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as sapiens? you can still make heli-behind-marines work, but it is harder on plains. As noted marauders for gang-up and finishing become more powerful on plains (they can snipe to start an exchange/gang-up and initially weaken, then retreat to safety, or press in to finish wounded Garuda, ideally then protected by marines.)
Also consider the new buffed battery. Mobile and deadly to aerial, including from two spaces. This can force khral to use swarmers to try to get at the battery, and swarmers are easier to kill with helis and marauders etc.
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It's a center base scramble map, and red and yellow get the jump on the center given blue credit deficit. All 3 of our games opened with red-yellow advantage; in the one game we were on red-yellow side it was a very rapid blitz, done in 11 rounds, I think they got one of the center bases momentarily before we took it. Our other two blue-green games we are trying to hang in but tough. Just a map that highlights the ongoing general red-yellow advantage in 2v2. I still think the easy fix is to let blue get their initial credits in team games...
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underlings – when buried, some mechanism where player keeps a face down chit which indicates whether it is directly on or in 1-space in any of 6 directions from where it is on the board. So when the underling is moved chit can change. Therefore opponent only has a general idea where the underling is, like in game.
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Turn resets have been a fact of life for awhile. Absolutely agree this should be publicly highlighted so it is not a disadvantage for newer players.
In some ways they made the game more tedious but they also removed the thing that periodically brought me to rage, which is a game getting ruined because of a thumb fumble. I once threw my phone across the room once when I trashed a close, long-developed game I was enjoying by moving a unit to the wrong place and losing it. Now (especially with the improved 'end turn' confirmation, thank you thank you!) it is always a desired move that is submitted.
For any readers not aware, resets are completely standard and expected in competitive play. Mainly it means people are submitting a pretty well-considered and optimized move. Showing the real predicted damage for a given move took out some of the tedium of turn resets (when they were used just to see what damage a particular attack would give). That's still done to see different damage sequences when there is a critical damage question (like whether a heli will get left with 1 health or 0). At this point as I play the game regularly, there's a lot of tediously changing accounts just to scrub moves, and a turn reset button is absolutely welcome at this point.
Also, I've gotten more enjoyment out of this game than any other game I've purchased in the past decade, including PC games that sell for $100, so I really appreciate the opportunity to show appreciation by supporting the devs with more purchases of something. If those with concerns have a better idea what to offer for pay by all means make suggestions. It is not correct to say that this feature gives one player more advantage than the other – you can still reset just as players are routinely doing today.
The game itself is free now. If you don't want to support the developers, then keep resetting by switching to a 2nd account. If you want to support the developers with a few dollars and have a convenience feature, you have an opportunity.
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change mirror map mechanism so that you cannot submit a move in one game without simultaneously moving in the other? i.e. one timer shown in both games, if you submit in one it shows this to you but will not actually switch timer to the other player until you submit in the 2nd.
you guys have probably discussed all this in the chat forums already, I can't keep up ...
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Didn't have time to read the details but sounds cool. I had similar thoughts about a race that could break some ZOC norms, for example a unit that moves more knight-like, two spaces then one at an angle away, pops there and can attack regardless of ZOC. Interesting for gang-up and creating problems for artillery defense, ideally such a race can be interesting vs. walkers.
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Titans are perhaps the most difficult to play correctly, but they beat sapiens on maps that are not small/sharp or otherwise favor sap due to early engineer pressure e.g. too many close-to-enemy-but-isolated bases. In the latest round of adjustments, battery and tank were improved to try to make sap more competitive with titans. However played correctly they already beat titans on a fair number of maps, maybe 40% or something (top players may argue about this).
There is a lot of content in the strategy section, look through there. As a rough beginner outline, speeders to start (and mechas on forest/mountain), play defensive, plasma to answer tank, eclipse to answer heli, walker to answer battery (and protect walker from marauders, which is tricky given double move – you have to think through what sap can do every turn and position your defenders correctly). Time is on Titan's side, so the most common beginner mistake is playing too aggressive early where sapien speed and gang-up (and EMP) can win the fight.
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I have some thoughts but won't be able to spend time writing them down until the weekend, which might be too late alas.
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Tournaments are what they are. Some chess matches boil down to clock management. In my basketball league most games end up with one team stalling to run out the clock, at which point you're running around trying to foul and it has nothing to do with "real" basketball skill anymore but it's part of the clock-based setup. Seems same thing here.
Congrats Fobos on being so dominant in tournament play. Sorry this was a frustrating one. Much respect.
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Sap still beat khral overall and I'd agree they do so more effectively on low credit maps. So there isn't any magic answer, just as there isn't any magic answer to how to get sap to survive against Titans on the wide range of maps that favor walker+plasma+speeder spam vs. saps. Helis behind marines mean that helis are getting free hits on ants and then protecting themselves. But for each heli you have two swarmers so if you can hide them behind ants, then you are doing free damage to marines just as the heli is doing free damage to your ants. What you build will be in response to what sap builds to some degree, if heavier marine-to-heli ratio then you can probably hide swarmers better like this, and Garuda are less useful due to marines. If higher heli-to-marine ratio, then the odd Garuda becomes a threat to counter-hit a heli and allow a +3 gangup hit from a swarmer (2-3 damage) and possible heli kills. But be careful just wounding heli with Garuda and losing the Garuda while heli heals. That said exchanges that extend the match allow you to build up more of a mass of khral units, at which point you can more effectively bring out infectors and threaten plague. When there is big buildup of khral vs. sap plague gets much more effective as it spreads to so many units.
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specifically, when they step on top. So massed marauders can pound down a buried underling in a single turn (not a common situation, but fun on the odd occasion).
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If there's water, levis can compete here (depending on layout and positioning of course). You can also try using small numbers of Garuda around the edges (protecting them from too many swarmers hitting them in counter-strike). Bases can help with this (swarmers can only move two spaces if there is a base in the way).
In terms of fighting swarm vs. swarm well, look up the post on here about ranged gang-up.
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8 strength marauder with +3 opposite side gang-up finishes 1hp plasma tank about 75% of the time, so you just got a bad roll. Full strength marauder gets that 90% of the time. Marauders are already very effective, making them +1 vs. heavy would be a big hammer making sap more dominant, but sort of turns the marauder into a monster.
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(Nice to hear from you two elite players Zero and Soli, thanks.) I've been thinking about the heli +1 g. heavy idea. It's interesting, my concern would be that it is already a bit of a super-unit, dominant in SvK and this would make it more prevalent in SvT as well. Maybe just adding +1 isn't such a big change. Currently the only real place the tank and the battery are useful is in SvT so I would not want to neglect them as part of the solution (I like that good SvT maps often provide incentive to use potentially every unit in each army). If we are trying to get the tank rehabilitated with mobility, giving helis +1 against g. heavy puts the tank back on the bench in SvS, and also has the side effect of increasing strength against marauders in SvS where helis are already heavily used. Other side effects include making heli better against pinzer so you'd have to take it along with a pinzer anti-air buff to balance that (I support the pinzer anti-air buff, but the main purpose of the pinzer is to control space so it coming down easier might not fully be compensated for by doing an extra tick of damage to the first couple of helis.)
Maybe this is a part of the overall set of changes that change SvT that can be managed, but in general I hope to see changes that encourage unit and strategy diversity as well as adding offensive options to keep the game moving.
Kyle's jeep mobility 11 is interesting, but I think jeep combinations are part of what make SvT the most fun matchup (on the right maps), and so yeah I kind of "hate" it . I don't think the change would be a big help for KvS. It seems like it would primarily help the jeep fest nature of SvS, which is a worthy goal and not many other suggestions seem to address; tank mobility not likely to rehabilitate the tank in SvS except in very specific situations.
As Kyle and Zero point out and I think everyone gets, new units can change the overall race balance and so changes have to be considered in that context. But good to discuss what we would do if we didn't have new units to get clear on the opportunities and current dynamics...
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thanks on mobility catch, edited.
not sure on your comment about 2 hex through forest – if tank mobility 9, that would still only be hex in forest, as move cost there is 6, but maybe you mean it could move over plains into forest, which would be true.
agree just moving eclipse mobility to 11 doesn't do much to repair weakness of eclipse, just saying this seems like a really easy immediate change to make that helps a bit.
on sap units and UV – don't see how you think this makes assimilator useless, it is still a healer. The engineer special ability (EMP) only works on Titans, and the infector special ability (plague) only works on Sapiens, so it's certainly reasonable to talk about having UV only affect Khraleans (i.e. the species that Titans have consistent trouble with). I think one dev objection to this is that it doesn't make thematic sense (if UV harms biological units, then it should affect saps) and that's why I mention the only engineers and marines, you can just say the saps sealed their vehicles to protect against it. In terms of balance, in maps where there are massed units facing off, Titans definitely do not need the added edge of assimilators taking damage off of every unit, it just adds insult to injury at that point.
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