. IMO ofc

#

keep simple then can always add more and make more complicated

#

u also cant compare low TS vs the literally 1 lobby that all the high TS guys stay in playstyles are completely differrent and usage of units

#

look at noobs loving fatboys hah'

earnest osprey
#

It's less about making it specialized for the sake of making it specialized, and more about asymmetry making the game more interesting, in addition to it being good to amplify a faction's focus on specific themes. Additionally, adding a unit is a buff to the factory in general, even if it's undertuned. Adding a potentially overtuned unit to a lab could cause a lot of backlash + spam of threads about "get rid of this new unit". When i occasionally look around the various threads here there're still regular complaints that the thor was added

earnest osprey
trail ingot
#

Hmm, I don't know if balance is the deciding factor in high level games either. Balance in an 8v8 will almost always be there because you will have some from both factions so all units are accessible. It's just a question of how do you want games to look

earnest osprey
#

Well, balance at least has an impact on variety of playstyles seen moreso at high levels than low levels

worn grail
#

I mean i get asymmetry; but why not then have the consul/freaker do more different tasks is my “counter point”
Keeping it as a core “butler” in vehicle model form versus a tanky healing unit with extended range/ or being able to spam rezzers on front line seems like the parts that could make for some abuse once figured out/certain maps.
Now you have a line of thors with printers printing reezers nonstop behind the thors just healing nonstop, yet you cant kill the printers printing cause there tanky and healing as well can honestly become busted

#

Or a lolcannon that has printers spamming rezzers healing it to the point its unkillable

earnest osprey
#

The grunt/rezzer ideas are extremely powerful and it would be hard for anyone to argue against that

#

I'm fine with printer as-is, would be happy to see it get the ability to build t1 mexes, basic solars, and/or radar. Everything beyond that i'm skeptical of aside from maybe being able to print a t1 con

urban ferry
#

i don't think it should be able to make mexes, i feel like that is too much of a buff

umbral heath
#

How is it too much of a buff if you don't have an option to do it now while every other lab including arm t2 veh does?

earnest osprey
#

Also it would still be drastically slower to build them across a large area compared to twitch/consul/butler due to movespeed and distance between most mexes

urban ferry
#

being able to build mexes vs not being able to build mexes is a major buff

umbral heath
wanton cloak
#

corprinter wins a fight against an LLT. It can roll up and reclaim it while only taking ~50% of its HP

umbral heath
#

would be kinda awkward if a T2 fat unit couldn't win against an llt

wanton cloak
#

Possible build list

image.png
urban pond
# wanton cloak Possible build list

i dont think it would be a good idea for the printer to make more of itself
none of the t2 cons can make t2 cons directly
they come from the factory
i would be fine with the veh or bot con at t1

earnest osprey
#

i feel like it would be worth putting printer on printer's buildlist when scav units are enabled because it's silly, but probably not by default

#

if that's something that can easily be done, otherwise probably best to nix it entirely

#

t1 con would be nice for sure without being scav'y or potentially risky

wanton cloak
#

Dumb scenario idea.
You have a Printer, and you need to clear some turrets using the power of reclaiming the towers while hiding behind walls you built.

umbral heath
wanton cloak
#

Na.
It already has advantages over the butler, no need to give it all the useful parts of the butler buildlist 😛

granite jackal
#

i would limit the build list to mex, radar, solar at most

earnest osprey
worn grail
umbral heath
#

I think the wall fits with it's cheap & tanky theme

earnest osprey
#

There could be some potential for abusing t2 walls made by printers, but it might be safe

urban ferry
#

Printers out there playing fortnight quick walling themselves whenever they get shot

earnest osprey
#

That's precisely what i'm concerned about. I don't know the exact mechanics, but i know there're already things in place with the intent of discouraging things along the lines of quick walling. I don't wanna be one of the people who pushed for the implementation of something that ended up making quickwalling a mandatory skill like in fortnite or like in age of empires when the community probably doesn't want that

still tiger
#

watched a game with printers enabled yesterday.
I think 330m for armored 200 bp engie is very low. Consider upscaling it to 300bp but 500m probably? It will fit core vehicles more, they all are bulky and big.

urban ferry
#

Could scale up energy cost

still tiger
#

why energy? It's vehicle, vehicles should have large metal cost and relatively now energy cost

#

330m is low for T2 armored unit imo

urban ferry
#

It's also a nano, which has a high energy cost and a low metal cost

umbral heath
#

could also reduce it's health and visual size, that would help with the "too big model" issue, and make it seem less like a giant brick that is way too big for 330 metal

#

by "reduce" I mean "reasonably reduce", so it still retains it's tankiness theme
(seriously, how can something so big be made out of so little? Is it hollow on the inside? Made out of paper-thin walls?)

#

I do think using the same ratio of cost-to-health as the behemoth is a bit too much

earnest osprey
#

I'd like to re-emphasize that if adding buildlist=more nerfs are required elsewhere, i'd strongly prefer it stays without a buildlist

earnest osprey
#

the current >15 hp/m could be too much, but a t1 veh con is at the ~10 hp/m that a 500m cost would put it at. Whether a price+proportional bp increase is done or a model size reduction is done, assuming one of the 2 happens, i can't say what would be the exact best ratio, but dropping it too close to a t1 con feels like it would weaken its identity. Perhaps somewhere close to the halfway point between t1 con and behe would work? a 1-3 hp/m nerf would probably be significant in making cost-effectiveness as a wall of armor more realistic, but still keep it quite comfortably above a t1 con, particularly with the high overkill units past early t2 are prone to having vs other t2 units

#

having multiple to split across a large, spread-out reclaim field helps a lot with allowing for everything to be reclaimed, due to their low movespeed meaning a large portion of their time reclaiming being spent travelling between debris. That pushes me slightly more toward favoring the model size reduction over the sizable price increase with proportional bp increase

#

alternatively, the price+bp increase could be paired with a movespeed buff to partially compensate for that

worn grail
#

tbh if it doesnt have any buildlist IMO its just not a butler/engineer then- and i cant support it. i understand asymmetry but when i made a thread year plus ago was not my intent to make armored healing units. it was to just bridge the LACK of a butler/engineer in core.... not try to develop another stand alone unit. no build list just defeats this IMO might as well just add 2 tanks

earnest osprey
#

having buildpower that can move is still a very large buff to cor t2 vehs

granite jackal
#

And amazingly they can actually survive running away from a front line sometimes, giving you that much more bit of come-back potential.

earnest osprey
#

it would be quite nice if it could have the 3 basic construction options we've discussed, or even a few more, but i very much enjoy its effectiveness at the roles it can currently fill, myself, and don't want those to be sacrificed for the sake of the added buildlist

waxen sundial
#

I still like the idea of making it an advanced minelayer, but this is an idea I had ages ago lol

#

Feels like a nice addition as is

granite jackal
#

I think the design on this engineer is smart, it's different enough from others and it fits core's theme, it's pretty well balanced for metal cost and it has a really nice supporting role for the front line.

#

Accidentally wander into the range of a Tsar while reclaiming on the battlefield? Oops, oh well, guess we'll need to go get the paint repaired.

granite jackal
# wanton cloak Possible build list

I'm on board with mex, radar, solar, T2 wall for a build list. I think if we do that, we're ready to take it to GDT for more discussion to: add printer and replace gator with salamander.

mortal flume
#

This may be too much to ask, but what if the T2 naval engi for cortex had the salamander in the build list? Currently it has no amphibious/hover option, while the t2 arm engi ship does.

worn grail
#

^^^havent noticed that but if so, id have to agree.

crimson coral
#

maybe let the engineer make wind turbines, thats one of the OP things about butlers, and kind of offsets the wind farms downside of requiring a lot of build power combined with space

mortal flume
earnest osprey
#

arm's windmills and t1 converters being substantially better than cor's is one of the reasons something that can build those is inherently significantly more valuable for arm. t1 solars are good in early t2 when your m income starts multiplying and you need a temporary boost in e that you'll reclaim later. i feel like printer lacking windmill and t1 converters goes well with the way cor eco functions

earnest osprey
#

so probably would be a good addition i think?

mortal flume
#

Or, they just forgot about it, because it's such a niche scenario.

earnest osprey
#

with how hard it often is to be relevant on land as a navy player on the map that half the playerbase spams, it's not that niche

mortal flume
#

An amphib factory or hover factory are only like 900-1400 metal with better build options, but yeah, should be somewhat useful. But I've also never seen arm navy players make platypus either, so idk.

crimson coral
urban pond
#

Butlers being able to make wind farms is op

#

Secret tactic

crimson coral
#

Yes it’s really op, you could even replace a standard fus stepping stone into afus with windmills instead

earnest osprey
#

basic solar you can reclaim fast with no e wasted once you're at fusion, winds...not so much. winds op on arm, not worth building more than a small handful of total on most maps for cor unless you get an arm con

#

so yeah by the time you have a printer out, t1 solar preferable for cor unless like 14+ average wind, not because of raw e generation, but because of other reasons

#

therefore, printer lacking turbines is fine with me

#

butler getting to be speedy and build mass arm winds is a very different story

crimson coral
#

This just sounds like more incoherent rambling

earnest osprey
#

ok

umbral heath
# earnest osprey so yeah by the time you have a printer out, t1 solar preferable for cor unless l...

14 wind is the breakpoint where it beats afus, and you should build pretty much exclusively wind if you have the space for it. It is beneficial to build wind even before reaching the afus breakpoint. At 11 it becomes equivalent to normal cor fus in terms of metal invested, being cheaper on energy, more expensive on BP, and has the advantage of being built incrementally. I'd say it's still worth building (again, if you have the space for it)... if you're using bots. I feel like vehicles (especially a big fat box) are way worse at throwing down wind than bots. I would still like to see it in the build menu, though, for those super high wind maps. Very niche, though.

quasi condor
#

can we do something to place salamander on first page on grid layout?

umbral heath
quasi condor
#

oh it was changed then?

#

it was on second page previously for sure

earnest osprey
earnest osprey
umbral heath
earnest osprey
#

1 doesn't affect a solar or fusion economy. The bit of built-in e storage on those buildings themselves is nice as well. 2 was just adding that wind farms chain easily and horribly if you have space to build wind, but not space to put gaps between your wind. Otherwise i was agreeing with you

umbral heath
#

Well, in the case of a mediocre amount of space, a combination of wind and more space efficient options would be better (or even necessary for enough E) anyway, I imagine.

mortal flume
#

Any confirmation on adding the salamander to the t2 engi ship/pathfinder? 🙂

earnest osprey
#

Personally, on the 9-11 wind maps or on a 14 wind map with very limited space to work with, i usually make somewhere in the range of 6-20 winds before switching to other sources, even when the other sources are asolar or (if stalling e) t1 solar. And with that gameplan, printer getting winds on buildlist is, as you also already stated, very niche. The idea of cor as a faction valuing wind power less being further empasized by printer not having winds on its buildlist just seems fitting to my brain because of that. If nobody else agrees, i won't try to go die on the hill that printer is thematically a more fitting cor unit without winds

crimson coral
earnest osprey
#

travel time is a significantly larger factor for printer than butler

crimson coral
earnest osprey
#

because printer is a slow vehicle while butler is a fast bot? the main intent behind printer is to assist your t2 cons and to frontline reclaim, as well as repair in a pinch if you lack rezbots

#

building t1 mexes, basic radar and basic solars are likely to be added as functionalities for quality of life

crimson coral
#

if they dont get the fundelmetals of a worker, then no one will make them, people will just make rez bots, and wind will always be a staple in any economy be it core or arm. Obviously you want to transition to AFUS quicker with core because they are cheaper. But it still does not exclude making wind. So imo they should be able to make wind and replace juno'd support bots. Otherwise they're just another unit that has no clear role.

earnest osprey
#

if you read the thread, most people agree that assisting t2 cons and frontline reclaiming without dying are 2 very clear roles which it provides solid value in

#

making a unit do more things makes its role less clear

waxen sundial
#

ive played a few games and they're great. they let me support my t2 con as it goes and builds mexes. all it needs to do tbh

#

would be nice if it made a large amouint of e too tho

crimson coral
#

Sure, I can do that with my t1 workers just fine tho

waxen sundial
#

not if you need your t1 workers in your home base, or if they die to a raid

crimson coral
#

Anything can die to a raid

#

even printers

earnest osprey
#

you should be reclaiming your t1 lab to go t2 as well, and as your eco grows, your need for bp grows

waxen sundial
#

yes but right now, expensive t2 cons are the only bp in t2 core veh lab

earnest osprey
#

so you probably won't have enough t1 cons after you've upgraded a handful of mexes at t2

#

and you need to build more bp to keep up

#

hence printer

#

giving printer the ability to build wind turbines would be a buff, if nothing else was changed about it, though not nearly as major as you seem to believe. However, it most certainly has useful roles without them, and the cor t2 veh lab is much better off with current printer (no buildoptions) in its buildlist compared to having no printer

crimson coral
#

if it has no clear role, no one will make it, they will just make rez bots. Unless of course its so durable that it can reclaim under fire.

earnest osprey
#

you're ignoring everything everyone is saying

crimson coral
#

https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=e9fb846469d7e4c890aea660b3b3eb88

I went core vehicles here, had no issues with build power, infact theres several games here I got more than enough. Generally you centralise your economy with fusions and then go afus with a Nano farm. Having the option to make windmills with t2 cortex vehicles, because like you say you will be reclaiming that T1 lab, would be super useful.

earnest osprey
#

your t2 eco would've come online significantly more smoothly had you built 1-2 printers instead of the immediate 2nd t2 con which you only had assisting your first t2 con for at least 10 min

#

with no downside

#

you could've at least sent a match on a map where you were a backliner who only gets 3 mexes total, all in range of a nano. your argument is almost valid in that specific scenario or if you for some reason built way too many t1 cons

#

otherwise you're just ignoring everything that has been said in this thread in the last week

#

including direct responses to your comments

crimson coral
#

Backlining in this meta is not a good idea, unless u wana chill n afk of course. Commander too stronk

#

its fine for a mid or lower ts I guess, or in a higher ts lobby

#

only backline games i got are dsdr and pre comm update where cortex backline eco builds weere more viable

granite jackal
#

Grid menu users who are testing cortex T2 units: Put the following file in the directory data/LuaUI/Configs/ (create the directory if it doesn't exist) in order to update the T2 lab grid. This change won't be pushed official until the lab is in the game because it will mess with current lab layouts. Printer is put int he standard engineer slot, Tsar is moved to Q, Banisher to D, Poison Arrow to next page. Includes amphibious lab.

📎 gridmenu_layouts.lua image.png image.png image.png
umbral heath
#

wouldn't it be better to keep the sala in the Q slot, which mirrors that of the arm jaguar as an anti spam tank, which also allows you to keep the button consistent across both the t2 lab, amphi lab and underwater gantry? Same with poison arrow on W, keeping it consistent with the turtle, and maybe move tremor to the 2nd page instead as it is a rather more specialised and less-often utilised vehicle (with tzar occupying the spot of tremor, as there isn't really an arm equivalent to it)?

simple panther
earnest osprey
#

i agree with q for sala, though with the removal of alligator, poison arrow will most likely be the least-used unit to build out of the t2 veh lab, so i'm personally fine with it being moved to page 2, though wanting to keep locations consistent is fair

mortal flume
earnest osprey
#

maybe, though its role as "less prone to friendly fire, amphib baby tzar" might just not be valuable enough to bother with when salas reduce odds of tzar friendly fire, unless the amphib part is relevant or it gets buffed to the point of eclipsing roles of tzar or tiger

mortal flume
# earnest osprey maybe, though its role as "less prone to friendly fire, amphib baby tzar" might ...

I played around with them in skirmish mode at 60 speed and it feels a lot better, but I still wouldn't consider them strong. At 60 speed it's still less power per metal and less usefulness than ducks, hover tanks, salamanders, shivas, and every arm amphibious/hover assault unit except the turtle. On land, way less power per metal compared to tigers, bulls and tzars. But at least at 60 speed, they're less prone to being wiped out by dguns and the longer range compared to tigers gives them a small niche as expensive poke/skirmish tanks.

earnest osprey
#

so basically half tzar half hound?

granite jackal
#

I hear the argument for Q but W is the amphibious tank slot for T1 as well, and keeping poison arrow there means moving tremor to the second page, which I'd rather not do. I feel like tremor has more use case now since it was changed that it used to, and more use than poison arrow at that.

#

When I first made grid menu I put Banisher on X as a joke because "Banisher OP" is the response every time I suggested there be an engineer for the Cor lab.. now maybe it actually has to move? xD

#

Maybe leave tsar and tremor on D and F, but Banisher role lines up better with Starlight which is on D in arm lab iirc, so then I move tsar to Q and have the only amphibious unit on page 1 go in the amphibious slot

#

in case you wanted to know the full thought process 😉

umbral heath
#

Well, I think it's better to make stuff make as much sense and consistency the first time around, so you don't have to rework it later and confuse people with additional hotkey changes after they already got muscle memory

#

tremor was not used much in the past, hence why little muscle memory change

earnest osprey
#

makes sense to me. my brain completely forgot that amphib units are consistently on w

umbral heath
#

the turtle is way closer to the poison arrow than to sala, in any case, so even if they are both underused, should be on the same button imo

earnest osprey
#

one argument, although a weak one, for putting sala on q would be to allow it to be the same key on amphib complex as it is on t2 lab

#

while muscle memory is quite valuable, needing to tab over a page to build a not-exceptionally-rare unit is a big enough inconvenience worth sacrificing a bit of intuitiveness for (having poison arrow and turtle not share a key in exchange for not having to tab over to page 2 for any of the current units on page 1, or for sala)

granite jackal
#

sorry but if you're building a poison arrow it's likely not coming from a land T2 lab anyway

#

so it doesn't need to be on the main page, when anti-nuke is the only other thing on page 2

#

if i decide to make change from this it will probably be to put Banisher on Q or maybe move salamander to Q and put Banisher on W while tsar goes back to D. idk yet

#

just try out what is if you're using grid menu and testing the changes, it's better than what happens without the update

umbral heath
#

well, as a grid user I do very much like my sala to be on Q, but the printer is annoying on the 2nd page, with your change i will have an easier time making printers but salas will be awkward (since I doubt people are going to use them much for amphib anyway)

earnest osprey
#

unless poison arrow gets a major buff, and we don't even know if the lab will need further unit buffs after sala and printer get added, poison arrow definitely belongs on page 2, regardless of how page 1 is organized

granite jackal
#

You can change for yourself here if you want to try something yet different:

image.png
#

swapping corgol and corsala will put salamander where you want it. note the rows here are inverted to what you get from grid menu in-game

umbral heath
#

awesome

earnest osprey
#

the beauty of all the personalization this game allows for

mortal flume
earnest osprey
#

i think at this point discussing poison arrow buffs pretty much = strictly buffs to amphibious assaults without any effect on t2 veh lab, and i have no idea whether or not people think that would be a good thing

mortal flume
urban pond
#

Amph units are about their ability to amph
They should lose in some way to regular non amph units

wanton cloak
#

amph units also for a while had much better slope tolerance than normal tanks. Still slow on slopes, but could go up them.
But the slope tolerance for vehs have been buffed recently, removing that niche for amph tanks.

urban pond
#

Incase someone is confused
None of the movedeffs were actually changed
What changed was what units used what movedeff

#

Movedeffs are arcane knowledge anyways

wanton cloak
mortal flume
# urban pond Amph units are about their ability to amph They should lose in some way to regu...

Yeah but personally I don't think being amphibious is a strong enough ability to trade everything else for. Amphibious vehicles (and not bots) are weak to dgun and static defense because of the slowness, they deal dramatically reduced damage compared to hovers and land vehicles, they are less durable than vehicles, they have no air defense, they have no under water defense, and they cost way more. Their strength is... Radar immunity until they're back on the shore.

#

That's what I mean by any time you win with amphibious vehicles, you would most likely win more with bots or hovers.

urban pond
#

Amph units are stupidly map dependent on ways that the regular units are not
Amph units are about their surprise factor

#

If all you do is play strait
The only real amph units are those with very high speed and stay power

#

On quicksilver it’s possible to rush poison arrow becuase of the underwater complex

mortal flume
#

True... But I have almost never seen anyone make amphibious vehicles outside of strait. I've seen them once on hades ponds and twice on ascension. Never on eight horses, sulphur springs, or any of the other 6v6 or 8v8 maps with water. Hovers and t2 bots see way way more play.

earnest osprey
#

worth noting that on ascension hovers get a bigger terrain buff than vehs, which helps with their popularity there, and on the rest it's mostly the same situation as strait, where you generally build raiders rather than assault units if you're crossing terrain land units can't cross

#

turtles and poison arrows are assault units, so they just aren't part of the meta on any semi-popular 8v8 maps

vale totem
worn grail
#

Ive had ideas for hover maps but kinda "iffy", you have to make ponds/lakes/bodies of water where the steepness going into the water (waters edge) is super steep underwater where amphibius cant even enter due to the angle. only all terrain and hovers which can stay on surface..... and even bodies of water with land masses that are pretty goodd sized where you need to get too the mex spots/eco/expand and staying ships limits you (also the map have very little metal in solely water this way forces people to use hovers if any of this makes sense haha. Hovers/amphibius really come down to the map style/layout/creation IMO

earnest osprey
#

You don't need to go out of your way to make a map for hovers that prevents amphib tanks from working, since most people go with hovers if given a choice between committing to 1 of the 2 anyway. Amphib units are already more niche than hovers by default, though as drivver in particular made clear, amphibs do have their uses

urban ferry
#

whenever is see a team game, usually smaller team games, on maps with some water either like in the middle or surrounding the map, i always try to tell people to make some amphib tanks and exploit that

#

amphibs on theta crystals can do good work

earnest osprey
#

I don't doubt it, hovers just have a fully fleshed-out lab of various decent units (aside from cost effectiveness when directly compared to other land units) while amphibs are more "here's this lab's smattering of units that happen to be amphib, and here's the same but technically not the same from another lab", which makes people less willing to go for them i think

#

Regardless, might be good to refocus the thread a bit

#

Something like making sure most people agree on whether printer should get a buldlist and if so, what/how much should be added beyond t1 mex, basic solar, and basic radar

#

Since that seems to be pretty much the only thing left unfinished with the implementation of sala and printer, and i know i'm pretty eager myself to not need to bother lobbies with a modoption to get them enabled

#

Most of the proposed sets of buildoptions work for me, including the possibility of leaving it as just a rolling con turret with armor

coral bone
urban ferry
#

gunslinger already has a suggestions thread for it

earnest osprey
#

As does webber

urban ferry
#

i don't think the webber one is active

#

the gunslinger one is

earnest osprey
#

true

earnest osprey
#

aight here's a mediocre improvised poll:
should corprinter have at least a basic buildlist?
emozstonks = hard agree
this = agree
peepoShrug = neutral/indifferent
Ano = disagree
pepeomg = hard disagree

ancient forge
#

Has anyone tried the Salamander on Jade yet? I’m curious how it performs there.

earnest osprey
#

i haven't other than a match i played on the southwest, where i just used it like i would on a pure land map. i assume it would mostly get rekt by navy in northeast though

earnest osprey
#

well, assuming it's going to continue being all or at least mostly agrees, step 2 of poll:
dofixed = only t1 mex, solar, radar
dologsplz = also walls
ecoenergy = also winds
thisplusone = also t1 con

wanton cloak
#

Got around to making the change (was distracted by engine stuff).
Printer has a buildlist now

  1. Mex
  2. Basic Solar
  3. T1 radar
  4. T2 wall

[T1 walls would also be useful, but printer has a tendency to run over and crush them]

earnest osprey
#

If the buildoptions are already pretty much settled, does that mean all that's left is for core team to decide if the modoption is ready to be made default?

#

Unless the hp/m and unit size/m discussion comes back up

wanton cloak
#

Main balance dude Zecrus I think needs to take a closer look at the Salamander.
And will probably need a lookover by the people who do the graphics and visuals. (I just threw together a strategic icon for Printer, but looking at it more I don't like it)

3x3 footprint is probably still fine, but the model might need to be scaled down again to better fit that size.

#

And my engine stuff revealed a flaw with multiple hitboxes and cannon weapons, so if Salamanders (with chassis and turret hitbox) and Tigers are working together, I need to make sure friendly fire is not excessive

earnest osprey
#

I feel like the main situation in which it should be confirmed sala isn't too strong would be rushing them out of a fast amphib complex to skirmish with the t1 units it outranges and/or outmaneuvers. least to me though, it feels like the damage drop-off reduces the effectiveness of that enough for it to not be too major of a concern, particularly when they only barely outrange llts and you're committing to an amphib complex

granite jackal
#

It should be balanced by it's relatively high metal cost as well. I think if you tried to rush this unit off a T1 economy you wouldn't end up with very many.

#

And I mean via amphibious lab as well. Consider the metal cost for that lab is 1200, and each salamander is I think 330?

#

They will probably lose to equivalent metal cost thugs and almost definitely to T1 tanks

earnest osprey
#

yeah, honestly it's impressive how basically just taking a never-used unit and mostly just replacing its weapon type immediately turned it into exactly what cor vehs needs to cover one of its biggest weaknesses, while being almost exclusively effective at that target role

#

they pretty much only beat t1 if the t1 is trickling in 1 by 1 without micro, or if they have a massive amount of space for kiting

earnest osprey
#

As for the friendly-fire issue, i don't think tigers shoot friendly salas any more than they already shoot other friendly tigers

#

Which does definitely happen when you have a big ball of tigers

#

Source:

mortal flume
#

Gonna harp on it again, but any word on adding salamander to the t2 naval engineer build list?

wanton cloak
mortal flume
#

Some t1 ships, mines, static defense, shipyard, t1 con ship, tidals, radar, and con turrets. But why would it be any more awkward than the t1 con ship building mexes and geo plants on the sea floor?

#

Actually the t2 naval engi can just straight up build mexes on the sea floor. I was gonna test how it looks building corsala or corparrow on the sea floor but the tweak units option is being a jerk rn. This is what that looks like

image.png
#

It can also build radar and t2 plasma artillery on land... so idk if we have to worry about it looking awkward.

earnest osprey
#

it would allow people with 300 openskill to escort 30 naval engineers past enemy sonar while being hidden from radar by a jammer ship, then building 50 amphibious units in that area that hypothetically exists between the sonar and land

mortal flume
#

Ironically, it's building on the water surface, like ships and static defense, that looks the weirdest. The build shadow is on the sea floor but the item being built is on the surface.

mortal flume
earnest osprey
#

yeah the extra steps are why it isn't utterly busted currently

mortal flume
#

I can't tell if we're being sarcastic or not, but I don't believe for a second that allowing the t2 naval engi to build salamanders would make it OP.

earnest osprey
#

it's sarcasm

mortal flume
#

Okay figured out the tweak units issue. This is what it looks like building corsala underwater with the t2 engi ship.

image.png
simple panther
#

Also looks really fun too

urban ferry
earnest osprey
#

sarcasm

urban ferry
#

Sarcasm doesn't translate well over text

urban pond
#

i wonder if the amph complex builds the salamander

earnest osprey
#

it does

simple panther
earnest osprey
#

i had already stated before that it was sarcasm

urban pond
#

good enough for me

urban ferry
#

No it doesn't 😠

#

I'm just too lazy to read, no wonder i'm also too lazy to play

granite jackal
#

I think there's a pretty strong argument that we're not missing much here, as the salamander can be built from an amphibious lab, buildable by a T1 seacon, which the engineer can already make. And, you would already need all the other buildpower to make the units fast enough, whether that's a bunch of other engineers or floating nanos. It's not a problem to just build the lab, and then you can make amphibious cons as well to reclaim the stuff you kill in your invasion.
I think if I was going to add a unit to cor T2 engi's buildlist to compensate for lack of amphibious, it would be the duck, which could still be built underwater. It's a pretty OP unit though, and can even take on T2 sea if there aren't enough cruisers. You can use it to finish off a sea player in a way that platypus just quite can't, because it acts as a hover.

mortal flume
#

That was the argument against the duck... but the salamander is even less useful on sea than the platypus.

earnest osprey
#

their stance is that having salamander on t2 engi ship wouldn't be useful to add at all

mortal flume
#

So instead of having something even fairly niche... it's better to not have anything at all?

earnest osprey
#

I assume the response would be that it's "unnecessary bloat"

#

Actually something that just came to mind: since sala has los that isn't utterly abysmal, as a navy player you could use them as spotters for your t2 navy sieging land, since otherwise you can only get vision approximately 5 feet onto the shore via your actual navy unless land/air players are getting scouts in for you or you dedicate an entire lab and production from it to producing something that allows you to see where your battleships and messengers are firing

#

This is diving into being an unrelated conversation again, but winning navy, building t2, and having no decent way of actually seeing anything to shoot at without making an extra lab or having teammates spot for you really sucks

tall steppe
crimson coral
sudden comet
crimson coral
# sudden comet > Got around to making the change (was distracted by engine stuff). > Printer ha...

Yeah we are voting on things like windmills to be added too, are those considered?

Solar is good for giving you enough energy to invest it into something else and then reclaim the metal back once your fusion is done, but then what is the printer going to do after that, assist building t2 mex, ok thats not going to last forever, assist building defences and reclaiming ok yes but that is situational. Allowing them to make wind will always mean they have something useful to do. That was my only opinion, although looking back at my cortex vehicle games, t2 cortex really does need some mobile build power after reclaiming then T1 lab, so as long as the metal efficieny to buildpower is good they will always be a good choice. Minelayer also is removed by reclaiming t1 vehicle lab perhaps mines could be considered too?

sudden comet
#

Ah, sorry, I misread your post, then 😄

#

I'm not really a part of this discussion atm, decisions are being made by Itanthias and we're waiting a bit on Zecrus' input

crimson coral
#

Too many cooks in the kitchen

urban ferry
#

they also have the option of reclaiming on the frontline instead of rez bots

#

not every unit needs to always be useful, look at mobile anti nuke

#

or mobile AA

#

both don't do anything if there aren't any nukes or air

#

i think the printer not having anything it wants to build (other than radar, mexes, and walls) after fusion is up is fine

ancient forge
#

Let it build skuttles.

urban ferry
#

let it print newspapers

earnest osprey
#

We also nearly got even votes for every option (including the "give it nothing beyond t1 mex, solar, and radar" one). So just going with the preference of the guy who made the unit works well enough for me since the people were inconclusive

granite jackal
#

Okay, grid layout updated to include printer build list.. also move salamander to Q per request for both T2 lab and amphib lab:

📎 gridmenu_layouts.lua
umbral heath
earnest osprey
#

I had hoped the "only" in option 1 would clarify that, but i could've been more clear

#

It was supposed to be "we already got a strong majority for giving it buildoptions, which implies at least those first 3 will be added. Should it have more, and if so what's the most desired 1-2 extra thing(s)?"

#

Regardless, i got really comfortable with being able to build printers and salas every game during the couple days after we settled on just printer and sala being in the modoption, and now that most of the lobbies i join are shifting back to "i vote no to buffing cor because i only play arm", it's been really hurting to miss out on 'em. Guess i need to go back to hosted lobbies as selfboss or nunyunuymi's bossed lobbies for a while

#

Printer and sala just make cor vehs so much more cozy to play, even though there's rarely a reason to have more than a few on the field at any given time

crimson coral
#

Having idle builders is not ideal for me atleast

#

but I get what you mean

#

I guess it falls into catagory of "utility" or, "builder" if my builder is idle I feel like I'm losing the game

umbral heath
earnest osprey
#

yeah, with their e generation factored in, they're barely more expensive than a con turret, so you can use them as a con turret if you're lazy

#

having a few toward the front can help with reclaim if the need arises, having a few in the back helps with spreading your base out more so your eco won't all chain react or for assisting with building a new field of con turrets

ancient forge
#

To me it feels like Armada is the faction that gets the interesting units. Cortex gets better versions of boring units. With exceptions, of course, but that's how it feels the game is designed: armada is the interesting faction and cortex is the boring one. So we say things like let printer build printers. The response is no, that's too meme. Printer can't do anything armada can't do, we can't have that. And we can't have a vehicle engineer with a gun, armada doesn't have those. Gotta be boring.

crimson coral
#

I see armada as this, and I'm a 100% cortex player, Janus, Liche, Maurader.

#

so I'm biased

#

if you can understand these gimmicks then I prefer cortex, its just with the commander nerfs then it makes eco/ fundemental play harder

earnest osprey
#

i view arm as the "hey look at this weird trick i can do" faction while cor is the "we'll assemble a frontal push that will roll over everything in its path...slowly" faction

#

even though arm has thors, and thors do what i described cor as pretty well

crimson coral
#

Yeah basically its just that d gun obliterates anything even higher cost stronger and more tuned units

ancient forge
#

Yep, Arm can do that and all its other tricks as well. Cortex units are better at it in general and that's why the factions are still balanced, but it still hurts.

crimson coral
#

I think there is different learning curves and different gimmicks

earnest osprey
#

yeah, dgun makes it hard for, as an example, behe to ever be balanced

crimson coral
#

make printer d gun immume

#

so we can block out behemoths

#

💡 ❔

earnest osprey
#

raghna doesn't like special rules for dgun

#

even though the comm immunity is technically a special rule

#

there've been suggestions for making behe take reduced damage from dgun, but at that point the e cost for comm dgun is irrelevant and he can fire off 20 between 2 shots of behe's main cannon

ancient forge
#

Give behemoth a dgun hose instead. Fires like a dragon's maw.

#

But this isn't the place to talk about behemoth though.

earnest osprey
#

yeah

#

sala saving cor's "unstoppable push" from completely crumbling to 1/5 its cost on ticks is glorious, and printers, even if they're far worse repair bp for cost+speed compared to rezbots, add a lot of extra bulk(hp) to your frontline when up there reclaiming and repairing

#

makes cor feel a lot more cor

ancient forge
#

Yeah, I just want it to have a gun, too. Not a good gun, just a gun so it's not helpless.

earnest osprey
#

forge got sidelined less because people felt it shouldn't exist and more because we still had a lot of experimenting to do to figure out how it should be balanced, while printer doesn't have to adjust for as many variables

#

i was coming around to liking the forge, but how cost-effective it should be, how much it should be able to build, how strong its weapon should be, and what type of weapon it should have were all being debated simultaneously, with little progress being made on any of the discussions

ancient forge
#

Yeah, I wouldn't mind experimenting with it myself, but I have my own project. Gotta get Jade up to par with the other maps.

earnest osprey
#

i like jade other than its sheer size/amount of grinding required to actually win a match

#

that's pretty much my only personal complaint with it

ancient forge
#

Yeah, can't please everyone. But I wanted to have a huge map for the Strait refugees.

#

It just has pathing issues that I must fix.

earnest osprey
#

ahh

#

i do like it more than a lot of people despite not being a strait refugee

#

disagree with the simultaneous contradictory complaints of there being too many mexes and mostly 1.0 value mexes, makes build orders more unique compared to other maps

#

but that's again enough derailing for this thread

ancient forge
#

heh

umbral heath
#

Do you have a thread about jade?

ancient forge
#

I don't, I should probably make one. One sec.

arctic python
#

Can someone clarify the point of the corprinter? I don't get it. Why should I spend 300m on a unit just for repairing/reclaiming when I can build a bot lab and have rezbots for the rest of the game which can rez and costs roughly 1/3 the metal? You can just use t1 cons to provide bp and it doesn't even have a basic build list.

earnest osprey
#

you reclaim your t1 lab to get t2 almost always, and will want to be developing your bp further as your first few mexes get upgraded at t2, but you don't want to rebuild a t1 lab at that time

urban ferry
#

well, it has more bp/m than t1 cons, it has more bp concentrated in 1 unit so less dealing with pathfinding, it's pretty tanky so it can reclaim on the front without dying to strong gust of wind, and there are ideas being thrown around for it to have a build list

earnest osprey
#

the buildlist is already added

urban ferry
#

it also saves you from having to build more labs, which while isn't a big deal, it is ApM, metal and BP that you need to spend

earnest osprey
#

also getting the bp you want focused on 2 different labs can be a pain depending on the situation

#

the "not dying to a strong gust of wind" is a big boon when you're in the middle of repairing and an enemy unit you weren't expecting attacks whatever you're using 20 rezbots to repair, and the splash damage kills all of them, but printers would've hardly been scratched

#

being able to reclaim on a contested frontline without dying to ~1 shot from any given t2 unit is also quite nice

urban ferry
#

stout walks up to try and kill printer, printer just reclaims it and carries on

#

now we just need a way to make printers capable of reclaiming live units automatically and they become another anti spam option

waxen sundial
#

I've been building it to assist my t2 con in early t2. core t2 veh has a real problem with getting buildpower out

urban ferry
#

printer having a built in vacuum cleaner

earnest osprey
arctic python
#

I feel like most of the time when playing cor veh I'll build a bot lab upfront anyway to have grunts/rezbots/t1 cons as a instant option to provide utility in the frontline. It's hard to compete with that when the unit itself costs almost 50% the cost of a bot lab. But the printer may have a role in the early t2 stage where you're still upgrading your mexes. Still I'm happy with the addition of the unit and as an avid cor veh enjoyer I can't wait for it to be officially implemented. I'm just trying to better understand it's role. I haven't seen it's stats yet, is there some place where I can check it outside of the game ?

urban pond
#

Printer is meant to be a build assist unit compared to what the rezz bot or t1 con does

#

That’s the one weakness that t2 cor veh has over arm

#

And it’s only here where there isn’t a mirrored build assist unit

granite jackal
#

TBH When I started playing two years ago and I first realized there was no T2 vehicle engineer I felt kinda ripped off. Like, no engineer, why would I bother?

#

It's just something that should be there

earnest osprey
#

the +25 energy production built into printer makes it more cost effective than a con turret if your existing e income source is less cost-effective than a basic fusion

waxen sundial
#

oh printer has e production now? that is amazing

granite jackal
#

That could make a difference in come-back situations as well

waxen sundial
#

anyway yeah I think core t2 veh these days is pretty good actually but having the only buildpower as t2 cons is very bad

granite jackal
#

especially for a unit that is likely to survive a raid

earnest osprey
granite jackal
#

@wanton cloak time to go to GDT with these two units?

earnest osprey
#

i think now the only ones that don't generate e are naval engis, but they're already significant direct upgrades to con turrets

earnest osprey
#

for comparison: (also con turret is 210m/3200e)

image.png image.png
rustic eagle
#

I'm guessing con turrets give the most buildpower per metal and energy cost?

earnest osprey
#

printer gives more if your energy income is from inefficient sources, t1 cons give more than con turrets if you are functioning purely on basic solars

#

naval engineers are just straight up better than con turrets but they're not really a direct comparison because navy

earnest osprey
#

for example if you have 3 printers, that's 1 less asolar you would need to build to have the same total e production

#

so slash 1/3 of an asolar off the price of each printer if you're on an asolar economy

cosmic stirrup
#

I think the current corprinter isn't unique enough, since the cor T2 veh con is already a slow expensive durable constructor with high build power. Some ideas I have, not sure how well they would work: 1. Have it revolved more around the concept of a mobile nano that you would deploy, which could have the same build radius as a normal nano, but would have to close before moving. 2. Have the central nano act independently of the main unit, so it could repair and reclaim while moving. This was possible to do with the carrier/drone script, but it would need some improvements.

For salamander, the 440 range weapon looks strange on such a short unit, and similar weapons have much shorter range. Termite (the T2 heat ray bot) has 340 range, incisor has 230 range, sumo has 275 range, duck has 300 range, platypus has 275 range. Mammoth has 650 range, but its an expensive unit with a higher turret. If salamander had 300-350 range, would it still be effective enough at clearing out streams of units?

arctic python
# earnest osprey

5.1k HP? Wow I wasn't expecting that much. Besides the BP/reclaim capabilities, it seems like a great addition to the Tzar rush and Tiger pushes as a cleric unit. 5.1k HP seems enough to not die instantly but also if the enemy focus the printer he'll waste a lot of damage that could be dealt on the fighting units. I'm really digging this unit right now. Thanks for screenshots!

waxen sundial
#

I played a little with the salamander, and I suspect much shorter range would give it some bad problems. because of how the heat laser works, and dot, they often cannot 1 shot a tick

earnest osprey
#

Sala is effective vs spam almost entirely because it kills the trickling units before they get in range to fire back

granite jackal
# cosmic stirrup I think the current corprinter isn't unique enough, since the cor T2 veh con is ...

I think having it be armored - at more than twice the HP of a T2 constructor - does give it a unique role of being able to survive well on the front lines where other mobile buildpower can't. There is big comeback potential here to be the last remaining buildpower on the field, surviving raids and having good buildpower to help rebuild, and even to finish last-moment static defenses already under fire from the opponent. If it also acted like a nano in being able to deploy while moving and have bigger build radius, that's a buff from it's current state. I wonder if it should also cost a touch more with those improvements? It's already 80m more than consul, I don't really want it too much more expensive too.

I think if we balanced Salamander's per shot damage to be some percentage of a pawn that we want it to kill and make sure it has good beam accuracy, we can put its range down to 350 without affecting the role.

earnest osprey
#

What's the range on jag's primary weapon? I'm not at my computer at the moment

granite jackal
#

600

earnest osprey
#

Couldn't remember if that was just its aa range

#

In my mind at least i think of a jag and sala as being similar size

granite jackal
#

that could be its AA range only, i looked at the website

earnest osprey
#

There's also just the fact that alligator has the same model and same range, but if it's visually seen as something that looks wrong now, i guess we can brainstorm an alternative

ancient forge
# 
                areaofeffect = 8,
                avoidfeature = false,
                beamttl = 1,
                burst = 10,
                burstrate = 0.03333,
                craterareaofeffect = 0,
                craterboost = 0,
                cratermult = 0,
                duration = 1,
                edgeeffectiveness = 0.15,
                energypershot = 5,
                explosiongenerator = "custom:genericshellexplosion-medium-lightning2",
                firestarter = 50,
                impactonly = 1,
                impulseboost = 0,
                impulsefactor = 0,
                intensity = 24,
                name = "Close-quarters lightning turret",
                noselfdamage = true,
                range = 320,
                reloadtime = 1.4,
                rgbcolor = "0.5 0.5 1",
                soundhit = "lashit",
                soundhitwet = "sizzle",
                soundstart = "lghthvy1",
                soundtrigger = true,
                thickness = 1.5,
                turret = true,
                weapontype = "LightningCannon",
                weaponvelocity = 400,
                customparams = {
                    spark_ceg = "genericshellexplosion-splash-lightning",
                    spark_forkdamage = "0.33",
                    spark_maxunits = "2",
                    spark_range = "60",
                },
                damage = {
                    default = 22.7,
                },```
#

gack, huge

#

That's off armlatnk.lua, is that the right one?

#

It is: "armlatnk": "Jaguar",

earnest osprey
#

I think any range nerf would require a substantial damage buff for it to maintain its role though, partially because any range decrease that's enough to reduce the number of shots it gets off before a pawn gets in range would require something like a 30% damage boost to compensate for ability to kill without any attrition damage from the stream, and partially because range reduction=damage reduction for anything outside of point-blank with laser weapons

urban pond
#

Website reports longest range
Jaguar is 10 more than welder

earnest osprey
#

A buff that properly compensated the range nerf could put it direct in competition with tigers in more situations

#

Or just not be enough for it to maintain its effectiveness in its role

urban pond
#

Consiquesntly you could nerf the unit overall but also reduce price aswell

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No need to make it power dense

earnest osprey
#

I might be horribly wrong in my usage, but the fact that sala's range allows a reasonable number to negate spam rallied across the map with no return-fire damage taken feels like the main selling point of sala, and that's heavily tied to its range

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Uses 0 apm to counter 0 apm infantry spam, and 1 action of changing rally point countered with 1 action of moving parked salas

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With something like a 10-20% damage buff it would 1shot ticks at max range, but it already takes 3 salas with their current range to kill 1 lab of pawns or grunts pumping out at max speed without letting them fire back

earnest osprey
#

Considering it already has fairly high build range, the first option would be a nerf in the majority of situations while the 2nd would be a mild buff to its effectiveness and a major buff to qol, but sounds like it would also require at least a mild level of programming wizardry to make happen

granite jackal
#

yeah i misunderstood slightly at first. the first is a buff too, actually, because it gets more range overall. it currently only works while deployed.

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idk, i don't think it needs more range really but i guess i wouldn't argue too much. it's still less than commando

umbral heath
#

how exactly does the jaguar chaining work?

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because if we compare them to sala, it deals way more damage per hit, dps as well as aoe for the same price, while having shorter range

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  • no damage falloff
earnest osprey
#

Jag's actual weapon having way less range is the big differentiator

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And it being designed to be pretty effective vs all of t1 instead of being specialized specifically for purely infantry streams

umbral heath
#

I noticed that when I spawn in salas, they are more spaced out/have a larger selection circle

image.png
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despite not being larger in size compared to jag

earnest osprey
urban pond
earnest osprey
# umbral heath

Probably also tied to its footprint, the way printer currently takes up less space than it looks like it should

urban pond
earnest osprey
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Ok

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Well, what he said regardless

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The way both have been discussed in here i got the false impression footprint was included in the other things controlled by movedeffs, my bad

umbral heath
#

okay so I made 4 labs with 40 con turrets making pawns, and faced them against both jaguars and salas

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6 jags were enough to keep it at bay indefinitely, 5 died eventually

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I need 12 salas to do the same

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even with 440 range

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if I reduce it to 11 they can hold but take slight chip damage over time

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they manage to hold long enough to gain xp to increase their dps enough to eventually make the chip damage disappear

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so basically you need twice as much metal invested to stop the same amount of spam

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this seems vastly disproportionate, especially considering the sala is slower, less usable for raiding, and does not come with built-in aa. Its higher healthpool is quite nice, but ultimately does not change how many salas you need to stop a certain amount of spam, and its amphibiousness... well, it doesn't count for much to be honest since it is very niche

earnest osprey
#

it took very little testing to see how much i massively underestimated jag's effectiveness vs trickles of infantry

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basically disregard all my ranting about range reduction

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it currently needs the range to function at all because of how much jag outclasses it in damage

earnest osprey
umbral heath
#

it is less bad against ticks - 4 jags or 4 salas to keep away 4 labs of ticks

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I'd say just straight out double the sala's damage - it will help match it with jags against pawns (keep in mind it is still slower and has no aa so is technically worse than just having a jag), and keep it from being too good at killing ticks

earnest osprey
#

yeah, specifically vs tick spam they're tied at least

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since my range argument is completely nullified, probably a good idea to nerf the range as per zecrus's wishes, just gonna need to either get ~2x damage(particularly since it's a laser weapon mostly used at/near max range where it's doing 50% damage), or a price reduction that would put it close to or cheaper than a brute

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current sala with range nerf will get eaten alive by pawns

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at least it's slightly smaller than a brute, so being t1-priced wouldn't be completely absurd

umbral heath
#

I think it should keep 400 range, at least, with the double damage buff.
As for "similar" weapons, it's supposed to be a heatray, of which there are... two units that use it? The termite and juggernaut. Bundling it "thematically" with laser using units seems weird.

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One more thing

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are we okay with it being able to attack aircraft?

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the termite can't, neither can jugg

earnest osprey
#

if too much power in a unit is an issue, could go with a price reduction and that suggested set of stats as the baseline to proportionally reduce from.
also of note: if giving cor something close to being loosely comparable to a jag is seen as too much of a buff for the lab, a significantly smaller buff could be made with it still kinda filling its intended role, just not as well as a jag would do it, so cor players would still basically never build more than a few, using it as their only option to fill that hole in their roster rather than a strong unit that also happens to fill that role like jag

umbral heath
#

I don't think that with it's weaknesses it would be too much of a buff, considering how weak t2 core veh is against spam of any kind and considering sala would never be close to as good at raiding as a jag (minus niche amphibious stuff)

earnest osprey
#

we were kinda saying it was great for a good while until today, so suddenly switching to insisting on a 2x dmg buff is probably at the very least a bit jarring to anyone else reading this and probably doesn't make us seem like very reliable sources of information

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also gotta be at least somewhat conservative with suggestions so not too many of the arm-only players start crying OP because it's a new unit that's pretty decent

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a lot of arm players already say sala is op

umbral heath
earnest osprey
#

i did say much though

umbral heath
#

having a t2 unit that costs 3x as much as an incisor and does almost the same damage is also most certainly not what I'd call OP

earnest osprey
#

i never said those arm players are anything that resembles being correct

umbral heath
#

I'd value the opinion of people who never play cor vehicles and just want an easy way to counter your entire army about as much as a used banana peel.

earnest osprey
#

same, but community backlash is a thing that the people who actually make final decisions have to deal with regardless

umbral heath
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I highly doubt anyone is going to spam salas (even with the buff) like they're spamming whistlers now to any large effect. I tried throwing 15 current salas against 10 brutes and they couldn't beat them despite being made out of over 2x the metal and 3x the energy, unless I just leave the brutes standing like stupid and maneuver the salas around to maximize their damage. And that's T2 vs T1

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so yeah... double the damage, slightly reduce range, possibly remove their ability to hit air

ancient forge
#

Just give cortex a reskinned jaguar and watch the armada players howl until you tell them what it actually is.

earnest osprey
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Without above-average range making it stand out a bit extra, is everyone ok with it pretty much just being a brute-sized brute-speed incisor you build at t2?

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Any feelings on whether something else should make it unique and ideas as to what if it's deemed too generic as current printer is?

mortal flume
#

Wait, I missed something. Are you taking out the stun resistance and the amphibiousness?

earnest osprey
#

No, just nerfing the range so it doesn't look weirdly long range as per zec's request, unless itanthias has other plans

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And we realized how aggressively jags outclass it in the meantime

mortal flume
#

Imo it's okay if a unit is outclassed by the other faction's unit for the role. The important part is that cortex has a cheaper, fast, raider and anti-spam t2 vehicle.

ancient forge
#

An amphibious unit that also happens to have a non-amphibious niche is pretty rare in BAR. Besides T3 we have I think the rocket hover and occasionally the poison arrow?

mortal flume
#

The AA bots

wanton cloak
# cosmic stirrup I think the current corprinter isn't unique enough, since the cor T2 veh con is ...

Printer 1:
Should be easy to do, I can tie movement speed to animation state.
Printer 2:
Doable. Would be a bit technically weird since the printer body and the central nano will have to be 2 separate units glued together.

Salamander was set to 440 range because that is the range of the Alligator main weapon.
And the scaling from 480 to 330 metal was done kargeneth style (damage reduced proportionally to the cost reduction, health reduced 1/2 proportionally to the cost reduction)
But LLTs are range 435, so it probably should be shorter ranged than that.
Could try 400 range, see if that looks better.

earnest osprey
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Given that it's currently roughly half as effective as a jag in dealing with pawns while having the same price, would a minor-moderate damage buff be warrented in combination with the range nerf? Or would that be too risky due to the amphibiousness and amph complex factors

earnest osprey
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idea for option 2 for printer if it's attempted: could enable the "separate repair bp and construction bp" idea by giving the part that moves only the ability to repair things, while the nano part could assist construction as well as being able to repair. that way, you could increase its cost-effectiveness for frontline repairs without making it a straight upgrade to con turrets at assisting. for example, if the "body" had 100 bp and only the ability to repair, while the "turret" had 200 bp that could be used for other things including repair, it would stay the same efficiency it currently has in assisting construction, but go from being 1/3 as cost-effective as a rezbot for repairs up to 1/2 as cost-effective.

Tldr: printer option 2 might enable 1 unit to have different bp values for different functions, could make it easier to balance+more effective at repairing

mortal flume
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Idea for salamander if folks feel it's too weak. What if it had a constant beam like the beamer tower, with high turret turn rate? Improve its accuracy, ensure it's always hitting something, and let it have a higher skill ceiling if folks can micro it well.

earnest osprey
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A mobile unit with a continuous beam weapon is also a neat unique feature to make it more interesting as well, though i'm not 100% certain how that increases the skill ceiling when it's probably autotargeting the things you would want a sala to be hitting regardless

mortal flume
#

Constant damage and high turret turn rate allows for better skirmish tactics, which tend to have a pretty high skill ceiling.

umbral heath
#

continuous laser is an arm thing though, isn't it?

waxen sundial
#

something like that but giving it a very low maneuverability might be better, so it's like an anti spam starlight. Fits more with how vehicles play imo

mortal flume
#

As far as I know the only unit in the game that has a constant beam is the beamer turret.

umbral heath
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yeah

mortal flume
#

It doesn't have to be an arm thing.

earnest osprey
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This does remind me of a unit type a lot of scifi rts's have, which bar currently lacks. The "beam weapon that does gradually more damage the longer it's hitting something", though i'm not sure that belongs on sala or even any cor unit. Probably would be a good legion unit

mortal flume
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That does feel more legion like, and more like t3.

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Also I mean, can we do a constant beam but keep it yellow-orange to keep the cortex theme?

earnest osprey
#

Legion also has a sizable handful of yellow-orange beam weapons, but i'm still in favor of cor getting a bit more heat

waxen sundial
#

one thing to note that's slightly relevant is beamers don't actually have a continuous beam, just a reload time equal to how long the laser lasts or something. I think there's an engine limitation where you can't have true continuous beams

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like people wanted pulsar lasers to be able to sweep and that would be cool, but not possible

mortal flume
#

Right. But low reload time does improve accuracy.

earnest osprey
#

Sala can already switch targets during a beam sometimes

wanton cloak
#

Heh, one of the first things I fixed in bar was the beamer continuous beam. It used to only fire 12 out of 15 frames 😛

waxen sundial
#

itanthias op

earnest osprey
#

Ayyy

wanton cloak
#

But yes, the engine code is littered with the failed attempts to makes a sweeping beam like the supcom monkeylord.

mortal flume
#

Some day. Maybe some day.

wanton cloak
#

Zecrus managed to get a pretty good continuous beam on the legion incinerator.

earnest osprey
#

Been too long since i played legion, forgot some of their specific units

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Would continuous beam sala be unique enough?

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Would definitely differentiate it more from any vehs outside of legion

wanton cloak
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But continuous beam on the salamander would be

  1. odd on a double barreled model (and I think too visually busy if it came from both barrels at the same time)
  2. BAR continuous beams suffer a little, because XP grants reload speed, but continuous beams are already at max fire rate
mortal flume
#

Do we have to keep the model?

earnest osprey
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What about something like 80-90% beam uptime, alternate between barrels firing, and with enough xp it hits 100% uptime?

mortal flume
#

That sounds sick

umbral heath
#

How does the gunslinger's special xp increasing range work? Would it be possible to simply make xp increase the beam's damage instead of fire rate? It would have the same effect (just gotta get the right number)

mortal flume
#

Or if that would also be weird, buff other stats during XP gain and let that also be another unique thing about it.

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Yeah, can it get the gunslinger treatment?

earnest osprey
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Could maybe increase model scale a bit? Since currently its footprint/movedeff/whichever decides that makes it take up substantially more space than it looks like it should as far as unit collision

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Basically the inverse of the printer scale problem

vale totem
#

just needs tweaks, not special rules

earnest osprey
#

Would additionally make it less weird for that tiny thing to be pumping out decent-range lava jets

wanton cloak
vale totem
#

I never even realized pawn and blitz don't have reload time. I guess it makes sense, burst first interval never changes does it? thonk

earnest osprey
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I've always been curious about but never bothered looking into how reload speed from xp interacted with things like despot and cerberus 3-round-bursts

earnest osprey
#

"uptime" on sala's beam is already fairly high, though i don't know the exact value. looks like somewhere around a 50% increase in rof/beam duration would bring it to that 80-90% range?

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somehow it went from being ~80% uptime at -40% reload to hitting a certain threshold between -41 and -43 where it jumped to being continuous

carmine canyon
#

Mobile nano would be very cool for gameplay, could make core veh worth doing maybe

still tiger
earnest osprey
#

Being so impotent at dealing with t1 spam and also being the worst lab by a significant margin for getting t2 eco started make me pretty hesitant to agree with that. I'd say it's "good enough" with the printer+sala modoption even if they're considered weak themselves and the high ts lobby will continue saying those units are worthless and that going cor t2 vehs is trolling

wanton cloak
#

Salamander altered.
Now it is 350 range, just a bit more than jaguar and centurion and termite.
And got a 20% damage buff, to compensate for laser damage falloff, so it deals the same damage at 350 range.

This makes Salamander less of a skirmisher (no need to add yet another skirmish unit to the cortex T2 veh lab), and more of a brawler, doing more damage as things (like ticks and infantry streams) push into it.

earnest osprey
#

also no longer is able to arbitrarily target air from the looks of things?

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👍

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i don't remember how close ticks previously needed to be for sala to 1shot them, but hopefully it was ~350 range

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looking forward to also testing whichever printer rework ends up working, and hopefully being able to play cor t2 vehs guilt-free and with the comfort afforded by printers in normal lobbies not long after

earnest osprey
#

not sure if it was deliberate or an oversight but sala still has the 445 los it was given to match its previous range

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i assume it's not a big deal regardless since tigers have 462 and salas will probably only be somewhere without tigers during amphibious assaults, but i figured i'd make note of it

wanton cloak
#

Good note to make. 😄
Baseline Alligator has 399 sight range.
Something like 385 sight range, 110% of weapon range to account for pre-aiming, would be a good idea.

earnest osprey
#

Sight range can be pretty valuable for finding good targets during amphibious raids, but since the primary role is to be mixed in to support t2 land forces, an indirect nerf to its amphib raiding abilities is probably actually a good thing for maintaining balance

#

So that reduction sounds good to me at least

earnest osprey
#

I do still feel, if there were a way to make it decently functional, printer having higher repair bp than construction bp would help a lot with not getting outshined by rezbots quite as much on the frontline without needing to eclipse nanos for construction efficiency. Printer being turned into 2 units bolted together for zecrus's 2nd suggestion seems like it a pretty good excuse to implement it if the chassis "unit" got 100-200 bp but only the ability to repair, while the nano "unit" had its own bp and could construct/assist ability tags as well as repair, so the bp values could be stacked for focused repairs, but the nano would have to build without the chassis's extra bp

carmine canyon
still tiger
#

reapers are decent units

#

fast and pretty cheap

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basically its very fast Can(sumo)

#

tremor is a good counter to shooters/penetrators

#

I'm playing core vehs in 95% of my games(principal position) and i playing pro lobby only. -- that's why i can't go over 31 os xD
Here's my thoughts about core T2 vehs:
PROs:
1.early tzar+radar is very strong when good microed and have cover of rescals or grunts or pounders. Still pretty risky and can be dgunned from jammer+cloaked comm, or swarmed by small T1s or stunned.
2.tremor is good vs shooter balls, penetrators, T1 spam. As a harass weapon.
3.tigers good as front line cover, have pretty low damage, but good armor and speed, can help neighbor lanes quickly.

CONS:
1.banisher is shit (very expensive shooter with lower range)
2.pillager is shit also imo (cant kite, very inaccurate, need to be in groups of 5+ to use and its not too cheap already), but can be still used if theres long skirmish with porc on both sides
3.two amphib tanks? why if even one very niche and rarely used
4.you have tough units that FEED A LOT and NO reclaimer to get metal back, you have to reclaim with T1 cons which are veeery slow because they need to turn around and accelerate a lot when reclaiming wreck field. Allied(or enemy) rezzbots eating evertthing much faster.

other things are the same as ARM:

  1. missile truck is niche, but good arty unit , two of them can kill pop-up arty or pulsars or some units if microed
  2. mobile flak - average AA, which is good enough for cover vs shurikens or gunships, but useless against EMP bombers. But as long as gunshing are rarely used and shurikens can be countered with T1 missile trucks...
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I think something can be done with core T2 arty vehicles:
either remove it completely and just have tremor instead, and give something pricipally different (one of new units)
or give it kite ability because currently they are more expensive the arm one and have LOWER range (a little bit faster instead, which is not that important for arty vehicle)

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i think arm jaguars are absurdly good vehicles (very fast raiders having built-it AA lol) means they are almost immune to shurikens

#

having core counterpart (fast flamethrower vehicle with emp immunity) seems good to me

granite jackal
#

Yeah, this entire discussion thread has been about ways to improve core vehicles. Right now on the docket is an armored combat engineer (printer) and an anti-spam, amphibious laser tank (redesign of the gator, called salamander). We need to keep Pillager, because cheap arty is always a goto in early T2. Tremor does help against starlight/sniper but it is quite expensive, and needs units to screen, so it's not really early T2 viable.

ancient forge
#

Rather than making the Quaker a clone of the Mauser, or yet another skirmisher, I would like to see its fire rate significantly reduced, and damage and aoe significantly increased. Basically make it’s weapon less like the Mauser and more like the Vanguard(which should be a cortex unit imo, but that’s a different discussion)

earnest osprey
#

So budget banisher?

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As far as tremor's ability to function early t2, it's worth noting that its e cost is extremely prohibitive if you teched with only a modest energy economy

ancient forge
#

Cortex has two other high-rof mobile artillery, so I'd love to have a high-impact one.

earnest osprey
#

honestly i'd like to know where the "banisher counters t3" idea people talk about comes from

#

aside from being more power condensed into a single unit, equal cost in quakers deal single-target damage marginally better in their first volley of shots, and then proceed to fire nearly twice as fast from longer range

#

quaker even has the same aoe with less damage dropoff from the center

waxen sundial
#

it's supposed to be core's sniper basically

#

worse in that it has less damage, range, maneuverability, and costs more, but it has aoe and can target air. are the downsides worth it?

#

no

#

but that's the idea

earnest osprey
#

this isn't me trying to say quaker is op, cor t2 vehs just doesn't have anything as a strong, reliable source of damage to put behind tigers other than a unit that's a worse version of a mauser

#

banisher's 1k burst damage for 1k metal per unit ain't it

#

unless it's somehow being allowed to fire into a plasma deflector or a very small quantity of unexpected t2 air units appear

ancient forge
#

Banisher would certainly be worth building if it had the 950 range of the penetrator. 🙂

earnest osprey
#

as far as people pushing back against cor changes, the feeling i get is that banisher buffs would pull in more complaints than anything else would, even if it's currently only worth 70-80% of its price at best

#

a price reduction would open design space for possibly replacing the quaker with something else though