T3 land upgrade buildtime

[JaggedAppliance]

This got lengthened significantly in the last balance patch and it now feels hideously long. A T3 rush was never very powerful except for harbs and this affects a lot more than harbs. T2 is already very powerful and now it's even harder to make the t3 transition. Can we find a different way to deal with harbs?

[FunkOff]

I agree. Tech 3 land should build relatively quickly.

[Apofenas]

Only 2 changes i disliked in latest balance patch were harbringer rush nerf and othuum buff. Why not make underused titan and loyalist a dedicated counter to harb rush? So with better micro or unit combination(mobile shields, range bots, t2 pds, percival/brick ect) raid bots would stand their own and give time for percival/brick forces to appear.

Othuum should get something better than 0.1 more speed. I'd start with 2.7~2.8 speed and transfer 50~100 dps from small cannons to big one.

[yeager]

2.7 speed was found to be almost OP (according to speed2, I never tested it myself) and stoping harb Rush with loyalists is like suggesting pillars are the counter to ilshavoh Rush. The harbinger is and should be better than t3 raid units. that's why the harb and t3 factory changes, to give you more time to get percivals or bricks. The t3 factory change was also because a t2 spam wasn't working well enough, build 20 rhinos and by the time you get to the enemy they already have bricks, that's not right. Imagine if t1 spam was useless because by the time you get to the enemy they already had t2, that's the issue. (Originally t2 was much faster, which made this issue smaller, but they were changed and give more health and less speed awhile ago.

[Apofenas]

My idea is not making raid bots capable of counter harb rush. My idea is about making them able to defend early harb attacks combined with t2 units that already exist in game at t2 stage and don't get complete obselite by a t3 stage: t2 mobile shield, t2 mobile stealth and t2 range bots. Most of these units are under used and all of them are faster than harbs.

Here's my numbers:
Loyalist: range 26 (from 25)
dps 159.09+50 (from 159.09+30)
Titan: dps 186.67 (from 166.67)
shield HP 1300 (from 1200)
power consumption -15 e/sec (from -25)
Harbringer: vision radius 20 (from 22)

T2 stealth field would allow loyalists to shoot harbs from being in range of their weapons and not gettign shot back.
T2 shield generator would increace hp/mass in unit mix and help titans fight harbs the same way it helps pillars fight ilshavohs.
T2 range bots would add damage from long range and prevent harbs from kiting raid bots, running away or reclaiming dead titans.

However raid bots still stay shit and eventually harbs would slaughter them, but by that time i expect percivals and bricks to appear in unit mixes. Also aeon player may get use of his under used tools - omni upgrade on ACU and shield disruptor, which does exactly 1300 damage per shot to shields (if i'm not mistaken).

Othuum is a complicated unit. But i will never believe that Othuum can be shit with 2.5 speed, ok with 2.6 speed and OP with 2.7 speed. May be 50 dps transfer and 2.6 speed is enough, but that requires testing (unless it was done already by balance team). Too bad i missed a lot of stuff for last 2 months.

[Zock]

While the idea is good, I don't think this can work like this.

Either "raid bots" beat harbs, together with other units or not, doesn't really matter, or they don't

They do? You just made harbs useless.
They don't? The problem is not solved.

If range bots with shield/stealth would work even in the slightest against harbs, you would already use them now. They don't work . And it's not because of the vision radius of the harb. Stealth is too hard to use reliably, and too easily counterable to use it as key aspect to balance something. Aside from the fact that with a unit that has more range and speed, stealth is not needed. You can try your changes in a mod, but i think to have any effect, you need to buff loyalists/titans much more, and then they become OP instead of the harb. You can't have them counter the harb early, but still losing to it later. And buffing any counters to harb outside of the bots (like t2 pd, shield, stealth, rocketbots..) has other implications on t2 stage, so you can't just do that without messing with the whole balance. If you buff the shield enough to be significant (it kinda sucks now, and could maybe use a buff, but if it gets a buff it should get it because it needs it, not because harb is too strong) , it can easily make uef OP on t2, or on t3 against factions that don't have a shield disruptor.

But as said in the changelog, this is not the final change to harbs or t3, and we probably go into a similar direction, but it's more complicated than just buffing some units that could counter harbs, that's why it was not included in the last patch yet.

[dstojkov]

why just not bring back the harb to the 3599 one ? energy was always the weak spot of aeon and restore the t3 land build time like it was

[Exotic_Retard]

Either "raid bots" beat harbs, together with other units or not, doesn't really matter, or they don't

They do? You just made harbs useless.
They don't? The problem is not solved.

is it really that simple?

by that logic:
either strikers beat thaam - and thaams are useless
or thaam beat strikers - and strikers are useless

while in reality its a draw.
in fact its even more complex than that, so lets not simplify the above to such a binary situation.

its possible to have raid bots lose to harbs, but not very hard, or even draw vs harbs. their role vs harbs would be not to beat them but to slow them down enough, and with the help of some other units, like bombers or t2 (which you would already have from earlier), be able to stop them, but at lower mass efficiency.

would also be nice if you could use those same bots as kinda harbs for raiding and such.

in any case i would not be so quick to write off the idea, without any sort of game testing in the first place, where there are too many variables to account for, even for someone like you

hope this helps

[Zock]

Of course it's not that simple (i didn't want to write a book about it though), but thaam and striker are essentially the same unit, while loya/titan and harb have different speed, roles and all other kind of differences that make it very hard to make them draw without causing issues elsewhere (most simple example: Having a unit that can draw harbs, is like giving every faction a harb. With speed 4. Except sera. So we have 3 factions rushing t3 every game, and one faction screwed.) or already being an issue, especially if you want to include t2 units into the concept.


And the idea is good, i'm not writing it off. You could make "raid bots" win vs harbs in small numbers, but lose in high for example, or many other ways to make it work. But not with the suggested concept. If you think it can work like this, make a mod and prove me wrong.

[Morax]

Now with the transition to t3 taking much longer the Ilshavoh (although more difficult to manage against spam with turret slowdown) is far more dominant. I don't see any reason to play a race besides Seraphim in 1v1 given this argument...