Make Juggernaut Great Again

[rain topaz]

The Juggernaut is supposed to be the ultimate fear-inspiring unit that makes enemies quake in their boots when they hear the "Juggernaut detected" warning, rather than looking forward to the free metal coming their way!

Currently, it's difficult to support Juggernauts with other units as their death explosion wipes out all supporting units, so that players often send them piecemeal and they get torn apart by annilihators, target practice for snipers, wiped out by nuke bombers etc (for some reason, it seems like all the counters to big units are Arm ones, but that's a seperate issue...). They also fail hard to Thors, with 2 Thors being able to slay a Juggernaut in single combat, and 3 Thors (still less metal than a Juggernaut) destroying it without losing a single unit.

In the event that one gets through the enemy defences, it invariably gets dgunned, due to its slow speed.

Part of this is due to flanking bonus currently not working correctly IMHO (flanking by a tick should add maximum of tick damage to the incoming nuke bomber attack, NOT double the nuke bomber attack) and flanking bonus making all large units that tend to get surrounded by smaller units UP. Perhaps Juggernauts, which are designed to destroy entire armies, should be immune to flanking bonus?

But also, the Juggernaut just isn't worth the metal. Perhaps it could get double the health, in recognition of the fact that most attacks on it get flanking bonus, or a speed bump to that of Thors, making it faster than commanders, so harder to dgun. What other buffs can people suggest to Make Juggernaut Great Again?

[acoustic nexus]

Maybe bump it's speed from 34 to 38

On one hand it's a walking doom nuke but that role is a behemoth's

How overpowered would it need to be if it was so slow. Huge robots in fiction are not that slow.

[forest galleon]

Juggernauts are a meme, agreed.
Its worthless right now. But its still fun, because hey, giant walking robot, right?
For 29k metal, something like this wouldve been worth:
Its main laser to be a constant sweeping beam, decimating tank columns.
Its shoulder mounted missile launchers should use tactical nukes, and its hand mounted plasma shotguns should puncture thors.
Its still gonna die to dguns, flanking units, and atmoic bombers, but atleast give it a fighting chance and get its metal worth

[rain topaz]

A Juggernaut should definitely be able to handle more than it's metal's worth in Thors. The Thor's weapons are more effective against most units and only cost 9000!

[fickle wasp]

Juggernaut should karate chop ships in half if they get into melee range.

[trail skiff]

if we want to buff jugg you could give option to arm the nuke so if its middle of your army you dont nessesarily want nuke your own army cause jugg died middle of it

[iron cloak]

Bipedal Monkeylord

[rain topaz]

I think the original idea of Krogoths is that they were an experimental unit. Experimental = unreliable, dangerous, goes boom! They blow up beccause of their extremely overpowered power source. But yes, this could be a good idea, as they aren't great for defending a base at the moment!

[round rain]

I'd love to have the arm shotguns have more pellets so they can reliably hit things.

The head laser cannon is awesome, but it's not going to do anything an armada sniper or starlight couldn't do instead (except for that it's stuck to a big pool of hp).

I actually don't mind if jugg can't trade effectively vs groups of other t3 units (cortex needs something for this, but I don't think it should be the jugg), but it needs to be able to deal effectively with swarms of t1 and T2 units.

[rain topaz]

Juggernaut should trade effectively with everything as it's slow and easy to dgun. It's also supposed to be the ultimate unit, not something that fails hard to 3 thors or ten snipers (didn't actually test versus the snipers, so this might be an exaggeration!)

[lethal saffron]

Cost decrease + Speed increase

*A beam weapon like Monkeylords and Collosus from Supreme Commander would be epic but i suspect not something the engine can do so well?

One of the issues is the juggy has stats from TA which was alright as it was basically the only tier 3 unit there, even without other tier 3 to compete with it is was easy to counter, especially if you are arm.

BAR is a very different beast and the Juggy needs to change with it to be relevant.

[inner bear]

beam weapons possible but not right now, as engine is regressed

[boreal spear]

Personally, I'd prefer they didn't automatically explode on death, that should be a reward for a well timed self-d and not a liability trait when you're around your own units. Maybe a slight buff to their cannon damage. Given their speed (34) and cost (~2.15x Titans), and Titans also being amphibious, they should trade well against them. I'm not sure how well they currently trade as it doesn't happen often. Hard to compare to Thors, because Thors just need a debuff before using them as a measure (their lightning damage is crazy). The only other big/tanky unit Cortex gets is the Behemoth, which is great, but super slow (17) and takes a really long time to project its power. By comparison, the Thor has 54 speed and Titan 46.

[cunning nebula]

How do you figure it has the stats from TA? That missile doesnt fire off near as much as it did in TA.

[lethal saffron]

this is correct, the missiles fire much slower and dont track air. So yeah you got me there. I actually fought the missiles were like the most op wep the krogoth had 😛 The Juggy only seems to fire its heat ray at air.

[boreal spear]

Projection of power tends to be Arm's big strength. Arm generally has the speed and alpha damage advantages, and in some cases even the DPS advantage. Higher HP only matters if you live long enough to balance things out.

[round rain]

Projection of power is the whole game though... Like, that's the entire point of doing anything, the end result it to apply damage to your opponent in a place that's meaningful. Armada seems like it's just generally better at doing that

[rain topaz]

1 Juggernaut (29000) taking on 3 Thors (27000), the Jug takes out either 1 or 0 thors before being destroyed. I don't think the Thor lightning debuff will affect that as it's to do with chaining, so it's a terrible trade, and the Thors are also much faster, better versus spam, have 3 EMP missile launchers, harder to dgun 3 targets etc etc etc

Give them a tac nuke instead of shitty auto fire missile

[rain topaz]

EMP missiles are better than tactical nukes, and Thors get those for 9000 metal...

[rain topaz]

Not really, if you emp 1/4th of an army and cant fight it, it did nothing, if u tac nuke 1/4th of an army and cant fight it, u atleast killed 1/4th of the army

[iron cloak]

I think the beam is the problem.
The gauss shotgun is very good.
The missile is a joke, but it's also a joke on Shiva and Titan.
The beam could use higher ROF, or Sweep ability like the Monkey Lord (best unit in all RTS except hydralisk)

[safe eagle]

Jugg is shite, Titans are like 5* as good. If you want to make jugg playable at current cost it needs hp buff 20%, dps increase 20%, speed increase 20%, and tac nukes adding like thor has emp missiles. Feel free to lower the death explosion AOE cos right now it's just a REALLY expensive amphib crawling bomb and nothing else.

Even then core is still completely missing a unit between 6 and 20k metal, Arm has 2.

[rain topaz]

I'm not sure when flanking bonus was introduced, but when that happened, large units should have been made cheaper to balance them, or else had their health boosted to take account of the fact that they're almost all flanked, and now a tick attacking from their side can mean Pulsars get double damage...

[boreal spear]

And Cortex has two units over 14k metal, Armada has none

[boreal spear]

Yeah, the way flanking damage works is unintuitive and weird. I think that system will need to be changed at some point, but that's a big change and has tons of balance implications, which means it would be very hard to do without messing up a lot of stuff.

[rain topaz]

When was it introduced? It favours faster, more manoeuvrable units, so must have instantly made Arm OP versus Core. Which they already were thanks to stronger, faster units...

[remote saddle]

i think the laser beam should stay as it is, but the missile launcher should be tac nukes, and i think the shotgun blast should have its projectiles replaced with something more powerfull maybe even Tzar/Fatboy projectiles

[frail void]

The laser should be continuous but have same dps, missiles should be replaced with twin Hydra salvos, shotgun seems to be buffed recently so I'm ok with it for the time being

@rain topaz

[barren spear]

Jugg should have 2x banisher missile , and all shotgun gauss should be fatboy/tzar like shells , heat ray needs a bit of a small buff , that makes juggernaut a thing

[frail void]

Hydra missiles, but yes

[barren spear]

Juggernaut should also have built in pulsar like radar

I mean come on it’s a huge mech

[crimson sun]

Dgun is ineffective if your smart and use radar

It's purpose is to punish over extending

[inner bear]

mobile radar is not always available, esp for core
very slow to replace

[rain topaz]

Also have good sight range as it's like 80m tall

[rain topaz]

Come to think of it, what's the best way to counter jugs for core players? All of the counters that leap to mind are, you guessed it, Arm units

[gusty phoenix]

Just make it so it does not leave a corpse when it dies. That metal is just gone.

[rain topaz]

You mean always die with the self-destruct bang? Currently, easier said than done, as you don't want to self destruct unless you have to, you're also trying to get as close to the enemy's base as possible so it's pretty hard to tell when the best time to start the 10 second countdown is. I have never actually built a jug as they're so UP, but I've self-ded Thors before then realised they still had a chance of taking out an enemy base so regretted it.

[frail void]

dgun

[gusty phoenix]

Behemoths hard counter Jugs easily. The ratio if the Jugs are not flanking is 3 to 1 and the Behemoths win handily. Reread what I said, make it so it is automatic that its big destruction destroys its body at the same time. Another Idea I liked was mounting 6 beamers on the shoulders. Arm has EMP, so Core deserves beamer tech on the Juggernaut and Shiva.

[rain topaz]

Giving the Juggernaut the Thor's EMP missiles would be pretty good too

[barren spear]

Jugger needs tac nukes, he is the ultimate unit of destruction

Half the cost of a ragnarok , it should be able to be An imminent treat

[remote saddle]

nah please not more EMP

doesnt fit thematicly either

[rain topaz]

Finally, what are the suggested buffs to Juggernauts that would make them workable as non-meme units?

[barren spear]

Check my message

[rain topaz]

Tactical nukes would be fun. Might have to make them ignore spam though, to avoid friendly fire issues...

[barren spear]

Manual fire tac nukes , like Thor emp missile

[brazen spade]

Let him rip the barrels off puny units like thors ans beat them to death

[inner bear]

decreased cost and increased lolcannon pricing helps a good amount

[iron cloak]

actually i think this is a great idea

also if you decrease the reload of the plasma shotgun it would be more capable killing spam which i think would be very helpful for a 29.000 Metal unit.

[thorn cedar]

Jugg can't have a invincible moving Radar like pulsar, it would be super broken
You have to spam air scout with a Jugg while you push to see commander dot combined with juno.
That way both sides can fight over radar coverage making it balanced

[rain topaz]

15000 metal cost ought to do the trick

[inner sleet]

The problem with jug cannon is the low accuracy and low range- it would be fine if ex. increased beam dmg by like 25% but made it cost like 1k e/shot- im noticing a jug inability to hit stuff with the cannon bruh- im noticing several problems with jug now lol

[inner sleet]

My suggestions= make cannons shoot in lobbies- like with mauser shells- improve accuracy. Make beam like 20% higher cooldown and higher dmg and 1k e/shot.

[barren spear]

you are paying 30k metal for the unit

[gray hornet]

i like the tactical missile suggestion

there was also stomp concept as antispam weapon

[rain topaz]

Tac nuke + replace 1 shotgun hand with a fast firing high calibre cannon

[gray hornet]

yeah shotguns looks very weak tbh, more like just placeholders, didnt see they do any damage neither to spam nor to single targets

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1069112987782221904/1069929610562785280/output.gif?ex=663aad59&is=66395bd9&hm=0d4d397692522035f3651f3790ee7a2b012619a108c7e5fbd06622d81e3f6ad3&=&width=800&height=500

[grim hawk]

tell that to flagships 😄

[gray hornet]

tbh overall D-gunning in BAR is too easy compared to OTA, in OTA its the last tool, because 1) if you fail you lose instantly and lose all your stuff with comm death 2) comms are not rezzable 3) cloaking is harder due to overall eco weakness compared to BAR

easy Dguns makes 30k in single slow unit wasting of metal.

small radar to reveal comms at least as a dot makes sense to me.
also i'd consider making it survive one D-gun hit 🙂

[grim hawk]

Given Juggers don't have many weaknesses as they stand, sending relevant support units to prevent the com-dgun doesn't seem completely unreasonable imo

[gray hornet]

yes but in reality they are usually cleaned easily
and yes, we back again to T1 spam being REQUIRED for the late game

[grim hawk]

I only really see that when people send the jugger in naked, or get greedy and push forward without their support units (radar , jammer , some spam, t1 scout planes, etc)

[iron cloak]

If you send naked 30k metal to the front without at least considering to allocate a other 1000 or 5000 in spam to zone, it's a skill issue.

[inner sleet]

I think the rocket is fine as is- it does hit the targets and deals decent dmg

[rain topaz]

I recall it used to have Krogcrush, what was that?

[rain topaz]

Spam is skill now? Surely just insider knowledge of broken game mechanics?

[grim hawk]

You just need to not have a naked Jugg on the frontline waiting to be dgunned, the method you choose to defend against a possible com-dgun is upto you. Spam is probably one of the least efficient methods of accomplishing that from a metal cost pov

[iron cloak]

It's not a skill to make spam per se. But it's a skill to recognize how and when to support a 29.000 metal unit with spam.

And spam is by far the most efficient use here as it's de facto the only method to uncloak a commander.
I guess 3 pinpointers achieve the same goal but having a 15 metal unit eat 2500 damage shot is also useful to supplement ur big guy.

[rain topaz]

I think what new players would expect to see is, a Juggernaut with an arrayed T2/T3 army supporting it, rather than a Juggernaut with a constant stream of grunts walking to their destruction in front of it. Think about how the game would look as a movie, at the moment, it makes no sense!

[inner sleet]

It is what it is. My strat is 1 jug/behemoth into grunt spam ; )

[thorn cedar]

It makes total sense to have little pawns suiciding themself on repeat to protect the big boy, that's exactly how it happens in many movies

[grim hawk]

Doing all of the above is surprisingly effective, esp if you don't let your supporting t2/t3 rush off alone to die ahead of the jugg

[frail void]

Increase damage and this could actually work

Maybe add a cool down and an actual stomp animation, like the Atlas in PA:T

Another absolutely stupid idea, make them PUNCH

[gray hornet]

just give them dguns in both hands

[remote saddle]

shotgun blasts should shoot multiple tzar projectiles, tactical nuke with manual fire and a bit more movement speed. lol cannons should have a price increase regardless

[brazen spade]

Cannons should shoot bedbugs

[inner sleet]

thats not helpful

having a stomp is perfectly reasonable probably- just make the dmg reasonable and its fine- more reasonable to just make the cannons work tho

[boreal spear]

Commando has 900 radar and a jammer. Although, annoyingly, if you tell it to follow a Jugg he paces behind at his build distance (which is pretty large) instead of at his heels to share his jammer and maximize forward radar for the Jugg. He can also provide some repair healing while he's there or lay some defensive mines or build T1 air scouts on repeat for even more sight/radar.

Although, while he is amphibious, I don't think either of the amphib labs can build him, so you'd need a T2 bot lab back on land.

Maybe the Commando should be added to the Amphibious Gantry?

[remote saddle]

the stomp could just be a counter to mass ticks blocking movement

[remote saddle]

how hard would it be to replace the shotgun blast with tzar projectiles? i really wanna try that maybe with tweak units

[gray hornet]

this would look boring, there already shiva with such projectiles

[remote saddle]

yeah but this time its 10 tzar projectiles all at ones

propably should lower lol im testing it right now

[iron cloak]

The Shotgun is good in my opinion. Give it higher RoF.

[inner sleet]

I wish they fixed the shotgun

[remote saddle]

I have done a few tweaks:
Shotgun now fires 7 Tzar projectiles with same damage and explosion radius but higher velocity compared to the Tzar
(used to shoot 10 projectiles with way less OOMPH)
rate of fire slightly decreased

Laser now has 1200 Range and a higher rate of fire but half the base damage (damage vs planes is same)

Rocket Launcher has been replaced with a tac nuke that takes the same amount of energy and metal as a tac nuke silo per shot but takes longer to restock ammo and has less range (1800 vs 2200)

https://streamable.com/w1de2s

propably needs some balancing but these are 3 ideas that have been floating around here that i combined

[round rain]

That look OP as heck.

One interesting thing about the tzar shots is that it looks like they'll be super likely to friendly fire. I'd definitely let the jug lead the charge (not including spam screen) if it had that much aoe on the shotguns.

[remote saddle]

yeah the damage is overtuned it used to be 160x10 damage for the shotgun now its 900x7

just copied tzar numbers to see if it works

[inner sleet]

I would like to see if can make so the shotgun shots land more clustered- like mauser volleys

[remote saddle]

yeah thats possible

[inner sleet]

Tbh if the shotgun shells were mauser/quaker shots then that might not be too bad

I believe in u : )

[forest galleon]

Insanely op! I love it!

[small nexus]

Change shotgun shots to fireball

[remote saddle]

Ok ive tweaked it a bit more the shotgun now does 320x8 damage with a lot more spread
the tac nuke has been decreased to 1000 range

you can use the tweakunits file if you are boss in a lobby and type !bset tweakunits followed by the code
the SOURCE file contains the raw code and cannot be used in game

its hard to find the proper balance for a unit that costs 30K since its half the metal of a lolcannon and same energy cost

160 damage on shotgun was basicly nothing

with tac nuke jugg has the potential to walk into a base with his massive HP pool and just snipe eco so there might be no good way to balance that

[inner bear]

jugg as it is, just cheaper, is enough to make it very viable again, and also with raised lolcannon pricing, has a much longer useful window

changing weapons is ideally best done as rarely as possible, players have to relearn each unit that's different in that way, whereas a cost nerf has a much lighter relearning curve

[round rain]

How much muscle memory could people have built up around jugs that would be invalidated by making the weapons better?

If the relearning is just having to actually go "oh shoot, that's a huge freaking robot and it's gonna kill me", instead of "oh lol, they spent their money on THAT?" that's kind of the point right?

[remote saddle]

right now if someone builds a jugg youre gonna assume its to self nuke in your base

if its cheaper its just gonna increase the amount of self nuking not actually the usage of the juggs weapons

[rain topaz]

It's supposed to be, for 29000 metal!

[rain topaz]

How much cheaper? I'd say 21k would be perhaps not cheap enough, but the kroggie has to be the most expensive unit!

[iron cloak]

this looks super fun but super OP

[remote saddle]

i tuned it down a bit shotgun does a third of the damage now

[barren spear]

Jugg only value rn is the self d nuke

[remote saddle]

Ok new version this ones definetly playable i think
laser range 1050 and 2200 damage per shot
shotgun 320x8 Damage
Tac Nuke 950 Range

https://streamable.com/ksjjpx?src=player-page-share

[inner sleet]

The shotgun looks quite good very nice

I dont really like the laser changes- laser is fine as was by default. The tactical missile launcher should be balanced- would be fitting if set storage limit to 2 missiles

[remote saddle]

yeah i would like to know how to limmit the storage i didnt find anything on that

[inner sleet]

It might be listed in the coding for armthor- perhaps as a gadget or in unitdefs

[remote saddle]

i looked at the thor and the anti nuke citadel

its not a big issue right now anyways it takes 150 seconds for 1 tac nuke to charge

but you propably wouldnt want the juggs to spend metal on tac nukes all the time

[rain topaz]

Is ADHD targetting behaviour common? As in, you previously clicked on the three titans in a group, but the krog still shot at the single titan that just came out of the lab? I've noticed that in playtesting.

[remote saddle]

i didnt target anything i just let the jugg do what it wants to do

but i think this targeting behaviour is normal jugg behavior the higher rate of fire just makes it worse

[rain topaz]

I see, I'd be interested to see how targetting works, as it is clearly optimal to stick to one target, once you've already started to shoot at it, rather than spreading damage around.

[remote saddle]

i think its part of its abillity to shoot at multiple targets at the same time, the shotguns the rocket launcher and the laser can all target individual targets in vanilla so constant target switching propably decreses the likelyhood of overkill like shooting a single pawn with all 3 weapons at ones

[rain topaz]

I see, there should probably be some intelligent behaviour, based on whether the target unit is still surviving or not. In general, the targetting and movement behaviour I've seen when playing around with units in skirmishes isn't great, I prefer how it used to work in C&C, back in 1995. I'd also like to see the Juggernaut getting much greater sight range, it's 200 feet tall, so it ought to be able to see farther than a radar bot!

[remote saddle]

got the stockpile to work thanks to SethDGamre

[gusty phoenix]

Juggernauts die to Marauders when equalization is taken into account and half the maras are alive... They die to 2 titans and 3 thors. One smart com can take out 2 or 3 of them if they are spaced right, otherwise 2. Jugs are a noob trap. Jug converted cost is 39,557. Titans are 18409. Thors are 13120. Maras are 1330.5. I do not use build power requirements at t3. If you need more BP at this point you have already screwed up.

[remote saddle]

the juggernaut is basicly just a lesser version of the epic tumbleweed

thats why i dont really like the idea of just reducing the cost it will just make it more usefull for self D

[rain topaz]

I did some testing against Thors, the Thors trashed the Juggernaut with either all surviving, or one dying, so at the moment a Juggernaut doesn't come close to 3 Thors, despite being designed to whale on such units...

[gray hornet]

i got an idea, how about Juggernaut will be the only unit in game that can survive D-gun but getting crippled from it and kill comm that dguns him?
will be more like game ender if theres last comm for example.

crippled jugg cannot move or move slower

or at least just killing the comm that d-guns it

[rain topaz]

I did think maybe it would be fun to make them dgun proof...

[small nexus]

making them dgun proof will promote pulsar spamming more tho

[thorn cedar]

the whole point of the unit is to not get dgun

[small nexus]

make juggs take less damage from pulsars/snipers but they should still die to dgun, this way you can play to keep your jugg alive against dgun while it performs well against pulsar spam or atleast tanks good bit of it for other units

[remote saddle]

i think it would be bad for gameplay if the jugg could just tank even more then now because then its way easier to reach that point where the jugg can just ignore your defences walk into them and self D and that is basicly allready the role the behemoth has its supposed to walk into defences tank all the damage destroy most of them and then die
i like the Idea of the jugg being a unit that has range that gets better by being microd

i increased the lasers range and rate of fire and lowered the damage in order to make it outrange a lot of other units, be less likely to overkill and get into range of defences like pulsars sooner

the tac nuke allso gives you the ability to sweep in slightly into the range of a pulsar launch the rocket and retreat again

[acoustic nexus]

giving it a tac launcher seems pretty cor like -- i would keep the tac launcher ~1k range though, it's meant to be a burst tool not a safe chip one.
i'm up for increasing it's speed a bit and giving it more firepower

if you up it's range too much you make it a slow and lumbering poke turret, speed encourages it to be used more actively, and makes it less helpless at avoiding dgun

[remote saddle]

currently with my unit tweak the laser has 1050 range the tac nuke 950 and the shotgun 600

2 tac nukes kill a pulsar

[acoustic nexus]

2-3 charges just like a thor maybe (with cost)

[remote saddle]

yeah its a bit more expensive then a regular tac nuke and you can only have 2

https://streamable.com/taxcv7

the AI did a massive mistake here by having the titans in a ball and trying to facehug the juggs, the optimal way to fight them here would be to stay out of the range of the shotguns and seperated wich should be easy to do since the titans have more movement speed

[remote saddle]

even with my rework juggs seem to get destroyed by thors (3 on 1 and 6 on 2) the DPS for the thor in game is something like 30K burst DPS lol

i know its in theory if you get a perfect chaining but still its funny because it absolutely does both anti spam and single target

[gray hornet]

yeah thats why its useless... kek

all these "make spam, make radar" is just a theoricraft and words, in reality it can be Dgunned very easy and i also often see T3 just walking in without cover even from Top OS players (check yesterdays Bismuth game when Indaclub just waste 10 shivas into Dgun in the mid rocks (he is definitely a noob... sure)

[thorn cedar]

it's very simalar to tzar rush but on t3, juno kills the sneaky petes, air acout reveal the commander dots, spam there to escort the jugg
i wouldn't mind it having a tacnuke tho, even tho i think it's gonna be super op it could be fun

[gray hornet]

nice joke about juno. noone ever can afford having juno when rushing tzar.

[thorn cedar]

you don't do juno for tzar, only for jugg rush, you have afus

[gray hornet]

ok you mean the jugg

yeah in theory it sounds fair, but as i said even pro players often use T3 without support

and 30k unit dying to a single Dgun is incredible Dgun value

i think comm dying preforming Dgun a jugg is good, you can rezz it after, but you cant d-gun jugg if you have last comm

[gray hornet]

nothing can be super op for this price and speed i think 🙂
thors have emp nuke just for 9k

[remote saddle]

yeah actually the tacnuke is the least broken thing about the rework i think, it has limmited range costs more then a regular tacnuke and is limmited to 2

best use case is getting within 950 range of an eco and blowing up converters or using 2 rockets to kill a pulsar at the front

[thorn cedar]

yeah that's very true, it would be interesting change to have, could make the jugg rush very enjoyable to play

[thorn cedar]

oh you did other changes

maybe do 1 version with only tacnuke added to the unit, so higher chances it gets played in lobbies

[barren spear]

i am with raikoh, test small changes

the fact that the jugger can stock 1 tac nuke in the stockpile makes him way more fearing

tac nuke range 700 or 800?

[remote saddle]

950

i reverted the laser but shotgun has to stay buffed to make up for the loss of DPS (you will save up the tac nukes so not having regular rockets means less DPS)

pulsar range is 1400 so the range of the tac nuke cant be too short

[remote saddle]

this version only changes the shotgun to be more powerfull and rocket into tac nuke everything else is vanilla jugg
shotgun has been nerfed from previous versions (deals 280x7 damage compared to 160x10 in basegame) thats 1.960 vs 1600 against single targets
tac nuke has 950 range

[split garden]

We've seen race for quickest titan on forge now I want to see quickest jugg.

[thorn cedar]

alright, hopefully we can give it a try 👍

[rain topaz]

Do pulsars, snipers and starlights still do double damage versus Juggernauts? I recall this being a thing back in the day.

[rain topaz]

Tactical nuke... or Multiple Rocket Launcher? I think giving it the catapult weapon would be fun.

[remote saddle]

not really possible since the catapult is direct fire and the rocket launchers of the jugg are on the back and fire up

the shotguns could shoot like a catapult

or at least it wouldnt be copy and pasting like the tac nuke since the catapult doesnt shoot up but at an angle

legion has a tank that fires a swarm of rockets into the air

[round rain]

I think the jug should have unique weapons from the rest of cor t3.

Otherwise there'll be almost no reason to build whatever unit shared the jugg weapon once you can start building jugg.

The jugg should be king when it comes out, but there should still be room for the king to have a supporting army.

[limber forge]

I like the tact nuke idea as well, but I also think cost changes might still be needed. With the current state of lol cannons, it just feels bad to heavily commit into 3.5 on most maps.

[remote saddle]

https://streamable.com/exxlmp

[inner sleet]

Hm I think I prefer how the shotgun worked in the previous demo u showed. OTher than that it looks quite good now 👍

[remote saddle]

do you prefer the slow projectile speed? or is it about how powerfull the shotgun was in previous versions?

the AOE effect is nerfed to previous versions and allso the damage

this one is very close to vanilla still underpowered i think, this version just replaces the shotgun with Shiva projectiles

i allso left the vanilla shotgun firing sound in this one wich is pretty underwhelming

[inner sleet]

I liked the shot trajectory- was clustered and good

It was a bit too much aoe in that version so i wonder if youve tried using quaker projectiles?

[remote saddle]

i think shiva is quite balanced

im adding another projectile and make it gravity affected and reduce the velocity

i personally dont like how far the projectiles fly either

[inner sleet]

:0

[remote saddle]

its gonna be more like the old version without being as powerfull

[inner sleet]

Actually this version for shotgun looks really good, idk if u agree?

Seems u improved the shotgun targeting aswell which is really cool

Actually with these changes the jug is bound to be quite good, nice work!

[remote saddle]

well see i think 25K metal price is still needed

[inner sleet]

Alright relax lol

Giving +1 to speed would make it ultra balanced imo

[remote saddle]

the look of the shotgun in this is very close to the old version

i think lower velocity is better because its less likely to reach further

[inner sleet]

Ye lower velocity, that one looks higher than what u showed before

[inner sleet]

Um how can i go and test out the tweak? Is it just aregular tweak def?

(It seems to be working now)

[remote saddle]

ok i dont wanna lower the velocity even further because it might make fast units impossible to hit

in a lobby you gotta use !bset tweakunits and in singleplayer its the unit tweaks menu

i would like to get a testing lobby going but we need some players for that

[inner sleet]

Man I just decoded ur base64 and now I see all ur secrets ; )

[remote saddle]

lol

it could propably use some shortening theres a lot of redundant code being overwritten

[inner sleet]

yeah u only need add in the coding that changes stuff- Im looking for the velocity edit but cant find xD

[remote saddle]

its under korg_fire

[inner sleet]

also i just realized the korg stomp was implemented- which means spam is to be dealt with- I saw someone show it of before

[remote saddle]

i dont know if it deals damage

havent tested it would like to combine the 2 tweaks if possible

i think every unit that can kill walls by walking through them has a stomp attack but it doesnt deal damage to units

[inner sleet]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1069112987782221904/1069929610562785280/output.gif?ex=66488519&is=66473399&hm=49f38e8150b13a2923b6740b9e95b2720c118740b687cfef6d9f15ee288b5890&width=800&height=500&

[remote saddle]

yeah i dont think that is in game seems to be just a tweak someone made

[inner sleet]

Ye Nikuksis made it

[remote saddle]

but its pretty cool

[inner sleet]

Should make so it only damages enemies tho xD

[remote saddle]

i dont know if that is possible thats the reason they allso destroy friendly walls

[inner sleet]

Thors apparantly cant deal dmg to other thors with their laser- so idt should be possible

Is it intensity that changes velocity?

[remote saddle]

no its weapon velocity

[inner sleet]

oh xD

Man this is a time where I can actually do some testing myself and maybe contribute- I didnt realize what u could do with tweakdefs very cool

[remote saddle]

would you be up for a playtest in like an hour?

[inner sleet]

Sure- Im already trying to figure out how the hell the jug tweaks work lol

[remote saddle]

i posted a shortened version of the mod that mostly contains the actual changes without the redundant code https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1241023760442855454

[gray hornet]

i think its a bit too much, may be try hound's plasma instead, though i like the old shotgun look, probably it just needs some stats tweak

[remote saddle]

the issue with the old shotgun is allso that it aims at dead center but has spread wich means most projectiles miss the target and keep flying very far this is why i gave it slow projectiles with gravity so they hit the ground and deal splash damage

i guess hounds could work outside of gauss mode

[inner sleet]

Do you have the source code for the stomp tweak?

[remote saddle]

this is with medium explosions

[inner sleet]

There exists a list of explosion variants?

[remote saddle]

the projectiles actually have an AOE equivalent of the shiva so i dont want to make the explosions look too small

[remote saddle]

yeah theres a list of existing units here where you can check out the commands being used for each unit https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/tree/master/units/ArmBots/T2

[gray hornet]

no its not mine, i think its @flint fern

[inner sleet]

hum

Well Itanthias, in case ur reading this- curious how u did the stomp for jug tweak

[wheat meteor]

itanthias was too op, he showed up, fixed like 100 problems and proposed and prepared fixes for like 100 more, then disappeared (ie is living a happy life with his spouse not messing with bar code or somethin)

[inner sleet]

oof

Someone should be a student of his, who writes down all the thing the dude contributed

Like what happened with the ancient greeks 😉- socrates I believe

[inner sleet]

Hum ive gotten down in a rabbit hole now- apparently been tried to implement stomp but it hasnt worked RIP

[inner sleet]

Hm I just noticed that the Jug deals more beam dmg when units are closer

Also I noticed an interesting UI bug- if u shhot with beam then it says it gets a new storage amount xD

[remote saddle]

im pretty sure that bug doesnt happen in my version

[rain topaz]

It looks better with fast projectile speed, and more fitting for the king unit of the game to have a better looking weapon than a mere bishop. Need to playtest the twealed unit against plausible opposition, e.g. can a Juggernaut reliably stomp 3 titans or 4 thors? It should be able to, there needs to be a premium in power for the slow unit that's a nice big dgun target.

[remote saddle]

yeah i kinda thought so too i used the slow projectiles to make it hit more often

because the projectiles hit the ground and explode

high velocity with spread means you get a lot of projectiles flying very high and very far

[remote saddle]

the fast version youre looking at shoots 7 Shiva projectiles at ones same damage same AOE

[sleek kernel]

thats intended behavoir for all lasers

[inner sleet]

:0

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1241023760442855454

Link for seeing different variants of the jug tweaks

[remote saddle]

i think for a first version it would be a bit much to make it stomp 4 thors or 3 titans i think most people would be reluctant to play under those rules

i allso think that its more important to rework the thor as hornet has allready done i believe, i have tried some really OP versions of my rework that melted 2 titans but i never managed to make a version that beats 3 thors

i think the way to go is just to make it cost 25K metal + tac nuke and slightly buffed shotgun because then it will at least offer something the behemoth doesnt while not being too expensive

[inner sleet]

Man i would really love to try and improve the shotgun targeting movements- it stalls about 50% of the time against anything that is not big

If anyone knows what the various configures do then a guide would be much appreciated

should be fine if jug is willing to just shoot randomly- as long as the shotgun shoots- Nvm I think im starting to figure things out lol

[inner sleet]

I wonder if u can make units move slower in the water? To give some sort of tax to compensate for a jug buff

[sleek kernel]

Yes

[rain topaz]

Do we really want to be making the Juggernaut worse in any way? 🤨

[inner sleet]

There is this concept known as "amphibious tax"- Where amphibious units are made worse by design

SO i figure that by restoring it to balance u can silence the haters by making it not op by being amphibious : )

[iron cloak]

rolling bombs got this nerf some months back.

[sleek kernel]

Well actually
They had it then It got removed then I readded it back

[boreal spear]

That's not quite right, they're made more expensive for their land stats by design. I wouldn't say they're worse by design, as many of them are quite potent (like Marauder for example is pretty fast and effective).

[rain topaz]

My wise counsel is that amphibious tax should only be paid on maps with water, set by the mapmaker depending on how useful being amphibious is on that map. Otherwise a good chunk of the units in the game, including the juggernaut, will be pointless to build on dry maps.

[inner sleet]

If the tax is only to nerf its speed in water- just makes it less good at using its amphibious skill

[inner sleet]

What in here makes the rolling bomb move slower in water?

[iron cloak]

maybe the depthMod ?

[sleek kernel]

constantcoeff

[rain topaz]

Did anything get finalised with buffing Juggernauts?

[inner sleet]

Well im happy with my version of the Jug but the official version is the same

[inner bear]

balance pack solves it somewhat

[rain topaz]

What buffs were in the balance pack?

[hardy kernel]

is there a place to look at the balance pack?

[inner bear]

#1186850950770610207 message
that's the latest published, but it's outdated now, I need to document the whole thing in one post, but waiting on finalising a couple of changes within it first
the other pins show the changes added in older versions

[remote saddle]

my tweak is seeing some usage on brightworks lobby, i think its mostly fair https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_K-cAxHgrevdGMlgeF1nDSIFSoqNC6LZTTw711JCfI/edit

still looses to 3 thors and still looses to 2 titans

but overall its stronger then before and atleast now its cheaper then those units that beat it

3 thors and 2 titans both cost 27K metal, the jugg costs 25K so its fair that it looses

another very important change is the AOE on the shotguns, the base game juggernaut cant even kill a group of stouts with his shotguns first he takes ages to aim and then he does mediocre damage with small AOE

[acoustic nexus]

Tac launcher baby

[remote saddle]

surrounding a jugg with lots of small units is literally the most efficiant way to kill it

[acoustic nexus]

Seems like a fair rework!

Base game doesn't hVe enough aoe on shotgun?

[remote saddle]

its a mixture of multiple issues, first the jugg animation is so slow that he just gets bullied by small units

but then 110 AOE with 10 projectiles is allso very likely to miss

[inner bear]

aiui, intended design, they're meant to be supported

problem is places you want to send a jugg, support isn't always too viable

and they cost a ton by themselves, plus obviously, the alternatives eg titans and thors are much more autonomous

[rain topaz]

The changes look good!

It's still not fair that it loses to the thors, you have a lot more dgun risk putting all your eggs in one basket, the Jug is much slower, and there should be a premium for having built the ultimate unit.

[inner bear]

balance pack juggs tried to be cheaper without changing interactions, but there is also a longer power spike timing too now, making them relatively better

thors are very overpowered units, in most situations

even many times their value in say kargs, in mountain terrain, will usually lose to them

[solid sage]

Big yes to Tac nuke with charges on Jugg! I also think Jugg should have 1s selfD time like rolling bombs so you can use it till the last moment and not misscalculate when to selfD, because Jugg wrecks are one of the worst things that can happen with such a costly unit. Not sure Jugg needs any more changes besides that unless we want a really OP unit in the end

[acoustic nexus]

tac nuke is neccesary to make jug interesting, can either make their normal death not huge, OR reduce their self d timer to 5 sec

[solid sage]

Why not 1s selfD? Would that be OP? Its jugg after all

[inner bear]

ability weapons are best minimised, but there are cases where it's needed and arguably jugg is one of them, especially considering the thor

[solid sage]

Would also be very fun to use

[inner bear]

not the consideration at hand unfortunately, BAR has a lot of hidden rules about unit viability, but this I would argue is justified exception

[solid sage]

This reads to me that you're gonna do it and i cant be happier :))

[inner bear]

false inference, I'm saying it breaks rules, but it should be allowed to

[acoustic nexus]

why? it's the ultimate unit xD

[inner bear]

as I said, it should be exceptional, by definition

[acoustic nexus]

t3 unit abilities are not a problem

[inner bear]

they are unfortunately

[acoustic nexus]

why?
besides CoNVenTiOn

[solid sage]

I agree. Thors already break those rules if i understand correctly

[inner bear]

convention/intention

[acoustic nexus]

thoughtfully added manual abilities actually add to gameplay depth

[inner bear]

I am not arguing in favour of the rule, I am just telling you what it is

[acoustic nexus]

what is "intention?"

[inner bear]

no, or minimal, abilites & toggles

and yes this includes artillery trajectory

[acoustic nexus]

well yeah you don't want to add toggles and complicate things without good reason

but like anyone who sees a jug launch a tac launcher is going to know that exists
it's very visible

bar conventions != better for the game, they are just conventions
good not to conflate those two

[solid sage]

I like this rule vs games like starcraft that task your micro heavily, but this exception is analogous to thor and in spirit of Core weaponry

[acoustic nexus]

so we have like kargs, titans, and jugs they all handle similiarly
you can only make so many of those units before it's samey

imagine how boring the thor would be without emp launcher

[solid sage]

Yeah it makes it unique in a good way

[inner bear]

again, not me you need to convince

[acoustic nexus]

alirght cool

[inner bear]

meaningful exceptions to rules make the rules themselves meaningful in some cases

and the ultimate unit (which is inherantly weaker than several cheaper ones by virtue of being one unit) should act like it

Core T3 needs a kick up the rump in general, part of the picture is increasing lolcannon costings, but jugg being terrible value is completely part of it and IMO should be fixed

[solid sage]

So how do we make you the president of unit tweaks?

[inner bear]

not entirely that simple :P

what we do need at some point is a gallery of tweaks, which I'll get to at some point, not least as half of them are mine anyway

[rain topaz]

Seems there is an unofficial policy not to nerf Arm units!

[rain topaz]

In playtesting, has a tactical nuke launcher proved as useful as the EMP missile launcher on Thors? I would guess that for the use case of late T3 units, the Thor EMP launcher is actually more useful, as with two missiles, you can EMP twice as much static defence before rolling in and taking it out, whereas to take out static defences, the Juggernaut will have to fire both of its missiles at the same target. Add to this that you get three Thors for the same cost and you can neutralise 6 times as much static defence prior to a big attack as a single Juggernaut.

Solution to this imbalance would be to let the Jug stockpile 6 tactical missiles. Did anyone try to replace the warhead of the current missile with a tactical nuke one, and see how that works?

[inner bear]

it's a differential balance issue. what we might see if/when comtrans nerf is added, is that thors start to become more obviously OP in all lobbies

[rain topaz]

Is Comtrans nerf is only supposed for be for t1 trans though? T2 trans should be able to carry units at full speed I guess?

[acoustic nexus]

its for kiling units and being a walking base threatener
that goes over terrain

how much range is it?

the cortex tac nuke even tho it's shorter range has advantage of not needing a followup unit to kill it

[inner bear]

there is a very slight slowness increase too, but not that noticable. T2 trans sharing at least takes more effort and cost, preplanning

[remote saddle]

yeah the jugg missiles are less usefull then the EMP, however, ones you get 2 or 3 juggs and you have 6 missiles in the bank you can just delete things with barely any threat to them so its better to leave it not too powerfull

it encourages the enemy to do something about a single jugg at their door when it is still only 1 jugg and not multiple

the tac nukes are allso really usefull to get into 1000 range of an eco backline and pop converters or even afus

you still cant rely on the jugg as a frontliner as titans or thors are still better fighters for their resources, The jugg is now good at sieging from the distance you can peak into range to pop off your missiles and then decide if you want to move back into safety again or continue to move forward and self D the jugg

[rain topaz]

2 jugs is 60 metal, should be game ending. Using jugs as tactical nuke siege units would be a waste, as you could have spent 10k on 2 catapults and got a better effect, or possibly just built 2 tactical nuke launchers with air cons for 3k.

[remote saddle]

the difference is that the jugg can move into heavy fire and launch the missiles from within, a catapult has to stay out of fire. Moving a jugg within 1000 range of an eco is way easier then moving a catapult within 1400 range of it

[rain topaz]

I actually think thors are seriously OP because their counters are static defence and slow moving units like snipers and starlights, but their EMP missiles counter their counters.

I'm in favour of removing the EMP missiles from thors, will rez one of the nerf thor threads and add that specifically.

[inner bear]

they also counter mass small fast units, which are usually the counters to monoliths

[remote saddle]

nah i think Thors should just deal a lot less damage against big high HP units

the EMP could maybe get a bit less range and less speed so its easier to dodge

then the Thor would be a support unit, it can take damage kill spam and lots of small units and stun static defence

[inner bear]

inverse, make it high alpha with a chain of 5 hops

rather than up to -50-
the razorback is the antispam T3 unit

[remote saddle]

but then were back at the beginning where Thor counters all T3

and is allso very fast and cheap compared to titan and jugg

[inner bear]

not without EMP it won't, comparatively

I agree it's bonkers overtuned for most player strata, yes

[remote saddle]

ive done a lot of testing, the Thor benefits greatly from its movement speed and high HP you can just surround titans or juggs and get flanking bonus

[inner bear]

bigger issue is most of things that counter thor, are arm only

[remote saddle]

and both titan and jugg have issues targeting

[inner bear]

flanking is somewhat amplified by the compound attack, making it single attacks would mitigate that somewhat

they do yes

achilles tortoise problem

[rain topaz]

This also means it's much harder to get flanking damage against a group of 3 Thors than against a single Juggernaut. Juggernauts almost always have flanking working against them as they are bundled by many smaller units, so their superior health is probably worth only 60% of its full amount in practice whilst thors' effective health is close to its nominal value. Thors without EMP missiles or EMP immunity would still be OP at 9k metal IMHO.

[rain topaz]

Thors having higher movement than commanders is a big design fault, as commander dgun and air attack are the only things that work against them. I would hesitate to call either of those actual counters, as they work against everything, and risking a commander is often risking the game. So at the moment, I would say it's correct to say that Thors have no counters at all.

[solid sage]

Jugg doesnt need to be samey in terms of missile use, its Core and it has its distinct flavor. Also... I think jugg missile is the first change we wanna try and see from there whats needed

Thor thread when

[rain topaz]

I think keep the same missile but put a tactical nuke warhead on it. To those who think it's OP... it's supposed to be at least somewhat effective when you spend 29k. 2 juggernauts should be just as game-ending as one lolcannon, at the moment I think you'd need at least 10 juggernauts to have an equivalent impact on the game to a lolcannon.

[solid sage]

Maybe. But i think its enough to test missile first to see how it pans out, it could be amazing for slow pushing with jugg.

Also lolcannon is getting a metal rebalance, no?

Here's a wild idea. Make jugg OP by giving it a reclaim beam to sniff up the battleground after devastation

[rain topaz]

Not sure about the lolcannon, it's better to benchmark against similar units, titans, thors and behemoths.

Juggernaut failed hard against Thors in my playtesting, which are also much faster and have other advantages. Others have playtested Juggernauts againt Titans, which they also failed against. I'm not sure about behemoths, I'm guessing they also fail hard against those?

The reclaim beam is a nice idea but runs counter the theme of reclaiming units being small and squishy, its value is questionable as it might turn out to be less effective than 5 rezbots for 500 metal, better to balance the main characteristics of the unit.

[solid sage]

Yeah but reclaiming under jugg is easier said than done. Maybe even borderline impossible. With beam you get insta metal while walking through enemy lines

[remote saddle]

imagine the friendly fire...

fire at will tac nuke

[rain topaz]

We need to make hearing the krog laser sound effect set off a panic equivalent to hearing the nuke launched warning when you don't have anti.

If Juggs get buffed so that everyone is making them rather than lolcannons late game, that would make for more exciting gameplay, and create a buzz of excitement similar to when theirs were introduced. Arguably, thors were well balanced for a new unit that was aimed to be OP to create excitement, they just never got the subsequent nerf to balance them for some reason.

[remote saddle]

allso a small buff is propably better then a big one, we dont want people to get a sour taste in their mouth when thinking about a juggernaut buff, then everyone will just say remember the last time we buffed the jugg? it was super busted lets not do that again

there can be another small buff after that if its not enough

[rain topaz]

Do Juggernaut missiles track? Could make them not lead shots, like bombardment rocket launchers.

[remote saddle]

even if they track, the missiles will track ticks that run into your lines

and tac nuke has massive AOE

meaning they will easily chain react buildings

i can decrease the reacharge time of the tac nuke in the future so its more spammable 90 seconds might be a bit long

but manual targeting is a must in my opinion, most players dont even let arbiters or ambassadors on fire at will

[rain topaz]

Yeah that might be a bit annoying, closely followed by 12 shiva shots and 4 catapult volleys...

[remote saddle]

catapults shouldnt be on fire at will either

shivas sadly have no choice

[rain topaz]

I believe the friendly fire issues are caused by the shot leading function being broken, causing shots at fast-miving scout units to be wildly innacurate. I made a bug report thread but nobody has replied yet

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1047080297042280518/threads/1261789588624638033

[solid sage]

Even without this supposed bug the autorocket would cause lots of FF by nature of spam traveling through your army. Tac nuke has to be manual with charges to not cause jugg to be frustrating unit to use. Especially since it uses multiple weapons, you dont want it on hold fire anytime

[oblique shard]

Just speed it up please. Not too much though so a place is kept for the T3 Tank that will hopefully once be finished.

[frail void]

The shotguns are meh for an endgame unit, a "mobile superweapon"

[acoustic nexus]

When you make a jug it feels like a liability and a walking metal storage

Literally a "we lose if this gets dgunned" unit

Also like all t3 it suffers the risk of getting rezzed

[frail void]

There are 23 ways to solve this:
-Make it nothing more than a tall titan (greatly reduced cost)
-Buff it to be actually scary (IMO DPS should be doubled, but reload nerfed so it works particularly well as a super heavy T3 that... counters T3s)
-MOBILE SUPERWEAPON CALAMITY COST NEARLY UNSTOPPABLE

[acoustic nexus]

A t3 unit should be super intimidating,cause if you leave the wreck they just rez it pretty ok

In addition to being ahead in eco

[solid sage]

No. Tac nuke should be enough IMO, otherwise we go 180 into OP.

[acoustic nexus]

i like tac nuke, it's one of those things you finsh a game you are like "man i could have used that better"

do you ever feel skill tested with you use a juggernaut?

[inner sleet]

It would be fine to give tac nuke 3x the capability of the emp missile launcher

[rain topaz]

A tactical nuke costs 1500, and the one on the Juggernaut will have a shorter range like the Titan EMP missile, unless they can go crazy with the tactical nukes, it's difficult to see this being a game changer.

The main problem with the unit is, they're supposed to be the strongest unit, but they lose to pretty much any T3, and well-microed T2. Probably ticks, too...

[oblique shard]

I would not give Tac nuke on Jugg - the tac nuke should be reserved for the Cor T3 tank that will eventually be created hopefully

[inner sleet]

Cortex already has 7 in gantry while armada has 6, why add more?

[remote saddle]

I think i might change something about my jugg tweak regarding the explosion on death.

Possible changes are:
-leave no rezzable wreck behind ever
-More damage to coms on death
-quicker Self D

I think if you D gun a jugg you should still survive if youre on full HP but after that you should be low and die if you Dgun another one in the next few minutes.

something like -95% of commander HP from jugg death explosion.

[rain topaz]

IMHO it's better thematically if the strongest units re huge mechs rather than tanks, and the Thor was OP from the start, so it would be better not to have any tanks in the gantry

[oblique shard]

Why tanks are nice.. Arm and Leg both have a T3 tank. Cor is a faction which could actually even have mainly tanks given their "hard&heavy" appeal.

[inner sleet]

Cor has the behemoth which is as big as can be lol

[oblique shard]

I mean I agree that tanks should not be too big, I thought Cor T3 tank could be as big as Thor and have tac nuke as opposed to the EMP missile. I have no idea what Hornet is cooking though

[solid sage]

Very quick selfD could be a unique perk of jugg.

[remote saddle]

not too quick

10 seconds is just too long to account for

[solid sage]

Whats the reasoning for not having, say, 1s selfD. Its 30k metal and a big problem of juggs are wrecks on enemy territory

[remote saddle]

I dont want the self D to be the main feature of the unit and i could just turn jugg wrecks off as a whole so they allways leave debris like fiends

[inner sleet]

I actually think the selfd is kinda ok as is- tho Jug can die from 50% hp because of the selfD length, so maybe it should be lowered lol

[oblique shard]

Just make the Jug faster IMO

[remote saddle]

if it gets more movement speed it cant have the self d or the tac nuke

that would be broken

[solid sage]

Wouldnt be the main feature, but low selfD would make the costly and honestly not too powerful unit viable as wrecks make it much less viable. Dont see how low selfD of 30k is somehow worse than having no wreck by design which is hard to justify

[remote saddle]

kindof like increasing behemoth movement speed

fiends allso have no wreck by design

and the standart jugg esplosion allready does quite a lot of damage

[solid sage]

Ye but they small and full of gasoline. Makes sense because they explode. Jugg just falls down, would look weird

I mean both options are ok i guess but no wreck just seems weird for a large unit

[oblique shard]

Yeah let's really consider the Tac Nuke for the Tank, IMO it would be neat as counterpart of the Thor

[inner bear]

too mirror, and not the role needed anyway

[oblique shard]

What is the role do you envision for the tank?

[inner bear]

https://tenor.com/view/command-and-conquer-gif-13861667

[remote saddle]

amphibeous tank wouldnt be a bad idea

since demon wont be amphib anymore

[rain topaz]

Make it as fast as marauders?

[iron cloak]

Why stop there. It should get a jetpack and be able to fly like t2 scout. Like a transformer.

[acoustic nexus]

flying titans and juggernauts would be sick

should be an extra units pack xD

[rain topaz]

Also, why are we talking about it firing tactical nukes? I reckon it should shoot regular Core nukes, considering it costs 29,000!

[viscid silo]

I would honestly prefer tac nukes as they can’t be anti’d. Super long range vision, flak cannon and tac nuke and it might deserve to be the most expensive unit in the game.

[frail void]

lol imo replace rocket pack with a single Catapult launcher with extra accuracy

[rain topaz]

The shotgun, laser and AA weapons are still well UP for cost though

[inner sleet]

AA on Jug? xD

[frail void]

a flak or two

[remote saddle]

now that i think about it, maybe the shotguns should be able to target air for reduced damage, similar to hounds

[inner sleet]

Titan shotgun shoots air hm

[rain topaz]

I believe the pointless missile can target aircraft?

[inner sleet]

With that in mind I think its ok to just make the jug laser deal big dmg to air (-reduce vtol DMG reduction)

[solid sage]

Airscout screen to counter lazer sounds bad tho

[remote saddle]

the jugg laser allready deletes air units

it just shoots slow

it 1 shots atomic bombers

actually if the shotgun would aim up in the sky to hit air units the shells would land on the other end of the map

so thats not a good idea, sadly i cant make the projectiles explode after a certain amount of time

you can allready aim at a mountain to make the shotgun shoot over it and hit way further then it usually does

works with a lot of units

[crimson sun]

How does your Uber buffed jug compare to a titan

It seems as if you've basicly just stuck everything you possibly can on a jug and made titans utterly useless

[remote saddle]

no, 2 titans still win against the jugg

titan laser has 6K damage, jugg laser in vanilla has 5.5K damage but i raised it to 6K damage to make them more equal
titans have 7.5 seconds reload and jugg has 4, so 2 titans will shoot more often then 1 jugg meaning the attack that actually matters has more DPS on titans

on top of that the titans are quicker and get flanking bonus

2 titans have 140K health combined jugg has 149K health but the slow speed means that 9K health more doesnt matter at all

the buffed shotguns and the tac nuke dont really help against titans and that wasnt my intention to begin with

[inner sleet]

2 Titans should be on even footing with Jug imo, even with tac nuke, titans dont suddenly become useless because Jug becomes better bruh

[acoustic nexus]

titan can split up, hit the field faster, walk faster

less gg when you get dgunned

the imagery fits, a bunch of transformers (titans) ganging up to fight the evil juggernaut

it's not much of a final boss if it doesn't have a weapon that makes you respect it at all

[rain topaz]

Shouldn't 2 titans lose to a juggernaut, which is slower, more expensive, and deserves a premium for being a huge investment that's all in one nicely dgunnable basket?

[rain topaz]

Flanking damage makes faster and smaller units OP, as splitting the same amount of metal and DPS into smaller, faster units that can surround other ones benefits from flanking damage.

Unit costs should have been updated when flanking damage was introduced, based on how likely they are to benefit from it, for example tick costs increased by 50%, Juggernaut cost decreased by 40% as it is almost always surrounded.

[inner sleet]

2 Titans should lose in frontline combat vs Jug but win if flanking

[iron cloak]

Well ticks have the obvious Juno all-or-nothing counter and generally many smaller units are susceptible to both AoE and cheap porc since you have a fraction of the HP that one larger unit of similar resources value has(?), that's the downside vs concentrating your mass into one larger units.
Of course in jug vs 2 titans there is no meaningful AoE involved so that thought of train goes out the window.

Jugg is definitely grossly underpowered or overcosted depending on how u look at it

[inner sleet]

The cost it has currently is perfect imo

[iron cloak]

I don't agree with that assessment and it's not even close

[acoustic nexus]

every situation where a jug could be used a titan would have come out a minute earlier
and once they both arrived 2 titans would be better

[iron cloak]

In it's current state, jugg is worth 20k tops as far as I am concerned. There is always situations where it might be worth 30k but generally speaking it's a very bad investment in most cases.

[inner sleet]

Currently its worth 20k u right, but I prefer buffing it to become stronger instead. Poll on design direction-https://discordapp.com/channels/549281623154229250/1234455410644222025/1264847961553375272

[iron cloak]

???

[acoustic nexus]

make it stronger

[inner sleet]

making it 20k would be like turning it into a tall titan lol

[acoustic nexus]

bar needs a unit that truly towers over the rest

[acoustic nexus]

if it has tac launchers now you have to think about where to position your anti t3
not only you have to spybot or somehow deal with the catapults if you want to use anti heavy t2 units

jugg vs other army should be somewhat advantageous to compensate for the huge build time and walk time

there's always the option of splitting forces and going around the jug. a building jug is a liability

[iron cloak]

I don't know. Kinda hard to see what a mobile unit has to bring in to be worth 30k metal really. The next expensive thing is Titans at 13.5k and even they are not giga worth it all the time.
For a mobile unit at 30k, it has to have a very huge upside and I would always compare it to lol cannon or more afus at that point.
Especially the comparison to lol cannon IMO makes sense because while its be twice the cost, it would impact any game immediately upon completion, compared to a jug where u spend the metal in advance (minutes walk time). Adding the com-magnet on top of that, I find it really hard to the make the case for 30k short range unit.
The tac launcher somewhat helps with that depending on if it has the actual tac nuke range or not. Still, wouidnt you rather make 6 LRPC , or try to actually place forward tac nukes.
Or just wait 10 more minutes for a lol cannon and possibly creep it.

Basically I'm thinking giant robots are cool as fuck but a lol cannon is just more efficient and doesn't give the time light years if prepare time regardless of a DPS buff in whatever shape or form to Da Jug

[inner sleet]

Lol cannon should be twice the cost. Currently weak enough that building might not even be game-ending. If u give jug like 1550 sight distance and make guns impactful then it would work together with an army. On glitters/supreme its relatively easy to make

[acoustic nexus]

maybe mid range (1200-1400), lowish stockpile time cd: 30-40 sec

lol cannon should be increased, any team with like 8 combined afus can pool make it

yes theoritically hard push counters it but you don't often have perfect info / push requires coordination

[rain topaz]

As they are faster, and arm has access to ticks, they will always be flanking, unless the player is afk.

I'm an anti-flanker, I think flanking should either be replaced with a side/rear armour percentage modifier, or gotten rid of, as it makes no sense from an engineering, physics or logical perspective.

[acoustic nexus]

how would directional armor work with bots?

[rain topaz]

Need to update to: Has the size and firepower to beat a single titan, or a single Thor, but only if they are unsupported!

[rain topaz]

However you wanted it to, could have 120% damage modifier for side hits, 150% for rear, or whatever makes sense. For juggernaut, I'd put those all at 100%, as it's supposed to crush whole armies with ease!

[acoustic nexus]

yeah but bots have very fast turning

for vehicles i get it but for bots it might lead to some wonky micro like "catch the bullets with your face"

[iron cloak]

Flanking is fine

[rain topaz]

Probably a bit hard to do that reliably in a flanking situation. Would be based on where on the model it hit, half the time would hit the lower half of a bot, which hasn't rotated.

The way flanking works at the moment is like magic, there's no reason your armour will suddenly get thinner just because there's a tick behind you, but that's what currently happens.

[iron cloak]

In fact it's good because surrounding units and going flank into a line adds value. It's a big deal.

[rain topaz]

But were there any unit cost adjustments after flanking was introduced? If not, all slow, expensive units are UP. As indeed we see, as they are rarely built by nin-noob players.

[iron cloak]

I discovered this game in spring 2023 and I believe flanking was already a thing then 👀

[acoustic nexus]

they can adjust it so that you can only recieve 5x your flank dmg as bonus dmg. so a tick that does 50 damage can only add 250 bonus flanking dmg

or w/e

[rain topaz]

Better but I would say even better with max 1x, so the starlight shot after the tick gets starlight+tick damage, rather than potentially 2starlight.

Flanking still OP even with this nerf, as tick clouds or any smaller units can still surround anything and take it down pretty easily, all the while benefitting from the large unit wasting most of its DPS by overkilling.

[iron cloak]

Huh...flank damage is already capped. Last I checked the max for a full flank is 200 % or smth. Ur example is 500 % unless I misunderstood the intention

[inner sleet]

Bruh Flanking cant do more than deal double dmg right? Is there an explanation somewhere?

[rain topaz]

Doesn't current flanking mean the tick gets 100% damage, activates a window for flanking damage, then the starlight shot gets 200%?

[inner sleet]

Ye thats how I thought it works but ye it should in that case only deal extra equal to tick dmg imo- make it something like only trigger dmg equal to unit one step down from highest dmg dealer ex. Thor+Thor works even if ticks assist

[iron cloak]

So Chrono wants the total flank damage bonus to depend on damage that initiated the flank ?

That is super confusing and also please realize it's not always 2 ticks and 1 starlight, there might be 3 grunts at 40 degree intervals, a Jaguar and another 30 degree, furrher back a starlight that is actually at 20 degree from the last shooter etc

[rain topaz]

But each shot that gets flanking damage, it's known which previous shit initiated the bonus, so it should be easy to keep track of. At the moment it makes no sense and makes spamming small units even more OP.

[inner sleet]

In practice going to be hard to get close and personal and flank since u can kite and jug will not be alone prolly, but ye how flanking works should be looked into

[iron cloak]

It's really difficult to setup a proper flank

Not Gameplay wise,.but the Mechanics I mean

I guess in practice every unit should have a variable that contains the total amounts of "Flanking" it is subject to. I dont know how fast flanking wears off, but that's besides the point.
So if a unit is taking damage, the damage is multiplied by its own known flanking- susceptibility variable. I'm not sure if it actually works like that, or if flanking damage is actually always calculated on the very last impactor.

@inner bear can you tell ?

[rain topaz]

People often send jugs alone, as they don't want to lose their whole army when it goes bang

[inner sleet]

Leaving Jug alone is not a good idea, I dont rly care bout the nuke that much, historically I have only used the laser on it for poking

[solid sage]

Just remove flanking trigger from scouts, no need to put in convoluted rules that need dissertations to understand. Scouts cant cause flanking bonus, BOOM, good solution

[rain topaz]

That would be a good quick fix, but still wouldn't address the major balance change in favour of small, fast units that flanking introduced. Big units like Juggernauts should have had their cost reduced significantly by perhaps 40% or so after that update, in order to be as effective as before.

[iron cloak]

It wouldn't be a good fix at all. For one, very early game the flanking bonus is very impactful when you are raiding with ricks or rovers. Secondly, Eventually scout spam is replaced by grunt or pawn spam so the problem will only show up later.

[oblique shard]

Hornet has reduced the price of Jug in his Balance Candidates pack, but I think nothing else has changed. Perhas you guys could go there to give feedback

[rain topaz]

How much is it now?

[lethal stone]

What is so hard to understand?

No dissertation needed

[rain topaz]

Does it reset after the second hit? Or in the case of 180 flanking, does the second hit trigger flanking on the 3rd; are all hits getting 200% damage after the first? In the former case, Juggernaut health could be effectively only 67% of its actual value, in the latter, only 50% of its actual value, as they are almost always flanked.

[inner bear]

it drifts, it's not a binary snap to last impact site

[solid sage]

Was talking about using different extra flanking damage for different units regarding how much they do by default. Not flanking mechanic by itself

[lethal stone]

thanks for clarifying

[iron cloak]

whats the wear off time ?

[solid sage]

So whats happning with our juggy, is he getting tac nuke or not?

[limber forge]

He just got an E production buff no?

For some reason I thought that GDT didn't want more unit buttons like thor emp missiles

[inner bear]

that's not a buff

and GDT don't if avoidable, however I'd probably argue the jugg is exceptional unit with exceptional abilities

[limber forge]

Because the laser costs more?

Offsets unless in combat, no? 300 E isn't a ton, but it still is nice

[inner bear]

basically it just lets it shoot without E prod

as far as egeneration goes, at that stage of game it's not even on the chart usually

[acoustic nexus]

exceptional but can't put 1 button on it?

the idea of making late game units less mana reliant to make them less feels bad is not unique to BAR

HOTS does that. mana constrains become less and less, so you can just spam on cooldown without worrying in late game much

[inner bear]

not my decision

[acoustic nexus]

ye i know

[rain topaz]

Better to remove the EMP missiles from the Thor IMHO. They counter the main counter to thors - static defences and slow snipers and starlights, and it's not a good idea to give a unit special abilities that counter its counters.

[inner bear]

same argument for splash and speed tbh
breaks all conventions

[iron cloak]

Jug is definitely WAY more standout than Thor. Either Thor loses the active ability, or Jug is allowed to get one also. Anything else make no sense from a game design point of view

[rain topaz]

It would make more sense for the 9k thor to lose it and the 29k jugg to gain it, but yeah, manual fire modes are possibly bad game design

[iron cloak]

i dont know. The Commander has an active skill as well.

Nuke Silo has an active skill. Is that bad ?

[acoustic nexus]

Issue is that thor has drawback of leaving wrecks if you take away thor that fufills a role then we will get lol cannon games every game

[smoky ibex]

Im feeling like cortex t3 units are rarely ever used on the battlefield

Like in every isthmus game i almost always see marauders spammed,didnt see a behemoth yet though...

[acoustic nexus]

catapult really good, shiva/karg are serviceable, demon underrated though fragile

behe is a real good thor counter if you can cover the mid or both chokes

[rain topaz]

The commander is the commander, has to be special. At the moment it's weird that only a lower late T3 unit has a special firing ability, and it turns out it's an unbalanced one

[remote saddle]

if the game hits 20 minutes youre guaranteed to see catapults, unless its a low skill lobby

vanguards dont even come anywhere close

Self D micro on fiends rolling bombs and jugg is allso kindof an active skill

[rain topaz]

I think it's OK for silos to have silos

[limber forge]

Core T3 is very common on other maps

[crimson sun]

Core T3 is arguably better than ARM t3 at very endgame

Beheamoth and Catapult are peak endgame
Shiva is great aswell

karg is good on glitters

[remote saddle]

even on isthmus catapult is mandatory

if you get that far

[rain topaz]

What is karg good for on glitters? I've never seen it used particularly effectively, too slow

[acoustic nexus]

seems like glitter is vanguard paradise
catapult is good too but on the high cliffs the vanguard out ranges it

[crimson sun]

on cliffs cargs open up many ways to play

[inner bear]

potentially, by which point either game is already lost, or lolcannon make it irrelevant

[timber minnow]

Kargs strong general use and spam control. Kargs in front, shivas behind them.

[oblique shard]

Well, how about giving Jugg to Armada actually? Cor has 2 super heavy T3 while Arms Titan way smaller. Moreover Jugg does not really fit into the Cor design - it has narrow waste, wide shoulders - typical for Arm bots. Cor should be more heavy and "Fat" which the Behemoth is fitting well. If we want to differentiate the factions more this would make sense.

[inner sleet]

Kargs are relatively weak

[acoustic nexus]

They outrade razors fwiw

Alot slower tho

[wheat meteor]

kargs are sooo close to being very usable

[rain topaz]

Should swap Juggernaut with thor, so that Core once again has the ultimate T3 unit ;p

[solid sage]

Core t3 spider bot with gattling gauss and big green lazer plz

[inner bear]

what would you say it needs?

[wheat meteor]

Like, 2 more move speed and like 15% faster turn speed. even if it cost like 500 more m then, it would be pretty generically usable imo. maybe even op

Right now they're in a weird spot where they're strong, but just feel terrible to use because of weird handling characteristics

karg stats and weapons are crazy strong, they just waste so much damage hitting their own wrecks, and are so slow to move around them that once you lose like 2 at the front of a group, the rest of the group loses like 80% of its potency

[inner bear]

it needs the termite treatment at least, yes

[iron cloak]

I think Karganoth is okay. It's not a high value unit in regular situations because It should have a spider-tax build in.
In that sense I'm wondering if Vanguards actually have such a tax baked in 🧐

[timid wing]

giving it double health would make it unkillable

balancing is based on effort and time, if you have to put stupid amounts of units on one guy and focus him for 3m its just not fun, the effort one player must use is FAR FAR higher than the other

its not the "OHHHH SHITTT!" moment you are looking for, it just becomes... "ahh gg"

making him faster is the same, and making him cheaper gives him more effective health per metal, making him spamable

the issue of the death explosion seems odd as well, if you commit units to the jug and you still lose it, maybe you should of been diverting more units to help, if it goes down you've done a shit job protecting something that is an entire base worth of metal, 2.99 afus...

also making it faster than a com is lowkey the most annoying thing ever

walking after something that is faster is just horrible, and i expect no person who has actually tried chasing a unit across half of straights, dodging this and that only to get 1 tapped to want it to be faster

we have ticks in the game, spam some, you can afford them if you are willing to waste 3 afus (150 metal a second) on a single unit, or just micro the unit

no unit should be an instant win, the closest we have to that is having an air player that isnt shit

[rain topaz]

Not unkillable, just as hard to kill as it was before flanking damage was introduced. Now it's as easily killable as a titan used to be.

[timid wing]

you get double the health for the same metal, meaning you just make 2 and now its 4x the health - you arent focusing 4x down before they break the front

[rain topaz]

2 juggernauts is a similar cost to a lolcannon, so is intended to be game-ending. At the moment, it's a metal donation.

People regularly used to take out juggernauts before flanking was introduced, they are pretty slow.

[remote saddle]

the vanguard tax is it being hard countered by shields entirely and therefor only being usefull for skirmish and defence instead of siege.

[remote saddle]

i honestly dont like the reach the 60K metal thing and win balance i actually just released a tweak for LRPCs and lolcannons that changes that too https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1267251807185535089

[oblique shard]

It's Spider-tax is it's slow speed

[remote saddle]

i know you can spot the lolcannon and bomb it but it still doesnt feel quite allright. In my newest tweak lolcannons are half as powerfull and cost half as much but still need the same build time.

vanguard has so many disadvantages over catapult it really doesnt need a spider tax

you allready need to babysit them like arbiters or ambassors wich is why most people dont bother with vanguards

[remote saddle]

@inner bear Would you be able to sneak in a new explosion type into the Unit_Explosions.lua File?
I think all the juggernaut really needs is a death explosion that has the potential to kill commanders so every Dgun would turn into either a trade or a commander with 1HP

there doesnt appear to be an explosion in the game files that deals enough damage to commanders

[inner bear]

I agree, but when I suggested that idea before there was mad kickback

I'mnot sure I understand why though, as even if it kills the com defensively, the corpse is still rezzable

and if you built a jugg 1v1 you deserve the win

[remote saddle]

right now i cant even try that in a tweak because unit tweaks cant edit explosions

maybe it could be an optional tweak similar to air rework?

[limber forge]

Generally speaking you should know it's coming, and the position, so they can be shut down with them. You have to have pre-emptive emp launchers to emp their emp before their emp can emp your lol.

[inner bear]

ah, but what if they have emp launchers that can emp the emp launchers that you plan to emp their emp launchers with?

such a fun mechanic, peak gameplay :P

[rain topaz]

Would the intention be that you can't dgun it in 1vs1? Seems a bit unbalanced.

[remote saddle]

how often does someone use a juggernaut in 1v1? please show me the replay that must be a wild match unless its low skill players in that case its business as usual i guess

and the Idea is that a full HP commander CAN survive IF he has full HP and is at the furthest range of his D gun range ( at least thats what i allways advocated for )

so it would be the most difficult D gun in the game to pull off without dying but if you have rezzbots to heal your commander it should be easy for a skilled player

But most importantly D gunning 2 juggs with 1 comander in quick succession wouldnt be a thing

[rain topaz]

Probably very rarely, but would be something to think about as 1vs1 is one of the main game modes.

[remote saddle]

yeah but as i said, if your commander doesnt take damage before dgunning and you manage to stay at the edge of your Dgun you will survive with 1% HP, at least thats how i would do it

so if you have your own defensive spam and rezzbots your commander can recloak and get repaired

and if someone watches out for the d gun and manually fires a long range unit at your cloaked com after you killed the jugg than that should win you the game in a 1v1 in my opinion

[timid wing]

you cant compare the two

both units arent made at the same time, thus the cost isnt the same overtime

and jugs are less vulnerable than a lol is so, a lol cannon is a sitting target with relatively low health and is even weaker while being made

its just not the same thing, and if someone dguns the jug, they dont get the metal

metal at that time in the game is only for the poor people on the front, not for the eco making jugs

and if its poor old frontliners getting the metal... i see this as an absolute WIN!

[remote saddle]

i allso dont think lolcannons are a good example of a healthy gameplay mechanic

regular LRPCs are allmost useless if there is 1 shield
and if someone makes a lol cannon you wont be able to make enough shields

the scaling is completely busted

[lethal stone]

I have a similar view to Ian which i think is shared by many - lolcannon is, and should be a game ender however, for it's M & E cost relative to the movement speed of the chunkier t3 units, which are slower, it's too good of an option to chose over late game t3. It's able to be rushed in a similar timeframe as it takes to get a juggernaut to the frontline on decent economy on a normal-large map. In other words, by the time your juggernaut arrives on the front, the opponent can have a lolcannon

[inner bear]

balance pack solves

[lethal stone]

which part of the balance pack?

(selfishly asking because i'm going to make a standalone tweakdef)

[inner bear]

mix of T3 being a touch cheaper, and lolcannon price hike

[inner bear]

please don't split it up, it's a bad idea to have too many lobby archetypes

[lethal stone]

i've tried 2x M cost in isolation and it didn't seem to be enough

[limber forge]

We have the x3 and x4 cost

[inner bear]

I mean in 8v8 on sausage map, it won't be

[lethal stone]

that was on rosetta

[inner bear]

problem is you can't balance whole game around an outlier like that

[limber forge]

JTL made them. I acutally liked the lobbies that had the x5 BP cost. It felt like you knew the lol was coming but had time to react

[inner bear]

rosetta is also outlier

[limber forge]

What are you talking about?

[lethal stone]

its an outlier ya cuz its so high metal

[limber forge]

wtf is a sausage map

[lethal stone]

but its also so popular. same story with glitters

[inner bear]

glitters, ice scream, etc

[inner bear]

indeed, but, that doesn't alter that it's atypical of most maps, and balance there is likely to be skewed somehow

[limber forge]

What, why are they sausage maps?

[inner bear]

what you really do not want to do is have a 'map tweak' to offset those balance issues, which players have to try to remember per map

[lethal stone]

its a sex reference

https://tenor.com/view/sausage-fest-hot-dog-gif-14785205

[inner bear]

they're rectangular, narrow fronts, long travel time to eco

shore to shore being the most extreme version

[lethal stone]

yeah, you know jsut like a sausage

[limber forge]

Right, so narrow maps, like everyone else calls them

[lethal stone]

I prefer when my GF doesn't call it narrow, actually

[limber forge]

lol cannons are issues on every game lategame,

[inner bear]

it's fairly common descriptor

[inner bear]

they are too cheap in all cases, but not exponentially too cheap

[limber forge]

I'm going to be honest, this is the first time I've ever heard the term in two years of BAR.

[inner bear]

especially with emp launchers being what they are, tbh, if you want broken, look at that

[lethal stone]

Volshok still thinking about the sausage gg

[limber forge]

We tried x2 and it basically changed nothing

Even on shit like DSDR, it has to be x3+

[inner bear]

what might make some sense, is lolcannon cost scaling with player count, it's the only non map constant that's relevant

otherwise it will never exist in 1v1s

[limber forge]

lol cannons don't exist in 1v1s now.

[inner bear]

they do occasionally actually

but mostly 1v1 is knife fight in a phone booth

partly map design issue tbf, but that's a tangent

[limber forge]

I don't think it makes any sense to try to balance lolcannons for "1v1" when they are essentially never used in it. it makes way more sense to balance them around 8v8, where they are common. The majority of min 35+ games currently become lolcannon rush.

[inner bear]

it might be better to ask if econvertors are too good

same problem wearing another hat really

[limber forge]

Sure, except that is asking to rewrite the entire game for an issue that is only for larger team games

[inner bear]

I don't purely mean 1v1s btw, but anything south of largest games

[inner bear]

no, you can do this in base game already, easily

[limber forge]

Changing energy converters affects the entire game, all maps, all modes, PvP, PvE, etc.

Changing lolcannons to enable more T3 use affects way less and doesn't potentially break the game across various modes and make every single player redo their eco builds

[inner bear]

I don't mean globally, I mean it's a lobby setting you can change

but I agree it does disrupt build memory yes

[limber forge]

So why break the game for everyone, when we can just adjust lolcannons to take longer to build? I don't see the logic that forces such a change

[thorn cedar]

2x delayed lolcannon on glitters by about 4-5 minutes, maybe also adding like 20% fire cost increase could be nice

[inner bear]

because people complain T1 phase too short T2 phase too short, T3 phase too short, before rags

it's not just rags but that you've minmaxed the fun out of the game and left no time to play it

[limber forge]

This is in context to juggs though, part of why Juggs feel awful is that lolcannons are so cheap.

[inner bear]

ah well. point is, I agree lolcannon too rushable, but also, yes, T3 too bad / costly for the window they exist in

[acoustic nexus]

T3 has risk of throwing game by leaving wrecks and yeah easier to afk eco then coordinate a push

After early t3, t3 walks so slow its hard to find a push window vs just making for afus

Putting aside lol cannon

[limber forge]

Yeah. For me personally I don't want T3 to come online faster either. I would rather extend T2 phase, because I think it's the most diverse and interactive.

[acoustic nexus]

You are investing like 50k metal + the 8k gantry in not scaling

[solid sage]

Converters are good mechanic i like them

[acoustic nexus]

the problem is exponential scaling rate is too high in BAR compared to unit time to do stuff on map

[limber forge]

Yeah

[acoustic nexus]

Many other ta rts have exponential scaling and it's not a problem because the endgame exponential scale rate is slower

[limber forge]

Have you played in lobbies with converters disabled? It's a massive balance issue, but I actualy love that style of gameplay

[acoustic nexus]

Balance issue cause it favour's e heavy units

Just nerf afus and fus a bit

[limber forge]

It's more that it forces players to contest mexes, which I think makes the game more dynamic

[acoustic nexus]

And fix wind speed on too high wind maps

[solid sage]

I think its good as it is. If you dont make units you can die so they do have purpose

[acoustic nexus]

Overall yeh

[solid sage]

Id rather they nerf converters by 20% but not remove such mechanic as its also an expression of skill

[acoustic nexus]

Nerfing converters skews it towards e heavy units

Plp will just prefer thors or air push

[solid sage]

Yea but 20isnt composition breaking imo

[acoustic nexus]

It is

Lemme see...

[solid sage]

Thors will need tweaks anyway and arguably more air involvment wpuld be good for meta. Ppl asking for more ground AA but no reason

[acoustic nexus]

Afus is 280, fusion 340 to full refund cost with t1 convert

[solid sage]

Definitely would see more spectres i guess so this is an issue for some

[acoustic nexus]

Mostly air. Double air really strong on big maps

[lethal stone]

t2 is the most phun phase phunfirm

[limber forge]

confirm

[solid sage]

Would push frontliners to invest more in AA which is neglected aspect

[acoustic nexus]

450 sec asolar
570 solar

Map dependent

[inner bear]

as I say, try with conversion rate turned down, it improves the game a lot

[timber minnow]

When I think Lolcannon, I think something like a Wonder in AoE. Except it seems to build faster than a wonder, and a wonder doesnt immediately start killing all your stuff once it's built.

[solid sage]

Lolxannon good, puts a timer on match, enables shields

[rain topaz]

True, but unfortunately, the spam phase starts mid T2 phase, which tends to make the game annoying and boring, and only gets worse from there.

[timid wing]

you make the lol more expensive, people spam t3 slow moving borderline unkillable units
you make t3 cheaper, people spam t3 slow moving borderline unkillable units and, SOONER in the game

the sweet spot is were you actually think, whether you do or not, have a choice

the main issue with the lol cannon debate, is that it is the ONLY choice for that kind of damage, and until its made so expensive that you can barely build it, and t3 is made faster and more powerful (not going to be fun to play against) there wont be a choice
people will stall the game out on T3 spam and make the lol to finish the game, since people forget shields are actually a thing

[lethal stone]

agree with all of that but lolcannon rush is the main issue

[acoustic nexus]

even lol cannon aside, making slow t3 units is risky

need whole team to coordinate, pulsar spam and nuke bomber abductor spam kills a lot

[timid wing]

nuke bomber is just funny if im honest, some T3 like karagath just kill it instantly and some T3 get wiped out in less than 20s

[remote saddle]

I have made a tweak that makes lolcannon half price half DPS, if you want the full power you need to make 2 lolcannons wich takes longer and is easier to spot

[timid wing]

wouldnt that just cause shields to become useless?

[remote saddle]

The opposite actually

right now you allways get surprised by lolcannons without shields

with the tweak you will potentially face a half as dangerous lolcannon wich gives you a chance to shield up

[timid wing]

the only other issue i can think of is the range

[remote saddle]

it has decreased range too, 6100 is too much on calamity

[timid wing]

you surely would just the air player out

[remote saddle]

armada LRPCs where allso allways just worse

[timid wing]

ahhh, seems ok then, maybe run an unranked with it sometime

[remote saddle]

Both armada and cortex LRPCs allso have an identity now instead of being the same,
armada has high velocity high single damage and high acuracy
and cortex has high AOE high rate of fire and high arc meaning it can shoot over cover

[split garden]

Tbh it kinda sounds like armada one has everything I'd want out of an lrpc. Accuracy and single target is the most important part since you're usually sniping things.

[remote saddle]

it needs to be tested cortex has way more DPS

and some people like to carpet bomb unknown areas

[split garden]

True but are you really going to build 6 x 9000 metal lrpcs to attack an unknown area with no clue if there even value there?

The arcing shot is neat though and could be enough to make it interesting. First instinct is still that the armada lrpc would be the one built 99% of the time.

[remote saddle]

i think the regular armada LRPC will get favored over cortex, but the cortex lolcannon will be favoured over the armada one

because people tend to like spread on lolcannons

[split garden]

Is that max fire rate? Might have to change nickname to meh cannon

[remote saddle]

its 1 shot per second, if you want a game ender you need 2 of them now

but they are cheaper aswell

1 lolcannon is equivalent to 7 LRPCs in terms of firerate but costs 6 times as much

Basilisk is 6K metal calamity is 36K

I want to reduce the amount of situations where someone opens up on you and you have 0 chance to shield up and survive

[inner bear]

the whole point though, is a game ender unit, ends games

it's a wonder victory, that shoots you

the wonder is too easy to build, definitely

[remote saddle]

i think it makes more sense if you need 2 of them

its not that much bigger then regular LRPCs anyways so visually it allso makes more sense

its still way more eficiant then regular LRPCs and at least those have a use then

its kind of a weird scale to go from 1 shot every 16 seconds to 2 shots per second

[inner sleet]

um but why xD -Ragna is game ender I would increase metalcost to like 140k instead+ have high DMG ceiling

[remote saddle]

140K ragnarok would mean it allmost never gets played

[inner sleet]

I tried 126k And somehow my team managed to build 2 of them xD

[remote saddle]

30K ragnarok with same eficiancy means you can just keep making ragnaroks until the enemy dies

im talking about normal lobster gameplay like supreme isthmus here

[inner sleet]

On isthmus you would get scenarios like that aswell

[remote saddle]

i cant remember the last time i saw a lolcannon without lava enabled honestly

[inner sleet]

Depends if u ever get to lategame on isthmus, lategame goes into afus farm- the basic lrpc is sufficient throughout game imo

Like Ragna feels too common but idk if thats just glitters

[remote saddle]

the games i play on glitters are usually just: who folds the enemy canyon harder

game is allmost allways won by taking canyon killing air and then surrender usually

[inner sleet]

Its more of a principle, like what is the point of lol cannon existence? Better lrpc or game ender?- on isthmus U might not be able do much with cannon because the range isnt big enough

[inner sleet]

Hm 20 afus costs 9500*20= 190k metal

[remote saddle]

it is absolutely possible to end a game on isthmus with a lolcannon it just doesnt happen that often

my issue is rather that shields and LRPCs are basicly a non exitstant gameplay mechanic, if there is 1 lrpc you make a shield and thats it youre countered because of that nobody makes LRPCs or shields

so when the lolcannon hits nobody has any shields and now its even worse

[inner sleet]

Well I understand that, idk if the regular lrpc needs to have shield dmg looked into. But if u make lol cannon more expensive then more likely youll be able spot it before its built

[remote saddle]

the way it should work instead is, youre slowly getting more and more plasma fire unitl its impossible to block by any amount of shields

[rain topaz]

Canyon is UP WRT metal spots, meaning the lowest-ranked players end up in the canyon, and additionally are hard to support for any of the other players, being geographically isolated.

Teams should probably put their strongest player on front canyon, but rarely do.

[remote saddle]

thats how nukes and antinukes work, there are limmitations with the launch distance that make them fail eventually

[inner sleet]

Like I think its fun to make that peak of plasma fire come from having very high e-upkeep to fire, like it is charging up over time

[remote saddle]

the issue then is, even if you play at your absolute best all you do most likely is just holding, but what if the enemy has their best player in a different spot? he will be guaranteed to find an opening and break it

[inner sleet]

Actually what if u make the ragna experience scale quite quickly? That way it would actually ramp up without allowing pro players to fully make ragna instantly shoot at full capacity if built

[remote saddle]

that is not a bad idea, but if people just use them to shoot at shields until they go down they wont get any xp

[inner sleet]

True lol but its certainly an idea🙃

[remote saddle]

so you would have to shoot units on purpose for way more energy then theyre worth pretty much

[inner sleet]

Unless u somehow automatically give experience for each shot fired🤔

[remote saddle]

would be kinda cool propaby like a minigun starting to spin but in slow motion

[rain topaz]

Yep, I don't like the balancing of that map, at least it's not as bad as DSD, I always had to go on the 2 mex start spot back in the day, you build a couple of rockos and you're already out of metal!

[remote saddle]

people allways bash on isthmus, but i think glitters is worse tbh

[inner sleet]

oof that hurt xD

[remote saddle]

well both arent that renowned but they are popular for a reason, its easy to learn roles on those maps but at the same time the outcome happens to be very similar

[inner sleet]

Isthmus also allows u to learn Navy so prolly good map to try out

[remote saddle]

not really learning navy on isthmus is a bad idea, because the 2 sides are so heavily imbalance you do strats you wouldnt do on any other naval map

[inner sleet]

Well I learned navy on isthmus xD tho maybe Ive forgoteten some things by niow

[remote saddle]

i never really leanred navy, but i have heard pretty much all good navy players say isthmus navy gameplay is bad

[rain topaz]

Isthmus is a weird map to have as one of the most popular ones for noobs, it's a very complex map with the two sundered season, and noobs usually get assigned one of the front starting positions that gets wiped out by a tsar rush at 7 minutes.

Has anyone designed a map specifically to be easy for noobs to start on?

[inner sleet]

Glitters, or anyone else u have in mind?

[rain topaz]

Yes, it's weird, you need to rush to make a shipyard, else youll get a couple of destroyers depth charging your commander!

[rain topaz]

Glitters is horrendous for noobs, as they usually start in the canyon, which is an uphill struggle even for experienced players, and is often facing off against the top player on the opposing team, who has twice as much metal as them.

[inner sleet]

Well noone likes playing in canyon u right. But for some reason there is a total of 6 front positions so there will be more options around, the lanes are defined

[timid wing]

YOOO!!! this!

glitters is just awful for new players, probably one of the worst maps to learn the game on

[rain topaz]

There's something about that map, whenever there are noobs on both teams, the ones on my team seem to do nothing, but the ones on the other team seem to at least play OK...

[acoustic nexus]

you don't get experience when shooting shields, seems like it's very snowbally

[rain topaz]

Glitters is the most commonly-played map, particularly for noobs, so it should be a priority to make that map as noob-friendly as possible, by evening out the starting spots so noobs don't always draw the short straw and have a bad experience of the game, which probably leads to a lot of players quitting entirely.

[lethal stone]

No

[timber minnow]

Glitters is one of the maps in which it's easiest to carry and have influence all over the map, i.e., it's one of the best maps for newbs to get carried.

Not sure what this all has to do with juggernauts, though. Buff them would be cool.

Maybe give them an active that utilizes their giant elbow cannons.

Like, epic-tzar plasma (x2) or something.

[civic bear]

LRPCs and shields are both heavily utilized in high level gameplay.

If you want to see how lolcannons are used, here’s a game with about 5 of them

https://bar-rts.com/replays/a39ca66654911510323b9997feded56c

[rain topaz]

Except in the canyon, where they are usually found, the physical barrier makes it hard for teammates to help them, apart from the air one, they just have one front player who can help, but often if that player has to help out too much, they lose their front shortly afterwards.

[timber minnow]

Juggernaut elbow cannons. Utilize the Juggernaut elbow cannons. @_@

[solid sage]

Tac nuke

The only interesting idea, should be in test pack

[inner sleet]

Ye the elbow cannons (-shotgun) currently look wonky as hell

[timber minnow]

Tac nuke would either be op or up for jug depending on range.

OP if it can hit eco structures from far. UP if it's like current missile range. 5k tac nuke damage isn't a lot of damage at that stage of the game, vs Thors and Titans and stuff.

[inner sleet]

It shouldnt outrange Pulsar, 1200 range maybe

[timber minnow]

I'm thinking like, jug rotates its arms up to point it's giant elbow cannons, then launches 10k+ damage of raw plasma.

(as an active ability)

[lethal saffron]

The juggernaut has a pretty serious friendly fire issues when it bunches up with other juggernauts, the rear missile launcher frequently explodes on launch, destroying supporting units and slowly eroding their own health I think the jugger needs to be a bit smaller footprint?

I also think the demon model is way too big and should be about the size of a shiva, it is a pain to use them with catapults as the frendly fire right into nearby demons frequently unless manually spaced / hold fire'd / bad terrain makes it much worse.

[rain topaz]

Friendly fire is a key part of playing with core and myst not be eliminated. Source: Friendly Fire thread.

[acoustic nexus]

how about 1.2k range? similiar to thor emp range

[remote saddle]

i have updadet my Jugg rework to 1100 range tac nuke

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r_K-cAxHgrevdGMlgeF1nDSIFSoqNC6LZTTw711JCfI/edit?usp=sharing

i think youre not guaranteed to get hit by pulsars at that range especially if you send in weaker units first to eat some beams

allso self destruct is now 7 seconds

sadly it is impossible for me to make the standart jugg explosion deal more damage to commanders

there arent any explosions in game that i can use that have the right stats and editing or creating new explosions requires making a mod that others need to download

[inner sleet]

Ye I also noticed that explosions are programmed in so u cant edit those, can only change what kind of explosion triggers

[remote saddle]

In the earlier half of the game scag invested 13500 metal into 3 LRPCs essentially just to snipe a bunch of E converters
then everyone made 1 shield wich hard countered them
then the enemy made lolcannons and LRPCs became irrelevant
he got a few potshots near one of the lolcannons while it was EMPd but he only managed to kill 1 pulsar with the assistance of something like 10 EMP missiles so its more a case of EMP silo killing the pulsar really
later he had 7 LRPCs wich is 30K metal and they barely got through a single shield while the enemy team had lolcannons wich for 60K metal can get through 14 shields

I dont think the LRPCs where metal well spend here they could have been if had eaten them after killing the converters but even then he would have spend way more energy then the enemies propably overflowed due to converter loss

What i meant by saying non existant gameplay mechanic is:
you either make 1 shield or you make 20 everything in between is pointless

if the enemy has shields you eat your regular LRPCs
and if your enemy has a lolcannon you spam shields wich propably wont help you unless you are the backline in wich case youre out of range anyways

all the lolcannons achieved here is kill the mid and frontliners and make the game a bit more boring

[inner sleet]

3 Lrpc should maybe be made able go through 1 shield 🤔 -im not sure how to look at lrpc, building one could encourage everyone to get shield so the value proposition idk

[civic bear]

I mean, the best use of LRPC is to snipe t2 geo but I guess this isn't the most relevant replay for that.

My question would be how would your tweakdef improve a game like this?

[inner sleet]

U can make so LRPC deal more dmg vs shields only

[civic bear]

the biggest counter to shield is emp which isn't changed by your tweaks and earlier (but shorter ranged) lolcannons would be emped as well

[split garden]

I wouldn't want to see any nerf to shields effectiveness unless it comes with considerable cost decreases. It's already a huge investment in resources and bp to get shields up.

[remote saddle]

my ideal version of LRPCs and locannons is that they work like nukes, they get harder and harder to counter untill impossible

instead of having 1 meme version of LRPC that barely gets used and 1 unstoppable version

[inner sleet]

ye LRPC can get respectable ability to get thru shield. Unit has uses even now tho

[remote saddle]

Many people have issues with EMP launcher, i dont know how to rebalance it but i think shields should be cheaper and use of LRPCs should slowly increase over the span of the game until you cant have enough shields to stop them realisticly

[inner sleet]

The EMP launcher Range is absurdly high

[remote saddle]

one idea i had was to let junos stun EMP and tac nuke silos to prevent them from charging or firing for a few seconds

it would be very expensive to use since you need multiple junos to stun for any usefull time frame
and i think juno would need limmited range allso

but this entire counter gameplay isnt exactly healthy you allready have the counter EMP to counter the enemy EMP and then they can make another counter EMP

[solid sage]

What if LRPC would have faster projectiles and more splash,? So they arent used as ninja building snipe but unit destroyer?

[remote saddle]

i have tried that in my tweak thats basicly the armada LRPC now

[civic bear]

do you really want a unit destroyer that outranges every unit in the game?

[inner sleet]

Starlight counter?

[remote saddle]

increasing velocity on LRPCs has the weird side effect that they are better at penetrating shields wich is why i had to give them WAY less DPS and shield damage

[civic bear]

it would also make it impossible to push with any unit ever which leads to lolcannon being the only way to end the game even more

[remote saddle]

basicly too high velocity lets you ignore shields with LRPC

[inner sleet]

Now that I think about it how good would they be vs starlight currently?

[civic bear]

they already kill them

[inner sleet]

Could be fun to try on glitters xD -new mauser counter? lol

[solid sage]

Maybe only velocity change and no extra splash. I like em as unit destroyers, why not

[remote saddle]

its very hard to make an LRPC in time when your front is actually still being bullied by mausers and sarlights thats more like 7-14 minutes that that happens

you would basicly have to have eco sacrefice an afus for an LRPC

[civic bear]

yeah LRPC is not an early game unit in it's current state nor should it ever be due to it's range

[solid sage]

Its definitely more lategame

But rag isnt really unit destroyer, lrpc could be. In a balanced way

Also as a side note, i dont think game would be worse if shields would become a norm lategame even without rag. Why not?

[remote saddle]

i increased firerate of regular LRPCs to make them more usefull for unit killing

[solid sage]

Amaze🥰

[inner sleet]

The cost of regular lrpc is rly high hm

[remote saddle]

in base game LRPC shoots ones every 16 seconds, lolcannon shoots twice per second

5K metal vs 60k

[solid sage]

Once every 16 is amazingly slow, i thought its faster lol

[remote saddle]

12 times the cost 32 times the firerate

[solid sage]

Cuz right now the only strat with lrcp is to literally holdfire then until 3 built and surprise fire at afus

[remote saddle]

wich isnt very healthy

[solid sage]

Not really gameur moment

[wheat meteor]

I believe lrpcs specifically do less damage to shields

also lrpcs are super op

[remote saddle]

it only works cause nobody uses them if it was a standart play to make LRPC people would make shields like antinuke

[civic bear]

the problem isn't that shields aren't a norm, it's that there's no use building more than 1 since the only thing that can break through it is a lolcannon.

this isn't fixed in the tweakdef since cheaper shields means you can always outpace LRPC dps with shields cost effectively esp since shields don't take e to recharge and LRPCs take e to fire. If your goal is to break shields you make lolcannon

[solid sage]

If lrpc would cause more mandatory shields, i wouldnt hate it. They arent made when there is no rag, but in this case they would automatically be a next step in lategame

[remote saddle]

first of all regular LRPCs are more competent at breaking shields in my tweak, secondly LRPCs can still kill 7 shields and thirdly shields have only slightly lower metal cost 3200 down to 2600 but i increased energy cost by one third

[solid sage]

Yeah i mean, shield vs lrpc can be a matter of balancing, but the idea that you want lrpc because they useful, and consequentially u want shields, is better than ninja niche use of both

[remote saddle]

it has to be tested to get the numbers right

i cant calculate stuff if theres too many unforseen variables

[civic bear]

if the units are so close in cost that the counter is "just have more" then I don't think that's healthy game design either

[remote saddle]

the thing that most people dont know is, shields actually chain react

[wheat meteor]

Noninteractive strategies need noninteractive counterplay

[remote saddle]

so by decreasing the price and increasing play of shields you have made another prime bombing target

spamming shields everywhere allso limmits space you can put AA

[inner sleet]

Shields should win vs LRPC but it seems now a single shield completely shuts down LRPC

[remote saddle]

another thing is, an LRPC or lolcannon should propably defeat shields slowly so the enemy can react to whats happening

[inner bear]

lrpc yes, lolcannon no

[remote saddle]

well LRPCs dont defeat shields at all currently

[inner bear]

whole point of a lolcannon is it breaks stalemates, it's not meant to be an ignorable gameplay element. it's a wonder victory that spits plasma

they do but not in the way you think

[remote saddle]

if you EMP them and shoot at them

[wheat meteor]

lrpcs defeat shields through macro

[inner bear]

consider I build LPRC in offensive position, you now have to cover -everything- that I can shoot with a shield

that costs you much, much more than I invested in the cannon. you see similar with 'useless' flagships that now forced 30K of shields out of a whole coastline

[remote saddle]

well yeah but that means again the best way to use LRPC is to shoot a bunch of converters, wait till they have shields and then eat the LRPC again

[wheat meteor]

it's like saying ticks beat juggs per cost. while technically true, that's a pointless matchup

[remote saddle]

shooting at the shields is a waste of energy

[inner bear]

I mean have you seen some games

but yes, the whole point of shield is to stop an lrpc, and not stop a lolcannon

[wheat meteor]

I've never seen ticks beat jugs in a high skill game, and I've never seen shields beat lrpcs in a high skill game

[remote saddle]

what would be the point of multiple LRPCs for example? i have just seen a game in wich 7 of them (30K metal) struggled with a single shield

[inner bear]

usually, there isn't much of one. but it can work for area suppression of anything trying to leave the shield I suppose

maybe if you're trying to bounce off into non shielded areas, also too

[remote saddle]

again you make 1 LRPC hope you blow up eco and when you see the bubble you eat it again, super cheesy 60 second usage if at all

[wheat meteor]

It's also incremental, you can keep and build pressure and threat over time with lrpcs and emp missiles that forces the opponent to continue to weigh and spend resources to counter

[inner bear]

and that means you just forced a load of investment out of the enemy, in multiple places usually

[wheat meteor]

Whereas lolcannon is only powerful after you put 60k metal into it

[remote saddle]

yes but this entire unit model is a glorified nuke that looks more boring and works worse

[inner bear]

if you want to complain about a porc element, the emp launcher is strong contender for the most broken thing in the game
which is a hot competition tbh

[remote saddle]

yeah we talked about that allready

was present in the same replay

[wheat meteor]

Many things are glorified nukes in the end. air is a glorified nuke too. there's a reason nothing can fly past like 6 flaks

noninteractive strategies need noninteractive counterplay, or they are fundamentally broken

[remote saddle]

in this case its even worse then the nuke, because nobody would fault you for not making shields early on but if someone commits to the strat he can plan to blow up your eco as an surprise

wich again is the reason why LRPC usage should propably be normalised so you allways just make shields

[acoustic nexus]

lol cannon is just a competition in late game between lol cannon and other strategies

[civic bear]

I mean I'm kinda confused, on one hand you say LRPC works as a surprise tool (which it should be considering it's a high-risk, high reward) strategy, and that the only reason it works is because people don't pre-emptively spend thousands of metal on potentially wasted defense. The answer then is that people should just scout more no?

[acoustic nexus]

lolcannon
more afus --> shields --> something else
t3 push

[civic bear]

why is it more boring, it's a big artillery piece, this seems like a matter of personal preference more than balance

[acoustic nexus]

out of these, lolcannon is the easiest by far and less risky since t3 pushes can be countered by pumping units later which is disastrous

it's map dependent but on many many non-close maps you see lol cannon if the game isn't decided already

[remote saddle]

what i mean by more boring is you place the LRPC use it for 1 minute and then you eat it
there is no reason to keep the LRPC ones your enemies have their first shield you are just spending lots of energy on nothing at that point

[acoustic nexus]

the point of LRPC is to hit like 5 bases at once
then it's free money

[remote saddle]

not lolcannon

were talking about early game surprise LRPC

[acoustic nexus]

only counter to lrpc is timing ganged against the blue player

[civic bear]

to be honest that's literally all units and all porc at a high level since the point of the game is to constantly switch strategies

[acoustic nexus]

i think most lrpc is not surprise, just additional harrassment

surprise is cherry on top

[wheat meteor]

also lrpc is good for sniping like, t2 mexes, fusions, wind farms, labs, etc. you can't protect all that

[inner sleet]

LRPC usually built offense, I havent seen defensive lrpc which is what early LRPC would be (-built before t2)

[acoustic nexus]

defense is just an afterthought

[civic bear]

nah it's too expensive to be harassment, if oyu can't surprise might as well make afus

basically every unit in the game should be weighted against just making afus

[acoustic nexus]

but i mean it targets nanos and stuff across the map?
i think you build it after like 3-4 fusion

[remote saddle]

if its an 8v8 match you will just have a wall of single shields across the front

[acoustic nexus]

if they build a wall of shield you can happily reclaim the lrpc
2 shield cost more than lrpc

[remote saddle]

i mean something like 5 shields across the front

[acoustic nexus]

that's 15k metal just make afus or push

[civic bear]

well he wants you to make more lrpcs instead of reclaiming it

so they in turn make 5 more shields ad infinitum

[acoustic nexus]

LRPC are like support
se the weakness of shields is that they are killable, and more investment in that location

you don't just kill their base you kill 3k in aa + a shield

that's why in 95% of cases you don't want to sheild up vs flagship
cause what are you doing to do against threat of 2nd flagship

[remote saddle]

eventually it just means the frontline player dies to the overwhelming economy o0f a seaplayer or an eco player yeah

solution is to build eco in backline and ignore front

and make ducks against flag

[acoustic nexus]

always put your afus in the backline outside of flag range yeah

[remote saddle]

well duck is all you have on front

[acoustic nexus]

against flag just sub spam is good. you could make a shipyard and make mass orca

ducks are pretty similiar, tho higher hp less dps so they are worse at surprising

[remote saddle]

i dont think you can make a shipyard and produce subs as a reaction to: my base is getting destryoed where all my unit production is

at that point you loose the front base

its a retake strategy

the idea is to throw shit at the flag so it reatreats out of range of your base

[acoustic nexus]

well typically you should anticipate a flagship could be coming or scout it

but yeah ducks work

maybe like emp launcher the supporting fleet and kill it with units / torp bombers?

[solid sage]

Imagine lrpcs countering flagships

[remote saddle]

they unironicly do, just not quick enough when your base is under attack

if you have pulsars protecting the lrpcs the sea player cant really rush you and eventually the navy will fall to LRPCs