Considering the price of Game-Enders

[Plasma_Wolf]

I'm bringing this up because of a thread on the GPG forums some time ago.

At the moment the costs of the Paragon and the Ylona Oss are 250200 mass and the costs of the Mavor and Scathis are 299700 mass. The salvation (which I consider being a GE because of the cost) is 270000 mass.

Shouldn't the prices of these units just be the same. IE all 250K or 300K mass? I think they're about the same in effectiveness, or at least at that stage of the game that the slight difference doesn't matter, though the difference of almost 20% in cost does.

Any thoughts?

[FunkOff]

I'm bringing this up because of a thread on the GPG forums some time ago.

At the moment the costs of the Paragon and the Ylona Oss are 250200 mass and the costs of the Mavor and Scathis are 299700 mass. The salvation (which I consider being a GE because of the cost) is 270000 mass.

Shouldn't the prices of these units just be the same. IE all 250K or 300K mass? I think they're about the same in effectiveness, or at least at that stage of the game that the slight difference doesn't matter, though the difference of almost 20% in cost does.

Any thoughts?

I've only ever seen these built in final rush pro and FFAs.

[Zock]

I think its okay that they are different. The difference may have to be changed or adjusted, but i would like to keep any kind of deversity here instead of just making them the same.

However you are right that the values look a bit imbalanced. But you have to keep in mind that you still need to build units to end the game with the paragon, a Ylonna Oss can be stopped by 8 antinukes (iirc), i dont know what you would need to stop a mavor or scathis if its possible.

[uberge3k]

The only thing that seemed odd to me was that the Paragon was less expensive than the others. If you build a Paragon, you can build as many other game enders as you please, limited only by build power.

An interesting anecdote with that, however, is that with enough build power you can eventually outpace the paragon's production. At which point you use your paragon to build another paragon.

[Kryo]

game enders arent balanced well anyway. they should be made light game enders... reduce cost dramatically and rebalance them.
Same for t3 heavy artillery... totally useless. (I like the style of heavy arty in supcom2... maybe that would be a way to change them)

[FunkOff]

The original supcom Mavor was crazy.... it would basically target the enemy ACUs as soon as it was built and would head-shot them from however many miles away it was

The game enders now are considerably weaker. The Paragon is good.... but Aeon hasn't got the build power to use it and, in the games I have seen, it's more effective just to get a Salvation first rather than a Salvation after a paragon. Also, the Salvation is ridiculously good and will destroyer any base. Similarly, the Seraphim nuke is strong and will destroy any base as soon as burns through all the SMDs the person has stock piled... so it takes longer than the Salvation. The Scathis is good, but has a lower DPS so is worse than the XP nuke/Salvation. The Mavor is just kind of crappy now and easily the weakest of the bunch.

The tech 3 heavy arties used to be a lot less, I think, but were made more expensive in FA to prevent mavors/scathis/salvation from becoming useless... after all, why build a mavor if dukes are more efficient at projecting the fire power?

Having established that context, I would like to see a reduction in the cost of tech 3 heavy arty. They are all around 90k mass and I wouldn't mind it being about half that. To balance, Mavor and Scathis should probably be reduced in cost by about a third... and increased DPS about a third... to a total of 200,000 mass cost and 2000 DPS (from 300,000 and 1500). I'd leave Seraphim XP nuke and the Aeon Salvation alone because they are both very good.... ad because Seraphim/Aeon have much better tech 3 heavy arties than Cybran and UEF. Serpahim's actually looks the best with it's combination of range/DPS/cost/blast redius with Aeon a close second. Also, I doubt it will be OP because, in the present game, bomber snipes (torp or strat) are pretty much the only thing we see for late-game endings.


So, summary of my idea:
Mavor/Scathis: -33% cost, +33% DPS
All T3 heavy arty: -50% cost

[Karottenrambo]

game enders arent balanced well anyway. they should be made light game enders... reduce cost dramatically and rebalance them.
Same for t3 heavy artillery... totally useless. (I like the style of heavy arty in supcom2... maybe that would be a way to change them)

Agree with that idea. I never liked the concept of the gameenders anyway, its so simple(not easy, just simple) to win with them: Build them -> stay alive until they are finished -> stay alive until they have killed everybody.

So rebalance the gamenders, I would like to see vanilla scathis.

[Plasma_Wolf]

I'd rather see the Mavor's accuracy increased a bit. The firing randomness of 0.22 to 0.18 would be more than enough imo. This would interfere with FunkOff's idea though.

I've used the Mavor several times on 81*81 maps and even though it is better at the huge range than the scathis, I believe it is weak. The mavor can take an enemy base down but it'd take a loooooong time.

Considering the Scathis. I didn't use it much but the accuracy is extremely bad on long ranges (but on shorter ranges with that high RoF it seems extremely powerful).

The Ylona can be stopped by 8 SMDs but 8SMDs is an extreme amount in terms of resources required.

The Paragon? If you have enough Build Power (this goes with the number of SCUs you have in the field), it's a good one imo. You can then afford a lot of SMDs and a lot of shields (for the Mavor and Scathis).

Anyway, the fact that people don't like Game Enders is also a point of interest. What would you do? Tone them all down, to a similar level of effectiveness for cost, or keep them at true GE level, also with similar effectiveness/cost ratios?

I'd personally go for the true GE version and with that, FunkOff's idea seems to be a very good one. Perhaps work form there?

[-_V_-]

Why are you even talking about the balance of those very particular mega mega units ? I think that if you let your opponent build it, you deserve a nice explosion. Don't nerf them.

[FunkOff]

Why are you even talking about the balance of those very particular mega mega units ? I think that if you let your opponent build it, you deserve a nice explosion. Don't nerf them.

I don't think anybody here has suggested a nerf?