#Balancing late-game T1 spam

1 messages · Page 2 of 1

dusty nacelle
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again, if t1 spam wasn't good then nobody would do it

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simplest isn't always best

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disallowing it has its own problems

prisma kernel
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Yeah, it's effectively unlimited in almost all scenarios. And the problem is any limit intended to reduce tick spam is going to also limit regular scenarios a lot of the time.

wary hull
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and its too high; its "survival of the fittest PCs" in the end game 😄

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who has stronger pc and more FPS wins 😄

dusty nacelle
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luck is a skill kek

wary hull
prisma kernel
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I mean. The problem there is graphics/optimization. Putting a unit limit is a band aid on a bullet hole and not a solution that solves the underlying problem

dusty nacelle
# wary hull what kind of scenarios

let's say you implemented a per unit limit of 50, that doesn't stop the player from making factories to spam 50 ticks, pawns, grunts, and each of the vehicle scouts from both factions, for a total of 250 units per player

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and 50 is a very small number for things like fighters or bombers

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even something like fiends would be limited by 50

wary hull
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simple scenario would be actually just ticks, grunts and jeffies = 150; unless someone "hack" and build other race scouts too, so then 250 😄

dusty nacelle
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in an 8v8 you can always just ask a player from a different faction for a constructor

wary hull
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so yea i prefer to see on map from one player 3 types of units, than if he just make 150 ticks constant, thats good direction 😄

dusty nacelle
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i don't think that would solve the issue though, and imo it's just as strategically braindead as spamming 1 type of unit

wary hull
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you can so i agree this is not full proof solution, its just throttling spam

dusty nacelle
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doesn't change anything

wary hull
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but this level of throttling would be enough dont u think?

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ok given someone spam ticks at +150 metal

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on open map

dusty nacelle
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250 units per player in an 8v8 is 4000 units on the map potentially

wary hull
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from 5 factories or so with 40 towers

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then how many ticks will he have in given moment of time?

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approximately?

dusty nacelle
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well i think the hard limit on spamming ticks with labs is like 1 tick per second per lab

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so that's 5 ticks per second, maybe up to 7

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assuming they die in 20 seconds because travel distance, that's 140 ticks at a time

wary hull
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so given he send in 1 direction toward enemy on 24x24 map? given in half of the map he will be stopped by enemy

dusty nacelle
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which isn't really that many

wary hull
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yea i think next time i see spam on replay/spectate i will just measure tick count per player 😄

dusty nacelle
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there's rarely ever more than like 200-300 units of 1 type per player on the map (and that's with really heavy spam) at a time unless there's some waypoint shenanigans being done (this is all an "i think")

wary hull
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maybe if 4 players spam in 8v8 its like 400ticks/player ?

wary hull
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is it true that ticks and other super fact land scouts are worst for fps cause the most calculations of pathing per unit is needed ?

dusty nacelle
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and i'm saying they'd spam other stuff, so in reality it would go from 300 to 250

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i don't know

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anyway, i'm going to bed

wary hull
dusty nacelle
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people already game the counter to tick spam, juno, by making pawn spam

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if there's a way around something then players will use it

wary hull
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ok but at least with pawns u get 3-4x less of them than ticks in given moment in time

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some dev would have to tell me what is real problem with FPS in late game

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is it mostly tiny unit spam or something else also

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i heard also air units are expensive to calculate

forest bronze
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I don't like any sort of artificial unit limit. I think its against the core of this game and ta before it. In both games unit limits are more an engine/processing power limitation than anything else. When TA came out 200 units was pretty taxing but quickly 1000/1500 became the norm for most players who played mods once it was easier to handle for PCs and 5k wasnt too uncommon although unstable. I think spam is a core option that shouldnt be limited by anything other than unit/map balance. More strategic options = better imo that's why I love these games.

prisma kernel
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I'm quite certain a good solution can be found that isn't about limiting the amount of ticks or buildings or otherwise.

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I think punishing the spammer or rewarding those who get spammed (like with metal, for example) would be effective enough.

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I mean ticks are strong enough already. A little nerf to their BP and metal cost seems in line right?

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As shown many times in this thread, the metal cost of spam is significant, and would be even more so

hard folio
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Make offensive nano turrets

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Nom the ticks

prisma kernel
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And having a defense building that can more effectively reclaim metal from the weak units like ticks and pawns will easily make people stop doing it.

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Exactly

hard folio
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Best anti spam if implemented

prisma kernel
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Cause then it's a double metal swing when you tick spam, and probably that alone would stop people doing it.

wary hull
wary hull
simple granite
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pretty common thing i was in that game

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i got blamed for pausing it and causing everyone else to lag lmao

ocean crown
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I'm not sure if anybody noticed, but for 9 days now, the following should be reacquiring targets much faster:

  • LLTs
  • Beamers and Twin LLTs
  • HLTs
  • Bulwarks (not Pulsars)
  • most floating equivalents of the above
  • Dragon's claws and maws
  • T1 AA turrets
  • Centurion
  • Razorback

and the other kind of turret targeting improvements (preferring to shoot what's the turret is pointing at rather than endlessly waving those turrets around while the weapon is off cooldown):

  • Tzars
  • Fatbois

Do these feel any different in the anti t1 spam role?

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Or have you all just been theorycrafting for the last 1k messages? 😄

dusty nacelle
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theorycrafting go brrrr

hard folio
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I want Pulsars switching targets >.>

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Beams of death OP

dusky willow
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bouncy projectiles

light crag
dusky willow
hazy quest
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nothing changes the fact we really dont have good long range anti spam to clear it, before it does it jobs, sure i have banishers to skill thier snipers, but the spam just eats teh banisher rockets even thoguh i can see the snipers

glacial prawn
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Same with Pulsar, etc

light crag
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Set-Target does that.

Main trick is if the T1 trash arrives in front of the heavy units, they are the only units in range and will be considered as the only thing to shoot. Then Starlights/snipers use their shot, and are stuck on reload as the heavy units move in.

warm barn
amber elm
glacial prawn
light crag
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What if Juno slowed infantry and hoverscouts to 20% of their normal speed?

amber elm
prisma kernel
undone escarp
prisma kernel
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Yeah and at the end of the day we just want easy ways to tell our better units "target ticks last, pawns and grunts next last, etc", which is basically leading us back to just making units with higher damage amounts and/or longer reload times to do that automatically

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I don't think gating t1 spam defense behind massive amounts of micro and apm is a good solution

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I will admit I don't understand how set target works very well, but I'm still pretty sure it's not a realistic solution to the issues t1 spam creates

light crag
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The automatic priorities are still pretty good.
Mammoth vs razorback+spam, the mammoth prioritizes firing on the non-trash razorback

compact sky
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T1 spam is no where as effective as it use to be, all it serves to do is wreck the experience of people with potato computers. Set a limit to how many ticks/pawns/grunts etc can be on the battlefield.

hazy quest
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*per player, say 100

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or even 75

humble timber
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Lower unit caps in 8v8 are something you can do already. Something can be said for setting the default lower though

compact patio
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Cant we just restrict it to two labs per type?
you can still spam but it wont be nearly as much as it is right now
just lost a game again to someone building fucking 25 botslabs with 150 turrets

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restricting the amount of units wont really help because the t1 spam tends to die quickly but it still melts computers

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having only two labs per player is gonna reduce the amount of spam greatly

keen kite
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Increase the cost of units based on how many you have recently produced in that tech group. Some amount that wouldn't be too noticeable until you start churning them out at max speed with multiple factories.
That way there's technically no hard limits and you can still churn out stuff like you can now but it requires wasting significantly more resources

frozen canyon
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so I instead want to push for some official version of this on the game/engine level so everyone can benefit

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(and the engine already supports it anyway, it's a matter of making an interface for it)

manic pecan
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Ashes of the singularity has this as a direct feature of its design and generally works fine
Smart targeting is very opinionated

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For example the ashes targeting doesn’t make anti cruiser units prioritize the anti cruiser units
It makes the anti cruiser units pick the nearest cruiser to kill

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Some like that others don’t

hard folio
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T3 defensive turret

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Low dmg, but infinite jumps as long as something is in range to bridge the gap

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Would kill all their turrets pumping out T1 eventually lol

light crag
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Firewall and Electric fence.
Sets up a barrier that deals 350 damage to any unit walking through it.

ashen osprey
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Can we start a vote based on the summary please?

tropic glacier
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#3 is the most sensible imo - my idea in the Juno thread is to just give each faction a t2 static napalm launcher.

Napalm is already in the game with Legion, and though it might feel faction specific Cortex has EMP stuff even though that's largely Armada's thing.

dusty nacelle
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napalm is kind of extremely unbalanced atm

ashen osprey
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Need the mods to create a thread locked vote imo , this thread is too long to follow lol

tropic glacier
sinful comet
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I suggested long time ago some weapons that creates "static" field and deal DoT in large area

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pretty useless against any midT1+

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but good vs spam

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probably some kind of Juno that can dot passing by

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or just mobile generator

wary hull
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permanent juno 🙂

amber elm
glacial prawn
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I love the napalm idea

amber elm
tropic glacier
# glacial prawn I love the napalm idea

I think it's the simplest, or at least most easily implemented solution. They're going to add napalm eventually, giving cortex and armada some napalm launchers could help them balance it in actually games as they work on finishing legion.

sinful comet
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another thing that can help is longer lab time - units "minimum" build time. so you can't print 1 flea per second in one lab. Lab will reload for some time after each print. It wont affect much in early game when you spent more time actually building units (10 seconds +1 10% longer build) but will require much more labs in late game for spam (though T1 labs are pretty cheap so it either wont give muc effect)

ocean crown
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Yeah, people would just skip some nanos and make more labs 😦

sinful comet
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I don't remember such problem in TAESC btw. probably because of nano tower absence

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so people used cons to assist labs, and you can't scale that much BP

amber elm
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PA/PA:T avoided it by keeping the metal economy as a fixed number. No converters.

sinful comet
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that is not affect spam, but affect the entire game a lot 😄

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but yeah, BAR has very scalable eco, for example in TA ESC MMMs are like twice less effective and no AFUS at T2

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and regular fusions are little less effective as well

amber elm
# sinful comet that is not affect spam, but affect the entire game a lot 😄

So of the ideas here, the popular ones are:
1: Better bug spray units
2: A T3 unit which projects a large slow field. (I think effecting units inverse to metal/energy or mass investment would be cleanest, but there's varying opinions on implementation)
3: Lingering low damage napalm

Special mention to the magnet idea because I think it was cool. Who do we talk to about if any of them have legs or are easy to test/take further?

sinful comet
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but thats entire another thread not actually related to T1 spam

ocean crown
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There's also an idea to give the Tremor some of that anti spam juice in #1112892794139316244

wary hull
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notice ESC also doesnt have tick which is super maneuverable thats why its top1 spam unit; also BAR lets you to manage spam movement much better with line movement; let's you produce spam better with repeat and towers; also I feel like in BAR pewee/grunt are better because in ESC t2 generally all units have better price/DPS/armour ratios; this is one of the key assumption in ESC as its "Escalation" name suggest: that conflict escalates toward bigger units; so it doesnt actually make sense in ESC to spam t1 as they are just shredded by t2 and t3; I think these are the main factors that makes ESC t1 spam not effective

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@shrewd veldt do you have a stats like of all land mobile units with attacker weapons (vs land): split them into 2 groups t1 and t2, then compare ratios m-price/DPS? my hypothesis is globally t1 might have better these ratios and if so it would be key reason why t1 spam still too strong in t2 and t3 game stages

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maybe even better to just make these ratio not for all t1 attackers but just spammable ones (tick pewee ak jeffy) vs t2

warm barn
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The fast units have way better dps for m cost than the rest of t1 too, at that stage of the game it's balanced out by their high e cost

sinful comet
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the main reason for T1 spam for me actually is just distract th emost danregous T2's with long reload and provide LoS

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also disable any spies and cloaked comms

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not for dealing damage actually

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though bunch of AKs can kill low T3 pretty easy because of flanking

tropic glacier
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They also explode on large units like late t3 + flanking damage.

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Tbf I don't think t1 spam is too strong late game it's just a pain to deal with. It trickles in so unless they mass up and then attack you aren't fighting hundreds of grunts at once, you're fighting a few dozen.

sinful comet
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it's not strong but pretty annoying and killing fps

tropic glacier
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Yeah no doubt about that, just thought I've seen some people over the course of the thread worried about it's actually efficacy.

wary hull
# sinful comet also disable any spies and cloaked comms

Question on flanking: two enemy juggs stand in front of each other fighting, now one of them is joined by single tick which will stand in the opposite side of the enemy jugg: does it mean now that the jugg supported by single tick gets +100% damage bonus from flanking?

sinful comet
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no, flanking is based on damage done

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im not 100% sure but probably its just tick will get bonus here

glass finch
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from people's tests its based on hit amounts not damage might be wrong there

sinful comet
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it is somewhere on discord. i rmemeber images and calculations. probably search can help

glass finch
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#1106622292773060618 message
found it
based on hits ticks almost doubled titan's damage

sinful comet
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im not sure about this test

dusty nacelle
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well peeps, we need to find a solution to this problem before sunday or else everyone's computer is going to melt to 40 players spamming ticks

tropic glacier
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I still say throwing weaker napalm in would be the quickest solution.

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Something more elegant could always come later.

amber elm
amber elm
compact patio
rose relic
compact patio
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thats where its better
because all those other ideas restict you in different parts of the game where you dont want to be restricted
making it so you can only have two botlabs restricts you at no point of the game until the very late where you wanna melt your enemies pc

rose relic
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basically the problem is very simple; BAR favors assault units very heavily and skews the game towards very high HP very killy combat instead of evenly shared with raiders and artillery... tanks for example got jacked beyond all reason compared to other TA type games while raiders are slow and fairly poor DPS for cost

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only two botlabs is also not a good solution

compact patio
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earlygame nobody is building more than one lab

rose relic
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the only reasonable solution is to make spam not desirable because the counters to it are effective

compact patio
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ppl are still gonna throw everything they have at anti spam weapons

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because even they can be overwhelmed with just enough spam

rose relic
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if it is an effective countermeasure then that is not effective to do- you can spend a fraction of your resources and defeat a much larger amount of resources of the thing you are countering

compact patio
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or spam goes a different route

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and even when the spam just gets killed

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it still melts pcs

rose relic
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if it dies and does not accomplish very much there isn't much reason to do it

compact patio
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that would include braincells on the end of the ppl using spam

rose relic
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tick spam is the biggest offender imo because it is 17 metal but has 600 vision and so is by far the best scout for getting vision even if it dies

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it would also help to have T2 scouts that are much better despite costing much more, but naturally you don't get nearly as many

compact patio
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restricting it to two botlabs and only botlabs would defeat spam entirely in a reasonable way

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because you never realistically need more than two botlabs

rose relic
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not really because two botlabs will still produce a lot of spam

compact patio
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but not as much as the current lategame spam of 20+

rose relic
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a typical brain melt is often only about 3 labs

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maybe 4

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besides even if you limited the number of labs you aren't making it less advantageous

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also people would make like 2 bot labs and 2 veh labs and use both scouts

compact patio
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so you would need atleast two players spamming to get the same effect
not have one player build 10+ labs and melt everything

rose relic
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it doesnt address the problem just hides it under the carpet

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besides 8 players with 2 each would still be 16 labs, potentially 32 if they did vehs as well, it doesnt really remove the issue either

compact patio
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16 labs if everyone joins in on the spam

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usually its one or two ppl

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doing literally nothing else

rose relic
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I really dont think thats accurate usually someone is brain melting alongside T3

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maybe T2 units like starlights

compact patio
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i just think theres enough units to kill the spam

rose relic
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a mixed composition including T1 in the later game is perfectly fine, the issue is that the brain melt part of the composition has few if any counters other than also doing it yourself

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the high alpha weapons are not effective vs massed pawns, so a mixture of cheap and expensive units is a good idea, such as pawns and titans where the titan is scared of the Dgun and the pawns can screen for it

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we just need it to require control and attention rather than literally rallying thousands out of the factories because trickling in your units one at a time should just get them slaughtered by their counters with hardly any impact

dusty nacelle
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how would you handle gifting buildings though?

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a player could make 2 labs, gift them to someone else, then make 2 labs again

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repeat

prisma kernel
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Limiting buildings or units is such a bad solution. It's a total bandaid solution. We need to somehow address the fundamental issues. Not shape the game in a bad direction so that the symptom is limited.

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Good game design is about encouraging the right things and discouraging the wrong things. Not putting artificial restrictions in place that both frustrate players and make little sense.

grave furnace
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ok how about a suggestion from u then, how do we fix t1 spam being too OP lategame

prisma kernel
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Saying stuff like "reasonably players never need more than 2 labs" is such a short sighted comment. This is an RTS. Players can build as many of whatever they want. That's just how it works. Even if it's true that you may not do a thing very often, limiting it on purpose is an artificial and bad fix.

prisma kernel
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My favorite is simply finding a way to reward the defenders

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Like some way of getting tons of metal if they are t1 spamming you, as one example.

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I don't think t1 spam is as big of a deal as people make it. It's just too good right now. Once there are a few ways to make it worse, and or make it better for defenders when you DO spam, it will begin to disappear.

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People underestimate the power of small changes

grave furnace
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im literally ingame

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look at all that t1 shit

prisma kernel
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Should t1 not exist in late game? Isn't that the point? To have both cannon fodder AND big cannons? That's literally good game design.

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Spamming 4 bot labs of ticks is a bit too far, I will agree.

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But making a few hundred pawns feels right within the proper realm of "this is what BAR is meant for"

grave furnace
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yes, and having 4 people on either team spamming 5 factories of t1 spam is not great either though

prisma kernel
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Yeah it melts some computers. That's a game optimization and hardware issue though, not a game design issue. And forcing bad game design for the purpose of fixing hardware symptoms is certainly not a direction games should go

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I agree it's a problem, but bad solutions are bad solutions and shouldn't be pursued

grave furnace
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i suppose ur right sir

prisma kernel
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Finding game design ways to punish t1 spam is really all we need.

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Like let's randomly say that a killer of a t1 unit that is cheaper than 100 metal gets rewarded instantly with the full metal cost of that unit . That would probably stop t1 spam alone. Not saying it's a well thought out or balanced idea, but just a proof of concept

grave furnace
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wouldnt that feed the oponents t1 spam too?

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so they end up feeding one another to infinity

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effectively having free t1 vision

prisma kernel
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But you wouldn't want to t1 spam cause then the OPPO would get rewarded. The goal is to keep the metal, not give it away.

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The other half of the solution is easier defenses against it, like metal grinder vacuum towers and napalm and more fast AOE and many other ideas too

grave furnace
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yeh lack of decent AOE options is cringe tbh

prisma kernel
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I think both is important. Make defending against t1 easier, and make there be a larger punishment (in game design sense) for spamming t1

grave furnace
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i'd like a razorback with two flamethrowers for cortex or smth

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that sounds like op melter against trash lategame

prisma kernel
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Two smallish changes along those lines is a good place to start IMO. See how it goes for a few weeks, make bigger changes if needed, etc

tranquil fossil
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I love it... Their arty just kills themselves heheh...

rose relic
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the problem with the 4 bot labs of ticks isn't that they are making T1- the issue is that they are exploiting aiming limitations with many small bodies, which nearly all weapon types simply do not kill quickly enough en masse not because they have HP but because aiming at each one takes time

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riot unit with very high swivel value and high ROF DPS would clean that up no trouble

light crag
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Some stats:
If you have an afus making 3000 e/sec and enough T2 energy converters, for each unit, this is how much HP/sec you can build

corjugg   |537
armcv     |380
corcv     |368
corcan    |348
corraid   |331
armstump  |320
armzeus   |301
correap   |296
corthud   |291
corch     |286
armseer   |285
corgator  |281
armham    |274
armch     |271
corstorm  |266
armpincer |265
corak     |262
corlevlr  |261
armflash  |259
corsumo   |258
corgarp   |249
armrock   |244
armpw     |240
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So one thing to keep in mind, that T1 units have really good HP to cost ratios.
So anything single-target that can melt T1 spam will also melt T2 and T3 units

rose relic
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that is very interesting but I think the "time to kill" for a tick clearly depends more on the swivel aim time than its HP, 100 fleas takes much longer to kill based on time in between targets to aim at each one

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T1 units having more HP is a good thing, but ticks are an anomaly

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we need some real spray, instant swivel weaponry vs that type of target

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like VADS or ZK antiswarm machine gun spraying

crisp raptor
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did anything come of trying to increase like, tiger (plasma weapon) accuracy vs moving targets etc?

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man if tigers had 100% accurate lasers that would actually be so good

light crag
rose relic
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tiger is an assault unit anyway and is more than passable vs most unit types- plasma cannons in general have a slow projectile

light crag
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VADS or ZK antiswarm machine gun spraying are still too single-target, and therefore too lethal vs T3.

BAR has things like the DLLT, beamer, cans, welders, etc, that do truck loads of single target damage and therefore are good anti-spam, but are held back from killing T3 due to their short range (and usually slow speed so they cannot close in to the T3 fast).
And that short range lets the spam get dangerously close (and makes it hard to close off all avenues of attack).

You need weapons capable of damaging multiple targets with a single shot, to be anti-spam.
AOE is the direct version of this, but spam is usually spaced far enough apart to avoid most explosion AOE.

Realistically, what we need is either

  1. Slow/Impulse effects, to bunch up the spam to let AOE explosions work
  2. Rework flame weapons to pass through targets, so a single slow-ish flame particle/sphere can hit multiple targets. (dragon maw actually kinda sucks against spam, the flames miss too much, and each flame particle can only hurt one unit, with pretty small AOE)
  3. Rework lightning weapons to leave a persistent "static electricity patch" that damages units one time when they walk into it.
  4. Ability to build walls at a distance to funnel and concentrate spam, to let AOE explosions work
  5. Some other "persistent damage patch" effects like napalm or caltrops
  6. Tweak of the reclaim system so that spam that is instantly blown up still somehow leaves beind metal that can be reclaimed
rose relic
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You need weapons capable of damaging multiple targets with a single shot, to be anti-spam.
AOE is the direct version of this, but spam is usually spaced far enough apart to avoid most explosion AOE.
You really don't though? High ROF with fast projectile would work too, with fast aim time

crisp raptor
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yea but by parking some very efficient anti spam units in the way, its very possible to accumulate a large resource advantage if the opponent isnt thinking. there's just not many efficient anti spam weapons

light crag
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High ROF with fast projectile would work too, with fast aim time
That single-target weapon type also murders T3

crisp raptor
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like mammoths work great, it's just a huge investment cost to cover a large area, and can be mitigated by the opponnt just... stopping == wasted resources

rose relic
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I assure you it does not, this is how it has worked in TA and ZK for years

light crag
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Most games also deal with this problem by having a light-medium-heavy armor split, and giving massive bonus vs small cheap light armor units

rose relic
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riot units get crushed by skirms and assault type units, especially very durable ones like T3 which may BOTH outrange and out-HP them

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like you're saying pounders counter T3? they really don't

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admittedly the AOE vs ROF approach to riot unit are somewhat different but in this they are not

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you need more than raw DPS to fight T3 units

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you'll ding it with a group of riot units for sure but the fact that it can outrange you and out-maneuver you means they are not good for that

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high swivel laser with high DPS would also work (see ZK Mace) and it clearly does not counter even assault units cheaper than it much less very expensive ones

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super squishy units will die too fast to close, while tanky units will just push in and destroy it

light crag
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Equal cost, yes pounders would murder T3. (although, good gosh do pounders friendly fire a lot en-mass)
But their short range and slow speed lets most T3 kill them without problems.

But, now that means riot/anti-spam units have to be both shorter ranged and slower than T3 (As is the current case with Cans, welders, pounders, etc)

rose relic
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riot units are slow, it's part of how riot and assault units work

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devastating against raiders but you obviously cannot catch them

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honestly even if they were faster than T3 units I do not see them being a good counter- not useless vs them but you would be better off with raiders or assault units to fight T3 without using T3 yourself

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raiders have more bodies and assault units won't die as quickly

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like riot units are intended to be good vs raiders but even marauders would probably wipe the floor with them

light crag
light crag
hard folio
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We need spam donations to give more xp.
It's silly to have 200 kill razorback with +5% attack speed.

low silo
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Personally, I think one of the better solutions is to rework the experience/veterancy system.

Ideas that add mechanics, or dps, or rate of fire, or impulse etc. will all throw off the balance for the rest of the game. All of these mechanics will result in units or defenses that can be used against spam, but also other units. Spam is nothing more than fast, light units that happen to be cheap, which means all light and fast units will suffer if any mechanic is introduced to counter spam. Depending on the details of what is changed, the changes may even affect medium and heavier units, if used in large enough numbers.

Give units ramping experience gain as they stay in combat for longer uninterrupted stretches of time and based off their total kill count. Grant experienced units more combat capability, like rate of fire increases, increased passive health regen, and range increases. Things that will seriously hurt the spammer and make it genuinely difficult to fight those veteran units. I like the idea of having a veteran unit of bulls that have 5x the combat effectiveness of new bulls after winning numerous battles. Sounds fun to manage and skirmish with and rewards players for good micro and smart engagements. If you can keep a unit alive for long enough in a game like BAR, whether thats a Jugg or Bull, why shouldn't it be 5x stronger than a regular unit? Different units can have different scaling multipliers so that T3 units take longer to scale than T1 or T2.

People will still spam of course, you gotta have cheap, constant, reliable direct vision for your starlights without having to mess around with slow radar bots that can get chased and gunned down. But it would mean players have to turn off the spam until they are ready to make a push, unless they want to increase the enemies combat effectiveness by some multiple and seriosuly hurt their chances of even winning the engagement.

wary hull
sinful comet
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it doesn't work like this. T1 units are completely different from T3 in terms of stats. You can't just compare 30k in peewee and 30k in juggernaut, theres too much difference in real game

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the reason T1 spam is that good, is relative cheap distraction and los and cloaked units clear. Also flanking gives bonuses to goups of units

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I'd suggest considering flanking bonus review. Probably it is too op mechanic that makes Large and slow units too bad. See any Mammoth/Tzar examples

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their stats are good, but they got wrecked by groups of smaller and faster units

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and that just makes overall AK/Peewee too good in terms of price/power

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another thread that was proposed - giving slow reload units like banisher/shooter threshold like "ignore T1"

azure dirge
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Razorbacks can shred entire legions of ticks with ease

wary hull
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1 idea that could help a bit definitely and is logical: flanking to work only on classes of units: eg all t1 units get flanking against all t1 units; but t1 units get flanking bonus only against light t2 units; vs heavy units no flanking; t1 vs t3 - no flanking bonus; for t2: all t2 get flanking bonus against all t1, but only against light medium (not heavy) t3; eg bull gets flanking against maruder (they are almost same hp) but not against thor

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this way pewee/tick/ak pretty much wont get any flanking bonus at t2 and t3 stages where its expected heavier t2 and t3 should dominate

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this way scouts get no flanking against bulls thors maruders, shiva etc; but the still get flanking against sprinter twitcher, fiend sheldon ("light unit" could be defined e.g. as below 1000 hp for t2, and all at t1: so stumpy tank is still light despite more hp)

hard folio
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Base xp would be nice.
So your t3 would get a trickle of xp that would get significant with 100s of kills.

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From just shooting at enemy stuff

sinful comet
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another thing about CPU usage in late game is insane amounts of planes in BAR.

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I don't remember that much of air in OTA/ TAesc, because T2 air in those ancestor games are much more expensive and scaled up

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for example I always wondering why T2 "strategic" bombers in BAR costs like T1 units.

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same about Fighter walls

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and those thousands of planes are coming usually just from one of 8 team players

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T2 fighter in OTA : 254m 6900e, BAR: 120m 4900e + BAR has nano towers that can assist lab and pump those planes really fast

ocean crown
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Nikuksis, do you think it'd be better to move that discussion to another thread?

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This one is all over the place as it is

sinful comet
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Air spam is also a spam 🙂 But sorry, yeah i guess it's another topic

ocean crown
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I agree, and it's an interesting thought 😄 But I worry it'll get lost in here 🙂

hard folio
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Its more beneficial to spam t1 fighters then t2 given how aa and fighter interactions work out, maybe to address that would be nice

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Halving the amount of air right there.

halcyon hazel
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Solution could be to have a t3 unit that would make it cost ineffective to spam t1. The unit would be weak against t2,t3 units but specifically meant to efficiently trade with t1 units

warm barn
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you can't ever make it ineffective to make cheap fast units. if there's a counter unit, it's still not gonna be everywhere - same as with any RPS mechanic. they'll still be good for most things - raiding, taking out artillery caught out of position, giving vision, drawing fire to themselves

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but that's fine too, these units shouldn't become obsolete and lategame be just giant mechs fighting one another

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buffing counters and altering their stats can still be done, but you shouldn't have unrealistic goals of what would happen as a result

crisp raptor
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I think it's a reasonable goal to make low-apm, low-attention strategies have clearer weaknesses and opportunities for punishment

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t1 spam has a very clear purpose which other units cannot fill ie scouting and tanking. however its excessive utility in the late game beyond those purposes as well as lack of efficient counters (not to mention game speed and health) means there should be better counterplay

amber elm
tropic glacier
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Just link the relevant message in the thread and ask someone like zacreus to consider the changes.

old crown
ocean crown
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You can right-click and close it

azure dirge
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Maybe you could add some anti-spam t2 to the mix?

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Jaguars work well

amber elm
# azure dirge Jaguars work well

I'm just going to add you to the column of people with better anti-spam unit ideas, unless you're saying there are already the tools in the game, in which case I'm not getting into that for the nth time

robust slate
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Only experienced players set up multiple spam factories, and the education thing could be by putting a sentence on the website when describing general unit types, and the specific page for each unit.

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We could also make all spam units killed by the Juno, so including grunts and pawns.

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Yep, all of these things like spam overpowering new players' core T3 bots with friendly fire damage are very bad for the game

sinful comet
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or new unit concept - large static field generator wil bubble-like degen area killing infinite amount of small unitsPandaDerp

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karganets/raptors are doing the antispam job pretty good already tho

sly ocean
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I'm a noob 24.os
I seem like the spam is so popular because he provide too much, as said earlier in this channel, the spam is strong because of multiples reasons, the most important seem to be (Correct/add if needed please):
1- Give vision efficiently on huge surface
2- Tank a lot of big single target damage
3- Trade efficiently with most of the units (metal wise)
4- Can see / counter cloaked units with they sheer number

A lot of peoples, much better than me spoke about metal efficiency and units tweaks, mostly the reasons 2 and 3.

I want to add my small contribution to the reasons 1 and 4 ^^

Radars bot or vehicle have a huge LOS, 900 is enough for most of the long range unit, and it's rewarding to play/set-up a mixed army, 2 wistlers in T1 tank ball to do the anti-shuri and vision providers for example...
But the juno shut down radar unit pretty hard in mid game, and it seem logic because you need a way to protect/use your cloaked units efficiently from the radar vision in mid game, but it deny the only way to have a descent LOS in a mobile army....

solution to reason 1 (Give vision efficiently on huge surface):
We maybe need a new type of support unit with only a big LOS and no other fonction inside T2 or T3, it will still be counterd by cloaked units but offer us a tanky and stable source of vision. (Maybe a buff to the mobile anti-nuke ?, to BP T2 engineer?)

solution to reason 4 (Can see / counter cloaked units with they sheer number):
Maybe don't want a T2 unit to be able to have the power of the Intrusion Countermeasure System. (This building is cheap, maybe a T2 unit with a shorter range and a bigger price can be ok?)
but we can have a costly units giving the same bonus than the Intrusion Countermeasure System in T3, a special utility unit without a lot of HP, you will need to protect it to not easily permit to counter D-Gun on costly metal boys. ^^

Quick question, is a decoy commander a good way to counter Juno and get radar coverage ?