Thors too good for cost?

[plush helm]

spybots deal 56000 emp dmg so in a lot of cases even if units did have 50% emp res it would do nothing to prevent a stun on a direct spy emp, it would only maybe matter on edge hits.

And the thor missile is even more insane with 80000 emp damage.

And abudctors deal like 22000ish, the values look like alpha test values tbh

[warm radish]

a lot of EMP damage numbers were either 'fix me later's or 'fuck it it depends on HP too much, lets make sure it sticks'

and I've probably spent more time working with EMP than anyone in recent memory, so that's not a random asspull statement; vanilla EMP values are wild

[lucid compass]

they are wild, 1 shruiken can stun a tzar given some time

[lethal smelt]

What about Shuriken EMP drones? They seem to have been nerfed so much that 5 can't even stun a medium tank!

[plush helm]

They like 2 hit med tanks with 800 emp damage, idk why you troll

[lethal smelt]

Last time I used shurikens, they didn't stun anything, have they changed in the last few weeks?

[analog urchin]

Shuri still seem op as ever idk what you talking about

[frosty vessel]

Ye since when did they nerf? xD -I have heard of like emp drone stuff but those are extra/legion type units

[weak hatch]

thors are probably fine in arm vs arm, since snipers/starlights. maybe its more of a cor issue ?

[neat oriole]

air pulsar, other t3, dgun

cor has 0 problems vs thor bcz shivas hard counter them

[rigid socket]

skuttlebug is kinda funny but yeah

a good micro-ed thor doesnt care much about snipers but starlights are a little easier to use against thors

[solid inlet]

might that be because the comm has a disintegrator cannon that can one shot a titan?

[frosty vessel]

xD

[rigid socket]

its even better against grunts! (this is not the point of coms vs units, its about thors filling more roles than they should, its all thors all the time if you have no idea what you are doing since they are affective even in low numbers, cheaper than titans and more over lack any unit positioning needed)

[solid inlet]

ph okay

[rigid socket]

i dont personally think they are too good, i dont even think they are better than other units but they are pretty cheap

[marsh tulip]

Siegebreaker and Deadeye are needed for Cor af

[lethal smelt]

Doesn't cheap mean they are better than other units that are not cheap for what you get? My first idea to balance thors was to increase their cost to 15000 so that they are more expensive than the second-strongest arm unit, Titans

[rigid socket]

no? thats a false equivalence, and 15000 metal is WAY too much

thats OVER a FIFTY per cent increase, even a basic 15% is a lot to move a unit by

[lethal smelt]

I think it's OK for the factions to have different types of units that do the same thing, e.g. long-ranged damage dealer is banisher or starlight. It just so happens that at the moment, starlights are about 4X better.

[pure bolt]

Starlight and Banisher do not fulfil the same role

[lethal smelt]

Benchmarked against titans, Thors seem more useful, so they ought to be more expensive

[lethal smelt]

Tell that to the website!

I agree with the website that they are both Long-ranged damage dealers of different types

[pure bolt]

Banisher is more of a skirmisher, to force someone to engage your units or retreat, where as Starlight is closer to artillary in its use-case as part of a line push

Titans are kind of t3 Starlights that come with extra tankiness & mobility, they shouldn't be your main breaching unit which is what the Thor is designed to do

Either way though, a 50% metal cost increase is a huge change balance is a much more delicate needle than that

[lethal smelt]

I think the reason why banishers are used as skirmishers rather than as a line push with artillery is because they do hardly any damage. I would argue that snipers and starlights can be used as skirmishers, but also as a line push. Banishers can't be used as skirmishers against arm front lines as they are outranged by snipers and starlights.

Titans are a waste of metal if you don't get stuck in and use the shotgun, you could have just paid 1200 for a starlight.

[rigid socket]

Banisher is 1000 AOE damage, is kinda funny how shit its range is tho

[pure bolt]

Titans are a waste of metal if you don't get stuck in and use the shotgun, you could have just paid 1200 for a starlight.
Disagree with this, Starlights and Sharpshooters are so fragile, and get zoned during t3 phase due to Catapults unless your just rolling the lane. Titans can easilly take that hit, and their hand-cannons are imo primarily defensive vs their Tach beam; which is shorter than starlight & sharpshooters and thus requires the Titans to be that bit further up taking a few more hits. They are as much a tank and more similar to Mammoths really i guess

[rigid socket]

i usually steam roll sniper lines with T3 spam np, usually 2 titans rekt a frontline that doesnt have immediate air support or LRPC, they just take too long to fire that 3 or 4 rounds

[lethal smelt]

I always find that snipers hard counter T3 units other than long-ranged ones, a titan versus 20 snipers would be toast IMHO

[neat ridge]

In the hands of an actually competent player, titans are the best T3 in the game, by quite a fair margin

[somber thicket]

Just make banisters not ass

[warm radish]

they are different roles

[pure bolt]

#1151868095376404621 message

[somber thicket]

Still dog shit at its job. Honestly better to just go T3 for what they do.

[frosty vessel]

Well they have not been buffed yet lol

[safe drum]

then thats a map rotation problem

[pure bolt]

to refer to another point in this, Thor is certainly not OP in Isthmus, its narrow choke where you can easily amass enough DPS to handle Thor's very nicely. That's why people often fear-eco behind them rather than being aggressive with them

[rigid socket]

I've never once died to a Thor I don't think, it's usually t2 spam with titans

They are just so fucking easy due to them moving as a vehicle, the titan can actually be microed stepping one step this way one step that way just makes using them so much more fun

Driving away from a com or other spam is hard in the Thor, it's not just slow it's honestly horrible to move around lol

I usually have one afk Thor building up emps before a rush, dump them all into the Frontline and rush with titans or soften with t2, sometimes going as far to donate the Thor (now out of emps) to teammates

[random moth]

New players need to not be put at 17 OS coming into the game day 1

[lethal smelt]

There is a thread about this https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1275366409722925056

[candid plaza]

all the titan has to offer is the laser and maybe the rockets, the cannons it has are extremely weak, the thor on the other hand trades best with any t3 ones its in range
except for behemoths of course, they dont count

you get flanking bonus with thor and an EMP missile now thats real microing.
The titan is so slow its basicly just static defence that can relocate

[candid plaza]

well titans are amphibious so they need to be slightly worse then thor but maybe not as much as right now

[north basalt]

For min 30-40 lobbies Titans are widely considered the best T3 unit, while Thors are rarely used.

[pure bolt]

you get flanking bonus with Thor and an EMP missile
What do you mean by this? A unit cannot generate its own fanking dmg unless it moves around another unit

[candid plaza]

yeah you get more thors and theyre faster
titan is more of a long range unit and slow, unlikely you get flanking
and the EMP missile means youre even more likely to flank and surround

[pure bolt]

gotcha

[candid plaza]

i think titans and juggernauts being used is mostly lazyness or wanting amphibious units
if you have enough metal might aswell buy the most expensive unit

for example 2 thors can kill a juggernaut
you need 2 titans wich costs way more

[pure bolt]

That type of comparison isn't particularly useful imo. "Does this unit do its job well and is it too good at it or weak for cost", comparing units vs units where they are not in the same role is very tricky

e.g.
Mauser/Quaker > easy to compare
Thor / Titan > hard to compare

[north basalt]

And yet, we routinely see titans carry high level games, while Thors rarely do. I absolutely hate empty map gladiator fights, they are meaningless. A jugg can easily kite thors from the rest of their army/porc, or just tank them and self-D to pop the frontline.

[candid plaza]

well yes the jugg will do its job but the titan isnt better at stopping the jugg despite the higher price

[north basalt]

Not to mention that on the vast majority of maps, thors struggle with terrain and d-gunned more than any other T3 because their vehicle movedef is god awful.

[north basalt]

There should be pulsars, testing is isolation just doesn't make sense to me at all

[candid plaza]

EMP missile is good counter to pulsars aswell
you get 6 EMPs for the price of 2 titans

[north basalt]

Right, emp all the pulsars perfectly and outfight the units, which happens so often.

[lethal smelt]

Sure, my idea for that was to have an amphib tax based on how watery a map is, so you'd pay extra for units on Isthmus, but not ATG, for example. Otherwise, you might find that a lot of units are not worth building on dry maps

[pure bolt]

Thor's are very strong when:
A: The first one arrives, its supported well and is used to breach the existing frontline
B: They are safely massed with a larger eco and then used to breach

A: is a well executed play with a powerful unit, e.g. Tzar rush on isthmus
B: is just an eco difference

[candid plaza]

again i think its mostly lazyness in theory thor has way more potential
saying, oh sure im gonna fire each EMP missile at ones right just shows that nobody wants to do that despite it being very good

[north basalt]

Outside of lower OS ATG/Straight, when did you see a Thor carry a min 30 or min 40 OS lobby? They are basically never made because they get rolled by everything and have awful timing.

[neat ridge]

glitters and strait never have os 30 min unfortunately afaik, there just arent enough actually high level players on them

[north basalt]

Shivas will break a thor rush 9/10 times, unless the core player royally fucks it up. Mara/Razor are going to come much sooner and deal way more damage. Like Rippsy said, the replays I see of "Thor OP" are generally a massive eco lead. The guy could have massed stouts and won with his advantage

[neat ridge]

thors often end up being used a lot on op isthmus, but thats half 'i dont know any better' and half 'thors are op arent they?'

and tbh, at least they're making units

[north basalt]

To be fair the narrow falt choke of isthmus is probably their best use case

[lethal smelt]

Gladiator fights are meaningful to compare units with similar roles that will come up against each other.

Thors are 50% faster than juggernauts, so as long as they don't have to manoeuvre too much, they can kite the juggenaut out of shotgun range, limiting the juggernaut to its starlight shot. In a 1vs3 encounter, the juggernaut always loses, even using its shotgun, sometimes taking out one of the thors before dying.

If you just use a juggernaut's starlight laser, it will presumbaly take about 5 minutes to destroy a single thor, and that presupposes the thor commander doesn't just use the thor's 50% faster speed to attack somewhere else.

[candid plaza]

well juggernauts are awfull by design unfortunately because theyre glorified epic tumbleweeds

[neat ridge]

juggs are terrible, titans on the other hand are excellent

[lethal smelt]

Thors being rolled by everything is basically the opposite of what happens in-game.

[north basalt]

Not for high OS lobbies

[candid plaza]

how do shivas outrun EMP missiles?
2 of them 1 infront 1 behind

[neat ridge]

they dont, one thor comes out as 5 shivas walk into the base of the guy trying to ake thors

or alternatively, thors run into a forest of pulsars, one or two of them get through, and then promptly get dgunned

[north basalt]

And when the thor arrives it has to wait for the single missile to stockpile, While shivas rip it apart

[candid plaza]

thors dont need to be your only unit

[north basalt]

Obviously, but a 2 fusion shiva all in with grunt/trasher/laz wins TONS of games in high OS lobbies, Narn basically hit 50 off the back of shiva pushes

[neat ridge]

yep. both players make other units, one starts trying to make thors, the other makes anything else, and kills them

thors are kinda okay on very flat maps, with very passive players, where the thors can be massed

if those arent all true, thors are outperformed by most other t3

[candid plaza]

thors are way better at taking damage too, they have allmost the same health as titans for much lower price

[lethal smelt]

IMHO the reason thors don't get made as much in high OS lobbies is due to usually playing on movement-friendly maps that reward greater aggression levels, i.e. not ATG or Isthmus, so the game rarely gets to late-T3 stage, and as you said before, titans reward god-like micro skills more than thors do, so are the preferred unit.

[north basalt]

Eh, I disagree. There are tons of maps that go ultra-late. Rosetta, Esker Creek, Tar Lake, Carrot Mountain, and Scylla are all maps that have seen 50+ minute games.

[candid plaza]

i think tank micor is just its own skillset, when you have a commander infront of you your first instinct is to reverse, but thats a bad idea, instead you should split your tanks left and right to the com so you drive past him far enough away to not get d gunned

[neat ridge]

thats true, but even microed thors are very dgunnable
just cause they so slow and unmaneuverable

[north basalt]

Generally you run parallel to the front, because otherwise the opponent should be able to shred the thor if it commits. Also the com should never be visible, always cloaked within a jammer or hiding behind terrain

[lethal smelt]

They are fast but unmanoeuvrable

[lucid compass]

I think part of it is maps and part of it is micro. Using a thor as a frontline and not getting it dguned is a skill. Thors are cheaper metal wise no Getting around it

If plp don't like to work together and coordinated push + Juno then thor is gonna suck

We saw it the tourney razors are overrated b/c they don't have the best raw stats just speed and mobility

thor is best as frontline timing push with sniper/starlight behind it
because the thor is tankier than demon/razor, and the rocket has a good chance of catch supporting units like sniper/starlight or even slow t3 liks shiva or vanguard

[candid plaza]

thors are pretty fast they hit the front sooner then titan

[lucid compass]

the reason thor doesn't seem like free win is because t3 pushes in general are risky. as they take long time to produce + travel distance + need multiple people to make units
they are reliable win cons if your team has eco advantage or mixed skil lobby
and they come in with built in anti porc
if you can afford thor you can afford 2 junos and a butler squad remaking radars

and of course thors not good on hilly terrain cause boy do they slow down
every time I saw thor get dgunned it was a mistake, not an inevitability

[lethal smelt]

Yes, a Thor is a great barrier to stop spam, tanks and bots rushing your starlights and snipers

[neat oriole]

thor so op nobody made them in tourney
cant reveal broken units confirm

[neat oriole]

Op 20os balancing takes

[mighty canopy]

20os is top 5% of players, obviously they know what they talking about

[lethal smelt]

If pros don't build thors, then how thors balance against other units in pro-level games is irrelevant.

[neat oriole]

thats the most braindead arguement ive ever heard thanks

[lethal smelt]

20 OS is in the top 20% of players

[lethal smelt]

OK let's assume the opposite.

According to your logic, Thors need to be buffed massively, as they are so UP that nobody makes them.

Then pro-level players will start to make them, but in the 95% of games played by regular players, every game will be about who can rush the most Thors.

[carmine cliff]

just make the thor a cheap titan, noobs will make it less and more usage with pros

shit, forgot abt veh movement

[neat oriole]

"lets buff the shit unit that noobs spam, so that good players can have use of them, but in the 95% of games played by noobs, everygame will be about who can make the now-nonshit unit"

WHAT AM I REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADING WHAT ARE U TRYING TO CONVEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY BROOOOOOOOOOOOOO

JUST BCZ NOOBS SPAM A DOGSHIT UNIT DOESNT MEAN ITS GOOD IN DOGSHIT TIER LOBBIES, they just havent discovered titans

[lethal smelt]

What is your current OS? I bet you're in a significantly higher percentile that you believe. OS 30 is 97th percentile. Suppose you had the same situation for every unit. You don't want to make a game that's only balanced for 3% of the player base.

[weak hatch]

I kinda do. >_>"

If you dont balance around the highest potential, then there will likely be a few highly exploitable things at the top level, else everything is watered down so newbs can't make a poor strategic decision when choosing what units to make.

[lethal smelt]

I agree if you buff units that are UP for noobs but balanced for pros. But we are talking about a unit that is OP for noobs and balanced for pros, so the same situation cannot arise.

[weak hatch]

It's also not bad to have some units that are only good in expert hands. Gives them a little bit of prestige

When talking about newbs, if they are dying to marauders, it's usually because they are greeding afus instead of applying pressure. (Or marauder player already far ahead on eco)

[neat oriole]

game being balanced for unskilled player is never a sensible thing, you dont balance a weapon to suit a noob, u make them learn it. only thing needing balance around the lesser skilled player base are the anti fun units like lolcannon,emp silo etc.

[warm radish]

the key is differential balancing, and limiting the efficiency differences / skill floors for various units for basic competency or exceptional value

[neat oriole]

how are u supposed to balance a game around people who dont understand the game? i keep seeing people with 0 skill keep talking abt balance even when the veterans have variety of opinions abt balancing and only some can point out what needs changing

[warm radish]

but some -very- loud people view balance as a tug of war rather than a holistic picture, and can't realise that the game exists for more than just them, nor that it's possible to fix some of the worse issues without affecting 0.5% percentile games much

[neat oriole]

says the one who keeps yapping abt his balance pack in every suggestion thread ever created

[lethal smelt]

Not unskilled players, skilled players who represent most of the player base. OS20 is a top 20% player, if they find Thors OP, that's a problem.

Imagine if all of the guns in Counter Strike were only usable by pro-level players. The game would not be much fun for regular players, so not many people would play, and the game would die. A similar thing would happen to BAR if the game is not fun for new and regular players.

[warm radish]

maybe if many people keep finding the same problems, there's perhaps merit in considering that?

[neat oriole]

gets annoying to listen to some random 20os player who acts like a know-all in every balance suggestion thread despite literally everyone 40+ disagreeing with u and telling u how ur achieving nothing by taking input from shit players

[warm radish]

except none of that is true. what is annoying is listening to the same few people pissing on everyone else constantly from some self appointed lofty heights

[lethal smelt]

Idiot what is your OS? As I said before, OS20 is a top 20% player, not a shit player. If the aim is to make BAR only appealing to the 290 players in the world with OS30, I think we should put Idiot in charge of balancing.

[neat oriole]

43

[warm radish]

my os is usually about 30 btw
not that it actually matters in most cases, it's semi arbitrary, relative to other subsets, and mostly a difficulty setting

[warm radish]

the whole point is that it isn't binary one-or-other though, you can completely balance units for different levels by pulling different balance levers

[zinc cosmos]

choice has a point here actually
how much is thor spam simply caused by the thor spam meta?

[warm radish]

I mean you could reduce anything to that, same with salamanders on pond maps, which were a storm in a teacup recently
and to some extent you can also dismiss everything as being solved by metas in time, eg brood wars has massive bugs that have meta solutions by now. doesn't make it good gameplay though.

[zinc cosmos]

that's not the point.
Could people using thors be caused in significant amount by people seeing thors used, ina self-perpetuating cycle of meta?
What if the noobs actually legitimately haven't discovered titans, and nobody builds them because nobody builds them.

[warm radish]

I'm pretty sure they know where the titan button is. there is some merit in essentially hivemind habit arguments yes, but similarly, people are also incentivised to do what wins, and they are very good at minmaxing routes to that
to a fault tbh, hence the fun being optimised out of the gameplay

my personal objection to the thor is that it does too many things, it has no one 'unit design'

[neat oriole]

if theyre incentivised to do what wins how come all them of have dogshit OS

[warm radish]

a bellcurve system obligates that, that's the entire design of it

[zinc cosmos]

they are very good at minmaxing routes to that
People are extremely dogshit at minmaxing routes to win, including myself. They try to do it a lot, doesn't mean they're any good at it.
It feels much better to think you've solved the game with thors than to keep digging.

[warm radish]

people can get stuck down certain paths of the tree analysis yes, people form their own personal subsets and playstyles and invest within that. however if someone comes along with something that consistently beats it, or they see pros doing and it seems even more OP, they won't just ignore that forever more

[neat oriole]

how are they gonna see pros doing it when all they do is play in their own max rated lobbies or in just strait only lobbies

[warm radish]

I'm pretty sure they have more exposure than purely those cases, and it's hardly a sealed ecosystem

[neat oriole]

its not rocketscience that titans beat thors and perform as one of the best t3 unit while thors fall off n become useless quite early on

[warm radish]

in some cases that is true, others, thors are very good at too many roles, and literally quick about it

[neat oriole]

what roles

[warm radish]

anti large, anti swarm/spam, anti porc, very fast, yet able to tank afus explosion and keep onto the next one. also has two different EMP weapons for some ungodly reason
it's like it was several unit ideas that just mashed into one

[neat oriole]

theyre not anti large, theyre not fast

[zinc cosmos]

I want a widget that tracks how many thors die with their emp missiles in noob lobbies

[warm radish]

they trade reasonably to well with most things, especially if the things are close together, and very especially if they can be EMP'd, as large things can't generally dodge the missiles
they are faster than the com which is the main tool for stopping them in many cases

the unit just seems to have an identity crisis going on really

[neat oriole]

thor being fast isnt a thing bcz 99% of the maps have slight terrain and theyre dogshit vs comm bcz theyre vehicle

[wild hornet]

I don’t think it’s fair to assume that noobs have discovered titans because a titan button exists.

For example, take Shivas which were considered by many mid-tier players to be complete garbage units as recently as 2-3 months ago.

Many threads were started asking for Shiva reworks, buffs, upgrades - but what came out of those threads was a lot of advice on how to use the unit properly situationally and micro-wise.

Fast forward to today and the diffusion of that game knowledge has resulted in people no longer complaining that Shivas are ass and instead recognizing and using them in their niche to great effect.

The same thing is yet to happen for Titan

[mighty canopy]

it's weird, most people yapping nonsense in all those balance threads we never see playing, must be nice forming opinions when not playing the real game

[lucid compass]

They not dogshit just drive better

[lucid compass]

ground fire to chain coms farther away makes thor a lot better vs coms. I'm not 100% sure but I believe you can splash to jammed cloaked coms

titan has 3000dam burst laser weapon (800dps), if you consider laser fall off it's more like 2000dmg. vs com it does 600 dmg a shot
basically the main laser is pretty bad at killing coms
the implosion blast has 465 range only

thor doesn't technically need so much spam as long as you blanket juno and remake radar bots with a butler. it's immune to spybot and abductor, and is faster at killing spam than titan
and plp forget that a titan costs the same as 1.41 thors

if you are metal rich you should make titan instead of thor but not always

[neat oriole]

u always make titan

[lucid compass]

with a direct hit thor kills com 2 shots, with splash in 5 hits i think

[mighty canopy]

Thors lose to almost everything but it should get nerfed coz strait lobster make 20 thors and send in mid

[lucid compass]

[neat oriole]

thors lose to shivas its not even close how badly they lose

[wild hornet]

Thor has to somewhat kite com to kill because of Thor range relative to dgun, whereas Titan can kill from a safe distance

[lucid compass]

have you used ground fire on thor before? it gives it at least another 80 range

[neat oriole]

ground fire makes it stationary

[wild hornet]

No but I should

[lucid compass]

use set target ground

[neat oriole]

i just will make a titan n win

[frosty vessel]

Thor move faster than com if u just have good vision of com it should be ez clap, sadly radar isnt good enough and the only other option is spam

[lucid compass]

wym radar + 1 pin pointer. you juno the jammers away

[frosty vessel]

radar so unreliable, sometimes it shows the silhouette of com sometimes not. It needs to show it way clearer

[lucid compass]

i think you need to get vision of a com before it shows you silhouette. you should be watching mainly for dots
thor is situational yeah. needs timing, team push and flat enough map. good for porc busting

[frosty vessel]

hm i didnt know that but ye dots not good enough

[neat oriole]

all this to kill comm only for a unit that dies to almost every t3 unit

[frosty vessel]

many sources of radar die to juno anyways

[lucid compass]

u bring scout plane or few butlers to remake radar bots

[frosty vessel]

You could of course build commando for that tho, at the same time u need to carpet bomb juno so no risk of jammer either

[lethal smelt]

Did you actually test Thors versus other T3 units? You might be surprised.

[neat oriole]

Ye it's dogshit vs shivas

Shiva Titan behemoth jugg demon vanguard catapult literally all better than thors

Only niche making it usable is emp resistance which doesn't matter anyway bcz since u don't kite with it, u won't have a sustained push and the aa will die. And then ur thors will to air

Had stardom making 500k metal in mostly thors and they all died trying to push

[lethal smelt]

IIRC, mano a mano, thors beat all of those apart from behe and shivas for equal metal, and thors beat shivas if they catch them off guard and emp them. In terms of usefulness, catapults and vanguards have very different roles, so are not directly comparable. Thors can choose whether or not to engage behemoths as they are over 3 times faster.

[lethal smelt]

Which match was that? Sounds epic. Must have been Isthmus lava?

[weak hatch]

Both kargs and Shiva beat Thors (for cost) if kiting and no emp missile

Thors beat Jug for cost in direct fight, and it takes like a solid minute+ for a jug to poke down a Thor from range

[mighty canopy]

Best thing to do would be come into lobby and show how good thors is, it's usually easiest way to get units changed

[lucid compass]

already did that with starlight jag

[mighty canopy]

you just reminder me of juzza trying to prove starlight were too op

[lucid compass]

i just crushed a game yesterday i had no business winning with it
was on starwatcher i think

[mighty canopy]

he tried it for a day, then never seen again 😦

[weak hatch]

Come ATG. ;D

[torpid tiger]

Thor are A tier imo , not broken unit not super weak unit, it’s a solid lategame unit

[wild hornet]

Ya I agree with that, and I think because of the higher HP pool and higher dmg it’s actually a bit more complicated to stop than marauders which is the other t3 unit being discussed currently in other threads.

I don’t think a slight nerf would hurt game balance significantly, it would probably lead to more titans which imo would make lower level Arm stronger (titans already made plenty at higher level)

I do see occasionally see Thors being game winning when other t3 fails, like a combined Thor Titan push when abductors stop Titans and Thors can tank liche bombing just long enough to pop an Afus stack

They’re also great initiators with EMP rocket

[torpid tiger]

Thors are the medium tanks of t3

A rushed Thor properly microed is scary af too , you shit on t2 pop ups and rattle snakes

[lethal smelt]

how early is a "rushed thor" anyway cuz i see it being very weak against commanders, assuming enemy has 5-8 coms and u invested so much into early thor that u don't have a lot of spam or whatever to assist the thor and not to mention youre essentially going all in coz if thor is dgunned the game is over on the spot

[torpid tiger]

Ye rush only good if enemy team on low coms

[lucid compass]

Need to get good at using juno and radars

Cliffs that block radar are pretty tough tho

If you had good early game and you think they are trying generic porc greed into afus you can make a few thors with sniper / starlight behind

[safe drum]

Thors should be buffed in a way they have more possibilities at high os
But keep balance at low os

[safe drum]

If that was the logic we would just make the game have 1 unit
So no mater how good or bad you are it's balanced

[wild hornet]

They’re already decent at high OS but not op - they have niches, those niches are admittedly narrower than titans or razorbacks and so they’re made less

The challenge is communicating to lower OS players how they are counterable and why some other units are better, when more than half the time Thors were game winning against them not because they’re simply better units at lower OS levels due to knowledge gap, but because the underlying reason they lost to Thors was because they were 6 Afus behind their opponent

[safe drum]

Take for example the beheamoth

The beheamoth is very slow
How do you use the beheamoth? Well you move it in a straight line at the enemy and hope you don't get d gunned

Consequently it's effectively at most skill levels is about even

If you graphed effectively in y axis and skill level in x axis it would look like a straight line

Now look at the Shiva
It's a unit that requires lots of micro and can be used to great effect if used properly but to great loss if not

Consequently it's graph looks like a upward trending line with a large slope

What we should try and do is balance units such that all units are like the shiva: a effectively graph that slopes upwards

And less like the beheamoth: a line that plateaus out quickly

The Thor imo is closer to the Shiva than the behemoth

The Thor has a emp that can be used for great effect

While also being slow enough to counter

The emp brings the skill ceiling upwards
So once the noobs learn to counter it with snipers then they also learn to use the emp

[safe drum]

Also
Where's the source for that data?

[lethal smelt]

We're already 50% there with ticks

[lethal smelt]

Replay data, for players who played at least one 8vs8 game during June 2024 we had:

#📜｜openskill message

[wild hornet]

If someone plays 90 games of BAR and are 50 OS and 10 people play 1 game of BAR each and are 16 OS, is the 89th percentile 16 OS or 50? Because id argue that 90% of the games of BAR played are at 50 OS and so the more meaningful stat is just that… 90% of the games are played at the 50 OS level, rather than that 90% of people have played the game once and are 16 OS

Think about it, if your measuring what average skill level is do you care more about the 100 games that are actually played, or do you care more about whether or not each game has a unique player?

[leaden vigil]

It’s really not that big of a disparity, look at players that have most games played this month, half of them are noobs.

Sorry for mobile I’m out rn

[wild hornet]

A good analogy is the average time it takes to complete a marathon.

That average is measured for pro athletes based on all marathons. If you run multiple marathons you contribute to the average statistic multiple times.

If you instead just took the most recent marathon result of each pro marathon runner, you might not get that all that different of a result but you’re not measuring the same thing as if you include all the runs that person has done.

[lethal smelt]

We were talking about what the skill level of players is, some people above seemed to think 20 OS players are terrible, so I pointed out that they are better than 80% of players who played in June.

Interesting idea, this is a count of games by average skill in the game. So 91% of games have an average skill level of 25% or lower. Roughly in line with player ranking percentiles. You are correct that higher-ranked players probably play more, but there aren't that many of them to begin with,

[wild hornet]

I intuitively think SadPanda is right (that it won’t make much of a difference either way you measure it) but I’m curious

I think The table basically confirms that?

[lethal smelt]

Congrats to g0af and Idiot, both over 300!

[wild hornet]

Ty It takes real skill to play this much BAR and not get fired

[lethal smelt]

Yeah, number of games played is more about enthusiasm than skill; intuitively, if people get better as they play more, you'd expect higher OS when weighted by total games played, however this is just for game in June, so the enthusiasm factor of new players learning the game probably outweighs that.

On the other hand, pro-level games I've watched tend to finish relatively quickly, whereas regular games on ATG and particularly Isthmus frequently drag on to the late T3 stage due to less aggression. So a better metric of how the game is actually played would be to weight by game time, not game count.

[lethal smelt]

Just be sure to mute the game sound when on Zoom calls

[wild hornet]

I’m mostly surprised by the fact that >60% of games played have an avg. skill level below 15

I guess there are a lot of passworded lobbies that get filtered out in the lobby list that are a group of friends who play together and don’t fw the broader competitive scene much

[wild hornet]

Yes and no - it’s hard to say that (for example) Randy beating me in 5 minutes in a 1v1 is less representative of how the game is played than if he somehow magically took 30 minutes to do it

[lethal smelt]

Depends on what you're looking at. If you're looking at unit balance, games played would make more sense, If you're looking at understanding the customers playing the game and how to make them happier, game time is the measure, so a 1 hour 8v8 would be worth 96 of you and Randy's 1v1 for 5 minutes.

[lethal smelt]

I've included 8vs8 matches from June, I'm guessing private rooms are mostly smaller groups of friends? Many games seem to have max OS 25 or 30 limits, so you'd expect average skill <15 in those. All welcome lobbies also typically have a bunch of noobs, several players around 20 OS, and maybe 1 or 2 over 30.

[leaden vigil]

why? it's a common complaint that you have 7-10 noob lobbies for every high os one, so logically there are more games being played at a low level

[old kayak]

So your reason for Thors being bad is it cant be spammed with 500k metal? How many games has that per day?

Most games you maybe see a few Thors that rolls over enemy team if used correctly.

Biggest threat is dgun.

[zinc cosmos]

I'm going to take a wild guess that passworded lobbies don't have a thor problem

[wild hornet]

Everything I experience is now irrelevant amidst a sea of 15 os lobbies

[safe drum]

I love how asking for the source has now become a in depth discussion of statistics

[lethal smelt]

You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes

[safe drum]

As a rule of thumb don't simplify statistics because after the third simplification it becomes misleading

[wild hornet]

Bar has good stats people I’ve noticed

[safe drum]

I would be willing to bet if you took the os of every unique player who played bar this month then graphed out their os you would see that the average person from my dataset and your dataset don't match up at all

From games I play I see that 20os is average

And nowhere near top 20%
And I'm a 16os man who regularly plays noob lobbies

[lethal smelt]

In a typical noob game, the opposing team only has 3-4 players who are actually good enough to dgun things, I've lost count of the number of times a noob teammate had a commander near a thor threatening his base, and either ran away, or just stood there, uncloaked, for the 2 thors to 1 shot, blowing up the metal makers and hence the afus. I've also had games where a teammate was frantically pinging my commander, which was waiting in case of thor attack, but I had no idea as I was concentrating on the marauders in my base on the other side of the map. This would have been fine for a bememoth appraoching, but when you make a game ending unit 3* faster than a behemoth, you have a proble.

A unit that can only be countered by dgun is not a great idea, particularly when that unit is faster than commanders. A speed nerf to make thors as fast as juggernauts would go a long way to making them balanced.

[lethal smelt]

That was my first percentile table. 16OS is just above average.

[safe drum]

Have you heard of snipers?

[safe drum]

I'm gonna make a unsubstantiated claim here and say this data is misleading

What is the data actually mesuring(don't say average)
Like how is it collected

[lethal smelt]

Why? It's from replays data. By design, match rating starts at 17, so you'd expect teh average to be about 17.

[safe drum]

Notice how I said misleading and not false

[lethal smelt]

Why is it misleading?

[old kayak]

What i mean is Thors mobility which is pretty bad makes it a big dgun victim if used incorrectly.

If you use both Thor and Titan correctly you wont get dgunned. Its still the biggest threat for both.

Titan is weak vs emp and Thor vs air.

Thor recently got its gun nerfed and no longer can insta-shoot in a completely different direction in between bursts.

[safe drum]

Because you just show a table without any explanation how it is gathered

[wild hornet]

It scrapes public games posted on the BAR website

[safe drum]

Does it check for unique names?

[wild hornet]

Ya it matches playerID rather than username so people that change names don’t show up multiple times

[safe drum]

Ok
That means that pros who play more often are underreported while noobs which there are many of and play less are over represented

If I hop into a random game I only care about the what the average os in that specific game will be
If you allow repeated users to be looked at multiple times it would show a arguably more acurate picture

[wild hornet]

That’s what I thought too but it turns out not to make much of a difference

[safe drum]

I disagree
Imo it does

Average Pro might play 3-4x more often than average noob

While top noob(top in games played) and top pro are the same number(because there's a physical limit on how many games you can play)

Looking at the top players in games played doesn't show nearly the full picture and is misleading

This is all just a theory tho I might very well be wrong
Only way to tell is to find data that uses playtime/games played

[lethal smelt]

As discussed above, you are correct taht pros tend ot play more games, however there are so few pros around, that this doesn't skew things much:

[lethal smelt]

My data don't care about your feelings 😜

[lethal smelt]

Noob lobbies will always be dominated by unskilled resource dump units you can attackmove, currently the thor is the best deal in terms of cost and effectiveness, if the thor is nerfed they'll just make behemoths instead.
Every RTS is like this, in broodwar noobs make carriers/battlecruisers/don't play zerg, in sc2 you make carrier/battlecruiser/broodlord.
It's just easier to manage a big fuck you unit that requires low micro, the Thor fits that criteria quite well, doesn't make it overpowered.

[ripe idol]

i think that people need to focus the balance discussion on =how units play accross a plethora of maps regularly to see how units play out with different tech timings, economy, and gameplay builds

[safe drum]

The keen eye among you might be able to notice that 20os and onwards makes 28% of the games played
That's a 40% difference

Now I don't know about you but 40% is a fairly large martain

So incase you where wondering
Yes it does make a difference

If the current noob player base is bad at counteracting thors they should learn to counteract thors
This is much more fun and satisfying than for example complaining about the game until they are nerfed

[ripe idol]

i would question the games where thor is supposedly what decides the game because it is so op. it seems to be that there a lot more wincons that have to be passed up before somebody has the eco for a gantry and a thor. that essentially means you let a team greed without any pressure or lost a significant part of the map. what lobbies are thors so oppressive in?

[safe drum]

Yea
Thors don't win games
The 6 fusions behind it does

[lucid compass]

With even eco no t3 push is gonna end the game
Travel distance just too much on many maps

That's why even though thor is quite strong on flat maps and a moderately porcing enemy, you could say it serves a healthy role as a win condition for a winning game.

[warm radish]

even assuming that premise is valid though, does core have a similar efficiency win condition unit? behemoth can take so long to get anywhere that a lolcannon could have been built before it shows up at the front, and juggs are a thread in themselves

games should be endable without having to resort to superweapons, certainly, but the Thor just has too much to it, too many attributes and abilities. if I were designing a new unit from scratch to fill that sort of role, I'd expect anything remotely like the Thor to be laughed off of the drawing board

[lucid compass]

that is the funny argument. imagine thor being proposed today, indeed
cor has shiva / punchier demon than razor ig to break open winning games

[lethal smelt]

ATG and Isthmus both have techer positions that greed without pressure.

[lethal smelt]

Not really, thors are fast for late T3 units, 50% faster than Juggernauts, and 3* faster than behemoths

[bronze haven]

I basically never make thors, I really don't think they're all that great. I could see them being pretty strong in low lvl lobbies though given speed and Amove potential

[old kayak]

How is the emp not great? It has huge aoe and 100% edge, doing 80k emp dmg, it stuns a titan but with 1 sec left.

If you engage titan from any direction with another unit you get the desired 12 sec stun on titan from a single emp rocket.

See 3 titans coming? Engage with 10 shuris hitting each titan once and the emp rocket stuns all 3 titans with 12 secs. Totally op imo. And require close to no micro to achieve.

[lethal smelt]

it's also not hard to be capable of dodging 1 single thor missle with 3 titans

[old kayak]

I havent timed the emp rocket but its pretty quick at turning towards target. Maybe 5 secs to impact. The 100% edge makes it incredibly strong.

[lethal smelt]

by the time u hear the emp missle u have infinite time to react

[north basalt]

And you can generally see when they're coming forward to launch, and pausing to fire them

[old kayak]

I think it shares sound with some other rocket. Tacnuke?

[lethal smelt]

also the further titan is from the thor the longer it takes for the missle to land (? dunno) anyways titans will always be at max range against thors ideally

thor emp only good if u abuse the widget op

[old kayak]

Ya im just mentioning the strength of emp rocket, its a strong reason to get a thor, shuts down pulsars (2-3 if close to each other) for example

[north basalt]

I think that's good though, right? Tons of games have simple A-Move newb units, like Battlecruisiers and Carriers from BW. I feel like thors fall into the same category. As players improve they realize they have to tools to deal with them, but when they're new the units are seen as oppressive

[lethal smelt]

yeah they are good against stationary targets

[old kayak]

If you have say 3 thors and rightclick drag you are basically emp nuking a huge area thats undodgeable, that is imo insane strength.

[mighty canopy]

there is audio queue when thor lauch missile

[safe drum]

beheamoths and jugs arent very good benchmarks
plus they have a slow turnrate

they are 8 faster than titans

beheamoth is literaly the slowst unit

[junior cedar]

Have you tried running a demon into a T2 Arm defence (annihilator) ? At Close range it is nearly a one shot....

Let's try a Thor against 2 or 3 or even 4 bullwarks... EMP Missile for no damage and if no EMP missile is present... Just fucking drive through them.

[carmine cliff]

That's a skill issue on the part of bulwarks, talk about bulwark buff instead

[bronze haven]

Yep agreeed

[ripe idol]

That just goes back to an earlier point that your eco/techer is getting diffed hard, so they need to improve at the game? Also, straits is not the rest of the game and making balance decisions around 2 maps is extremely cooked. Literally any unit is oppressive if your team doesn't bother to make any units and actually play the game. This just sounds like a "I play only two maps where techers can greed for free from minute one" and a "city sim eco players are boring to play with/against," issue, not a "thor being more expensive would change greeding and not having any counters online."

[junior cedar]

It has nothing to do with Thor OP, I guess but it is related to the Thor:
But it's icon is not really in line with other T3 units. It does not have 3 squares at the bottom nor has it a picture.

Any thoughts?

[lethal smelt]

Thors seem to be in the unique position of being very difficult to defend against for regular players, and very easy to defend against for pros. IMHO, the best solution is to delete the unit!

[old kayak]

Titan isnt much different, its the same counter unit, Pulsar. Difference being Titan cant stun Pulsar, Thor can.

[lethal smelt]

I think slightly buffing the singletarget dmg, nerfing the aoe dmg and nerfing the emp missile would be a good start

[warm radish]

coughbalancepackcough

[lethal smelt]

Also, is it a good idea to have such a fast unit be EMP immune? It's 50% faster than the next-fastest EMP immune unit, which happens to be the most expensive unit in the game. Seems like the Thor is not paying the EMP immunity tax. I think remiving the EMP missiles entirely would be best, as they counter the main counter to large T3 units, i.e. static defences.

[neat oriole]

Should nerf ticks grunts pawns and mines aswell since they're too good at owning noobs

Shud nerf every unit that wins in 16os games aswell, bcz it makes absolute sense that it's the unit being op, not the players being terrible at dealing with said unit

GigaOmegaBrain balancing takes here holy shit keep it up

[lethal smelt]

If the players are dealing with all other units apart from one or two well, it's the unit, not the players.

[neat oriole]

Who the fuck is dealing with Shiva Titan lolcannon better than thor

[ripe idol]

theres no argument beyond "im bad/my team is bad" really being presented as a reason for a thor change. the "oh it does too much-" okay, we add another t3 unit?? You are just going to get eco checked with a titan next. you could make the exact same argument about rushing a bull or t2 units because "omg they could tech for free and get units" ....thats how the game works, unless im missing something

[lethal smelt]

Most players deal better with shivas that thors - just spam ticks at them and they self-destruct.

Nobody thinks bulls or titans are OP, but lots of people think thors are OP, hence the discussion.

There are basic game design reasons why thors are OP [EMP immune, fastest late T3 unit, greatest AOE in the game, Counters static defences and slow units, which are the main things that counter it].

You could make another thread "nerf Titans, buff Thors" and see what the reaction is.

[warm radish]

I'd actually be fine with a thor buff - as long as it became one unit, rather than three mashed into one
'high tech T3 tzar' would be fine for example

I'm unsure how much of the 'thor OP' is 'I can't stop it' vs 'it breaks the design conventions for things that should stop it', people from both views use 'OP' the same way

[lethal smelt]

Not if the shiva player has a mouse and presses hold fire while making some grunts or sumos to support, shivas see far more plays than thors, infact the last game i played i was just making shivas on repeat fighting razors and thors + ticks with bad micro, but it didn't matter cause shiva is just a strong unit

[warm radish]

I have a fundamental issue with units needing to be told not to shoot in order to not be a flaming liability

it can kind of work for 1 unit a lab, eg tzar, fatboy, etc, but T3 has catapult already. Core have a power gap late T2 and shiva is the first affordable T3 they can get, it should be a competent 'not dying' unit rather than if anything making the problem worse
I'm highly aware there are ways to try to offset the inherent 'artificial stupidity' of the shiva, yes, but my point is -you shouldn't need to-, the unit shouldn't be that hazardous

[bronze haven]

Ya funny thing is Cata is another unit you should always have on hold fire xd

[warm radish]

catapult I'm actually fine with being a micro unit, it's basically designed for it, and the high reload & alpha makes it much less onerous to do so with. that is the 'one unit a lab' budget gone though, and the entry level T3 unit should definitely not be one such

[north basalt]

With no rotato recently I've been in ATG, and even in ATG I see more Shivas than Thors, lol

[ripe idol]

1. Balance is not a democracy of random people thinking something is op. Those people could be unskilled and not handling a unit correctly. It is best to listen to the higher skilled playerbase because they are the people that actually play the game at a high level and will use things effectively.

None of these things demonstrate why thor is op compared to other units. Its an expensive t3 unit. It has perks. You keep dodging the key point which is that all things being equal, you should have your own t3/large t2 def/army to counter t3 by the time a player has a thor.

[north basalt]

I don't even think shivas are a liability, just that people overuse fight instead of move so they fuck themselves with targeting priority. Very few units should be issued fight commands, and Shivas are def not one of them, as soon as you strip target priority shit gets bad quick.

[warm radish]

partly. 'OP' can also be used for 'unfun' or 'breaking convention' and that is also perfectly valid feedback that is not OS gated in any way

[warm radish]

even without fight command, shivas will blast themselves, but fight -does- make it a lot worse yes. partly an issue of BAR itself not explaining what fight actually does internally, to some extent

[lethal smelt]

Well, late game, you'd expect to see about 6* more shivas than thors given their cost. Mid-game, you'd expect to see a lot more shivas than thors as players can't afford thors yet🤔

[lethal smelt]

Depends whom you want the game to appeal to - most players, or only hardcore pros. If appealing only to the latter, the game is likely to die out, as indeed happened twice before IIRC

[north basalt]

I only time I see thors called op is in this thread.

[ripe idol]

have you considered acquiring your own thor? im sure that you have been abusing this unit to get op high os

[north basalt]

Even when I spec low OS games, or play in mixed lobbies, I don't see/hear Thors being op. They're just another T3 unit. I would put a ton of units in front of them for balance concerns.

[ripe idol]

yes for instance ticks op

[warm radish]

ticks broken units but that's a thesis, and another topic

[old kayak]

Make a poll how many knows about thor having a manual emp launch button 😂

[lethal smelt]

ye same tbh i usually fight thors with shivas

[bronze haven]

So in conclusion Thor not OP. Ty all for figuring it out

[north basalt]

Nailed it, thread can be closed.

[neat oriole]

Tfw every ffa player knows titans are the best t3 unit in the game

Shivas r one of the hardest t3 to deal with just come play Rosetta with us

But when ur hardstck playing strait where the land is just a choke covered by a cerberus on each side, what unit perspective are u gonna have

[old kayak]

its the only unit who has a special ability (except for firemodes) @lethal smelt

[lethal smelt]

I don't know why all you pros who say thors are so bad that you never build them care if it gets nerfed, as it wont affect you anyway. It's only worth getting feedback from people who actually use the unit!

[lethal smelt]

Only until the forthcoming jugbuff, which will restore the rightful king of units!

[lethal smelt]

Yep, should be removed, its weird that a 9k unit gets a fantastic special ability, but the Juggernaut has to make do with a crappy rocket.

[old kayak]

titan/shivas rocket aint that much better, shivas especially

[torpid tiger]

Juggernaut special ability is cortex nuke self d explosion

[old kayak]

that is very true, but you still need to get it into position

[old kayak]

i would buy Thors just for the emp alone. Emp all enemy frontline and walk straight in without any contest

[north basalt]

These compete with emp launchers, which have absurd range and also defend against lol cannons

[old kayak]

true true, but you have quite a rocket cost difference, say you want insta stun on 3 locations with emp launcher, this would require multiple emp launchers and 500/15000 per rocket, you pay 100/5000 on Thor, plus you get a stronk attack for the price too.

if emp is removed on Thor i would most likely buy Titans for sure, but its still weird one single unit in the game has a special ability on 'D'. And most likely many dont know about it or forgets.

Propose a change that it has an automatic emp launcher but weaker? This makes even a beginner able to use emp. It could act like Titan/Juggs missile. Cool or just useless?

[lethal smelt]

Yes, the great ability that means you cant support it with any other units

[old kayak]

even if you support jugg it gets damaged, at some point it blows anyway

[lethal smelt]

As soon as the Juggernaut gets within range of the enemy defences, you know its gonna go boom sooner on later and you'd be foolish to support it with your shivas and karganeths

[old kayak]

support it with spam, get jugg into position for selfD, iirc the selfD is much larger and also required to not leave a big chunk of metal on the ground

[ripe idol]

because players that understand balance in games recognize that making gameplay balance decisions based off of people who are bad/play two maps is bad for the game. nobody is posting replays showing how op thor is, its just "i feel its op." you guys are ignoring key parts of the game, like a thor costing an afus. if the enemy team can afford to throw an afus at you and you cant respond with your own, you got outscaled and you should lose unless you massively outplay or the other team messes up.

[carmine cliff]

On Strait shivas are still op, at least from my pov

[lethal smelt]

I love shivas, what strategies do you use with them?

[wild hornet]

On the topic of unfun units, the Turtle is so frigging unfun

[neat ridge]

fantastic to pressure from sea, opening a new front to force eco to respond, while you can duck back into the water whenever the tick spam etc comes your way

works best to pressure up geo sea beach as you cant get flanked, can work anywhere else

[ripe idol]

turtles are actually a secret op way to throw games and feed without looking like you are doing so, they just dont want people to know it 😮

[north basalt]

Make Shivas -> Run at enemy's face. I'm pretty my last Rosetta was literally all 4 techers going Shiva

[neat oriole]

Shivas are basically t3 thugs and only decent counters are all on t2 lab, but most ppl just see t3 enemy and make their own t3 to throw the game

[lethal smelt]

Decent counters are the usual suspects i.e. snipers and starlights?

[neat oriole]

Spybot

[limber pewter]

Shivas just need gruntspam to work, when they have it they are the best slow push early T3 option currently

Thor is good but in most cases you want to build Titans instead once you reach this level of eco

Which means that even if we nerf Thors, "because it seems op in low rating lobbies" the next thing we will have to need is Titan

It's not that balance is necessarily pro biased, it's just that it's a bit of a failed argument if the answer to 20os question why Thor so good is just one click away from it

It's not like someone has to become a scholar of the intricacies of BAR to realise it

Just click the button next to Thor and see what happens

It's not like the unit requires much more pro micro either, I would argue it's actually more noob friendly to control

[lethal smelt]

Wait and see with titans, nobody is complaining about those at the moment. Thors are much more effective against spam and big groups of units due to their huge AOE damage, plus they get EMP immunity and EMP missiles. If anythin, titans should get EMP immunity.

[warm radish]

I really do think a lot of the OP issue stems from Thors breaking conventions for how a large tank should be counterable, rather than it being numerically overstatted

[wild hornet]

I have a theory that the reason thors outperform for noobs is that they chain shoot, so attack moving does plenty of damage including to rear units whereas no other t3 has chain feature so attack moving just kills tics. I think other people have said that they perform well when attack moving and that's probably part of it

[lethal smelt]

You mean fight command? Yes, thors are relatively good if you just click on the enemy base and go and make a cup of coffee. If you do the same with shivas, you'll end up with a bunch of dead shivas

[lucid compass]

did the thor chain damage get changed ever?
i recall in the past, it would obliterate a bunch of starlights in one shot by chaining. seeming like doing 3k actual dmg to every one of them.

[warm radish]

I'd assume most of that would stem from the chain reaction rather than thor weapon itself, every hop does less damage - but it does fire iirc 10 shots at once, each of which hop up to 5 times

[lucid compass]

Do the hops each do 100% of their main dmg do you know?

[warm radish]

no, each drops to 25% main spark damage (300 a spark)

                    spark_maxunits = "5",
                    spark_range = "125",```

[carmine cliff]

Everything that is not raiding

[limber pewter]

Monospam shivas from T3 lab on fight command and have like 3 T1 labs spamming grunt and some aa, rez

Grunt to make sure you don't get shiva killing eachother due to ticks + as sniper/tachyon fodder

And you have one of the strongest late game pushes possible

If someone abuses sniper/starlight vs it, throw in a catapult or two

[carmine cliff]

shivas are so good, i might as well rename myself Shiva if I actually win something with them

[warm radish]

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/blob/6119a89595bc23edd8eb783fdbab12ab17bcfce2/luarules/gadgets/unit_lightning_splash_dmg.lua this is the code responsible

[lethal smelt]

Yes, in one game I had 15 starlights that obliterated all in their path, a thor got them with one shot and they all chain exploded!

I believe the chainign was nerfed a while back?

[lucid compass]

heard there was a bug with thor chaining that got fixed

[edgy rock]

Insta re-targeting? Or somthing like that

[warm radish]

chaining (as it was a burst) used to be able to shoot the remaining shots in any direction, I fixed that a while back when engine allowed it
same bug as razorbacks being laser disco balls
it did not change anything about the damage that the shots did

[lethal smelt]

Do lightning chains automatically target enemy units, with no friendly fire, or do they chain to friendly units too?

[warm radish]

so basically, thor does 3000 a shot, plus up to 3,000 more (750 * 4) if chaining allows it

[lucid compass]

so normally lightning chain can go ABA or ABC right?
i get insta-retargeting for a razorback would lead to disco ball, but how does that work for lightning?

[warm radish]

because the initial shots were still burst, the hopping not relevant to that mechanic
it would fire first shot forwards, then the other 9 could go anywhere around it - then do the hopping

[lucid compass]

or is it the thor's main weapon
10 shot burst that disco balls, eh?

ahhh that must have been it. now the refiring is limited by turret direction?
feels like thors are less crazy aoe per shot now

or does it just drop the remaining sparks if the main target dies
that would severely drop it's dps if it attacks a low hp target
not only do you overkill the main target but you lose most of your chain dmg

[warm radish]

first is old broken burst mechanic, forced to retarget behind in this case

[warm radish]

no, they spawn new spark as soon as old spark is used, if there's something to jump it to
this is slowdown of mechanic. each new initial spark (up to 10) has a burst delay, so you have 10 chains of 5 hops each time, basically, with no double damage/overkill attempted if first target died

it's hitscan damage on crack basically, magical stuff

[warm radish]

the only time the remaining burst won't fire is if there's nothing now in range / correct turret angle for the chain to start at, otherwise the remaining burst will retarget anything valid

[lucid compass]

so each main spark and it's chains are processed by one by one
each main spark selects a target that is currently alive within the turret cone

do the spark chains themselves have significant aoe?

[warm radish]

48 I think, assuming they inherit parent def fully

or 0, possibly, and only the 'true' burst shots (eg *10 a volley) has the AoE. looks like subsparks don't inherit the def, and are essentially single unit damage only

[warm radish]

so in short the real AoE depends how close units are together, and how many hops it can pull off

[lucid compass]

hmm testing ground fire deals 750 dmg exactly to 2 demons nearby

[warm radish]

sounds like only one hop, watch on 0.1 speed and try with bulls or something with less space between them

it -looks- like the code allows for ABABA chaining, but I may be misreading

ideal unit to test is probably tick, but set to 100000 health

[warm radish]

is the 'nearby' definitely within 24 (eg 48/2) of the initial target point?

[lucid compass]

they probably were more than 24 away

too late here.

[warm radish]

interesting, that was ground fire, the shot arcs right upwards (ouch) and zaps for 75 a hop

potentially, LightningCannon might also flat out ignore defined AoE. doing a quick test

aoe is accounted for, it's just such a small amount, and initial burst shot only, it makes basically no difference. not even sure it affects massed ticks

[junior cedar]

the real question is:
does the Thor shoot or is the E-toy of the Demon just turned to 11?

looking at THE widget 😄

[lethal smelt]

So the effective AOE of the thor's weapon is about 3* that of a tactical nuke?

[warm radish]

in extreme cases it looks like it could have quite a wander, but would need a lot of valid targets in the right place

[lethal smelt]

It often does, as it's shooting against a ball of T2 units or spam. Thors are way more effective against a ball of tanks than titans or sometimes even juggernauts.

[warm radish]

the caveat though is that the maximum is limited to 6,000 total damage, 3,000 of which has to be in range of main cannon. still nothing to be sneezed at though. tacnuke is 4,000 damage at core, for comparision, with 380 AoE and 0.55 edge

[ripe idol]

thor is op

[lucid compass]

it only will chain dmg units that are within 125 distance of the main hits right?

[warm radish]

unclear, I can't see where subspark range hops are handled specifically

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/blob/6119a89595bc23edd8eb783fdbab12ab17bcfce2/luarules/gadgets/unit_lightning_splash_dmg.lua#L125
relevant code

although line 199 suggests possibly not?

hard to read dead code, will have to test with some debugs in it. does look like ABABA targetting is explicitly prevented though, at least for next 3 frames

[lucid compass]

for i=1, #nearUnits do, this justloops over near units?
yeah seems like it just will try and hit the first 5 legal targets within spark range (125)

[warm radish]

think so yes, so max is probably range + 125
doing like 3 things at once atm so can't look into it in detail sorry

[lucid compass]

makes it quite good at ground firing coms. for other units not so amazing
10 hits of 300 plus 10 lightning chains of 75 dmg each which can it up to 4 targets within 125 range of the main hits
simplified, 3000 damage + 750 chain to 4 targets within 125 range, but can redistribute the dmg if the main target dies

[warm radish]

that's 125 from point of impact of each burst though - which isn't always the same place. it will retarget bursts for free as long as it's within turret arc

[lucid compass]

how can you find turret arc of a unit?

[junior cedar]

3, only?
Is deadeye in it 😉?

[warm radish]

actual splash pattern is something like that, original impact points in orange, possible outside in red

[lucid compass]

yeh
suprising thing was that the splash was only 25% of the main dmg

[warm radish]

per hop
so each subspark can do 75 damage each, main spark does 300

[lucid compass]

yeah but if you compare it to a 125 aoe tank like tzar
it's anologous to splashing units in the 125 radius (4 of them) for 25%

[warm radish]

well, there's no edge effectiveness, so it always does full subspark damage to anything in hop range

[lucid compass]

it has the spark multiplier (25%), aoe has the edge effectiveness + distnace from center

[warm radish]

thor kind of throws WYSIWYG out the window though, so much unit specific stuff. WYSIWTF is more like it

[old kayak]

What does that stand for?

[warm radish]

what you see is what you get, the main unit design principle in theory

[old kayak]

Is it the emp rocket that isnt seen then

[warm radish]

and side sponsons, and weird arc/splash shaping

[old kayak]

The side emp lasers are seen but not necessarily useful?

[warm radish]

about 10 degrees allowed retargetting for thor
but there's actually a possible bug here, waiting on BAR to start so I can test & fix

[warm radish]

tl:dr; ideally you should be able to shoot a unit at ground once and know what it does
and similarly units should follow conventions for things that should counter them

18 degrees I think - that explains something if so
tag limiting the refire arc was on a subweapon, so it was defaulting to standard 18, which was close enough the issue was missed

I'll fix it but keep 18 degrees as the allowed variance, as it seems reasonable, will just be a code change rather than balance

[safe drum]

balancing the game around noobs incentavises being a noob

just get gud

[lucid compass]

So a commander takes 5 shots to kill with spark dmg (ground fire)
2 shots to kill with a direct hit

[warm radish]

the game does not just exist at the 99th balance percentile

[north basalt]

To be fair Sun_Tzu does have a point. We almost never see Thors, so nerfing them doesn't really change game balance that much, but it seems silly to nerf a unit that isn't overpowered.

[lucid compass]

can we set up some scenarios see how the thor does? vs t2 armies etc

[ripe idol]

we should buff shiva because then

[lucid compass]

1 Thor loses by 1 shot to 10 starlights, if it hits both of it's emp launchers
but the starlights don't scale vs 2+ thors cause they clump and can't fire past each other

starlights are wierd they want to charge the thor
10 starlights in the right place is pretty much one of the ideal t2 army setups

[north basalt]

I mean, that'd be the timing though. If you're spamming T2 and they're spamming T3, something else has gone wrong

Kinda like how I'm sure 5 thors beat X Shivas in metal cost. But in an actual game the shivas are in the enemy base by the time the first thor comes out

[ripe idol]

tbf id expect a thor player to realize he should not rush at a starlight wall

[lucid compass]

with a bit of walking forward (that makes the emp missiles not direct hit), starlights win with 4 left
usually thors used as frontline for starlight/sniper, or you mass a few for the blanket emp

[ripe idol]

if im remembering correctly that means that thor trades about evenly with starlights then right per metal spent right? also omg volshok what was that

[lucid compass]

well that's in the best case, with 1 thor only, and both emp launchers land. you have to estimate total cost not metal
does demon actualy beat shiva in small numbers? per cost

[north basalt]

Wrong channel, that was a "rotato". For the smile vs Helo grduge match. The APEs vs the rotatoes

[lucid compass]

snipers are pretty good against thors, but snipers have <750 hp so the spark damage one shots them
the thor user can technically aim ground to snipe snipers at +125 range out

[north basalt]

The more I see snipers, the less I think them. The 500 hp is just brutal.

[ripe idol]

so thors are in fact counterable from t2 lab you just need to have the eco to make the units? thats what im seeing here.

[lucid compass]

well, single thors are...
i mean medium tanks with a concave will beat just about any t3 unit but the issue is splash damage and attrition (fight + repair)

[ripe idol]

i would hope that by the time two thors are out your team was making their own stuff lol

[warm radish]

I'd rather make it better at one role, rather than questionably good at many

[lucid compass]

i d/k why the starlight gets free pass on not paying energy dues in its base cost
then you have the sniper which is decent unit, you pay 20k energy and for every shot

scariest thing is 4 thors or so, emp all your porc and long rnage
hopefully by that time you have 2 thors + anti heavy units

[ripe idol]

yeah idk doesnt seem that op

[lucid compass]

yeh but i mean they have to commit. if they go in and it doesn't work its gg
if you have 2 thors + snipers in the back you should bea ble to just back up, as the anti sniper units won't be able to keep up

[ripe idol]

yeah if you have that much invested in army the other team bears responsibility for why they dont have stuff

[lucid compass]

yeh. it's just the only t3 unit where pulsar spam is merely okay, and bulwarks are crap
however scorpion spam that's spaced out is really good vs unsupported thors
the thors take 2 shots to kill scoprions
if they just charge in you lose front but you can rez thors

against thors I imagine you just don't get too attached to your front base, back up with snipers, spam t2 popups, wait for team t3 reinforcements or shivas

[north basalt]

I know it'd be broken af, but giving bulwarks emp resistence would be amazing

[lucid compass]

could give them like 20% or something iuno

[weak hatch]

If they can get thors, they can probably get Vanguards, which kinda invalidates large numbers of snipers and Starlights

[weak hatch]

Shivas win for cost if kiting, iirc

[ripe idol]

"if the enemy team can afford t3, you will probably lose"

[weak hatch]

Basically. That's the point of t3, right? To beat t2 armies and win the game?

[ripe idol]

yes the opinion of some is that that the thor is op

[lethal smelt]

More importantly, I've noticed that often, a dgun doesn't kill a thor, I've lost my commander several times like this when I hit the thor at close to maximum dgun range, but it didn't die. I'm pretty sure thors are the only unit to get this superpower, what's going on?

[lethal smelt]

Let's make thors difficult to use like shivas then, will be no problem for pros, but stop them being OP for normal players. Thors should also do massive friendly fire if left unattended in the presence of ticks.

[warm radish]

the key point is 'close to maximum range', the dgun doesn't quite instant kill anything on hit
if you did same thing with a behemoth, you'd have the same problem. if you only hit it with end frames of dgun then it won't do enough damage to remove all of the hitpoints

[north basalt]

I still don't think shivas are that difficult to use

[lethal smelt]

I've never noticed this against juggernauts or behemoths, though, is that just a coincidence?

[warm radish]

I imagine you dgun thors more often than you do behemoths
it's possible there's something interesting about thors and their nature re dguns, sure, but nothing I'm aware of

[neat ridge]

the only hard part of shivas is choosing the right time to use them, generally the unit itself has very simple microo

[analog urchin]

This happens with behemoths too for sure never personally encountered against Thor though

[wild hornet]

@warm radish Apologies in advance for the long winded post, but could you make it more clear for me please whether you actually mean specifically this (“the game does not just exist at the 99th balance percentile”), or if it’s mainly rhetoric/a turn of phrase?

Because it seems to me that when you are asked (or forced, lol) to defend your positions against objections from high OS rotation players, the line seems to be “20 OS is top 20 percentile, the game needs to be balanced for the masses”.

And in this forum the tune is “don’t balance exclusively for the 1%”.

And those two things are maybe quite different?! Or maybe (probably) I’m just misunderstanding..

it’s entirely legitimate to me to balance the game around unit interactions that happen at the top tier 1% of gameplay - it’s not like this is a massive game where top tier means a godlike one in a million eSports pro, like in SC2. And if you don’t balance for the top 1%, those player will abuse exploitable balance.

There are no pros in this BAR afaik (we do have ex-pros from other games though admittedly), those who have >40 OS (or whatever 1% really is) vary wildly in skill level within that subset. Plenty of people have made it there after playing 3 months. Some, like me took a year. Point being while it may (or may not) take actual skill to reach the top 1% of the player base, the reality is these are just normal people who are either more dedicated to BAR, or have really good RTS game sense.

When you say you’re not only balancing for the 99% or the 80%, what does that actually mean in practice? The difference to me is, if you’re balancing for the 99% then you’re removing arguably “stupid” mechanics (like how the Cor dgun is just shitter), and if you’re balancing for the 80% you’re making the game explicitly noob friendly.

Basically, I’m just curious for an example of some balance change you made or want to make that explicitly isn’t needed/wanted by top players?

[warm radish]

essentially, game design is a holistic picture of the whole spectrum of play, and there are different concerns at different levels, various units get varying value for varying reasons. this could be map related, team size, game type, or OS. it's all part of the picture to consider

my point is usually, that just looking through a tube at the OP lobby 8v8 on a small subset of maps, and using that as the sole definition of 'balance', is flawed. It also has no care for 'fun' or 'variety', see conga lines of rocket bots on all fronts - it might well be numerically balanced, but is it good gameplay?

The main issue high OS people have with this seems to root in them taking it as a personal attack in some way, or threat to their gameplay. I specifically aim to minimise any non-target balance impacts. It isn't a 'tug of war' between high and low OS game design.

The top 1% are indeed usually better able to exploit specific things, usually moreso in specific ways on specific maps, and that is absolutely consideration. As is 'is the game fun' at lower levels.

For an random example maybe, units shouldn't basically destroy themselves if left to their own devices. So, maybe Shivas could prefer targets not really close to them by default, or, limit the amount of leading they will do, so a fast tick can't pull fire 400 units into your lines. Pro/highest OS gameplay would still manually fire them, use set target, and all that good stuff, so their gameplay would be unaffected, but mortals would no longer have shivas shitting themselves at the notion of a tick.

thors specifically, break a lot of design conventions for how a large tank should be counterable, and has 0 downsides to AFK piloting. contrast say with tzar, which without a babysitter, is usually of more use to the enemy team

[neat oriole]

The whole point of games is to have somewhat of a challenge especially multiplayers, I know stupid behaviour like pulsars firing at ticks 24/7 is just straight up annoying and needs change. And how emp works, air vs sea interactions, sea lack of versatility, map design flaws etc etc.

The game already has done enough to provide players with proper controls, custom widgets etc.

But at this point ur just dumbing the game down more and more just with the hope that lower skill players will have more "fun".

And ur gonna kill player retention doing it bcz it's not news a 20os player will never have proper perspective for balancing.

The reason most bad players are bad doesn't have much to do with lack of APM, Voice Coms, hours played etc. You don't need to be good to enjoy the game. But at the same time if you don't understand that a unit that is 10 pixels away from another, counter its then just stop trying to force ur opinion through

[warm radish]

I'm not ever going to make the game 'play itself', and mostly it's conforming to user expectations. eg units shouldn't flat out be stupid.
it should counter it, and in fact would completely even with the distance preferential targetting. unsupported shivas would still die, the difference is they would leave tick control to their support units, rather than blasting everyone into low orbit

[warm radish]

what is your definition of 'bad player', in this context?

[neat oriole]

Basically 99% of playerbase

[warm radish]

so they all need to git gud so they're all top 1% players?

[zinc cosmos]

Why is this thread suddenly about ticks and shivas

Give groundscout category to the tick, add it to shiva badtargetcategory, see what happens. You have a balance pack already.

[neat oriole]

No they don't need to git gud if they don't wanna, but if they wanna learn the game, they shud figure out why X unit isn't performing or why it is overperforming. They shouldn't go to a suggestion thread and just start giving opinions about balancing

[warm radish]

very little, unfortunately, I've done exactly that before, and even tested (as experiment) what happens when tick has no weapon at all; it's still often considered worth shooting

[zinc cosmos]

Nevermind it's already the case

Shivas should already ignore ticks if there's literally anything else on the screen, unless fight commanded

[neat oriole]

It takes 1x 600metal t1 building to stop shivas getting countered by ticks, and u need that said building to counter jammed commanders anyways

[warm radish]

people at lower OS are genuinely more aware of the reasons a unit misbehaves than you seem to realise. a lot of them feel that those reasons shouldn't be the case, rather than, 'I can't use unit unit is bad help help help'

[zinc cosmos]

I'm pretty sure a tick lab counters a fight commanded thor. Won't it stop dead in its tracks if there's a tick in its attack range?

[neat oriole]

Example?

[warm radish]

the engine priority in theory also means scouts should be last thing on the list, but it does depend on what else is in valid range at the time

[zinc cosmos]

I'll test it when I get the chance, but I assume radar dots take priority over ticks with badcategory

[neat oriole]

Ticks stop any unit on fight commands bcz fight commands prioritizes units closest, it's just how the command is supposed to work

[warm radish]

eg 'thors being OP', there's a lot of discussion in this thread about thor mechanics and why they're too good at lower levels. it's not just people saying 'dis shit broke yo'

[lucid compass]

pulsars don't ever shoot ticks i think. one rare exception
ambassadors shooting spam is pretty cringe tho

[warm radish]

not always true, but usually yes; some units will still move ahead regardless, and a few need interesting workarounds to make that happen

[neat oriole]

All "thors are op" "marauders are op" arguments are always just same issue of bad play

[zinc cosmos]

Same deal as the shiva, ticks are last priority

[lucid compass]

converted cost is 883 + 371 metal per shot. 1254 metal for the juno and first shot

[neat oriole]

Still affordable if ur making a t3 lab bcz it will pay for itself on its 1st shot

[warm radish]

they do, but usually prefer high priority targets; as their range is so obscene they usually have something better to shoot instead

also junos are not magic anti tick bullet, the game should not be designed around junos as 'wizards tower of unfuckery'. they are also being removed from game eventually, better solutions need to exist

[lucid compass]

i think they are OKAY on their current state. They are an expensive but very effective vision / radar / jammer control unit. and are used to reveal coms on pushes
they could disable t2 radars and maybe mines

[zinc cosmos]

Importantly, this is NOT the case with ambassador, although I think in ambassador's case the engine default makes it ok

[lucid compass]

anti jamming/radar is useless if you don't also kill the spam giving vision
like juno is expensive but you want to get the shot/timing where you get the most tactical value, and kill bonus ticks if you can
juno is so expensive that you don't wnat to stockpile missiles before you need it

[warm radish]

I added scouts to badtarget for a lot of stuff, it made basically no effective difference any more. to the point scouts in badtarget should probably be removed, ideally we need a 'nevertarget' or something

[neat oriole]

Junos are needed for the base game to be playable, it took me abt 2.5k hr of gameplay with 2 years to realise how to counter a cloaked commander efficiently without a juno

[lucid compass]

imagine lategame t3 push without juno

[zinc cosmos]

If you ask me, the game should not be designed around having a t1 scout that needs a magic tower of unfuckery to keep it in check

[warm radish]

yup. scouts should not be combat units, ideally, they break too many game rules - but that's a whole other conversation BAR isn't ready for. (fun fact, even without weapons, scoutspam still OP)

in mean time, there is a stated game goal to remove junos, and collectively consideration needs to be given to that end state; 'juno fixes it' is not ideal stopping point for anything

[lucid compass]

yeah signs that scouts are too good in the vision game. i mean if we purely talk about the vision game then juno killing scouts makes sense
anyways 80% of the time you don't need juno, you just need juno when you or they are pushing / sniping with units

[warm radish]

this also is way off of thor topic, again.

[neat oriole]

Thor convo isn't going anywhere

It's just lowskill players might take another 1 year to realise the Titan button exists and they'll start clicking it and the problem will magically vanish you don't need to fix it.

[lucid compass]

thor seems okay. t3 all in pushers need to be strong to have a chance vs travel distance + eco. maybe it's a mix of plp clumping units / throwing units at thors instead of backing up / not assmbling the counter arm units

sometimes your eco'er is afk or team is way behind so thor is just the game ender

[zinc cosmos]

Speaking of stated goals, I believe the stated optimal max duration of a match is 40min? To that end, there should be more stuff that's hard to counter at low os

[neat oriole]

You don't need to be armada to counter thors, dragons wasps shivas mammoths do it well enough

[lucid compass]

flak truck thor is classic comp
mammoth is okay but nothing stopping the tzar from running by. and 2+ thor will stun the mammoth
scorpion spam or shiva i think is ideal

[neat oriole]

Well in an real scenario where ur driving in thors and flak, the thors will get down to 30% hp and the flaks would've died 20second before that

[lucid compass]

wym? flak trucks are super fast if you lose them all you are bad
and they can kite wasps for better trades

[neat oriole]

It's not about being fast or keeping them alive, its abt them being able to live amidst a push that is being well contested, it's just a stat issue their hp isn't super high, ideally u want to mercury creep, or have figs

T3 armies are the biggest all in play anyone can possibly do, u might end up having more metal in those units than the enemy base ur trying to kill or your own afus stack metal combined. Thors are low range, low maneuverability units, even if u kill 1 base with it, most likely against a decent team you'll lose your entire push.

Titans juggs are higher hp, higher range. It's easier to keep them alive since you don't need to dive in with them, you simply kite, outtrade and rez.

With this big of a flaw on thor, it's not even close to being op it's just a decent unit that has use case vs emp and u might make 2-3 max for tanking for other units.

It's very obvious the unit isn't anything special, it sees no play in high ranked ffa games.

And hornet thinking the 20os players somehow know abt unit behaviour more than the top players who have been playing longer is just pure delusion

[lethal smelt]

What's the issue with the Core dgun, is that perhaps why I've been unable to dgun thors many times, then lost my commander to them?

[lethal smelt]

For the Shivas vs ticks example. imagine a commercial game like command and conquer being reviewed by IGN. They would definitely give a lower score for gameplay if one of the sides was much harder to control than the other, with units that self-destructed.

When BAR gets released on Steam, it will attract many gamers familiar with C&C etc, where unit AI might not be perfect, but doesn't include units self-destructing just to kill a tick. Such players would no doubt leave the game after a week or two, reviewers would ridicule the unit behaviour, and BAR would lose its chance to become the greatest game ever.

[north basalt]

Counterpoint, BW is probably the most popular RTS of all time, and factions require much different levels of skill to play at the same level. You can lose both arms and an eye but still play Protoss reasonably well.

[old kayak]

Dont tell that to any protoss players 😄

[frosty vessel]

How dare u say that bout us protoss players!

[neat oriole]

That's like saying sc2 would have no players bcz everyone would get cannon rushed, immortal+prism'd, void Ray proxy'd, 4 raxxed, dark Templar rushed etc

It's better to not have any players than have a bunch of new players who retain but cannot figure out juno after months of gameplay and asking for advice

[warm radish]

that is not what I said. I said they know it better than you believe they do; many are highly aware of how the units work, and just think it's broken as standard, which is a valid take frankly.

and OS does not always correlate to game knowledge either - the number of high OS players who don't know you can make bulwarks and pulsars hunker down, for example, is alarming
once again, people need to stop gatekeeping game experience viewpoints behind magic numbers. it's not remotely productive.

[wild hornet]

I'm honestly thinking a lot of the objections might be a storm in a teacup, the reason being that if changes are made that do happen to have a negative impact you can always iterate on them quite quickly and for many changes nobody knows for sure with 100% accuracy exactly how they will impact gameplay

A lot of people do really like that the game has both a high skill ceiling and a reasonably high learning curve - flattening either of those will quite often elicit negative feedback

[old kayak]

common scenario is when ppl see buffs, they start using the unit, and nerf they stop.

[ripe idol]

i fix cars. i have spent a lot of time doing it and i know a lot about it. many, many people can have opinions about cars and which ones are better and probably know more random facts than i do about cars. however, i am actually the person that effectively fixes the car, or enacts the knowledge. my car repair os is very high. you could trust some guy that can do brakes and oil changes to diagnose your car problems, or you could trust my op high os opinion informed by consistent review of interconnected car systems.

you can hem and haw about how garage mechanic knows a lot, but my cars odometer reads 350000mi and his reads 120k mi which of course are arbitrary numbers....until you look under the hood

[neat oriole]

The game is about flow, u get good by having ur macro and unit efficiency high, units being good/bad depend on how well they fit in this flow.
Having knowledge of certain interactions without being able to establish a proper flow and fitting that knowledge into it basically makes having that knowledge insignificant

[neat ridge]

theres a very interesting story about that that happened in league. the patch notes said one champion received a reasonably significant nerf, and afterwards the playerbase was claiming the champion was unusable.

the change hadn't actually gone live with the rest of the patch. it was entirely in peoples heads

[old kayak]

lul

[neat oriole]

ye its same in dota, some random hero will get +1 dmg and people will start spamming it

but theres a clear difference between dota/league and BAR, the skill ceiling is much lower and its not hard to figure out every unit unlike every hero in those games

[neat ridge]

id say the skills involved are very different, its really hard to judge skill ceilings between such radically different games

but even if we do assume that the skill ceiling in these games is much lower, there is still significant evidence that some champions/heros perform much much better at lower skill levels than at higher. Master Yi in League, or I believe Ursa Warrior in Dota (my info here is probably outdated) are both notorious noob stompers

The issue here isn't to do with that, it's that people disagree over exactly how much balancing needs to be done to reduce the impact of the 'noob stompers'.

Personally, I find Thor to be a unit that does its job reasonably well, without being overpowered by any means. The problem is that the job it does is not very good in high skill levels, and is the most important thing in the game in lower skill levels.

My thoughts on it would be to remove the EMP missile stockpile, so it only has the one. It would still be very useful, but it wouldn't be able to stun all the pulsars on the map in a huge burst (blatant hyperbole)

Better would be to rework EMP entirely, but that's a whole separate issue.

[neat oriole]

I disagree on thor being a noobstomper, i think theres infinite units that can be noobstompers

ive noob stomped with turtle rushing with amphib lab u cannot just nerf turtle for it.

Marauders Shivas Razorbacks Thors Catapults Vanguards Titans Juggs can all be noobstompers

its alot to do with that most players for some reason have grown too comfortable with clicking thor on repeat without giving it a thought, so games end up 15 thor vs 24 thor and the thors wins

only problematic unit rn seems to be Lolcannon, Shuriken/abdjuctor and the shadowbuffed tremor out of nowhere

strait is one of the only maps where lolcannon is almost always useless bcz of diagonal length

[warm radish]

EMP is indeed being reworked, but IMO the thor should lose EMP missiles. instead it should be better at being a powerful tank - and have the traditional downsides associated with such

[warm radish]

so far tremors only seem questionable on glitters, which is perfect breeding ground for the things. also still very much in 'new toy' era of the change, and people still not countering optimally
they might later need a tap of the nerfbat, but jury still very much out

[neat oriole]

its not about countering it or it being optimal unit
its about it being just unfun and shit unit to play against

[neat ridge]

the missile is one of the most interesting things about it id say

[warm radish]

I agree it is, but either the jugg gets tacnuke, or thor loses emp

[neat oriole]

jugg getting tacnuke will just be stupid

[neat ridge]

thats the exact reason people talk about nerfing thor 😛

also, id be fine with jugg getting tacnuke, sounds fun

its probably not the ideal change, but jgg is kinda shitty

[warm radish]

being able to semi reliably stun high calibre porc, which should be one of the things that counters it, is rather questionable

juggs just ... yeah. there's a lot wrong with them really.

[neat oriole]

its uniqueness is in self D nuke, it doesnt need tacnuke or some stupid wacky shit. just need some number changes on cost

i have seen more juggs winning than thors in my games

[warm radish]

if the best that can be said about it is 'sometimes it might die in a useful way', the unit design has failed

that's what I did in balance pack yes, and that makes it more reasonable, but it is still too much a dgun magnet, and surprisingly poor a combatant for the money

[neat oriole]

jugg dying in a meaningless way is just fail of unit usage its not unit issue

lolcannon is #1 reason jugg is bad, #2 reason is titan

[lethal smelt]

In any case tactical nukes are less useful for preparing to assault a line with big T3 units than EMP, if you hang back and just launch tactical nukes with a juggernaut, congratulations, you paid 29k for a 1.2k tactical nuke launcher!

[lethal smelt]

Thors are the most unfun and shit unit to play against at the moment

[lethal smelt]

Thors are the #1 reason why juggernauts are bad, they steal its school lunch money

[neat oriole]

💀

These takes are so bad I cant

[lethal smelt]

Zerglings beat thors immortal stalkers hydras in sc2.
These are more expensive units dying to cheap ones, but it's only true in a vaccume, where said units lack support.
Being more expensive =/= the unit beats everything cheaper than itself, if that was true you'd have dogshit balance.
BAR has smart ai for projectiles, not every RTS automatically leads shots, AoE2 for example or some WC3 arty.
And again, you can manually fire these units, you have hold fire etc.
It's an RTS, control your units, BAR has the smoothest control of any RTS, it's not hard, just select shivas, target all valueable enemy units, put hold fire, ur problem is solved.

[neat oriole]

Ye you have the tools, u can ask better players for what unit matchup to play, u have everything u don't need to Nerf just bcz "it works or not in noob lobbies"

[lethal smelt]

Also, i haven't tested but tigers and bulls beat thors right? With surround and proper spread etc

[neat oriole]

U can kill thor with some high hp units + ticks, since unit will prioritize non ticks and ticks get full flank dmg

Killing X unit with Y unit in a vaccum is always irrelevant, we had some scientist talking abt how marauders counter shivas but that's just not how the game works with real human beings

[north basalt]

What?

[lethal smelt]

Idk how many thors it takes to fight 1 behe but its atleast 4

[neat oriole]

Thors cannot fight shivas titans jugg it's just range gapped

In case of behemoth, it's insane dps issue u cannot trade metal:metal even closely

[lethal smelt]

Have you ever tried fighting againt thors with a juggernaut? You'll be lucky to take one of them out with your death explosion!

[lethal smelt]

Thors are much faster than juggernauts so it can't run for long, and its long-ranged weapon does about the same amount of damage as a starlight, so youd be really wasting your 29k metal. Once the thors close in, at best the juggernaut can take out 1/3 thors.

I'm thinking there might be a revolution in the pro games meta once pro players discover the Make Thor button 10 pixels from the titan one!

[lethal smelt]

Behes trump everything, but are also 1/3 as fast as thors, so it's up to the thors if they want to charge in.

so ticks are the best unit then?

[ripe idol]

nobody has shared a replay where a thor demonstrates its op game winning ability that is not caused by skill issue. post the replay of thor totally being op

[junior cedar]

They are one of the most OP units in the game per metal, that's common knowledge.

[junior cedar]

At what part does your so-called skill issue end?

Especially if you consider that we are not talking about OS30+ players.

Me, as humble 25 OS pure CORE player can tell you this much:
Take a Thor. Let it soak up damage, drive it back, repair repeat.
This is so much easier compared to any other core unit. And no I won't waste my time to search this one reply when I build an ARM gantry and drove up the hill and crushed shivas. Because I could always just retreat to my Pulsars. Similar eco btw... And yes, I pushed OP shivas back up the hill with a Tank (that handles so much better than a Tzar).

[ripe idol]

oh so ur opponent only made shivas into a unit comp and lost? thats crazy. i actually remember this replay where i tried to send fighters against the enemy air over flak and lost, seems like highwinds are too op

[junior cedar]

It is amazing how wrong you are with your assumptions.
I won't waste time with the aaaage old game:
You attack me. I waste time. You invent the next claim.
CU

[ripe idol]

💀makes an anecdotal argument, gives details that btfo the claim he thinks he is asserting, gets mad when the obvious logical connection is made from information provided (did not provide a replay) that in fact there are more variables at play. i provide a similar example to demonstrate the illogical conclusion, they get mad and try to claim i am attacking them.

again, to reiterate my challenge: pull up a replay where you show that the thor is demonstrably "OP" or is "overperforming" in your eyes, so we can see why the op players that have already responded are wrong here.

[junior cedar]

So you are claiming that your response was kind?

[ripe idol]

Yes, actually. I did not call you stupid, illogical, or otherwise call you names. Instead, I politely referenced how clearly you did not construct a real answer to the previously asked question (clearly just a "oh duh" moment) and then used my own example to demonstrate how the logic you were using in your example did not apply to the conservation at hand.

You then proceeded to say that I was "wrong in my assumptions," which is partly correct, I assumed that you did not intend to use an example clearly not relevant to the conversation. You claimed that I was attacking you, then accused ME of inventing claims when YOU are the one that brought up a past event for which you provided no evidence for. I assumed that you were giving me accurate information and constructed a response based on your provided information, which is hardly me inventing anything.

After I quite soundly detail how your described scenario discusses how hiding within range of porq makes you trade well (duh), reference how clearly angry you were that I instantly honed in on it and how I only responded according to your provided information, pointed out that you introduced new variables that purely benefitted your implied position, and then expose the fact that the claim I am "attacking you" when I attacked your argument. I then restated the challenge to make it clear what exactly my inital request was to provide a satisfactory conclusion that your argument and described scenario does not in fact demonstrate what you think it does.

You then have moved the goalposts, because you know that my logic is inconveniently correct here, to a meta conversation about how I was not "kind" in an attempt to sway the argument via a pathos appeal. Have a nice day! 🙂

[neat oriole]

There's no point having a real discussion with players who are hardstuck with their ideas and this lowskill

Bla this bla that. Lets just be real 99% of people here are literally to dogshit to form a valid opinion about unit balancing and close the thread.

[junior cedar]

Can we focus on the game, again, please?

I think we can all agree, that different opinions may exist.

Meruby, I am not afraid of your logic, quite the opposite.
I actually think you have great logical skills. In this case it seems as if the view point is a bit too narrow.

Idiot, well you are invalidating all your comments through your manners, sorry, mate.

[lethal smelt]

nobody has shared a replay where ticks demonstrates their op game winning ability that is not caused by skill issue. post the replay of ticks totally being op

[frosty vessel]

Maybe a replay can be found where a runby gets countered by Ticks

[lethal smelt]

Skill issue, the runby player should have built 8 junos before the runby and junoed absolutely every area of the map where his runby might ebd up

[frosty vessel]

Idk if ur sarcastic or not

[lethal smelt]

Was repeating the above that was said of thors. Some players will argue that literally every unit imbalance issue is actually just because opposing players are not skilled enough, but this ignores the fact that their suggested counters are generally much more costly, risky and difficult to implement than the unit being countered, and that players who have not yet logged 1000+ hours are the ones you need to keep happy if the game is going to survive.

[zinc cosmos]

If I give you replays of overperforming ticks, will you retire from the thread?

[frosty vessel]

I wouldnt https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1263560364747133090

[old kayak]

I see no emp rockets

[neat oriole]

titans easily hold 3x metal in thors with a few pulsars behind, and in open field they just outrange and outtrade inifnitely, just see the thor wrecks, he was perfectly micro'ing emp on thors

https://www.beyondallreason.info/replays?gameId=7a8dd166e4bd66486684b94b41aa06d9

[old kayak]

Titan + rez is interesting, maybe could work with thors too.

[neat oriole]

titan + rez is bcz u can always get dmg with titan without overcommiting and u always have 20% hp titans that can get back and full repair, thors r lower range and bad turn rate so either u lose them or u keep them alive but not have dmg done for its value

[old kayak]

You have good tick spam + 5 pulsar + mass repair + a few meatwall titans. I doubt even titans would be able to battle that. Its a good display of superior porc though but not definitive proof of Thor vs Titan is an unfair fight

[lucid compass]

titan skirmish and retreat is later phase then thor push
thor is usually for a decisive all in push

also glitters is super metal heavy so favours titan

[neat oriole]

its 19 thors from enemy (didnt count ally thor wrecks)

point is, thor is easily counterable. Thor being an all in unit cannot skirmish outside of porc range so realistically ur always gonna dive porc no matter what

[lucid compass]

yeh. thor needs to be with long range dps behind it in a commital push
many thor (late enough that opponent can have 3+ titan is pret bad)

[neat oriole]

they mostly got every emp charge off onto titans and pulsars but it still all dies

the window of thors working is extremely small, he had early thors on 2 afus but he lost 1 to snipers.
The unit needs alot of support, alot of investment, while having a narrow window. maybe its good maybe its bad, but its not OP

[zinc cosmos]

I just thought of a hack. Can't you export units from a replay? Then boot the export up as a scenario and playtest that way. Effectively continue from replay without having to deal with the premade commands?

[lucid compass]

a good suggestion

[zinc cosmos]

let's just replace this with titans and full send them, see what happens. If it even works

[neat oriole]

thats just stupid theyll all die to abductors i had 20 in the back. U dont full send a skirmishing unit, it allows u to porc creep with aa and pulsar then u can eventually just emp silo and stun all the pulsars n go in, thors dont allow it, theyre all in it unit and in this scenario 2x players spamming them couldnt break

[zinc cosmos]

Abductors are not a low os tool

[lethal smelt]

Skill issue, first volley of emp missiles to take out the titans, seckns for the pulsars. Also, isnt the lolcannon shooting the thors, with some shots missing amd going over their heads? Hardly a scientific test?!

[neat oriole]

both of those players had 20x better unit micro than you ever will

[zinc cosmos]

If the export thing works, feel free to demonstrate it

[junior cedar]

bold claims

[neat oriole]

its not bold its 46os player

[lethal smelt]

diving emped porc js pretty safe, just have tk watch iut for commanders

[neat oriole]

it was emp'd, they still all died

Stop the coping its pretty absurd ur throwing random words as proof for thors doing well while im posting replay with full analysis. Its so low effort idk why i bother talking in this thread

i didnt even mention that i stopped unit production to make a lolcannon and even then the push failed

[lethal smelt]

This would be a fun feature

[neat oriole]

0 dgun, no liche, no mass wasps that fight

[zinc cosmos]

Are you here for fun or because there's a balance problem with the thor

[ripe idol]

then surely you have a replay to show different?

[lethal smelt]

This is typical thor gameplay, you get them out first with some good supporting units, you win ATG.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la2iwbvKsiY

[neat oriole]

That game looks over before the thors got out

You have to actually share a replay of thors performing well, not thors ending an already over game

[lethal smelt]

This whole conversation has been about how thors are on attack, but they are also very good on defence as they are anti-swarm, large units and mega units. Watch from 45 minutes here, MasterBel had only one ground unit on defence, surely he was doomed, as 8 shivas moved in for the kill? But wait... he has a thor!

No other unit would have tanked fire from 8 shivas and taken them out so quickly due to having the biggest AOE in the game.

https://youtu.be/bn-GiJiM9TQ

[zinc cosmos]

Watch from 45 minutes
Because at 44min a thor gets dgunned for free

[lethal smelt]

Your game above was also over before the thors got out, as you had a lolcannon protected by a forest of pulsars and titans.

[north basalt]

Bro I've basically only been playing ATG for the past few days, and I have to see a Thor do anything of importance that would define it as "OP"

[zinc cosmos]

yea, a shiva push held by a lone thor

....and a swarm of stilettos

[lethal smelt]

Yes but did you see how quickly it took them out? Idiot's game above showed that titans can take out lots of thors if supported by a forest of pulsars and a lolcannon.

[zinc cosmos]

go into a skirmish, spawn 6 shivas. Clump them up for maximum aoe. Spawn 1 thor againts them, see how it goes. Then consider shiva can kite.

You actually are just saying random things with no real world application.

[ripe idol]

wow INSANE you can WIN against other units when they are emped and dont shoot back/cant micro!!

[lethal smelt]

I've done it, shivas win if they surround and circle kite, as it's hard to emp more than one or two. If they clump into a ball, they lose as they can't kite like that against a faster unit, and will lose hard if EMPed as it's much easier to emp them all.

[neat ridge]

units in general perform worse when they're balled up

you should probably not ball them up

[lethal smelt]

Yeah, just like it's insane that Idiot's Lolcannon defeated 20 thors. Need to do skirmish testing suggested by meruby above, as there are lots of factors at play in a live game. Shivas and behemoths beat thors metal for metal, snipers can from the arm side, sometimes starlights, but they are easy to EMP as static when firing. Thors are the best unit in the game against large groups of T2 or T1 units, which get zapped due to the huge AOE. They're also possibly the best defensive unit in the game.

[zinc cosmos]

If you ever wanted to be in a 40os player's shoes

also whoever fixed the resurrections on features, god bless

dump these in the saves files, should work

for context to those who don't scroll, this allows you to replay this fight of a thor push:
#1151868095376404621 message #1151868095376404621 message

[ripe idol]

Wow. The t3 tank kills big groups of units. How do groups do into catapults behind porq, or rushing beh, or shivas acting like big gunslingers, or I could go on but it seems youve already figured out that a unit performing in its usecase is not abnormal and "op," unless you are gonna tell me yous end grunts at razorbacks and mammoths, or marauders into porq

[lucid compass]

thor only fights 6 shivas at once and gets help from emp bomber

[zinc cosmos]

and the shivas arent full hp to start

[lucid compass]

i learned recently thor actually doesn't have as good splash dmg as you'd think
the full splash dmg radius is 24, then it hits up to 4 other targets (that weren't hit by the main attack) within 125 radius for 750. (the attack is actually split up into 10 attacks that can retarget so it does better against overkill tho)

a tzar with 146 aoe and 15% edge effeciency will do maybe 65% dmg to everything in at 73 aoe, tapering off
and at least 75%+ dmg to something 20-50 units away

Shiva only has 88 aoe so it's a bit less but still
anyways, 125 distance is the magical number, if you keep all or all but 1 unit out of 125 distance from each other you will take 3k dmg + 750 max per attack

that's 1.2k dps
Also lets see comparison of relative costs of t3 units

For 1 thor, you get:
6.62 shivas
0.71 titans
2.6 razors
3.75 kargs
9.79 marauders
1.71 demons

note: shivas, titans, and demons have higher 5 metal drain vs 3-3.5mps, so if you have plentiful metal those perform better

the strength of the thor is that it's a fat t3 unit that doesn't lose incremental dps when dmged. And ideally it's a frontline for starlight/sniper

there's merit as a pushing unit cause it's immune to spybot/abductor/shruiken, and you get 2.82 thors for the price of 2 titans
as a skirmishing/flexible unit/ hands down titan

thor: 967 dps (25% splash within 125 radius) at 540 range. Within ground fire can intentionally splash coms (25% dmg) 125 radius away.
titan: 400-800 dps (1500-3000 burst) laser at 800 range
An additional 521 dps at 465 range (32 aoe)

131 dps from guided rocket (800 burst), 860 range, 48 aoe

[neat oriole]

I didn't have problems killing commanders with titans I always made 3 pinpointers

[lucid compass]

yeh for sure, at that stage backline should always have 3 pin pointer

[neat oriole]

At that stage only abductor and pulsar spam r problem for titans, 2-3 pulsars u can usually deal with 1 emp silo

[lucid compass]

it's just not quick at killing coms (which is fine) for it's cost, compared to razor/demon/thor/shiva etc

[neat oriole]

Ye it will take some shots but comms aren't too big issue once u have the tools (juno pinpointer radar airscout etc)

Sniper starlight etc u can counter by switching off Titan and making 2-3 vanguard doesn't take too much time, the lab usually can deal with every ground unit except 20 catapults or smth like that

[carmine cliff]

emp missiles can be dodged

[carmine cliff]

Thor also needs 2 shots to kill full health com

[weak hatch]

i feel like thor is more of a cor issue.

Like, let's say you're arm chilling late t2 with a solid handful of starlights/snipers and a steady stream of spam and some porc and beans and such. You see a thor roll in from their techer, maybe boosted or something, seems early. No big deal. You shoot it until it buggers off.

Now, you're Glirious Cortex in late t2 with a grand army of a couple tremors and some banishers and even a tzar. Any (filthy) arm t2 army should be very afraid. But nothing here that can stop a thor.

Granted, in a 1v1 situation, all else being equal, the Cor player coulda woulda shoulda have t3, and Karg/Shiva > Thors (unless hard emp lands)

that *(unless hard emp lands) is a big deal. it sucks trying to push into Thor(s) not knowing if I'm just gonna kill it, of its emp is gonna land and I'm gonna lose all my army, so it's a big deterrent. threat of harm is often more powerful than the action itself

[wild hornet]

I feel the same way as what you’re describing when someone rushes a catapult

[lucid compass]

catapults are great when you have the time or mexes to afford them
5k is a lot, sometimes you can get by with 6 negotiators or 2 tremor instead

[lucid compass]

@warm radish the thor looks op based on unit roles but pushing in general is difficult as you are fighting travel time and team coordination
despite the thor not giving AF about a bunch of things you still need AA, 3 junos, steady source of radar
and thor will often drop it's wreck if you don't self d, a huge blow if the push doesn't win

bulwark is bad but try spamming scorpions spaced out to assist a defence

[warm radish]

I mean, it is bad unit design by BAR conventions, that's not debatable at this point I'd hope

that mashup leads to the problem of terrible differential balance, and the higher the team coordination the weaker the thors are, which is true for many things naturally, but thors moreso I suspect, and that's probably part of the differential balance problem itself

[lucid compass]

a role based adjustment to the thor later is reasonable i d/k

[neat oriole]

thors pushing creates wrecks which mostly block thors from either pathing or getting attacks off, they already have the veh turnrate issue, 5-6 thors dying just creates too much of pathing issue

[warm radish]

which is one reason why I was amazed you didn't split or flank with them

[lucid compass]

should never use more than 6 thors prolly
thor has the timing if that failed and made wreck field time to make titans with your influx of metal

[neat oriole]

i was the defender not the attacker, someone made a scenario u can use that exact moment to micro what u want ask @zinc cosmos

[lucid compass]

well playing against tzar is similiar. it crushes until people learn how to scout and abuse jammer in time, or flank avoiding the turret
true thor is sort of pushing for babies. it is hard to push with non-emp resist t3 as you just eat spybots and abductors / maybe even stilleto

[warm radish]

somewhat true, but long range still beats it, as do swarms, or emp, etc

[neat oriole]

im sure alot of players will disagree that thor counters/doesnt get countered by most long ranged units

[lucid compass]

tzar has far more weaknesses, it's more like there's a learning curve to beat it. their being a learning curve to beat something isn't problematic in itself

[warm radish]

as with all things, that depends how they're used - but it has a lot more scope against them than it should, for sure
of course Thor should need a proper response, but part of the issue is that response isn't the same learned response as every other similar role unit
and a large part of the rest is that it takes much more forethought/reaction/apm to counter thors vs instigate them

[neat oriole]

tzar is very different than thor, at t2 transition stage, tzar is the highest dps unit with that long of a range and aoe. Thor isnt the same, it has aoe but it isnt a range advantage unit

[warm radish]

in thise case I mean the unit archetype, eg 'large tank', thor doesn't have much range on main gun but the EMP gives it ridiculous projection

[neat oriole]

afaik alot of issue with thor was thats its good in alot of games with lower skilled players, theyll use the thors at same level or worse than red and yellow did in the screenshot, red is 46os and yellow is 27os.

[warm radish]

in short, it solves too many problems too easily, while itself being one that needs a much harder solution, than it is to create
similar to spam streams (disregarding junos for the moment)

[neat oriole]

so "need to use thors at optimal capacity" isnt really a thing u can say in that scenario when theyre already using every emp charge and doing a 2v1. Red had bigger eco than me, yellow had about 60%

early on, being able to eco was hard thing to do, now most people know how to spam afus. countering thors, i think its a skill set most people can learn if they try

alot of new players that die to thors would prolly do so bcz they havent had any experience with t3

[warm radish]

thing is ... thors amount to an unfun unit at low/mid ranges, for reasons outlined, which is same argument you seem to have against (a possible) tremor meta (on specific maps?) - and the counter to tremor was also said by Goaf to be afus
not to hop back over to other topics again, but the parallel is interesting

(and for what it's worth I actually agree a generalist tremor meta would be bad for the game, and am watching for that - but I'm not seeing it)

[neat oriole]

thor is a pretty low range unit for that stage, tremor for t2 stage is the highest range unit. Again ive said personally i dont think its OP so it needs a nerf, my point of it needing a nerf was that the longer the range units have, the less impact they should have

[warm radish]

thors project force via HP & speed, and EMP, they're a rolling hardpoint much moreso than a tremor is, which is at best a slow rolling glass poke
a reasonable principle, but tremor has gone from 'meme tier' to 'sometimes useful' (maybe moreso on specific maps, yes), is that really in the wrong place yet?

would for example a slight tremor reload nerf, but a better banisher, make sense to you? I don't want any one unit to hold up a lab and certainly not the tremor, but I genuinely am not seeing it as too effective outside of the ideal situations (and usually unreacted to) yet

[neat oriole]

banisher already is a good unit, its problem is that its too high upfront E cost so it misses its window of having impact

[warm radish]

top level yes, it's micro'd to high value when built, lower they're less useful as they overkill too hard, so any change would have to address both sides of that

[neat oriole]

i would say its same problem with thor, the t3 lab cost is so high that it will miss its window and people can react with sniper starlight. or if both have t3 lab, then titan or shivas

[neat oriole]

ye the projectile travel time making 6 banishers shoot 1 tick is stupid i cant even say skill issue to that, it just looks awful to look at

[warm radish]

indeed, I have something that sort of helps with that, in the usual place. it's prime example of why hitscan is too powerful a mechanic to be arm only, it's the only innate overkill prevention in game

[neat oriole]

starlights are ok but usually they need too much team coordination

[warm radish]

starlights probably need slightly longer reload for balance at 'most levels', with even trivial support and no micro/widgets, they're just too good against chaff, but good value does need team to properly support them yes. banisher a little hardier to afk team, at least it can kite away again

[neat oriole]

well rattlesnakes tachyons t1wall etc, basically porc is too good rn so u dont wanna straight nerf, maybe adjust reload and dmg to have same dps

tfw you can counter snipers and starlights with 8 metal t1 walls which requires negligible BP to make

[warm radish]

balance pack also nerfs porc range a little for that reason

I need to head off for a bit, thanks for the productive discussion though

[carmine cliff]

We need bulwark buff?

[lucid compass]

Thor and tremor so different role and battlefield not worth comparing

[leaden vigil]

Honestly I have a feeling that when noobs say Thor is unfun to play against because they don’t know how to counter it, this is solely due to having an emp missile and being emp resistant themselves.

This is because noobs don’t move units around and can even get large armies of fast units like razors emp’ed since they are typically found sitting 300 meters behind the line of porc. Imo once noobs unlock the emp silo the same problem will happen and it’s just a matter of “skill shot vs someone who can’t dodge op”. Also don’t bring up cost with emp silo missiles because if we’re talking about noob games cost is irrelevant. They either build things 3 AFUS later than they should or they don’t make afus at all and stall for 400 years. (Imo this “lateness to make units” is also why noobs don’t complain about razors since by the time they make a t3 lab they can afford to spam titans)

[warm radish]

the logic was being compared/contrasted, more than the units

lower OS do complain about razors, they're borderline OP, but demons sort of counterbalance well enough it mostly evens out, ish

since the disco ball nerf, and the slight cost to fire, razors not as bad as they used to be though, so jury out on that one (razors do cost about half the amount to shoot that they actually should for their DPS, however)

[lethal smelt]

It helps to shepherd thors, a tickswarm can push a thor around quite a lot. In one game a teammate accused another teammate of herding an enemy thor into his base with his tickswarm. I'm not sure if friendly units can herd thors, or just enemy ones.

[zinc cosmos]

I've seen that happen and there's got to be a way to replicate it with allies, but this is exploit gameplay and shouldn't be encouraged.

[lethal smelt]

Yeah, one of the reasons thors are so hard to stop is, they seem to get a speed boost from any chasing units colliding with them.

[zinc cosmos]

It's a one in a thousand thing and even then it might not matter. It's not a reason for anything

[lucid compass]

small units pushing large units kinda op sometimes. with ally and enemy

[lethal smelt]

I guess it's something to do with how the game stops vehicles from getting stuck on wrecks etc excessively, seems like a magnetic repulsion?

[warm radish]

if you can replicate behaviours in a <1 minute replay I can probably have it looked at by engine room, it is likely unintended
(start skirmish, pause, cheat spawn units, unpause, hold fire them, replicate examples of issues)

[zinc cosmos]

is that even an unknown issue? Units bumping each other all over the place with collision is commonplace

[weak hatch]

It used to be that you could push your thor at high speed with like 3 marauders. I think that was patched out, so only enemy units can push it ?

[warm radish]

somewhat, but the ability of tiny units to shunt huge ones, is deeply questionable

[old kayak]

You can still do that with ships. Light boats can shove other boats away 🙂

[lethal smelt]

Have you ever seen a flagship-boosting exploit? Could be OP!

[old kayak]

No i just recently found out Light boats op, and that they can push other ships around 😄

[lucid compass]

I think you can use small units to push a tzar into dgun range

[lethal smelt]

maybe that's the best strategy against thors too, get a few ticks to push them towards your commander!

[safe drum]

Or pergapse snipers / starlight or catapults

[warm radish]

or just push the thor with catapults? best of both worlds, thread closed, we can all go home now

[neat oriole]

u can push commander into tzar, for tourney i was practicing boosting commander with 4 ticks it was quite good

[bronze haven]

I've done this to plenty xd

[torpid tiger]

This is micro Intensive and risky af unless you mastered the technique

[lethal smelt]

Problem is the ticks aren't cloaked. Can we buff ticks, to make them cloakable?