The state of 1v1

[turbid kettle]

I know there are a few other threads out there but they all seem too dated about this topic.

Can we talk about the state of 1v1 right now. Higher level 1v1 is completely cortex dominated for the simple fact that grunts and incisors out range their counter parts. They keep chipping armada apart until they reach a critical mass and then simply dominate the game. I will specifically talk about bots since I open bot lab in 95% of my games.

Playing pawns vs grunts is literally like trying to light a fire while under water, its literally insane to play it. Any cortex player that has enough APM to control multiple grunt armies is completely safe from ANY harass and can keep baiting armada into attacks only to walk back to have infinite efficiency. This is simply not okay. For every three pawns that armada has, cortex gets four grunts in return – combined with the fact they OUTRANGE pawns means cortex has a severe advantage in the early game. You can’t defend as armada because you get outnumbered in every angle you take and centurions/plasma bots are too expensive and slow resulting in losing the entire map (aka a slow bleed into gg), and then comes the cherry on top, since cortex has more grunts they can easily have their main attack force chip down your army while they defend with the extra grunts they produce. Which means you are always fighting 1:1 if you go head on against the main grunt force but they have a second group of grunts. The only time this does not work if 10OS 6 Chev Arnold has 3 APM (AKA the cortex player stalling APM or just being too slow). If that is the goal of the game (to make armada more useless the higher you get in 1v1) then you can just comment “lol not an issue anyway” and I can just move on.

With some help from other armada enjoyers that are playing cortex at the moment because they can’t make armada work either, we came up with some potential to balance the situation. Increase pawn accuracy, lower buildtime and lower DPS, this means they are better vs grunts and incisors but weaker against the mid T1 units. Lower grunt range back to 210 so they don’t outrange pawns so much and allows pawns to catch them before they are dead.

[gritty sapphire]

below 35 os pawns are free win
above 40os there are a lot of tactics you can do pawn vs grunt. I don't know which one is advantaged but remember you are playing the entire arm lab vs grunt lab

You should do a fast tick scout --> scout cor bots, hard greed, then make more ticks and follow the grunts coming

You don't want to fight when they are paying perfect attention.

You can hide 1-2 pawn raids, grunts cannot catch these if they miss them
When you do look for a angle you should pay attention to the grunt rotation, attack into them as they are turning the grunts towards you.
You want to posture to delay grunts gaining ground on you because they can't force you to fight and kite you until they reach your base
reactionary porc and llts are significantly more effective against grunts then pawns

Still, I will try and make 3 rez bots + reclaim transition into vehicles when I can

[turbid kettle]

I am currently 48 OS I can battle armada match ups just fine, this saturday it was legion fiesta in fight night once again I can go 2-0 against people that are higher than me in a legion vs legion match up just fine. Then it comes down to armada and there are issues. Centurion/Plasmas are too slow early so you can not rely on them to play defense because you will lose all the map pressure for nothing in return. If you both go 1 con for hard aggro you will lose that game as armada almost garantueed. Going ultra greed as you suggest means you are on the defensive the entire game. The moment any self respecting cortex player sees that he will contain you and expand the rest of the map

[gritty sapphire]

I'm 40os. On the best grunt maps yeah I think pawn vs modulo's grunts is pretty rough but every lab got bad matchup
if it doesn't seem super grunt favoured map it's fine

you are never trying to fight straight up without catching/distracting them, you are trying to scramble their attention and use mobility of pawns. you have more speed and choice of engage with pawns/ticks. Very high skill cap matchup for both sides

[turbid kettle]

Thats why I am specifically refering to higher level matches, I can steamroll 35 OS players just fine with armada because they don't have the APM to control their units that well, which means I can catch grunts off guard and chip their army away. There is no issue in those games because they are gifting me these oppertunities. Once you reach a higher skill level you get cortex opponents that will actually catch any attempt to raid their expansions and are playing perfect keep out. No value for armada means you are now already on the back foot because the main army keeps approaching. If they right click their entire force to my side of the map I can have a good time but these players don't do that anymore. They keep 20% of their army on their side to defend and the other 80% goes to my side which means I am already outnumbered because grunts are that much cheaper to make, so even if I slip by a pawn or tick it will get caught because they have the APM to control everything

[gritty sapphire]

I'm referencing 40-50 os players with grunt
with perfect micro grunt player will always win, but that kind of hypothetical perfect doesn't mean it can't be roughly balanced at pro level (e.g. m&m micro in sc2)

[junior canyon]

yeah cortex still too op man, i mean some people said 2 grunts can kill an incinerator

[sonic meteor]

I mean incinerator turret turn rate is horrible, i bet a pawn could do it too

[astral olive]

i can say this much........ they're gonna make you repost all this in the other forum

[turbid kettle]

I need some explanation, not that active on discord to know what the other forum means ._.

[astral olive]

the meta-discussion forum, but we've evaded the moderators so far

[turbid kettle]

When making a new post I saw a lot of older posts mentioning 1v1 balance and stuff and those have a LOT of posts

[true wren]

This thread was posted in the #1047081727291559986 forum, but the post itself falls under the category of #1047082708796448789, which was separated from #1047081727291559986 some time ago.

[turbid kettle]

Ah yes that makes sense, is it possible to move this over some way or another? Or just repost in meta?

[true wren]

You'll have to ask Seth.

[grim kiln]

You know how I can't control my units well so how I feel about this matchup is irrelevant.
BUT:

The grunts have the number advantage against pawns if we take nothing into account but metal cost, but on BP for example the pawn is significantly more efficient which does matter a lot in the early game.

Ticks can distract grunts too so you won't always use 9 pawns against 12 grunts; you can have 4 ticks instead of a pawn to distract 4 grunts and then it will be 8 vs 8. Because of ticks and because of BP efficiency it's more accurate to say that the arm player have the number advantage (and health, dps, and speed advantages).

Then there's the LLT which is extremely good against grunts but barely do anything against pawns.

Pawns are faster and stronger so the arm player will decide when and where fights happen.

Centurion is slow I agree but it still shouldn't be ignored - in the very early game armada have the advantage due to ticks and the pawn's BP efficiency, then a bit later centurions can be at play.

In my opinion, ticks + LLTs + centurions can be used in a way to neutralize the grunt advantage against pawns.
I could obviously be wrong, but I think it's also possible that not even the best players can fully utilize the related armada advantages against grunts (or just don't recognize when they do because they are not direct advantages).

I don't doubt that you're correct and some changes need to be made but if you just want to make pawns better against grunts so equal economy will produce equal results with this specific matchup, then you need to address every armada advantage too and there are just too many of those.

If you don't want to address every armada advantage, then the grunts must be able to beat the pawns in some way so players will always have a reason to complain about this specific matchup.

Also, I rarely play with armada and I'm not a top player but theorycrafting at least tells us that the armada player should just avoid the grunts when they can't get a good engagement. They can avoid them and the grunts pretty much can't do anything well except fighting against pawns... Obviously the grunts can't be ignored completely but the best and often only thing the grunts can do is to try to get in the way of the pawns. Eventually not even that will work because after a certain number of units the grunt's range advantage disappear (they can still do some extra damage due to range, but then they all die to pawns because of their speed,they have no chance to escape).

In short, "just" avoid the chip damage and armada will come out ahead.

[opal crown]

<@&549291872192036874> is there a way to move the thread over to the correct channel meta discussion?

[clever gyro]

sethdgamre
Please remember that the <@&549291872192036874> and support teams consist entirely of volunteers, with lives, families, jobs and all that. As much as we'd like to be able to consistently stay on top of things for BAR, real life takes priority - we will get to it as soon as we can.

[mossy tartan]

Looks like no

[cobalt pebble]

Nah, I can lock it and he can remake it there?

That would be the most desirable outcome.

Let me know what you decide.