Speed vs range

[lapis badge]

Much of the early game issues I have playing alien early game is that a lot of the human units can both attack from range and move faster. In contrast, crabs are slower, fragile, and melee. Fragility can be countered with just having a lot of them as an artificial hp sponge to close the distance. Melee isn't an issue if a unit can survive long enough to close the distance which is also solved by having more of them. However they can't close the distance if they are also slow in combination to being fragile and melee.

Crabs could use a speed buff to help them close distance with range infantry units while maintaining their fragility so that ranged units can gun them down.

The game could benefit from removing starting units that are not tier 1 ( we all start with infantry and crabs. No hunters, impalers, or light quad). Light Quads ( when controlled by a player and not just yeeting themselves to death ) are just a tad bit faster than hunters which means we run into the same issue of the hunter getting kited around in circles. Unlike the crab, it wouldn't be appropriate to give the hunter a speed buff because they are stronger than buggies so being slower makes sense. Removing high tech units from the start helps alleviate this. However in addition to that, the aliens could benefit from impalers being a bit cheaper to build so that they can more effectively use them to shoo light quads away from their base.

Here's the changes this causes:
-Infantry can no longer kite crabs whicih means they need to be present in large enough numbers to gun down crab rushes. This means commanders on both sides need to be smart about engagements. Too few infantry get attacked. Too few crabs cannot close distance to attack.
-light quad harass is still possible, as they can dart in and out to attack and pick off crabs. But it's no longer a game winning strategy, as they have to be aware of where the impalers are placed when doing this.

[gleaming sphinx]

as a fellow bug player i cant agree with all of this as i feel a speed buff to crabs would make them OP

[lapis badge]

not a huge buff. just a small one.

[gleaming sphinx]

i think the real answer is to lower the cost of the crabs

as they are more expensive the rifleman

[lapis badge]

them being fragile and slow and melee all at the same time doesn't work

[gleaming sphinx]

scouts i mean not rifleman

works fine when you send 30 plus at stuff. part of it is waiting for them to close the distance themselves while hiding behind either ridges, dunes or cliffs

[lapis badge]

if it's against AI sure

the AI is silly

against humans they can basically kite and evade crabs to death

and that may change with time. The AI may get better so that it doesn't yeet its buggies and infantry to death

This feedback is mainly aimed at interaction between players

[gleaming sphinx]

if you have more then one crab you can send a few to chase and have the others cut it off, when they go to turn to evade they lose speed and you can catch them

having player crabs helps with this also as they can catch them without dying sometimes

[lapis badge]

only if they're silly enough to do that. Anyone that realizes they're faster than a melee unit will know the best way to kite will be straight back

[gleaming sphinx]

if they run straight back just stop chasing and get behind a dune they will have to come back to do more dmg

[lapis badge]

you're over simplifying things. While all this is going on, the crab is still getting shot at.

[gleaming sphinx]

not to mention if you have players as impalers they can shoot over the dunes at the buggie

im simply stating things ive done to solve the problem your stating

[lapis badge]

it isn't a valid solution

[gleaming sphinx]

it works so i dont see how its not

[lapis badge]

In your solution, crab goes fowards, get shot at, gets kited, decided to try to hide, gets shot at while trying to hide, probably dies.

[gleaming sphinx]

im less worried about my crabs and more worried about my shrimps getting picked off by buggies

[lapis badge]

this thread isn't about shrimp

[gleaming sphinx]

your wanting your 80 point unit to be able to do something about a 200 point buggie i get it

[lapis badge]

no

[ancient dust]

instead why don't they make it so crabs spawn 2 at a time instead?

so you can swarm easier

[lapis badge]

still runs into the issue of being too slow to engage

[gleaming sphinx]

if your saying other things then the buggie are faster then crabs your wrong as crabs can catch everything else humans have

[lapis badge]

are you drunk?

There's no way a crab catches a light quad. Even infantry can outrun crabs

[gleaming sphinx]

no im just a guy thats been no lifing the game for over 40 hrs as bugs

infantry cant outrun crabs

[lapis badge]

they can and do. seen it done in games I play

[gleaming sphinx]

you can send two crabs at a rifleman and its guranteed one will catch and kill it

also id recommend not fighting in wide open terrain to begin with as bugs and use hills and cliffs to get close so the rifleman cant shoot you until your ontop of them

[lapis badge]

well it sounds like we disagree on a fundamental level so I think I'm done chatting with you since we're now going around in circles.

[gleaming sphinx]

i simply think the answer to the buggie issue isnt crabs to begin with and its more so i think humans shouldn't get two buggies to the bugs one hunter in the beginning

[lapis badge]

that part I agree with and do suggest in my original post

But based on my experience, a player crab is slower than a player infantry

[gleaming sphinx]

based on my exp as infantry i have the opposite conclusion but i play commander on bugs and i play fps for humans

[lapis badge]

I've done all roles so that I can have a better idea of differences between things. AI infantry is paltry to handle with crabs. Human players are not

[gleaming sphinx]

i dunno ive had a decent time killing them granted i mostly hide and wait for them to get close to me then ambush them

[lapis badge]

yes that strategy works great when ambush areas are available.

We can make comparisons to starcraft2 if we need examples for how this works in meta. Marines are slower, more expensive, higher durability, and have better range than zerglings. Zerglings are fast, cheap, fragile, and melee. Both of these units have advantages and disadvantages. Range is a big advantage over melee so there needs to be some kind of tradeoff.

Another example from the same meta are reapers. Reapers can kite zerglings ( pre speed upgrade ) and typically the zerg player needs to have an other unit ( the queen ) to shoo the reaper away from the base. The queen is slow, so she can't catch the reaper but she can act as an effective deterrant. At least until the zergling speed can be upgraded and allow them to catch and surround the reapers. For Silica, this is closer to the interaction between the impaler and the light quad. Light quads can effectively kite crabs ( and hunters) but have to be careful about being overly aggressive if there are impalers around.

[gleaming sphinx]

bro this isnt starcraft though

[lapis badge]

obviously. it does have an RTS mode though so parallels and examples can be used for game balance.

[gleaming sphinx]

fair enough

my main gripe about comparing the two though is when you recruit in sc2 you are getting groups of models instead of single models with possible player control

[lapis badge]

They certainly aren't going to match up. If anything, we want Silica to differentiate itself and stand on its own. The point was to compare and contrast the zergling to the crab and highlight why the zergling is a successful unit from a game design standpoint. We can ask ourselves things like: what advantages and disadvantages does this unit have? why does it have them? How do they affect the meta with other units in the game?

[gleaming sphinx]

i will say this crabs need to be much cheaper then what they are to be used properly as right now they are too expensive to spam enough of them

right now crabs are 80 and rifleman 100 i think crabs should be 50 to you get two crabs per rifleman

[lapis badge]

I would agree but my only hesitation is that I can't actually see how much damage a rifleman does which makes it hard to do balance math.

man I want damage values on unit cards

[gleaming sphinx]

from what ive seen it takes about two mags worth of ammo to kill a crab