Season 2 balance feedback

[muted barn]

you don't see the big picture, it's not just about what happens between grunts and ticks when they run into one another

[scarlet mirage]

I think its fair to say it was not easy to predict how accurate lasers will impact things

[placid eagle]

Yeah its clear things were overtuned

The grunt -20 range nerf really hurts vs pawns

[noble yarrow]

the HP buff pawn got might have made then too good stat wise/stat dense and pawn should not be allowed to kite grunt, which they do with current range when retreating. Fix those 2 things and 1v1 is gonna be more balanced

[muted barn]

the fact is that Arm has a unit that can massively outpace grunts from the same lab, and that gives it advantages in lots of situations - ticks are still S tier from start of game til end of game

too many ppl think of balance just in terms of what happens when X unit and Y unit stand and shoot at eachother

[placid eagle]

I really havent had issues with ticks, its all been with pawns. And I agree with pajefernandes, pawns are just better than grunts right now in every possible way

[muted barn]

what makes Arm overtuned is that it doesn't have to, it has options to do all types of shit

[uneven belfry]

i mean grunt vs pawn dynamic is whoever kites wins no? nerfing pawn DPS solves nearly all the problems involved

on top of mkaing pawn leaks not insane compared to grunt leaks

[placid eagle]

Yeah but you dont necessarily have to balance it that way eiter

Giving them less HP would mean its easier to prevent leaks

[uneven belfry]

so just revert HP buff?

[placid eagle]

Buffing grunt range again would also have a good effect on that

I wouldnt mind the HP buff being reverted

I think the HP buff makes them too close to blitz anyways

[uneven belfry]

you should def choose one, though i think the grunt ahving less range gives an interesting dynamic to the unit as opposed to how it used to be

[muted barn]

you are 1v1 playeur?

[placid eagle]

Right now there is just 0 reason to make blitz over pawns

[uneven belfry]

not much i started playing recently but i was core before this patch

[placid eagle]

I dont mean a full range revert though, just like +5 or 10 range to solve the kiting issue

[muted barn]

ah

so, if you wanna see why ticks are op, go play lane vs emre

[uneven belfry]

yeah i don't really care for 8v8 tbh too many factors going on, i just know that 1 faction is unplayable in 1v1

[noble yarrow]

that is why pawn should not win against grunts, but be able to trade less efficiently. Not giga win like the old range either. ARM has centurion and ticks for grunt spam and better raiding. We don't want the old range but a small bump so retreating pawns don't kite grunts test +5 or +10.

[muted barn]

2 days ago on a flats game I got a couple of ticks into back line and I think I destroyed 3 mex of 6/8 enemy players, lmao

ticks are just gross, and they stay gross all game cos spam is so good

Core will always be half a faction until we're willing to give them similar tools imo

see: starlight, pulsar, sharpshooter, liche, emp bomber, emp launcher, jag, tick

[fast obsidian]

dgun is what's keeping the game playable, it's just how the game is
by touching sneaky pete and spy you are actually changing dgun
coz the spies are there to get the stuff dgun most of the time, sure you can replace dgun by units sometimes but it's basically the same

[uneven belfry]

i was doing that with rascals before

[muted barn]

Arm just has every possible tool it needs to never even have to engage core in a firefight, it has range advantages and speed advantages out the ass

[muted barn]

great lets talk about t1 veh arm vs core in lane

[noble yarrow]

cortex definitely need 1 more bot for t1 botlab, but this isn't something that can instantly happen, better mitigate the problem for now to when it gets implemented adjust accordingly

[uneven belfry]

yeah you just go pawns and win gg

[muted barn]

Whistlers are the backbone of this matchup, and they are better than core equivalent due to higher alpha damage, also Arm gets janus which is a super good laning tool and core gets basically no useful equivalent

because janus can apply huge pressure on commander so he can't protect his missile trucks from tanks

[muted barn]

the problem is arm gets the utility advantage in every, single, lab (other than t1 air), I don't know why, it sounds insane that this could be the case but it's actually true.

[cobalt brook]

do people really identify easily the sneaky pete location ?

[muted barn]

I think balance will always feel bad for one reason or another until this is fixed and it's why I think we really need kuchy or Flash on the balance team, like seriously balance team needs to take a long hard look at itself and be brave enough to include a real core advocate

[cobalt brook]

coz usually you send the commander ahead of the sneaky pete, so it's not like it's full of enemy scouts that see it, and tick sight range has been reduced

I'm just wondering is sneaky pete D gun is really out of the question now

[placid eagle]

Yesss I want a new cor bot 😍

[muted barn]

core needs like 4 new units or 2 new units and 2 unit reworks at the least until fundamental game design problems go away tbh

[placid eagle]

And some t2 changes too, it is pretty wack that arm gets long range high alpha damage units to deal with T3 and cor gets nothing

Its core buffing czn

[muted barn]

for some reason core buffs are always just like 'ok lets make their tanks better' or whatever, and then core seems op because 95% of players just play the game by smashing units together

[placid eagle]

Well core is technically supposed to be more brute force

[muted barn]

it's utility core needs because at high OS people will actually counter stuff

[muted barn]

yes but that only works if the game meta is brute force, why would anyone come fight your army of sumos when they can just murder them with sharpshooters?

[placid eagle]

Yeah since arm was focused more on utility its clearly created this massive deficit for core

[muted barn]

Range will always be king in this game

[cobalt brook]

Cortex historically has had better bots. But yeah they're weak in terms of static defence. Tac nuke's alright but Bulwark's trash. But people play Cortex because the units are more fun.

[muted barn]

if you can outrange something, you can kill it for free

[placid eagle]

Yeah true. Thats why hornet thinks sharpshooters and atarlights are inherently broken

[cobalt brook]

if you have vision, which Armada does easily with ticks. Double OP

[muted barn]

the game needs something to stop t3, my issue is that it's all in ARM labs for some unknown reason

[placid eagle]

Cor needs some long range high single target damage at T2 to be competitive in the late game

[muted barn]

^

[cobalt brook]

historically people have responded "tac nukes and mammoths" to this

[placid eagle]

I just hope this is done with more unique weapons than long range lasers and plasma lol

Well tzar and mammoth do trade well with some T3

[muted barn]

I do not hate the idea of asyymetric balance but I think the ability to counter t3 is too fundamental to be an asymmetry issue, it's like not giving one of the factions a con unit or a bot scout ... oh wait

[placid eagle]

And I think these units existing is why they dont have equivalents for sharpshooters and starlights

[cobalt brook]

let's be real, the Sharpshooter's weapon feels more Cortex than Armada. In Total Annihilation, Sharpshooters had a tachyon laser, not a sniper rifle.

[muted barn]

mammoths also just get massacred by sharpshooters like everything else core has

[cobalt brook]

yeah coz they're also cloaked 😄

but people still play Cortex all the time, it's not like it's Armada accross the board. And it has switched back and forth depending on the patches.

[muted barn]

and because they travel slower than an 80 year old driving a skoda

[fast obsidian]

you know jammer is there when you lose the radar dots, then you send few scouts to see the exact location
once you have the jammer radius, it's very ez to not lose anything to dgun.
The difference with core jammer is that armada still probably has enough range to still dgun a tzar before the tzar can kill the jammer
but that's something that needs to be tester more but in most cases it will not be important coz people will just go around the jammer and you don't have the element of surprise about the exact range of the jammer anymore which is what allowed to do clutch dgun on tzar/fatboy

Concerning t3 razors, the sneaky pete is basically useless now, coz you will have spam (ground / air scouts) that will always see the jammer, so commanders will never be able to dgun razors anymore

[muted barn]

yeah but I think that's because generally you can just win the game with macro and micro, it hides the serious competitive balance issues

[muted barn]

the bigger problem with sneaky pete honestly is why YET AGAIN the counter to stuff like razors is.. to be arm and have a cloaked sneaky pete

whoever did the initial game balance I swear would have married the Arm faction if it was fuckin possible and there's sadly infinite resistance to unfucking the huge utility mismatch

[fast obsidian]

core has a later counter once you have more eco with skuttles/mamouth but that comes too late to deal with razors rush

[cobalt brook]

the fact that scouts see jammers is an issue IMO. The same way torpedo bombers see subs. It should not be the case.

but I don't know how easy to make an exception out of these, like sneaky pete isn't cloaked but scout planes can't see it

[muted barn]

just feels like an insane take to me, one of these things is basically free and the other takes a lot of resources and more importantly a lot of foresight

I am not saying you're technically incorrect

just what's required to make it work in practice is so much more effort

[cobalt brook]

Skuttles SHOULD be an essential part of the game imo, somehow. Same thing with mines.

[fast obsidian]

well yea, but 8v8 you have both factions, it wasn't uncommun to have to beg for a armada con to be able to build a sneaky pete when you knew stuff like that was gonna come your way, so it wasn't such a big deal, unless you are unlucky and coulnd't get armada con in time to build sneaky pete

[muted barn]

idk guys I just wanna be able to pick core again without feeling like I am trolling

I feel like I have seen behind the curtain/veil or something and I am just trying to get as many people as possible to also have a peek

[cobalt brook]

haha I remember Baron once rage quitting a game coz someone picked T2 Armada bots. He considered you were trolling if you picked Arm bots. How the turntables...

[placid eagle]

I think this is universally shared by the community, cor is just not winning games anymore

[muted barn]

That was true in 1v1 for a long time but in team games?? idk he tripping

[cobalt brook]

it was in 8v8 yes

[placid eagle]

Yeah arm bots has been good in team games for as long as Ive played lol

[muted barn]

maybe it was some ancient game version idk

[cobalt brook]

not saying he was right, he was wrong, but some people thought like that

[muted barn]

atg tourney was like 100% Arm bot starts other than techer who was arm veh lol

[fast obsidian]

core strength comes later but for staying alive early against such rushes sneaky pete was most of the time the deciding factor

[placid eagle]

But sneaky pete is arm

[muted barn]

what even is core's strength? from my pov it's pretty good at t1 if you make use of shuris, and then it kinda just trades badly with arm up until you have behemoth

shivas are not bad unit but they also get deleted by sharpshooters and arm t3 can trade efficiently with them

[placid eagle]

Low BP cost, damage output

Shivas are still pretty good and they also cant be stunned by a single spybot anymore so theres that

[cobalt brook]

I meant T2 armada bots, sorry, not coz he started T1 arm bots

he rage quit coz the game went T2 arm bots

[placid eagle]

Oh lmao

[gilded token]

Sneaky Pete is T1 jammer. If you're going up against T3, use a T2 jammer at least to give that extra 260 range over the T1 version.

[muted barn]

to be fair, fiends/sheldon are not bad either, but still in that lab Arm ultimately gets the range advantage

[placid eagle]

Yeah there also is the push to make t2 radars and jammers useable but you arent.likely to have one before a tzar rush

[fast obsidian]

?

[gilded token]

Except for the 'unstoppable Tzar without a spybot' thing, apparently

[muted barn]

can't 2 spybots stun it?

[placid eagle]

Yes

[fast obsidian]

it really isn't that ez to have a sneaky pete rdy and have enough energy to have com cloak walking inside at 6-7 mins
on most map without infinite wind, it would require effort, it's really not as ez as it looks

[placid eagle]

But why is it not sufficient to be able to stun a tzar with two spybots

This seems perfectly fine to me

[muted barn]

I think a lot of the other stuff could present really obvious fixes if they'd just give core the same basic tools arm has honestly.

[gilded token]

Razor range and vision are both under 500. T2 Jammer for Armada has ~760 range. That's enough to have a commander on the edge of range and to dgun a Razor before it sees the jammer or gets in range to kill it.

[muted barn]

trying to balance a flawed concept is never gonna provide a good meta

[placid eagle]

I dont want this though, I want there to be more unique solutions found

And I think this is absolutely possible to balance without giving cor 1:1 copies of sharps and starlights

[muted barn]

I feel like range is king and that's that tbh

[gilded token]

Couple potential changes I was just thinking of are Snipers revealing themselves briefly through fog of war when they shoot and maybe making Arbiter shots track a little to miss slightly less when a target moves.

[muted barn]

you can say, oh we can buff crawling bombs or whatever, but that still needs a lot more micro than just watching your 10 sharpshooters delete unit after unit

[placid eagle]

But you can give cor range without them being 1:1 copies is what I mean

[muted barn]

if a core solution to a problem requires like 100% more attention of the player it's not a solution

[gilded token]

Delete your crawling bombs right in your face :P

[placid eagle]

But you can beat range with enough health thats why mammoths and tzars still do well vs T3

[muted barn]

the trouble is those units are hard countered also by Arm's t3 killing units

[placid eagle]

Yep

Cor def needs some range to compete

[fast obsidian]

idk i never play games when razors is all alone running at things in the dark

maybe once you have pass the front line and are killing every bases you can have razors without anything, you have already won the game so you don't care if it gets dgun

[cobalt brook]

They have range, just unprecise range, Catas

There's a Starlight equivalent in extra units, with longer lasting laser

Feels a bit unimaginative though

[unreal wharf]

can we give to Tohrazer the role of core lobbyist ? i think he deserves it (and where is our armada lobbyist ? )

[gilded token]

Well, Vanguards outrange Catapults now. Cortex does have a range advantage of sorts at T2, in that Tremors and Arbiters both have good range. Although Arbiter is bad versus moving targets and Tremor is very low concentration on the damage. And if there is a Pulsar up, they'll get picked off if they aren't careful. Although both factions have rocket tanks with ~1300 range.

[muted barn]

the arm lobbyists is the balance team 💀

[visual wolf]

arm got nerfed wdym arm lobbyists

[placid eagle]

Thats what Im saying

[muted barn]

if by arm got nerfed you mean Razors are now unstoppable killing machines then yes we're in agreement

[visual wolf]

how were razors buffed?

[placid eagle]

By the spybot nerf

It takes 4 atm for full 8s stun or 3 surrounding it

[visual wolf]

and y'all wanted a spybot nerf

shivas got buffed too in that case

and demons

[fast obsidian]

i don't think people really care about playing such gameplay, will be hard to get data lol

[placid eagle]

Yes that was part of the whole point

These balance issues can be addressed directly instead of one unit for everything

The question was, "Is the spybot so overpowered that other OP units are held down?" And the answer is obvioisly yes

But balance revolving around a single 350 metal unit countering everything OP is bad :p

[noble yarrow]

l dont think demon rush is in the same realm of razorback, razor is way cheaper so it can come online sooner with comi or not

[lunar hollow]

Just revert spybot damage and reduce AOE to the point that it can only stun 1 unit.

Would fix all the complaints people have

[placid eagle]

No thank you

[lunar hollow]

And a rauder rush couldnt be stunned by spybots

[placid eagle]

I dont think anyone wants that -_-

[lunar hollow]

I think rushing 1 tzar or 1 razor deserves to be hardcountered by spy

But going 5 marauders would allready be imposdible to counter if you have to micro 5 spybots

[placid eagle]

Can someone please give me a serious answer why just using 2 spybots instead of 1 to counter a tzar isnt good enough?

I can see why 4 for a guaranteed razor back stun is too many, but just 2 for a full stun on a tzar isnt hard to do at all

[lament crater]

Do you build spybots bro? Spybots are deceptively expensive in E and BP.

[lunar hollow]

Pawn is literally just better then grunt now and on top of that arm gets faster rocket bots janus ticks and centurion

Arm was allready super eficiant on solar maps early game due to metal heavy pawns but they got even more metal heavy and less E heavy

[placid eagle]

Yes of course but if they are rushing a tzar out you can surely afford a second spybot

Also I have been advocating for a cost reduction

I think spybots could be cheaper on initial E and stay at the power where theyre at now

[lunar hollow]

Making 2 spybots is allready setting yourself up for loosing as they are a defensive tool

Better to just t1 bomb really before tzar can happen

Investing in defense preemptively has a high chance of being dead metal that could have been used for dealing damage or eco

[grizzled atlas]

Mobile jammers + antispam

A tzar cannot get in range of a mobile jammer without being dead to dgun

And then commie starlight, sniper or enough sheldons

[placid eagle]

But you need a defensive tool to stop a tzar rush

[lunar hollow]

So they invest in something that will wreck your t1 ftont before the right moment appears to stun the tzar and all you will do is kill the tzar and deal no further damage?

They had the better investement even if the tzar dies

[hollow dawn]

hmm... I think we need a separate thread for T1 and T2 balance
they don't really interact with each other much and T1 stats need a lot of tuning as well

[pearl merlin]

E isn't the limiting factor of spybots it's BP

it has nearly the same BP as a tzar

so it's v challenging to rush 2 in the time ur opponent rushes tzar

esp from front lab which has limited bp

[lunar hollow]

Just make a tzar too

Theres your defensive tool

It can even deal damage unlikespy

[pearl merlin]

[lunar hollow]

Its weird how armada and cortex switched places for front and tech

Cortex is now the rush tzar or banisher faction

And arm the make pawns and ticks faction

[placid eagle]

seems like a BP buff would be good then?

I think a cheaper spybot at the power level where its at now would be amazing personally. It would make it a lot easier to mix in with any composition at any phase of T2 and beyond, while not being so ridiculously OP

And since you can still get solid stuns with multiple spybots, making them easier to produce seems natural

[placid eagle]

What if both spybots got a significant BP buff but the cor one got more of a BP discount with an E cost reduction as well?

Enough where it became feasible but still difficult to make multiple to counter these problematic rushes

[lunar hollow]

I think the result will be spybots forming a line and detonating all at the same time being a perfect welder counter

Wich isnt really what spybots are ment to do

We dont have an isdue with people rushing welders or sheldons or mausers we have an issue with heavy units

And with tweaks like this light units will allways be worse off vs spybot making heavy units an even better choice

[placid eagle]

The changes for the spybot were explicitly designed to make spybots more useful in early T2

[fast obsidian]

that's funny

coop wasn't an issue enough

[lunar hollow]

Why tho, nobody needs spybots vs mausers

Early t2 units have a lot of t1 counterplay

[cobalt brook]

soon the lowest OS guy in a team will be the one who has to micro all the spybots 😄

[prisma mulch]

@chilly heath btw has the GDT thought about wind values being more reliable? Alot of maps I see the wind values are 1-25 and it can shift from one end to another in less than 20second and it feels awful rng

Testing t1 unit balance also feels impossible when there's such high rng on energy, prolly one of the biggest reason incisors are the best t1 early unit, it's energy:metal is super low

I'm not saying it shud be constant, it shud just be more reliable, instead of 1-25 wind rng have, 7-19 or smth along those lines

[hollow dawn]

yeah map makers just put whatever but the high ranges feel quite bad

[placid eagle]

Yeah its too much

[gilded token]

isn't that the whole point of wind, it's more efficient, but it's risky and will sometimes make you fail due to running out of e?

[grizzled atlas]

that's wholely in terms of map design

imho average wind over like 11-12 is cooked

[chilly heath]

GDT has not discussed it. As map maker would you rather have me put unreliable but high wind (1-20) or reliable but low wind (3-14)? Because you can't have both, it would just make all other energy sources worthless.

I have been putting some semi-reliable but still reasonable wind values like 3-12 on my maps, but everybody absolutely hates it. 3-12 is still on average better than a fusion but everyone thinks it's way too low.

[prisma mulch]

U can have wind be 5-15 and solar might still be better for 1v1s bcz of most maps being high amnt of mexes

Wind is alot of BP and takes energy while solar is better on both parts so efficiency doesn't matter anyways

3-12 just sounds like reliably bad investment

5-15 7-12 etc might be better for wind being reliable for 1v1 while solar still being very relevant due to their BP being alot lower

Bcz BP bottlenecks the eco more than metal in 1v1s

[chilly heath]

Kinda yeah. Though afus also takes a lot of BP and energy. 5-15 windgen is more efficient than afus and takes only slightly more bp to make same amount of production.

[prisma mulch]

Yeah but making that much of energy in windmills would mean u don't have centralized Buildpower and it's spread across so u have to defend it in several areas

[chilly heath]

Yeah it's still worse true.

[prisma mulch]

It's not clearly better bcz u will need to make fusion or afus anyway to convert the metal faster

Most 1v1 maps people have the 1st t2 con make a fusion before any t2 mexes because the metal needs to be spent on energy

Wind being more reliable prolly won't change that and fusions will still be better bcz they require alot less BP to make

[chilly heath]

Maybe 1v1 maps should have more reliable wind. It's kinda bad you have to dice roll wind value when you get a big wreck field to rez or something. In 8v8 it's not that big of a deal since it won't snowball the game so much.

[chilly heath]

I have put 3-12 on many maps and people still build wind. They complain it's shit and still everyone builds them because it's still better than solar.

That's in 8v8 though. 1v1 would be different.

[prisma mulch]

Ye but that's 8v8 ur prolly stuck on 7 mexes and when u look at solar it's just insane metal price and when u look at wind being bad u just spam energy storage to trick the overflow share thing into funding u

[chilly heath]

E-store overflow won't help you with bad wind. Nobody is overflowing when wind goes down. E-store is otherwise op on wind maps though.

[pearl merlin]

@chilly heath can u guys hotfix spybot this weekend?

[hollow dawn]

I would not consider 3-12 "reliable" btw, it's still enough variance that a string of min wind periods will cripple your economy
at least in 1v1

[pearl merlin]

revert emp immunity and double the EMP dmg (there or thereabouts)

[hollow dawn]

a bunch of popular maps have 4-14 which I'd consider low-normal wind (with moderate variance)

I think 6-12 could be interesting, not many maps have it

[placid eagle]

3 - 14 isnt reliable

6 - 12 is a good balance

But 2 - 20 is just awful

[topaz glade]

U still can chain spybot detonate. Just need place with 100 range separation. So harder now but reasonably possible

[grizzled atlas]

wind takes far more bp, and bottlenecking from wind drops sucks
you'd prefer fusion when you get there

average wind between 8.5-12.5 is generally where there's choices. although arm did get nerfed wind 37->40

[west birch]

It's a skill to deal w wind swings too, it's not that common for a low wind moment to decide a game where you couldn't do anything abt it

[prisma mulch]

Nah

It's just rng

Minimizing the affect of rng by making estorage and making solar doesn't mean it's not giga dogshit rng mechanic regardless

[grizzled atlas]

it effects both team's equally, true if it's wind build vs fusion there's rng in if wind is favourable

but it's skill to deal with wind swing, estimate opponent's timings given wind this game, and even time attacks to when the wind drops

[cobalt brook]

Attack @tough cave 's com when wind is low, savour the big W

[tropic aurora]

Has anyone updated all the tooltips and in game things to reflect these changes?

[grizzled atlas]

there's a changelog, you mean the instructional tips?

[prisma mulch]

Wind dropping doesn't affect both the teams equally in every case

Wind drop basically auto wins the game if someone is doing a big raid

Or doing smth like com snipe

It fucks over the defensive player more

[empty yew]

Solar maps op and fair

[viral valley]

+1 on spybot nerf rollback, its very unsatisfying getting one in position and it doesnt even a stop a tzar

reduce aoe or stun duration but not the one hit stun on tzar and i guess razors

[empty yew]

I dunno, after thinking more on it, spybot nerf seemed kinda fair. Tzar coop is insanely strong but that's why the anti-funneling resource debate is ongoing. If this fast boost wasnt viable, spybot would be ok imo

Its a very gamey unit

[west birch]

If you were rushing spybot to counter tzar rush, then its plausible to rush another t2 unit that can counter (even if not as hardly) the tzar

[chilly heath]

Yeah if you already have a T2 botlab then some fiends can probably surround an unprotected tzar and take it down.

[prisma mulch]

No

Like which player in 2025 is losing tzar to fucking fiends

Fiends were barely killing tzars even with the old spybots

[chilly heath]

I do want to do something about co-op rushing tzars and stuff though. Just don't know what.

[prisma mulch]

Ye idk how ur gonna balance around spybot no longer being viable unit

[fast obsidian]

on some maps/lanes tzar was already winning super hard and was best strat to do
and you still had to deal with sneaky pete which was the only thing slowing the tzar for long time
and with that delay you could build something in response, the best counter was to do 1 spy and dgun the thing.

making fiends to kill a tzar is what a new players would go, you have a commander with the tzar you know

[prisma mulch]

I'd say half reverting the dmg nerf and making t2 counter intrusion have units autotarget the spybot would be good enough nerf

[chilly heath]

I think sneaky pete builds will still be a thing on many maps. You just build it behind a hill or a corner now. But yeah it's not very satisfactory tzar counter still.

[prisma mulch]

Reduce counter intrusion buildcost/make it reveal walking cloaked unit instead of just giving red dots so that units autotarget it and so that u can creep forward with it faster

[west birch]

In the right circumstances, rushing a strong t2 unit like that is obviously a logical play. Then it's a question if it's tzar vs tzar or a wider variety of rush targets, be it counter tzar units or smth else.

Ofc the timing and strength, and what kind of eco (coop etc) you build it with, can be affected by balance changes, but the simple fact of units like that being strong rush targets on closed lane won't change

[fast obsidian]

Some maps aren't balanced in symmetry like bismuth but in diagonal, only thing to counter it got removed
but even on balanced map like bismuth, do you want to force players into mirror build and do tzar battle every games when it used to be a choice you could make.
Not go for the ez tzar build that wins early but try to survive it and go for different strat.
(also razors rush has become super op now just like the tzar)

[prisma mulch]

Also flash complained about FFA being just razorback rush fiesta since spybots r literally useless

[fast obsidian]

like i don't get why this couldn't have been tested in mod options and give enough time to have a proper thing become making it main game

[prisma mulch]

#1355518969016090767

[hollow dawn]

it's not that common but it happens, where the wind swing happens to favour one player more than the other

[empty yew]

@prisma mulch @fast obsidian would nerfing resource funnel still make the new spybot garbage?

[hollow dawn]

spybot emp couldn't be changed in tweaks so maybe that was why, self-d explosion is in a separate file to unit stats

[fast obsidian]

i mean it's really not that complicated to make emp bot / sneaky pete more balanced instead of removing them
im not sure why they make it look this change need to happen and the entire game need a rework to go with it

I think players are beyond bored about those endless half done changes that keep breaking the game over and over again
it's best to just let it go and everyone will be happy, if no one complains anymore they will think their changes are good
and if no lobby is there to actually play the video game, there won't be anymore replays/clips that will show how terrible it actually is

they clearly have a direction they want to go on with and if it is having a casual game with legion for 10 os players and mono spammers
then it is what it is after all they do the game they want to do and we were blessed to have a good game for the time it lasted

[placid eagle]

In 1v1 it happens all the time

Depending on the map ofc

[empty yew]

slightly dramatic but you're french so it's expected.

[crisp bison]

Don't ever project your own feeling on what you think all the players feel.

Banisher now seem to be a decent counter to Tzar rush.

Always tried to use spybots to provide vision rather than a EMP counter to something. Now I'm just patiently waiting for some means to counter spam.

[placid eagle]

You open 2 cons your opponent opens 1 con into 20 pawns and then wind dies its gg

At that point its just opening rng.

[crisp bison]

I mean, this situation won't get very different based on the wind, no?

[west birch]

It's a bit more than that, it's your choice how risky you want to play

[chilly heath]

I gathered some charts if someone wants to make unwarranted conclusions from skewed season start data.

Personally I don't really care about the overall winrate much since the balance algorithm will try its best to make it 50 % no matter what faction you play. The pick rates are probably more interesting, at least once the season start hype dials down.

[fast yoke]

Everyone saying game ruined without sneaky Pete forgetting Cor has never had this

[placid eagle]

Yeah definitely, but it can feel like too much rng at times

Maybe like 1/10 games on volatile maps tho, so not super common

[placid eagle]

11k vs 391 matches!

[fast obsidian]

coz you forget it's a team game and you could always ask armada player to make a blueprint

[tardy basin]

I allready warned on this spybots overnef, now i am clearly bored of microed tzar/razor rush because there is 0 counters when you are bot on a lot of map and slightly behind in eco. The sneaky pete nerf i can adapt, no problem, but this AND spybots overnerf just make the game worst. I suggested some idea to fix this, feel nobody react on it or want update it, idk, you want feedback, we give feedback, nothing happen. Each time i ask gamers in my usual lobby their feedbacks on spybots change, they ALL say it is bullshit now and are always disappointed using them for all kind of things like emp each other, emp nothing against porc/big units, they all say it is unusable. You seem want keep the spybots on a "just LOS purpose", well, you just killed a mechanic and now there is more and more balance problem, this need clearly more time and test like with "accurate laser" as it affect a lot of things on the game.

[crisp bison]

I mean, you can argue that spybots themselves should be EMP-immune, so that might solve the issue without backtracking into the balance changes.

Spybots EMPing each-other so far seem the most "bullshit" part of the change, because before that you could just use a single spybot to knock out half the enemy army or whatnot, and was never concerned about such circumstance.

[subtle jasper]

LMFAO, the pick rates are exactly inverted.

[subtle jasper]

Statistical significance is any sample size over 30 😎

My unwarranted conclusion is (and was) 1. revert Pawn hp buff first 2. maybe revert Grunt handling nerf 3. DO NOT under ANY circumstances revert Grunt range nerf.

[hollow dawn]

I think keeping hp buff with cost increase could work

having more hp helps with not dying to kiting

[subtle jasper]

I'd also think just buffing grunt (hp) would be an answer. I need to actually watch 1v1 replays rather than waiting for people to cast them/tourney to be run. OH YEAH Fight Night is going on RIGHT NOW. Time to OBSERVE.

[placid eagle]

it depends

[dull ledge]

what exactly is grunt's purpose rn?

[lunar hollow]

Pawns can now kite grunts, the projectiles hit further then 180, and whenever you try to dip in with your slow grunts you only get 1 shot before the pawns get into their own range

[placid eagle]

To feel sad

[dull ledge]

they now lose to every earlygame unit

except fleas?

[placid eagle]

They have a humiliation fetish\

[lunar hollow]

Good thing core botlab has no other umits

And good thing we decided the game has enough units even tho clearly core botlab is missing 2

[placid eagle]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1353782741942145186

give cortex another t1 bot

Or quad thug

I think grunts need some range back

[fading lagoon]

do you have this chart for FFA too?

[placid eagle]

The middile switch in each case is really interesting, why would that be do you think?

for 1v1

[dull ledge]

lol

you need 7 grunts to make cost against an llt

[chilly heath]

There you go. No minimum rating though since ffa almost always has some 17 os guy.

[dull ledge]

you also need atleast 4 grunts to kill an llt

[forest girder]

the second half is something i believe the gdt has already approved of and is expecting

[placid eagle]

What about cost buffs?

[forest girder]

thats outside of the gdt purview

[muted barn]

idk if anyone else feels this way but having lower uncertainty floor actually makes me not want to play

every time I lose early in season with high uncertainty I am thinking, that's gonna take 3 fucking wins to undo later and I just log off

[hollow dawn]

there were some debates about it before, I prefer the slightly higher floor as well

[eternal osprey]

I really enjoyed last seasons uncertainty myself as well. Was a nice change of pace from getting 2 or less uncertainty and being hard stuck. I lost the first few matches of this new season and yeah I get where razers coming from in feeling like you screwed yourself later.

But I try to also not let it bother me too much, I've been all over the board and as long as I can join and play good games that's all that really matters.

[gilded token]

Not that I was in favor of the uncertainty bump, but that's not really a correct understanding of how rating changes and balancing works. Your rating is going to wobble around your skill the whole time. It's a wide wobble at the start and becomes a less wide wobble as uncertainty goes down, but aside from some 'lucky' streaks, your rating will not be too far off at any point. If you drop too far right off the bat, then you will be increasingly likely to win as it underestimates your skill to higher degrees and you'll tend towards your actual skill. Even with the lowered floor your rating once it reaches that new floor will be still be sufficiently fluid to get you close to an accurate rating in a reasonable amount of games. If you drastically change in actual performance it could take a decent chunk of games, but for normal variance it won't take too long. Each win and loss impacts your odds and game difficulty for future matches. The results are not independent in team games.

You think "I lost, now I have to win!" without perhaps realizing that for the next game, getting a win is now easier than if you'd won the first game. If you'd won the first game, getting a win on the second game would be harder and you'd be more likely to lose and move back down. The further you get from your actual skill, the more likely you are to have a result that moves you back towards that center point. If you have a pretty good or bad streak and don't bounce back, it's likely your performance changed and you'll wobble around some new rating. If you do bounce back, then you just had some luck or short term change in performance that reverted itself.

Next time you lose, don't think about the OS you lost, just think now you'll have things a bit easier than you would have otherwise. You're afraid to play when you're more likely to win versus the opposite situation where you'd be more likely to lose OS in your next game(s).

[muted barn]

I'd love to have that attitude, alas I don't and never will

[tropic aurora]

Why was the spy bot thread shut down when this one already has over 1000 comments.

And the first one over 2000

Seems like this thread is just a honeypot to contain, not listen to feedback.

[placid eagle]

-# So conspiratorial 🤦‍♂️

[tropic aurora]

Mostly sarcastic. But when Seth says 'discuss it here' makes me think nothing here was read. Because it has been. And now it's unwieldy and unfocused. So it makes sense to take the themes and break them out into dedicated threads.

Not shut them all down and tell people to go back here, which again clearly isn't being read.

[placid eagle]

Yeah we need a thread for each tech level at least

But it seems the focus has been on pawn vs grunt, spybots, and cortex being weak against armada T3 in the early parts

So a thread for each of these?

[tropic aurora]

Well there's at least the T1 eco changes. - feedback mostly okay

T1 bot changes - most people say grunt overnerf?

T2 arm nerf - already is a hound thread

T2 cor buff - pretty quiet but people seem pleased.

Spybot change - very mixed.

Sneaky pete - mostly sad it's gone. Could have been fixed with better emp/juno/less severe nerfs.

[placid eagle]

I take quiet as pleased and havent seen anything about the t1 eco changes so these seem OK. iIhavent seen much about the arm nerf mostly just wanting a triple toggle back. Cor buff seems to have been overlooked bc of the spybot anger but Ive only seen praise for it.

Spy bot change seems to mostly have just revealed how OP a lot of arm stuff is

[rugged fjord]

Also sneaky pete is overpriced (energy, metal, buildpower) for what it gives now.

[crisp bison]

Debatable given that the difference in range is substantial and how more secure it makes it from deliberate artillery attacks.

Benefit of range is exponential, so you cannot treat the difference as linear multiplier of expected cost. Just shows how absurdly OP Pete previously was.

[west birch]

Why'd you think this isn't being read?

Signal to noise ratio here isn't great, not sure if that'd be improved by having more threads, but rn the rule is that ppl need to start balance threads first in the meta-discussion forum

[tardy basin]

#1355518969016090767 message

[mortal summit]

Just my thoughts for T1 1v1s core:

Grunt nerf seems too hard, vs arm players blitz and pawns can outmanoeuvre them and take the fights when they want, this leads to a forced (a bit) defensive play style from core. They cannot match the scouts with equal numbers of grunts as they’d lose out a bit on eco. I wish this wasn’t the case however it might have to be fixed by an additional unit/accepted by core players.

Incisor’s higher BP makes core veh quite hard to open, you simply cannot get enough incisors out to protect vs large amounts of ticks/scouts. Whilst scouts are good, it would be nice to have a few more incisors to defend/attack earlier on. Also since they (I think) haven’t gotten any other nerfs it means that they are still really good to switch into from cor bots, in a way forcing the transition due to incisors crushing grunts in matchups.

It’s hard to quantify this one as it doesn’t really come from the stats but core does seem to have a harder time expanding than arm. This could be due to the fact that they are forced to play more defensively (grunts can’t really go too offensive vs arm ticks + pawns and incisors high BP mean veh starts are substantially more difficult.) So in a mock engagement: arm player gets early scouts, core player is forced to defend, arm player can naked expand, cor army STILL needs to defend and is contained due to higher speed from arm, finally core breaks out but pawns/blitz are now in larger number by the time they reach base so arm successfully defends.

TL/DR: grunt nerf too hard, incisors BP too high, arm can expand faster/get better eco, core players now “forced” into a defensive play style

Solutions?:

[unreal pecan]

its worth noting that grunt needs to do the job of ticks and pawns

[mortal summit]

• Maybe increase grunt speed/turn rate/acceleration? At the moment they are filling a space between ticks and pawns so it’s possible that a new unit for the cortex roster is needed. Core players should be able to have some tactics allowing for earlier aggression. Extra range is also welcome.

• Incisors could benefit from a lower BP but maybe less HP? If not, DPS nerf could also work. If incisors will stay like this then we could introduce a bit more faction variance and buff core scouts so that they have better units than arm however they take longer to get operational.

• Finally, pretty big one. Due to the defensive nature that cor players are forced into I think they could get an economy buff. This would not come in the form of changing metal income but rather two simple things: 1. Make cor cons have more BP than arm (I know there is 5% however I think 15% would be better). 2. Buff mex’s HP. This could go towards the factions (slight) asymmetry which is really nice but also would certainly help vs early scout spam.

[mortal summit]

I will edit these messages and delete this one. But yes I was going to say this.

[hollow dawn]

I'd like to start with just +5 range on grunt

+2-4 metal on pawn

[grizzled atlas]

make sneaky pete somewhat cheaper to compensate

it being not cloaked good change tho imo

if you combine sneaky pete with a bit of MLT LLT to kill spam, it's just not even play vs counterplay difficultly

[mortal summit]

I think due to the nature of this thread my comments will get buried very quickly which is annoying. I’d like to invite others whom are higher up in the 1v1 scene to reply and share their thoughts on this. [reply so that I can come back to this at a later date]

[placid eagle]

Yes this is OP

[mortal summit]

Perhaps arm’s faster nature/better eco leads to them being naturally stronger in 1v1s. I think core needs to have stronger eco in order to balance this out (as well as their defensive nature means they are on the back foot from the start) My suggestions are above.

[hollow dawn]

in 1v1 the eco probably gets cancelled out by the factory penalty

3 metal per wind in favour of arm
but 20 for bot lab, 30 for vehicle, 5 per solar for core

[subtle jasper]

Out of curiosity, are there average game time stats? I'd guess games have been shorter recently

[lunar hollow]

This

Why, would you keep incisors just as broken but make it so opening core vehicles is just pain?

And on top of that opening core bots is allso pain because armada can choose 3 strats that comepletely counter you and there's nothing you can do

Core is now a support faction, let others handle the front so you can make buildturrets to go into incisor spam or make wolverines

[lunar hollow]

The energy reduction on pawn and tick need to be reverted

Armada is allready quicker due to faster lab and less e heavy early unit, now the buff just made it redicolous while core got nerfed

Energy matters more in the early game due to 1000 starting metal and reclaim

It snowballs a lot with arm

[placid eagle]

Cor having a harder time expanding is also exaggerated by the strength of pawns right now. They can just run them at your expansions and kill it even if your grunts are on top of them.

[scarlet mirage]

my take on the grunt nerf is that accurate lasers did not buff it as dramatically as most expected so the preemptive nerfs were too much

i feel like turn rate nerf alone might have been enough

[hollow dawn]

I think with just the turn rate you'd still see people kite infinite pawns to death... the range gap is really crucial

[placid eagle]

Yeah grunts need just enough range again to stop pawns from fully kiting them, I like the idea of trying just +5

Also a pawn metal cost nerf would make sense given how healthy they are right now. Its really hard to stop groups of them from melting your expansions.

Blitz are so irrelevant right now too.

[hollow dawn]

not sure about that...

[fast yoke]

are incisors giga op or what

[west birch]

pawn is strong, grunt is weak, how the light tanks compare to one another isnt as clear

[placid eagle]

Pawns just feel like a better option, I dont see why youd make blitz over pawns atm

[hollow dawn]

they might be at the point where T2 is the deciding factor for armveh start

on canis and bigger maps that is

[placid eagle]

This is good right?

[noble yarrow]

hp buff to pawns make then trade better even to blitz so its a bit of both

[pearl merlin]

has the spybot nerf been reverted yet?

[tropic aurora]

https://discord.com/channels/549281623154229250/1355518969016090767

Apparently no one has discussed Spybot here yet

[unreal pecan]

i thought it was patently obvious that people thought it was an overnerf

[tardy basin]

Spybots clearly bad balanced and overnerfed, we are a lot saying this, but look like we are ignored or minimized. We tried suggest and rework a lot of time the suggestion, but feel like we talk to a wall.

[grizzled atlas]

pawns are better than grunts in most other situations so it's normal that grunts should beat pawns by some amount

[odd swallow]

give grunts same LoS as ticks ? ;D ?

[placid eagle]

Grunt LoS would be nice

[hollow dawn]

pre-patch ubivator was complaining about grunts having op los compared to pawn

[placid eagle]

Pawns get ticks tho 🤨

[lunar hollow]

Revert pawn and tick energy decrease

[tropic aurora]

And ticks has Los nerf no?

[lunar hollow]

seriously who came up with lets make armadq super fast and cortex takes ages to do anything

low energy cost in early game super busted

grunts have allways been E heavy and pawns got even less E heavy

[tropic aurora]

Typified by the cortex 'wind gap' as the lab opens. Enough time for the commander to build a wind turbine.

[candid grove]

Just seconding existing feedback that it feels like shurikens needs a stronger nerf with the buff to accurate cortex lasers.

Previously shurikens missed more often than 1/~11 shots so the accurate lasers is a pretty big buff.

It really makes going for leaks most time not worth it unless you have some form of air coverage (or you know they have 0 shurikens)

[lunar hollow]

I was fine with the old balance of core being on the backfoot very early and having to catch leaks instead of doing leaks yourself, but now a skilled armada player will simply end you early on cause there just aint no way you stop all those leaks with slower inferior units, and every leak drains apm and can come back any moment

[pearl merlin]

has the spybot nerf been reverted yet?

[crisp bison]

Are we there yet?

Guess Core players should just rely on Exploiters more than before...

[fast obsidian]

also plz just for fun purposes, give the countdown back

it's just like fiends, the countdown makes it fun otherwise it's so bad

[empty yew]

Yes to countdowb

[placid eagle]

Yeah taking the countdown away was the only change I didnt like

[fast obsidian]

idk how they can stack so many bad changes on those poor spybots lol
you can smell the hate for them a mile away

[unreal pecan]

arm vehicle lab cabal shitting on bots again

[empty yew]

Maybe spybot EMPed Damgam's whistler ball idk

[red grove]

i would just like to say that i love recluse speed nerf cause now i dont have to manage it running out of my jammer cause my jammer can keep up😂

[hollow dawn]

balance hotfix before tournament y/n?

[placid eagle]

No way

[hollow dawn]

it'll reflect poorly on the game if an entire tournament is just pawn spam imo

[unreal pecan]

looks like monospam is back on the menu, boys

[placid eagle]

-# incisors are sweating rn

Is less than 2 weeks enough time for players to adjust to the changes?

[hollow dawn]

the current balance is still fresh as well

and it's demoralizing from a player perspective if the balance simply changes from one extreme to the other with no adjustments or fine tuning to numbers (on a patch that was officially untested), and a tournament is allowed to go forward in this state

players and viewers will leave with the impression that the game isn't really interested in balance

[tropic aurora]

While true, previous tournaments have been monospam grunts or incisors depending on map...

[hollow dawn]

yeah, and I think those reflected poorly on the state of 1v1 balance as well

[fast obsidian]

welcome to bar

[placid eagle]

I dont disagree with you, I was just wondering if making another change this soon before the tournament would go over poorly. I think they tend to wait until after the tournaments to adjust things

But the current changes are fresh and the tweaks would be small

[unreal pecan]

There isn't "anything to adjust to" if you just nerfbat something. This feels exactly like the high-lo trajectory change where five seconds of thinking about it would've determined "oh yeah we just auto mode to the button." Here it feels like "lol bots get nerfed again for our lord and savior arm veh lab and i guess coretex gets some pity buffs"

not to be rude, because i understand it is a volunteer project, but if you listen to what people yap about on repeat people wouldve known that certain elements of this patch werent going to go over very well

also, heres a really good, pertinent question neb. if you actually think that the reason people dont like the spybot change is just because arm veh is op, why were those not nerfed in the balance patch? how could it possibly make sense to nerf what people use to fight overtuned vehicle lab without also reigning that lab in?

[hollow dawn]

this is why we need separate threads

[unreal pecan]

yeah you have to recognize that if you change something it also affects other things

[placid eagle]

But also, just because someone is saying it a lot on here, doesnt necessarily mean their views reflect the communities

Which is why these things take time to adress

[tardy basin]

Every gamers on every lobbies i play say spybots changes are bad and way too much, stop minimize opinions like that please

[fast obsidian]

They don't even mention why it got nerfed against buildings, that's like insane buff to popup and rattles rush
completely changing gameplay without even a 2nd thought, way worse than that emp rework fiasco

[noble yarrow]

l remember seeing then talking about changing structures to 20sec for porc and antinuke, not sure when its gonna come though

[unreal pecan]

the community is literally responding here right now in the thread. pretending that there is this etheral community somewhere that thinks spybot nerf is good and ignoring the ones actually taking the time to comment in the thread is just a wild take

[noble yarrow]

Spy bot shows a bigger fundamental issue honestly, something that l don't know why this game does not have is dedicated anti stealth units, and when l mean units its units not a structure. why not pick a underperforming unit from each of the t2 labs and give to it a detection range or one that fits thematically? the range doesnt even need to be big just better then literal current stream of t1 bodyblocking.

spybots even if lets say their price in BP and energy gets reduce to be like 2 to stun tzar for example will have the same frustration issues of not being able to predict when or where the spy is coming from. lots of other RTS deal with stealth units by having detection in varies forms not just a structure.

if lets say spybot stun damage increases, and cost gets adjusted, this fundamental issue is not going to go away

and no t1 spam is not enough

[unreal pecan]

also, it is irrelevant whether or not people think one way or the other about changes feel a certain way. you have to take the arguments and positions for why people have their position and use that to your inform your own point of view. I think a good method right now would be to do an intellectual exercise over how players are supposed to play against an overtuned lab (which you have recognized), if one of the major tools to do so has been nerfed.

[unreal pecan]

someone suggested earlier that antistealth building provides a radar dot to target for units. this seems like a good way to nerf spybot and make them relevant in early t2 versus against late t2 and t3, which neb (i believe) thinks should be the function of the unit. early on in t2 you will not have built the (600?) anti stealth building and so you have a good window to use spybots. it doesnt address overall balance issues necessarily but it seems to allow spybots to retain their old functionality while being reduced in power for later stages of the game

[empty yew]

Raikoh suggested a while ago that mobile AN could have detection like ICS

[noble yarrow]

that does not solve the problem. this is a building. How do you push with early t2 or t3 against a t2 lab that can make spybots and you cannot stop them if the player has the skill to make them reach their targets? you don't. the structure helps to prevent spybot reach porc and base, but not units pushing. that is why when spybot was doing the crazy 1 for t3 trade, it was not worth rushing t3 to push the enemy.

adjusting emp damage and cost of spybots to require more spybots wont change this fundamental problem.

[noble yarrow]

this seems more like a proper solution, now a tzar rush would need to account the cost of mobile antinuke, requiring more commie/time/resources
and in the razorback case it is forced to push more slowly to be in range of antinuke, so more time to react and make a response

[unreal pecan]

I might be misunderstanding your meaning, but the idea would be to give a radar dot to spybots with the construction of anti stealth so that your units can shoot the bots before they blow up and emp your units.

I like the idea of adding anti stealthy to the mobile anti

[fast obsidian]

mobile anti nuke should have stealth detection, would fix the pushing issue against spybots on repeat while buffing the weaker labs from each faction

[noble yarrow]

about the dot l would prefer that it pulses on radar so you would be forced to spy check for it

[unreal pecan]

yeah i believe that you could just leave the pulsing in there. potentially you could take it out if it becomes too obnoxious.

all of this assuming that if you do actually get schwacked with a spybot it should hurt

[noble yarrow]

one thing that comes to mind about if mobile antinuke gets anti-stealth is if we should leave the other labs access of it or not

[fast obsidian]

Reduce stun duration by 33%, reduce aoe by 15-20%, give back the self D timer, give option to have mobile detection to counter spybot on repeat and do push on long maps just like you need mobile antinuke (this will stop t3 units getting perma stunned on repeat while still allowing spybots to counter tzars/razors rush without proper micro or support units). Then you see if you need do other tweaks after that once people played for couple of months with it.

Don't try redo the entire balance of the game when it's not necessary, balance team is obviously in no shape to try do so large project, you will just fuck things up even more.

[grizzled atlas]

should consider making stealth detection make stealth units appear on radar as if they were not stealthy
that is, make units auto target them

[fast obsidian]

that would be pretty good to to help people without amazing apm

[grizzled atlas]

you can instead try and snipe the mobile anti-nuke (stealth detector)

[fast obsidian]

ya would promote decision making

[chilly heath]

It has been decided it should work like that (but with bit of extra radar wobble). Just needs you to code it 🙂.

[gilded token]

Will Pinpointers help with that wobble accuracy as well as normal radar wobble?

[chilly heath]

Well really we want to remove pinpointers from the game and instead have less radar wobble on T2 radars. But that also needs someone to code it.

[gilded token]

Yeah, I was getting to that as well, if Pinpointers are removed, is there any way to decrease the wobble (either or both types)?

Normal wobble is enough already to sometimes allow for a unit to walk right up to an LLT shooting at it without getting hit until it's right on top of it. So more wobble beyond that might make a couple LLT's with the detection useless if the person is unlucky.

(useless in that a spybot would still make it to the antinuke and go off before the defenses could kill it)

[scarlet mirage]

can we remove wobble from coms so its less bullshit? 💀

it also hurts cor significantly more because only the pounder can hit cloaked com well, arm has janus and lightning claw

[prisma mulch]

So is spybot getting buffed or what

I read some GitHub comment from mitvit I thought it's April fools joke but can't confirm

[chilly heath]

Spybot probably gonna have 20 sec max stuntime vs buildings.

It helps re-enable the antinuke trick and some utility vs porc. Buildings can better defend against it with the stealthdetector too.

[grizzled atlas]

all other units have the same wobble so it could be a flat or multiplier

e.g:
normal unit: 80 wobble, halved per pinpointer
spybot: 80, halved per pinpointer, + 20

having 140 wobble on a spybot would probably look silly

[wraith slate]

when would a modoption for those change be avaliable

like, realistcly speaking, a week?

[chilly heath]

No ETA

[weary marsh]

spybot got nerfed too much imo, it needs an e cost reduction and I would also like to be able to stuck EMP duration by self d more than one in a pack of enemies

[forest girder]

Anything on GitHub isn’t a joke

And will never be a joke….

[placid eagle]

Well also for new players its just another weird esoteric mechanic. Like you think if you build an instrusion countermeasure you should be safe but then you find out you also need to have T1 units around to sniff it out

[placid eagle]

I want to see it get an E cost + Buildcost reduction as well as stalethed units being autotargeted now if theyre in range of an intrusion countermeasure. I also like @fast obsidian Idea (I think) of making mobile antinuke also have intrusion system

[prisma mulch]

nocap?

[placid eagle]

Love to see it

Is auto targeting intrusion detected units for sure coming?

[west birch]

'''Pawn 52->60m
Grunt 43->45m, 210->220 range
Skuttle is stealthy

New values for the Pawn and Grunt, not necessarily final - the changes can be tuned down if they seem in the right direction, but too much.

Also to address the issue of Cortex T2 botlab lacking a good counter to T3, Skuttle is now stealthy to fill that role better.

In the proposed_unit_reworks modoption.'''

^ new test version is available. There's been already some talk of it, some are for it some against, but I hope everyone will approach it with an open mind and see how it plays

And that we get enough feedback to do proper adjustments before putting it to main game

[lunar hollow]

I think one thing nobody thought about before increasing price of grunt and pawn with the last patches, is that this is a massive buff to centurion wich cortex doesnt have

And cortex doesnt have an answer to rocketeer + centurion because the rockos beat thugs and the centurions beat grunts

Im not saying nerf centurion i like it as a unit, but core is lacking a similar unit

Grunts + agravators is weak to centurions who will erradicate the grunts and then your open to ticks in your agravators

The solution is to spam LLT wich sucks in my opinion

[brittle hazel]

More penguins please.

[placid eagle]

Jesus, that pawn nerf is brutal

[hollow dawn]

the hammer of balance 🔨

[eternal osprey]

Stealthy cloaked skuttle I can't see lasting long but will sure make for some funny games.

It one taps catapaults btw, and with the recent changes to its cloak cost to be frontloaded into the e cost if you build some e store beforehand it's not that incredibly difficult to get out pretty early now.

[prisma mulch]

U literally cannot kill a stealth cloaked skuttle with anything with efficiency

Counter intrusion is very vague

[eternal osprey]

Yep, as much as I love the idea of something super op as someone who plays core open 98% of the time I don't see a way for this to be balanced at all without a counter intrusion rework at the same time.

[prisma mulch]

The fact that someone in gdt thought this was a good possible change is beyond cooked

[eternal osprey]

Who needs spybot to stun AN when you can just kill it

[prisma mulch]

Why even need to kill the AN when u can kill the player fully

[eternal osprey]

Actually who needs nukes when you can just kill afus farm yeah

[placid eagle]

Well hopefully with this change they make units autotarget counter intrusion spots

[prisma mulch]

So what happens to sea

Sea has no counter intrusion

[placid eagle]

Arm being good in 1v1 lasted all but 7 days

[placid eagle]

Lol true oof

[eternal osprey]

Frontline coms about to be a death sentence after t2 as well

[placid eagle]

Make mobile antinuke also have counter intrusion

This + autotargetting will be enough right?

[west birch]

Will see how brutal exactly when it's tried. I figured it's better to overshoot now and see how it feels, then tone it down if necessary. Rather than do a tiny change that'd be very hard to feel in a test session

[lunar hollow]

Wait how do seaplayers spot the release candidate underwater spy?

Just by touching it?

[prisma mulch]

Mfk be like we can't be sure terrorist behaviour is good or bad we need to test it first by bombing the fucking building

[placid eagle]

I guess thats fair but it just feels like too much of a reversion, I feel like if youre going to tweak the balance again you should start with just one or the other

Or buff one and nerf the other in smaller increments

[prisma mulch]

In what sense is stealth for skuttle even considered a balance change

Might aswell make commanders stealthy

[lunar hollow]

Its changing the balance by tripping over the scale

[placid eagle]

But maybe since its just a metal increase, needing less energy will be an interesting shift since you can get so much metal in 1v1. I look forward to trying this at least, its just gonna be a modoption for a bit yeah?

[prisma mulch]

Balance team out there trying to make the most cooked changes with spybots n skuttles so they have more unpaid balancing work for no reason

[placid eagle]

Just buff counter intrusion fr its nbd

If you make it auto target

Give it to mobile antinuke so it isnt so niche

[hollow dawn]

feel like stealthy skuttle is a bigger problem than op spybot since you can directly attack eco with it

[placid eagle]

Now you have actual counters for stealth + cloak units

[placid eagle]

Facts

[prisma mulch]

Nah actually stealthy skuttle good idea

[placid eagle]

But they dont deal 50k damage at least

[prisma mulch]

I'll make an all welcome lobby get the tweak in and farm the 10os nubs with invis bombs

[hollow dawn]

you're just recreating the same problem as spybot but with a different damage type

[placid eagle]

Stealthy skuttle only works if counterintrusion is made not useless

[prisma mulch]

Will see how fast they uninstall game

[eternal osprey]

If you make it auto target you'll still see shenanigans like cheap cloaked tanks mixed with a skuttle once you can afford both t2 labs, better hope your stuff hits the correct dot or you boom.

[placid eagle]

Lol even without stealthy skuttle you can skuttle noobs its not hard

True true

[prisma mulch]

With stealth u can align 10-15 skuttles in all bases and 1 click

[eternal osprey]

Skuttle actually in such a good spot rn anyway imo after the last e change. Just requires junos beforehand.

[placid eagle]

But if u make counterintrusion actually not useless then its no different than needing antinuke around 13 min

[prisma mulch]

Current counter intrusion is insanely trash

U literally have to wall off ur AN even if u have CI

Doesn't detect the 1 spybot in ur base chilling there since minute 8

[placid eagle]

Yeah thats why Im saying units need to be able to just autotarget

Counterintrusion is so useless rn

Its also super niche as only 1 immobile short range building can do it

[wraith slate]

GDT decided no new units so they are trying to fix self inflicted problem using existing ones

which goes, poorly, as you can see

[fast obsidian]

nah it's much worse to have something that can do huge dmg than something that can emp

[hollow dawn]

they should change its damage to emp

[fast obsidian]

they are clearly on meth or something, this looks like a comedic show

[hollow dawn]

srs suggestion, it would be op buff for only core to have emp bot

[subtle jasper]

CORE t2 vs t3 would be better serviced by reworking Negotiator and or Arbiter to fill the role. High single target damage with a guided (mostly) direct fire missile.

[prisma mulch]

Nah guys it's ok it's just an April fools joke surely

It can't be real trust

[wraith slate]

...you realise there is already this thing called banisher right

[subtle jasper]

Problems mentioned with stealth aside, they just need a near clone of Sharpshooter Starlight, I don't see a way around it.

[subtle jasper]

No. I've already thought about that. Banisher is cool where it is, it fills a different role. It has AoE though and lacks the appropriate range/stat profile to square off vs Starlight Sharpshooter

[unreal pecan]

honestly i appreciate the aprils fools joke but now we need to get stuff reverted to normal

[subtle jasper]

I need to play with the new changes!!!!

[pearl merlin]

its a modadoption no biggie

pretty sure you can still make figs shoot at ground units with a modadoption

https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/blob/6b4ba14cb1620c03792b623b75b3191d09dc8853/unitbasedefs/air_rework_defs.lua

[placid eagle]

Or buff core emp bot vs arm

[fast obsidian]

oh boy that air rework is coming back eventually isn't it o7

[pearl merlin]

there were parts of that air rework that were honestly excellent

like the new t2 figs and updated air unit speeds

[gilded token]

Single target DPS is too low on Banisher to deal with T3 anywhere near as well as Snipers do.
It's good versus clumped t1/t2 units, but too low damage for T3.
Yeah, I think that stealthy Skuttle idea is an April fools joke, lol, that sounds crazy. I'd be spamming those things out blowing everything up. Sea would be cooked easy with no intrusion detection and then you'd just roll into everyone's bases and pop them.

[grizzled atlas]

Yeah I just make spam instead of anti nuke unless on the front

Can make 20 ticks still cheaper than anti stealth

Due to upkeep

[empty yew]

I honestly believe its april fools comment

Cant prove me wrong until its actually in the game which it wont be

[wraith slate]

modoption is quite literally in game

[empty yew]

you mean trolloption

[tropic aurora]

Removed cloaked stealthed coms and jammers, added cloaked stealthed tactical skuttle nukes. 🙃

[tropic aurora]

There is one, it was rejected and now in extra units.

[subtle jasper]

Mitvit hosting testing RIGHT NOW owo

mfw I see grunts kite pawns 😩

[odd swallow]

Idk, Banisher in many cases better than sniper or starlight vs t3. Like, if the snipers/Starlights can't outright kill the t3, they just gonna get ran over and die. Banisher can kite kargs/shivas until the end of the map, can kite razors fairly well, and can reposition vs marauders better (+AOE vs marauder ball).

5 Banishers will 3-shot a razor, and 7 will 2-shot a razor. Banisher pretty effective vs early t3.

Later t3 has Catapults and Vanguards, which fk up snipers and Starlights just as hard as banishers.

Banisher is in a pretty strong spot atm I think

[grizzled atlas]

i mean hounds technically kite a razor xD

razor strength is the speed, firepower, and lack of attrition of other anti-spam units

[scarlet mirage]

from what I played banishers now seem ok at scaring razors away on a flat map

[grizzled atlas]

if they already have a bunch of banisher I think you just keep ecoing lol
instead of making razor rush

[scarlet mirage]

killing them is a stretch

yeah or maybe a fast rotation to another lane could still yield some dmg

[vital flume]

ackstuashlly one is enough

[empty yew]

"It's just a tiny spider, what are you afraid off?"

[placid eagle]

It was an April Fools joke... right?

[fast obsidian]

why do you even modoption this change, just put it in the game already

[pearl merlin]

has spybot nerf been reverted yet?

game is unplayable

[odd swallow]

Dafuq I never even use spybot and rarely see it used, dafuq is all this unplayable crying

Fk spybots

"you didn't make spybot detection or have a wall of spam, so now your army is stunned for 20 seconds" was fking unfun bs holy shit

[pearl merlin]

sure, from the perspective of someone who has played glitters literally 90 times more than any lane map, not having a spybot that can catch a rushed tzar/fatboy/razor is something that wouldn't seem important to you in the slightest because its not important to you in the slightest

you can rely on at least 2 other allies to help you with that

but u don't have that fallback in lane maps, and so the game there has just become whoever rushes first big unit wins

its just outside what you see and are familiar with and so its not an apparent issue to you

for any map with a 2-person lane that can rush t2 for example bismuth, kings assault, hades, swirly, etc., playstyle has noticeably devolved because of the difficulty in stopping tzar or fatboy - similar story on rosetta with razorbacks

for cortex especially , your only answer on those maps to stop a tzar rush is dgun or one of a small handful of very non-simple to quite difficult to pull-off strategies like shuriken + heavy transport pickup stunned unit + transport to commander to capture / reclaim

so if you don't have your commander anymore you are pretty much just praying that you have an op air player or that your opponent blunders their unit. And killing (slowly) it isn't a panacea either, they've likely done a fair amount of damage to you already and they are in a position to make more, while you aren't, and so the lane snowballs and gg

skuttle is a good counter, but without ageo u can't rush it early t2

[placid eagle]

Or like the recently buffed banishers which are pretty good

[unreal pecan]

"I never even use spybots and rarely see it used"

ICANT

[crisp bison]

I use spybots, but only for providing vision. I also haven't seen them being used as EMP bomb for a long while.
And yes, new reasonably priced Banishers can counter those early T2s pretty well. If you just proceed to feed your entire army to a Fatboy, that's largely on you.
If you don't have feasible defenses by the time a Razorback comes along, that's also on you. An eco gap between heavy T2 and T3 is enormous.

Countering a 3800 metal unit with a 135 metal unit is hilarious at the very least.

[prisma mulch]

Coura type of guy to take tech spot, not self D commander, not reclaim t1 lab, make 900E in asolar, make t2 lab, make hover lab and produce from all 3 labs while making t2 mexes

No flame tho

Just putting it here for contextual analysis

[odd swallow]

Choice type of guy to exaggerate loudly.
No flame tho. ;P

[cloud elm]

That most certainly sounds like a map design issue, not a spybot issue, just play glitters instead :-]

Though I do think spybot nerf was a Lil too much, it could have either a bit more emp damage with less radius or a bit of a longer stun like 10s and buff the intrusion countermeasures to have more range/ more accurate pinpointing and most importantly less E upkeep, idk why it took 125 e/s just to not have your entire army stunned for 20s every 30s

• increase emp damage slightly
• reduce radius
• increase emp time to 10s
• buff intrusion countermeasures it should've never cost more than 50E/s to run :-(

Is my conclusion

[unreal pecan]

i dont think too many people have an issue with spybots not being able to emp t3 units with just one bot, the issue is tha tin the t2 phase they are highly relevant to maintaining vehicle/bot balance

[visual wolf]

the main problem with the spybot nerf is, that it's even easier to do heavy t2 unit commie (tzar, fatboy) which just insta wins lanes usually

[prisma mulch]

Who tested the spybot nerf before implementing

Can u remove that guy from balance team pls

[hollow dawn]

we're all testing it right now 😆

it never got added to modoption

[placid eagle]

Op alpha tester gaming (for real)

[pearl merlin]

not being able to stun razorbacks with 1 spybot is good - but the fact that there is a sliding scale on the EMP stun timer from 0.001-8 seconds, which depends on how much EMP damage you do to a unit between 100% & 120% of the units max hp means that its very difficult to near impossible to know how long a t3 unit that you do manage to stun with multiple spybots will stay stunned for

for example, razorback has 13.3k hp so you would think 3 spybots dealing 5k EMP damage would easily stun for 8 seconds

[unreal pecan]

yeah if it could be made more predictable that would feel a lot better to play imo

[pearl merlin]

but because of EMP decay due to walk time between successive spybot stuns, XP increasing max HP, EMP flanking damage (which works in spybot favor but isn't predictable assuming it even exists, im not 100% sure), you actually need 5+ spybots to get an 8 second stun

[unreal pecan]

if spybots didnt emp each other do you think it would improve the performance?

like you could hit it all at once instead of having to walk one in at a time?

[pearl merlin]

yes it would mean that, but I'd be favor instead of ditching the entire sliding scale stun duration mechanic altogether because of how difficult it is to understand.

the changes I'd like to see are:

1. any stun over 100% HP is a max duration stun (which makes the mechanic more straightforward and makes spybot balancing overall more simple going forward).
2. spybot EMP damage increased from 5k to 12k (so that marauder/shiva/tzar/fatboy need 1 spybot, karg/razor/mammoth all need 2 spybots, titan require 6 spybots, AND there isn't a # of spybot differential between a vanguard and a catapult - both need 1. Also, all t2 other than mammoths would need 1 spybot) this is still a 78% nerf to EMP damage from the season 1 spybot.
3. 8 second spybot stun duration on units, 20 second duration on all buildings (at 12k dmg, 1 spybot would stun all buildings other than: cor/arm gantries which would require 2 spybots, and manually closed pulsars (3) and bulwarks (4). For unit, this is still a 60% nerf to stun duration from season 1.
4. reduce shuriken max stun duration from 7 seconds to 3 seconds (since they were buffed from accurate lasers).

@west birch yes?

[unreal pecan]

actually that seems pretty nice that lighter units can get rekt by a well placed spybot but you have to use a lot to stop more expensive units

presumably this would mean that once you can afford lighter t3 in mass you would also be able to afford scout spam or a forward antistealth as well, which retains keeping spybot as a tool instead of a an omnipresent unit. heavier units cant just get gibbed by one relatively cheaper unit.

[pearl merlin]

Raikoh suggested adding countermeasure to mobile antinukes which i think is a good suggestion

I'm not fully against spybots being able to stun eachother either (i.e. no EMP immunity) but i don't feel super strongly either way. But if they do stay as is without EMP immunity, I think simultaneously detonating spybots should all detonate, rather than what happens currently which is 1 single spybot will randomly detonate and all others in that radius will be stunned.

I'd also revert the spybot countdown timer back to 3 seconds because it allows for spybot blunders

also banshees shouldn't have plasma dmg (no air units should because of how plasma range interacts with height)

[fast obsidian]

Only 2 active members in balance team, 1 doesn't play large map the other is a mono spammer
your feedback can not even be comprehended by them, it's literally a waste of time, they have already another wave of even more cooked changes rdy

[placid eagle]

The timer is rly fun sad its gone

[fading lagoon]

cant believe the ghost nerf is not yet reverted... like its so obviously bad at the moment i lack the vocabulary to describe it

[grizzled atlas]

emp bot stunning themself is awkward if units can target spybots in stealth detection it should naturally discourage clump

[tropic aurora]

Current spybots on hold fire+set target are super reliable. But not being able to fight move due to reclaim is really wonky. Bring back the timer.

[unreal pecan]

yeah goafs suggestion seems more balanced between desired player interaction and developer intent of nerfing spybots

[placid eagle]

Have you tried stealthy skuttles? What did you think?

[exotic sigil]

All my muscle memory for spyboy self-d went out the window with this change and I'd like to have it reverted

[subtle jasper]

That's like a fighting game player complaining their combo link went from 1 to 3 frames but the timing got moved from frame 30 to frames 33-35.

[exotic sigil]

I don't know what that means but if you're saying skill issue I agree

[pearl merlin]

has the spybot nerf been reverted yet?

game is unplayable

[placid eagle]

Revert the spybot nerf only for Cor OP

If arm gets long range high alpha damage units give cor spybots

[placid eagle]

Has g0af tried the new skuttles yet

[pearl merlin]

I have and i thought the balance team already did a good job of summing up my experience

[exotic sigil]

I thought it was already confirmed to be a joke #1356948269594316941 message

[pearl merlin]

gg this neb can't tell the difference between balance and an april fools joke i guess

[placid eagle]

Lmao agreed

[placid eagle]

Lol i knew it didnt see it wad confirmed gg

[grizzled atlas]

seems less like april fools and more like a targeted troll xD

most players wouldn't pay much attention

[prisma mulch]

Revert the spybot changes just buff counter intrusion

Ong if the skuttle stealth and these eco changes on afus and t2 lab get implemented there's almost no reason for giving feedback

[exotic sigil]

giving mobile anti-nuke ICS and reducing the aoe on spybot seems like a good enough nerf to me

[visual wolf]

If it wasn't for the stupid changes these last months I wouldn't pay attention either, but at this point it's not something I would put past them to actually add lol

[visual wolf]

this. Yes please.

[visual wolf]

this too

seems reasonable. Along with mobile ANs having ICS, that would be very nice and way more balanced

[west birch]

Post replays that you'd consider ruined by lack of old spybot

[fast obsidian]

imagine trying to balance a video game as complex as this one without even playing the actual thing
so you literally need to watch replays and study to understand what the average player 20os already know after playing for few months

[wraith slate]

Imagine playing an volunteer run video game and instead of trying to help the developers improve it or contributing yourself insult thier intelligence instead

[prisma mulch]

the spybot change was never a modoption as changes usually are

its 90% dmg nerf with no testing

you would assume the GDT would test the changes as they did with accurate lasers and tried balancing t1 around it. even if the changes were sus atleast there was attempt at overhauling t1 so that the accurate laser change doesnt fuck up the balancing too much.

but with this spybot change theres nothing of that just plain 90% nerf with no changes around it to rebalance t2 units or t3 units

[fast obsidian]

what has intelect anything to do with not playing a video game

[prisma mulch]

also idk why theres this discussion of posting replays for pointing out spybots r useless, u literally did a nerf without testing so atleast test it when everyone overwhelmingly told u the spybot is insanely dogshit as it ruins FFA due to razor rushes, 8v8s due to tzar/fatboy rushes etc

like what do u want a replay of FFA when someone just dies to razors bcz spybots r useless and everyone knows it now so nobody makes it

just open skirmish test the spybot dmg onto a tzar -> neuron activates -> revert change

[fast obsidian]

show me the replays, playing game is too hard

[pearl merlin]

here's a good example, blue player is forced to tech switch from bots to veh to try to stop tzar but because of lack of spybot nothing can stop it

and game ends in 12 minutes

here's another example, rushed razors one-click base from other side of map and end game. added irony

the person who died is on the balance team and had a lab that could make spybots

also during that game, spybots try but fail to stop brown player from pushing with tigers

[placid eagle]

Also imagine being an alpha playtester and being upset when you have to test things

Easy to forget we are all alpha testing this game

[pearl merlin]

here's a 3rd example - blue player loses their commander early and team is powerless to stop t2 push and game ends in 17 mins

here's a 4th example, forge game ends in 12 minutes to tzar rush because of lack of spybot

the common theme with all of these games is that very small leads quickly snowball out of control when faced with large units

incase its not obvious, the 2 mechanics to stop that from happening used to be: 1. cloaked commander under sneaky pete, and 2. the spybot

has spybot nerf been reverted yet?

[fast obsidian]

it's really not that hard to know if you remove the counters to something the game is broken

but need play the video game to know about those things

[chilly heath]

Well I watched the first 2 replays.

Kings Assault:
Tzar coops are a bit of a balance problem yeah. I'm wishing for a better solution than "invisible unit that oneshots it" though. And to be fair the blue player in that replay didn't apply any pressure at all to his lane enemy while enemy spent 4500 metal on the tzar rush.

If someone can be ahead in their lane while spending 4500 metal on something else on the side does it even matter what that something else is? If the metal was spent on 80 pawns instead the result would have been pretty much the same, no spybot would counter that.

Rosetta
There were just so many mistakes made by my team that spybot being nerfed hardly had anything to do with losing the match. I forgot to build my geo, I was bombed, my backplayer gave me almost zero support, our middle collapsed early on, our southside was doing so little that their south just came to attack me as well. By the time the first razorback came our team had half the army value, was 25 % behind on eco and were losing every lane.

[fast obsidian]

Just watch one of Fiddler replays, he got his Tzar dguned few days ago
That's proof Sneaky Pete was never needed to counter Tzar

"If someone can be ahead in their lane while spending 4500 metal on something else on the side does it even matter what that something else is?"
I would think a map maker would know about maps that don't even have balanced lanes and are 2v3

Comparing 80 pawns to tzars rush is completely missing the point

[empty yew]

I think these balance moves are kinda normal for alpha stage, expected even. If community is so split as this one, regarding most prevalent issues, just do the changes and let us cook on them

Its a free game, voluntary project. Yes, some moves regarding balance are strange, but acting on it the way some do is just giga low social OS, thats facts

[noble yarrow]

this is something l don't get the complains regarding sneaky pete, that thing was just overpowered and limited to only armada. The moment l see someone saying sneaky pete without self cloak is unplayable l just ask then, was cortex unplayable to you all then?

[crisp bison]

It makes sense that the community is split on this one. Old spybots were essentially working as a crutch to solve any issue for a cheap price. Whenever you want to make the case that the lack of old spybot reliability makes something non-counterable, you'd have argue the same numbers of metal spend on other units trying to counter it (such as newly 2x reasonably-priced Banishers or Gremlin+Starlight as ex.).

On the other hand, the fact that Spybots EMP each-other seem like an undesireable oversight.

[pearl merlin]

a strong anti-snowball mechanic is absolutely vital for this game because of how co-op, metal reclaim fields, and exponentially scaling economies all work

in AoE4 for example, you run out of resources in your base and are forced to make increasingly riskier expansions to keep your economy pumping

you also don't have the ability to get half your resources back after a won battle

and if you have allies, you're largely just cooperating with just teamplay, not primarily resource sharing

[fast obsidian]

Also saying spybots have no counters is just wrong and showing lack of skills

Spybots are needed in the game, yes they are overpowered but there are many ways to make them balanced just fine
instead of removing them and acting like there is no other options

Any good players in this game knows how to deal with spybots, just improve the game instead of acting like that

[brittle hazel]

One of reason why I'm playing in BAR is pro snowball mechanic. It's one of distinguishing features of BAR. I want that BAR's core mechanic to stay.

[pearl merlin]

nobody is asking for snowball mechanics to be removed its a core distinguishing feature of the game

[fast obsidian]

well that's fine opinion but thinking they can overhaul the whole game when they lack understanding of what they are playing currently is just asking to break everything and have bad result

[odd swallow]

Spybots friendly-stunning each other does seem a little wonky, tho.

Maybe it's k and peeps just need to learn how to chain EMP shrug

[pearl merlin]

but for games to routinely be completely decided by commander + rocketbot interactions at minute 2 with the outcome largely deterministic based on what happens earlygame makes the rest of the game very ho hum - if you like to play to win and can already see the outcome at minute 2 and know that the anti-snowball mechanic isn't strong enough to stop what is already happening, where do you find your fun?

[fast yoke]

Rocket bot rarely decides game

Very easy to stall and deny them

Only thing I think easily determines outcome of game is if someone gets t2 up much earlier which is usually coop based

[odd swallow]

Part/most of this is map design, with many high value resources in the middle of the map, a deliberate snowball choice. I'd personally like to see some maps that are less snowbally.

[pearl merlin]

rocket bot denies mid-mexes which enables fast t2 in solo lanes but ofc coop is more deterministic

[fast obsidian]

and the same goes for t3

[pearl merlin]

the point im making isn't that t1 snowballs, its that earlygame interactions enable one player to make the first big unit (tzar/fatboy/razor/banisher) and without spybots as an anti-snowball tool, you can put a high probability guess on the outcome of the game at a very very early point in the game

[fast yoke]

my t2 rush build focuses on giving up mid mexes and minimizing rocket bots for t2 tempo timing

also I'm still in belief that if you allow your opponent to make t2 lab + large big unit which in total costs like 4-5k m and you have 0 response then you should lose

[fading lagoon]

you're not serious, are you?

[subtle jasper]

Too much anti snowball is just as unfun. Spybot was op.

[pearl merlin]

which is also why you don't like to play maps where there are 2v2 lanes like rosetta and swirly rock u prefer maps with proper 1v1 lanes

i'm the same in terms of preferences but maps that don't have that feature are now largely determined by large t2 unit or razor rush

if you look at games played in the op lobby today, 80% of them have ended before 20 minutes

[lunar hollow]

There's a second issue, spybot just became more economical for stunning light t2 units encouraging heavy t2 even more

[fast yoke]

i havent lost tzar to spybot in ages. You just com trade or kill with salas. The techer razor rush shit is dumb but early game I dont think spy bot is dramatically changing it

[lunar hollow]

We didn't need to nerf hounds and other light t2 like this, wich is what we did by making spybot cheaper

[fast yoke]

80% of games end in mauser jag coop not tzar

[lunar hollow]

But nobody thinks of it like a light t2 unit nerf even tho light t2 was allrrady trash in a lot of situations (except jags they broken)

Now you can send multiple spybots to stun a wall of welders and trade evenly

This update encourages rushing heavy t2 on so many levels

[crisp bison]

Spybots were not removed.
"Any good players in this game" is a completely hollow argument applicable to anything. Nobody I have ever seen dealt with Spybots, just succeeded or failed to deal with the aftermath of the Spybots.

[crisp bison]

They can do whatever the f**k they want, its their game even moreso that games that you have to pay for. Stop making personal attacks.

[prisma mulch]

lmao getting mad on behalf of others

[crisp bison]

lmao reading emotions into text and believing them to be real

And yes, if you read someone writing "lmao", he's probably have a poker face the entire time

[prisma mulch]

u realize t2 rush is 40,0 mex on 1 spot in kings assault in mid, and in the sides, its a narrow lane so in any situation 80 pawns do nothing

these reasonings r beyond stupid nothing sees a tzar and just says "imagine you have 5k metal in pawns"

pawns take time to make, making 5k metal in pawns will take 2 labs, alot of bp, alot of E, it will be scouted easily, even if it isnt, at best it damages 1 base and gets shurikened while ur behind in t2

this is most stupid arguement every unit mono spammer makes "just imagine same metal in ticks/pawns" without considering how game state evolves

why is every high os player t2 coop rusher and not coop pawn spammer?

why the noobs spammings pawns/grunts lose inansely badly to any seasoned player?

these questions shouldnt be even a consideration if u understand how its not just metal

like its known meme florio making 14k metal of pawns on tournament 5v5 it was most fucking dogshit play anyone couldve made but the unit monospammers look at that and start analyzing every minute detail and how the stars didnt align for the 14k metal of pawns to do ideal amount of dmg from ideal pathway while ideally enemy didnt respond to it

[crisp bison]

I think you've missed the point.

[fast obsidian]

do you even play the game or you doing PvE?

[crisp bison]

I do.

[fast obsidian]

so you are 20 os, do you think you are playing same game as high os people?

[prisma mulch]

the FFA playeur said the spybot change is dogshit, the 8v8 playeurs said the spybot change is dogshit, the balance team itself is fully confused because they dont wanna revert the nerf for some reason while they dont know how to nerf the things that the spybot was supposed to counter

why in all this theres players who are not capable of comprehending how the macro of this game works, saying its somehow a perfect change

there was no testing

no feedback before change

no discussion or w/e

simple solution to spybot is u just buff Counter intrusion its literally a fucking no-brainer

[crisp bison]

How is that relevant? Are we going to balance the game around top 100 players?

[prisma mulch]

my fucking god

not this braindead fucking arguement again

anyways

come 1v1 i rush tzar and u can hoarde 5k metal of pawn we can put the idea to test

[crisp bison]

It's not a no brainer, because its a roundabout way of doing something. It's like saying you want to make a car faster by making atmosphere less dense.

Lots of things will be affected other than the target, and the effect on the target is convoluted.

[prisma mulch]

no its like saying u can nerf the missiles by making the missile interception system more accurate

its a fucking no brainer

it says in the name "counter intrusion"

[crisp bison]

Sure, assuming missile interception system also doesn't cover for aircraft and drones.

[prisma mulch]

what the fuck does counter intrusion affect meaningfully except spybots n gremlins

its a niche building for spybots

[crisp bison]

If something is OP, then you balance that. YOu don't balance the assumed counter, that will also affect other things.

[prisma mulch]

ye ok thats ur opinion of balancing

[crisp bison]

That's a real no-brainer

[grizzled atlas]

tzar in 1v1 is good but there's banisher and starlight, or just attacking/retreatnig/going around it

[prisma mulch]

look at how ur idea of implementing spybot nerf is recieved by the players

does it look positive?

[placid eagle]

It really shows who was relying too much on spybots lol

[fast obsidian]

does being bad at the game means you fail at things that you shouldn't?

[crisp bison]

It's mixed. It's in the right direction, but too much at the same time and has overlooked issues

[grizzled atlas]

i mean coop is just coop

[prisma mulch]

"its mixed" 🙂

[grizzled atlas]

coop tzar used to be difficult because you still had to babysit it against omg jammer and omg spybot

[crisp bison]

yep

[fast obsidian]

isn't why people learn to play to go beyond beginning level

[prisma mulch]

90% dmg nerf without any fucking testing

[crisp bison]

ye coz original dmg value is basically stun anything that isnt EMP immune

with a unit that less than 150 metal

THAT is unbalanced.

[prisma mulch]

150 metal?

who said spybot costs 150 metal

[grizzled atlas]

tzar can't break hlt / sneaky pete or mobile jammer by itself

[prisma mulch]

this is what being 20os does to your macro sense

saying spybot costs 150 metal so its cheap is like saying solar costs 0 energy so its free

[noble yarrow]

about spy bot l gonna repeat my old message so players get a more thoughtful way to change this issue, so far stealth detection for mobile anti nuke seems to be the best from what everybody has suggested so far from Raikouh with a buff to spybots bot to a middle ground state from what we have now and before.

[prisma mulch]

theres 2 more values to the cost that u ignore

[grizzled atlas]

135/8800 is not bad, high bp cost tho

[unreal pecan]

holy shit guys basic solars are free they cost zero E

just learned this from the very op opinions on balance

[noble yarrow]

Spy bot shows a bigger fundamental issue honestly, something that l don't know why this game does not have is dedicated anti stealth units, and when l mean units its units not a structure. why not pick a underperforming unit from each of the t2 labs and give to it a detection range or one that fits thematically? the range doesnt even need to be big just better then literal current stream of t1 bodyblocking.

spybots even if lets say their price in BP and energy gets reduce to be like 2 to stun tzar for example will have the same frustration issues of not being able to predict when or where the spy is coming from. lots of other RTS deal with stealth units by having detection in varies forms not just a structure.

if lets say spybot stun damage increases, and cost gets adjusted, this fundamental issue is not going to go away

and no t1 spam is not enough

[prisma mulch]

i cba arguing 20os players about macro balance of units

just revert the nerf and buff Counter intrusion until u figure out how to nerf coop tzar etc etc

[grizzled atlas]

coop banisher / starlight lol
or just spam mobile jammer with HLT/MLT to buy time

[unreal pecan]

idk we have a two thousand plus message thread about how coop is a problem for the game

[crisp bison]

Indeed. THere's dozens of ways to abuse coop, or how to exploit the backline position for a rush. Tzar is chosen because it just so good at wrecking the T1 baseline.

[grizzled atlas]

with nerfed spybot, tzar is sort of overtuned

[crisp bison]

It has very little to do with Spybots as such.

[grizzled atlas]

but honestly tzar isn't the fundamental problem it's coop
all coop is doing is rushing the best t1 crusher

[prisma mulch]

oh really i thought rebelnode just said 5k metal of pawns ez counters tzar

[subtle jasper]

What if
Spybot detected spybot
Spygames

[crisp bison]

Tzar is generally overtuned due to its massive HP pool for cost.

That's what I mean what I said you're missing the point.

[grizzled atlas]

tzar is not tanky, it's because the firerate for an aoe is high

spread out medium tanks / pawns beat tzar if it overextends

[prisma mulch]

tzar being tanky is a certified 20os take

[crisp bison]

You're reading into people's claims what you want to see and easily argue, but that is plainly wrong.

[grizzled atlas]

i mean it's tanky if you level it up to 10k hp
and keep good micro. then it's very hard to kill

[crisp bison]

Rebelnode never said pawn spam counter Tzar

[prisma mulch]

just give mobile AN spydetection unit and just add spydetection to some 1k metal utility unit for all t2 labs problem fixed

[crisp bison]

But its easy and profitable to misfigure, or conveniently misunderstand the claim, so that you can bullshit yourself into feeling right

[prisma mulch]

trying to make the shitters understand basic unit interaction of this game is beyond impossible

[noble yarrow]

to me this seems more like a proper solution, now a tzar rush would need to account the cost of mobile antinuke, requiring more commie/time/resources
and in the razorback case it is forced to push more slowly to be in range of antinuke, so more time to react and make a response, this considering spy bot emp damage and stun time gets increased to a middle ground value from before and now with emp immunity back

[grizzled atlas]

he said there was a window to t1 rush to attack the tzar before it popped

[prisma mulch]

w/e cba keep it up good spybot change

the change helps my bottom line of coop rushing t2 units anyways

FFA sucked anyways so people hating it more bcz razors r uncounterable on big maps is just good change

👍 nice untested, no feedback change of spybot by the balance team. Never thought someone could get the change perfectly with so little effort

[grizzled atlas]

i rather micro antinuke (w/ antistealth) bots instead of microing spam wall against anti-spam + invis spybots

[prisma mulch]

removing sneaky pete cloak, making spybots useless etc is actually vry good. Now i can full kill the 35os shitter player infront of me with 0 resillience

remove walls next theyre annoying

[grizzled atlas]

should sneaky pete be made cheaper now that it's visible? cheaper cor spybot? 1 spybot stuns light t2, 2 to stun a tzar?

add emp rework so that 1 spybot gives slow and firerate slow? lower tzar fire rate slightly

[crisp bison]

Yeah, Pete should be ~40 metal and 2k E cheaper. Spybots just should be EMP-immune

[placid eagle]

Also spybots could use a BP and E cost reduction if they stay around the current level

[noble yarrow]

which is something people suggested way before when the nerfs to spybot were announced, me included. Honestly, the dev team first got to decide how powerful they want the emp damage from spybot to be, it should be higher them now imo.

[placid eagle]

BLT just isnt active enough tbh we were talking about it to one of them in another spot

[scarlet mirage]

the goal of giving spybots right click target selfd was clearly to make them simpler and more intuitive to use and the lack of emp immunity goes against that, again making them very finnicky and hard to use

the vision is misaligned on this

stunning a tzar with 2 clumped up ghosts would still be big value

[placid eagle]

Yeah true. But also the 2 second timer was fun and really easy anyways

[scarlet mirage]

its also a ninja buff because selfd made a sound a gave u some time to react

[fast obsidian]

I member the good old days when all we had to complain about was a super op newly released unit aka demon and salamander
and even that it took devs 3 months to finally get right, they have the spybots changes that would make it work perfectly on a plate and they still gonna be too stuborn and do random domino changes to try salvage that horrible patch that should have been reverted already

[crisp bison]

I have played games for over 25 years, and there's always these kind of people that think its all very simple, and the way to make things perfectly lies on the surface. Well, congratulations, you're a narcissist. You think that you particular vision on the abstraction is the right one, and everyone who think differently is wrong one way or the other. Good luck with that.

People like that should be placed in a locked room with a box of random bladed weapons. Some vintage FFA to decide who's opinion on that change or another is the correct one.

[fast yoke]

I think DivineEvil has some really good points here and probs has more experience thank these noobs talking

[empty yew]

Using this as pasta, ty

[fast obsidian]

How do you go back to 6 os after 1.2k games?

[crisp bison]

That question doesn't make any sense to me. Are you having a seisure again?

[fast yoke]

i think hes implying youre bad after playing a lot. you guys should 1v1

[lunar hollow]

Spybots are a tilting unfun mechanic if you are on the receiving end wich is why it was mostly supposed to be used against heavy units, so my question is: WHY DO WE WANT TO ENCOURAGE SPYBOTTING LIGHT UNITS TOO?

[fast obsidian]

there is that website that tracks OS

[lunar hollow]

I don't think hounds need to be discouraged

[crisp bison]

I had a 2 year break because BAR ceased to support W7

its not difficult to lose some after that

I don't believe I played 1.2k games

[lunar hollow]

Previously spybot was mostly anti cheese, now it could be used against regular plays with normal units

[placid eagle]

Id rather spybots be useable in a t2 composition than be that niche, though

Which is why I want to see a spybot cost buff more than anything

[lunar hollow]

I think light t2 is just gonna be used less when possible

[crisp bison]

I don't believe it was an intended function

[unreal pecan]

lol

[crisp bison]

Which you desperately love, because it helps you make personal attacks on people instead of arguing your point correctly or make suggestions.

[fast obsidian]

it just an ez way to make sure someone is a troll mostly

[unreal pecan]

i havent been attacked for my os yet

[crisp bison]

Oh, not really. If anyone would care to trace your responses across time, it would be easy to say you're a troll regardless of what skill level you are.

[unreal pecan]

and tbf you just suggested that people should be put into a room and given pointy weapons to kill each other with the inference being it should be particular people in the thread

which imo is just a little bit more toxic to suggest some irl battle royale versus some1 saying something about os

[crisp bison]

Well, yeah, because some people just say what they see as a problem and possible solution, and some people say that "errithink is so simple I coud make it meself with closed eyes, devellopers are noobs".

If you ask people in general, you will have difference of opinion, so it immediately denies the idea that the situation is not obvious.

[unreal pecan]

sure you can just say that you think that people should tone down the more flamey aspects of what they say instead of saying they should be locked in a room to kill each other

[crisp bison]

Which I did as well.

[unreal pecan]

and then you escalated it

[crisp bison]

I responded to a persistent continuation of "its so obvious, devs are dumb" line of reasoning

which is repeated, but there's no actual valuable input.

[unreal pecan]

i dont like this crybully thing of complaining about people attacking you for your os and then saying things like that. as far as your point about making actionable suggestions: the person you responded to with that has made several actionable suggestions in the thread

[unreal pecan]

you are responding to tone

[crisp bison]

I'm not complaining, I just think its cheap trick and a logical fallacy to use personal attack and appeal to authority to invalidate my personal point of view.

And what I said about a room, is that some people seem to believe balancing a game is obviously easy when it obviously is not, and that's the gist of their repetitive input into the discussion.

[unreal pecan]

i mean i dont rlly know what suggestions you had in the thread cause i dont read most of what you write

cause i skip the thread mostly

what are your suggestions to better balance spybots, so we can stop the meta conversation

[crisp bison]

Well, the entire discussion narrowed down to Spybots, because it was the most controversial change of multiple avenues it went.
Like i said, its good that Spybots have been truncated in their ability to stun units of higher caliber, so from that it naturally follows that you'd need to use multiple Spybots to stun such units, but the fact that Spybots EMP one-another is a problem overlooked because Spybots haven't been used in groups previously.

Therefore you just need to make them EMP-immune and see how it goes.

[fast obsidian]

Player skill and balance talks will always be related, people with lower OS have less of a understanding about the gameplay as well as people completely not playing the game which is what is concerning about the balance team.

[crisp bison]

Yes, but anything that is proposed by a mid-low OS players is just as legitimate, because the median of the player base OS is something like 15. The validity of the argument stnads on the merit of that argument, not on the person making it.

[unreal pecan]

so if i understand you correctly, you agree with what others have been saying in the thread that spybots should have been nerfed against t3, but that it should not have lost as much utility against lower tier units

im trying to understand where you disagree with what people have been saying about the changes.

[crisp bison]

Yes, but moreso, Spybots should have been nerfed so that a single unit could not disable half of an entire army of heavier units, which it now can't.

The same way a single Gremlin cannot just crawl through the frontline and wreck the entire base before you can respond. In this kind of way.

[pearl merlin]

The end goal of all of this berating the balance team is to get Zow to join. He fixed mausers after all

[unreal pecan]

old spybots couldnt get an entire army stunned unless you ran your tanks in a ball right into them

[unreal pecan]

wheels within wheels

[crisp bison]

Which why I said "half of an army". Like, you could stun 3-4 Marauders or Razorbacks with just one bot.

[unreal pecan]

yes and i think one spybot stunning more expensive t3 is dookie

[crisp bison]

That is, unless you're below median skill and can't time the self-D it for effect.

[unreal pecan]

but goaf suggested nerfing it to require multiple vs stuff like razors, but still retaining utility versus lower tier units

[crisp bison]

Then you barely even know that you're able to do this.

[unreal pecan]

which i think is pretty equitable

[crisp bison]

Sure, and you can do it now, but only if you make Spybots EMP-immune so they can stack.

EMP damage stacks upon the affected units

[unreal pecan]

i just think that opens you up more to failing, which snowballs into bot t2 being weaker than veh

i think it would make more sense to leave it as one unit and just limit its effect

counter intrusion is already fairly under utilized and i like raikohs idea of adding it to mobile AN (which kind of buffs core veh t2 because arms anti is a spoder)

[lunar hollow]

We should have kept the damage high enough to stun tzar but lower AOE

I don't think welder should get countered by spy

[unreal pecan]

it isnt, if you use counter intrusion and scout spam

are you trying to push forward in a monocomp?

[lunar hollow]

That's true for tzar too, but tzar allso needs 2 spies so it's the more robust unit early on

Wich I thought we wanted to move away from

[unreal pecan]

well thats also a coop problem (that we havent addressed)

[lunar hollow]

Spy gets more value on welder cause AOE

[fast obsidian]

i don't think a single person in bar think the spy bot change was good, what's concerning is they actually made that change and push it wihtout testing, meaning they couldn't tell themselves it was super bad

[crisp bison]

That's whole different topic. Anything can seem broken through the coop. Lets not go there

[unreal pecan]

yet it is extremely pertinent to conversation about one of the counters you kind of have to use against a coop strat (which is now gone)

[lunar hollow]

Spybot was a bandaid holding back certain strats now its rebalanced to punch down at allready weak units like hound and welder

[unreal pecan]

so it is even easier to coop t2 unit and win because you cant use bots against the often coverless tzar

[crisp bison]

I mean, using 2 spybots on a Tzar doesnt break it. I think its weirder if it is balanced to that particular end. It's like making the Spybot a universal anti-vehicle bot.

[unreal pecan]

one of spybots main jobs is balancing the bot lab versus the veh lab

[lunar hollow]

I don't want spybot stun to be a regular occurance when I'm just playing early t2 with normal units at that point I'd rather its fully removed

[crisp bison]

Well you can, you just need 2, not 1, and it is easier because you can directly attack it

[unreal pecan]

is it easier to micro one unit in or two?

[crisp bison]

You dont need to micro shit given spybots are EMP immune. That's the point

[unreal pecan]

you have to micro spybots around other units so they get within range to emp the good units and not the chaff

[crisp bison]

and 2 is just a easy as 1, unless they stun one-another

[unreal pecan]

you would agree that the cost needs to be reduced then

because you have to spend more bp and e to get the same effect

[crisp bison]

The problem with that is that the original effect was effectively broken. But I wouldn't hold much against it myself.

BP especially seem oddly inflated

[lunar hollow]

Nobody likes being on the receiving end of spybot stun but with things like tzar most people feel like its somewhat reasonable

[crisp bison]

I'd feel more complacent if it was 2 spybots doing that, not one.

All the many lighter units, 1 is perfectly reasonable

[unreal pecan]

sure i dont like having my units blown up either, but its a little stupid saying that i should just win because i put my units on fight command right?

spybots, scuttles, mines, these things are all annoying but they stop a lot of braindead plays of "ope i got the razor first gg, ope i cooped nice units gg, etc etc

[lunar hollow]

Light units are more plentyfull and spybot has AOE, this encourages spybot use more on light units then.heavy units

Welder would be best example

[crisp bison]

It just means it can be used on both.

[unreal pecan]

thats why we have things like count intru that puts a big blinky red circle around stealthy units with a voice callout to tell you to send ticks at the blinky circle to blow it up

[placid eagle]

If spybots had better counterplay, this could be fun gameplay

[lunar hollow]

How abou we readd some counterplay against heavy t2 to botlab first

[crisp bison]

CIS is a bit too sketchy in my opinion. I don't care about it stats or cost, but the reading isn't very helpful aside the fact that it exists.

There's such counterplay, its that people are used to the same principles of countering bots with other bots, which aren't at all the same units.

[lunar hollow]

But allso why should I be concerned with counterintrusion at a stage where I just want to raid with hounds or fiends, this would just encourage spamming even more worthless t1 units spybot isn't worth using on and getting into stalemates

If you attack and get traded by a spybot for 5 hounds you made a really bad trade, wich means you shouldn't take the risk and keep building up and porcing

[crisp bison]

And reducing the cost of Spybots may in fact make vastly more likely for this unfavorable situation to emerge. Again, this topic is not as simple as it might seem, and you'd need to think about potential repercussions.

[lunar hollow]

This is just like with pawn and grunt price increase, the other side of that coin is that centurion now trades even better with them, wich only armada has, wich can't be intended I imagine

Even if you keep these units reasonably balanced to each other 1 faction still got buffed by having a unit that benefits ftom light bots being weaker in general

[fast obsidian]

60metal for a pawn, 120 for a rocket bot

Zecrus need come back

[crisp bison]

Well I mean Centurions are intended to counter them one way or the other. The fact that Cor don't have anything of their own to that end is a problem with a separate thread dedicated to it.
When I was just starting up, Grunts were so good at kiting Pawns that almost nobody played Arm in the tourneys... oh how the turntables.

[grizzled atlas]

you can spread out your light t2 and pick them up with transport ig

light t2 is usually less dgunnable (esp with sneaky pete change) and more mobile

[muted barn]

Choice starting 1v1 arc??

[forest girder]

i really do love the its alpha excuse

ive been seeing it for years now

[subtle jasper]

It's a good excuse, sir

[hollow dawn]

in which direction?

[forest girder]

its never been a good excuse
changing portions of the game just because its alpha has always been used to defend why changes are happening
especially when they pull the game in the wrong direction.
that is what modoptions are for and for test builds
not alpha master branch stuff

[placid eagle]

Its not an excuse its just a good reason to allow the developers to test stuff on us

[forest girder]

it has always been used as an excuse

[fast obsidian]

Modoptions were subject to players feedbacks and also gave the choice to play with it or not
i guess when you don't like the feedbacks you stop having it completely
It's not hard to know what would have happened with that change if it ever was a modoption

[grizzled atlas]

2 is easier to catch with spam, aoe, or units firing with stealth detection

i think. If either one dies the spybot plan is botched

[tardy basin]

For summarize, my last though on spybots fix changes are :
1- Restore EMP immunity
2- EMP damage => 10K (need 1,2 * HP), the idea is fresh tzar/fatboy => stunned with 1 spybot, but fastly need 2 with xp hp increase, 2 for razors
3- ParalyzeTime => 10s (20s for builds)
4- Cloak cost => 25/50
5- Reduce blast radius to keep effectivity on small group of t2 light ball and keep stun on few units for big one
6- Intrusion Countermeasure System with energy operating cost of 50e/s
7- Add stealth-detector capability on mobile AN

[tropic aurora]

What about (a small) seismic detection on perimeter cameras?

[scarlet mirage]

any buff to stealth detection would be welcome imo

[crisp bison]

The whole point why cloaking is so limited is because detection is also barely available. There could be more opportunities for it otherwise.

Stealth as such isn't that much of a problem.

[red grove]

ye im happy im reading they will add a radar dot

hey i detected a stealth unit! but....im not gonne shoot at it, nor can you until you send a unit on top of it! might aswell just not build it and just spam more t1

[grizzled atlas]

just use mines at that point

[lunar hollow]

I think commanders should get short range intrusion alert

Propably with 700 range

[pearl merlin]

congratulations @crisp bison you've completely killed the thread. The discussion has now moved to channels you're not invited to. Best of luck!

[crisp bison]

Good

[noble yarrow]

finally something is being done, lets hope more spybots changes get added to the hotfix 🙏. l already knew the spybots vs antinuke and porc was coming but the other changes seems reasonable https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason/pull/4732

[fast obsidian]

not that any of this matters anyways but it's funny how the biggest most broken cheese in the game just got a buff for some reasons
surely that was the way to go

[grizzled atlas]

Antinuke buildings should consider adjusting their emp resist (negative emp resist or give spybot bonus dmg vs antinukes?)

reducing their hp matters vs air bombing the antinuke

[fast obsidian]

it was already possible to have like 6-8 running around but you had to be mindful about the E stall that revealed them
now you can just print like 15 and have them everywhere for basically the entire game emp anti nuke, you never gonna run out lol

[visual wolf]

does that mean shuri wont have accurate lasers anymore?

that would be good

[noble yarrow]

yep

[subtle jasper]

ty for keeping an eye out 🙏

Slight nudges rn

IMO weapon range is still the most dangerous variable to touch on the Grunt, but I appreciate it's just a 5 increase there

[empty yew]

Raikoh literally wired to be unsatisfied rip

I like the changes a lot personally

[fast yoke]

Yeah ngl this is like crazy giga buff to nuke cheese

Gonna have to sweep your base with ticks every game after making an

[empty yew]

is this live yet?

[scarlet mirage]

I despise the emp nuke ghost build

no idea why ppl wanted it back

cheeze that relies on my 4chev eco to not know you have to jump goofy hoops

[crisp bison]

Probably would be cheaper to wall it off

[sullen mesa]

I continue to play games and I continue to find that banishers desperately need a debuf. From my expirence neither cortex or armada bots have any reasonable counter. You have 2 choices for arm: lose all hounds in desperate attack, or get snipers and hope that the banishers don't punish the incredibly slow snipers

For cor you basically have to switch to mammoth spam and hope

Perhaps there are other counters but I can't find any ways to effectively trade into banishers

[wraith slate]

no idea why you ever consider making hounds to fight t2, this never goes well and never should be done. To counter banisher specificly 2 snipers are well sufficient with cloak. For corebots the counter is a spread out sheldonball with something in front.

Banishers without almost full attention fare very poorly vs spam, so that is another thing

[chilly heath]

As bots you can counter banishers with spybots or spam. With cortex should be quite good to stun with spybot or two and then rush in with fiends.

[wraith slate]

you realise one spybot stuns banisher for like 2 seconds right?

[chilly heath]

It's like 7 seconds, not 2.

[wraith slate]

Counter is spam and LR units, unless you can somehow get a double spybot on enemy expensive stuff

[chilly heath]

Looks like it gets full 8 secs actually, just tested.

[lunar hollow]

Sheldons In a pincer formation should work but require lots of micro