[old] Balanced Annihilation V6.81

[Yuri]

FFS. Now how i can kill a bunch of levelers then? they would kill any unit which range is lower than the leveler.

IMO levelers are used as a defense to prevent flash spam etc. So its already too hard to kill line of levelers with spam, and you want to make it even harder -.-

+1

[Pxtl]

Levellers are sluggish and short-ranged. A small squad of stumpies can punch through a defensive line of levellers quite easily. Their armor is light enough, speed low enough, and range short enough that simply spanking them from range with long-ranged L1 units is a good approach.

The only thing levelers have is their high DPS and explosive power - and the drawbacks (weaker armor, low speed, short range, self-pwnage, flat firing arc) make them useless for 90% of combat scenarios.

Even their intended function - taking out raider spam - is trivial to work-around by microing them into point-blank range.

It's an ineffective unit. In a micro-intensive situation, the enemy pwns it by rushing to point-blank range. In a spammy situation, it gets stuck in the field of wrecks that it can neither shoot over nor maneuver through.

[ginekolog]

Levelers are rarely worth it and i vote for acred shoot too. Check how lever work in CA (or is it SA or NOTA). It has arc shoot, high DPS ,crapy health and works from behind well.

[BaNa]

hey i like my leveler + slasher combo

A line of five or more levelers will pwn a huge number of flash if the enemy doesn't micro well. 1 leveler pushing front healed by com is also useful. They aren't raiders, sure, but their not supposed to be. whats next, making rocko shots arc and faster? It's a good thing that these units are different, that you have to adapt your strategy to the way a battlefield is evolving.

as for making them self-pwn less, that is a cool and valid thing to use against these units. I love taking out gollies with jeffyspam.

One thing you overlook leveler-wise is that it deals huge impulse damage, so a lot of times units coming towards it cant even fire a shot. This is something most tanks don't have, so a lot of time leveler lines can eat up enemy without taking any loss of hp.

[Wingflier]

The biggest problem with Levelers is that the people who don't build them don't micro them. I have seen scenarios where a person had literally hundreds of Levelers and just sent them in a swarm, without micro at all - to which they destroyed each other in massive proportions, the way they are so characteristically known to do.

I also think there are a lot of misconceptions about the unit. Levelers aren't meant to take out Stumpy/Raider spam. They are meant for smaller units such as flashes/gators and Aks. This is simply because the Raiders have too much hp for them to destroy quickly, and, as everybody knows, once they are on top of the Leveler, it's self-pwn time.

I think of it like a triangle. Flashes/Instigators are the best unit to take out mass Stumpies/Raiders. Some of you may argue with this but I assure you, with the same amount of resources spent, and a little micro, Flashes will win everytime.

Stumpies/Raiders are obviously the best to take out Levelers.

And of course Levelers are the best for Flashes.

Kbots don't even come into the equation because a group of mass Levelers or Stumpies can own any number of T1 kbot unit, including Warriors. To which Core has no equivalent. But of course, kbots are completely fair (no sarcasm intended).

Wing

[jellyman]

I play kbots nearly all the time. And mostly team games on tabula, delta siege dry etc. I've learned that if an opponent manages to get 20 or so stumpies and attack me I am in trouble.

However if I build 20 rockos (as soon as possible while still retaining a normalish base expansion) and use them well against a vehicle player, then that vehicle player is in trouble.

And I will always get to 20 rockos before a tank player will get to 20 stumpies.

However with my 20 (or so) rockos I probably won't be able to finish of the tank player completely, and what is happening with the other players will be critical, which is likely to involve one of my opponents building 20 stumpies. With 20 (or so) stumpies, you can use con vehicles excellent ability to reclaim under combat to build more stumpies and potentially kill all opponents.

So my current thinking is to start kbots, and reclaim lab and switch to tanks when the mass stumpy phase of the game arrives. So far it seems to work well, but haven't played many games that well...

Maybe it would be fun to get some of the best kbot players in team games against the best tank players and see who wins.

[ginekolog]

Yesterday i ran some tests with ZEUS vs other bots, cost for cost.

It seems ZEUS is best close combat bot in game, it beats can, pyro and even friggin sumo. On paper can seems good but actually u get 170 DPS most of time instead od 340 becasue of minintestity stuff Zeus can even fire trough wrecks very well and does not suffer from minintesity (50% dmg at max range).

TEST:
~30 zeus vs ~20 can (numbers were acording to cost) ram into eachother = 8 zeus survived --- wtf?

IMO zeus is slightly op (low cost, only 7k build time) but arm needs it.

I would suggest improve can slightly (DSP or health) as it should be ultimate close combat bot, right?

BTW, all lasers units that looks decent on paper(modinfo) can actualy be crap. Compare cruisers, its arm 180DPS vs core 200DPS but core only does 100dps on max range while arm still 180. Now who wins?(+ arm shoots in arc ofc) Its really hard to balance with minintensity ON for all enegy weapons, imo it should be on only on spceific ones or even NONE.

Do others agree?

[[Krogoth86]]

Sure - I also disliked that minintensity thing and that's why I disabled it in MA. You usually hear the argument that this change ruins the recent balance as it was built around this. I disagree - pretty much all of the stats in BA were done without this minintensity thing in mind. In addition to that it really didn't break the balance - it just gave back some units its value and especially as the T1 turrets use lasers you got the result of e.g. flash spam being a bit less effective vs. static defenses...

It imo also "fixes" some annoying stuff like having your corvettes to go on ramming course because otherwise they'll just go down to 50% of their normal damage. That imo is a kind of superfluous amount of micro you are enforced to do plus it isn't really obvious to any player and if you don't browse through this forum you very well might never hear about lasers not dealing full damage...

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Maybe it would be fun to get some of the best kbot players in team games against the best tank players and see who wins.

this sounds pretty ballin

[MR.D]

Only reason Kbots even have a chance against vehicles is simple.

Rezos, and Necros.

Without them, Kbots are next to worthless against any Vehicle army of equal cost.

Until T2, Kbots get pounded by vehicles, and once you start getting Zeus/sniper and Pyro/Can's/sumo out there, then its Vehicles turn to suffer, even the heaviest T2 vehicles can't stand up to Zeus's low cost and high armor pushes.

[Jazcash]

Is there any way for me to filter annoying ingame messages such as "x cannot move" LUA errors, etc etc.

I'm being spammed by so much different shit that I don't care about at the moment that I can't read actual game chat.

[ginekolog]

iceui does that very well.

[slogic]

Does BA have a bugtracker? Where should i post bugs?

[smoth]

here

[BaNa]

No, send them in a personal message to sleksa, he is the one who deals with these things.

[slogic]

I'd better post here & make a PM.

Seaaircraft platform bug:

A build plane shoud be higher.

[Hubebert]

Hi, I'm currently writing a bunch of articles to review several SPRING's mods. They are published on a french video-games website. I wrote the first part of my review on BA and would like to get an interview from a dev wich is involved enough to answer some questions about upcoming features, an generally, the future of the mod.

I would be pleased if one of you accepted.

Regards,
Hube.

[Spiking]

With regard to kbots- it's quite possible to play them versus vehicles in some situations. However you tend to play them only one way. After early scouting pretty much the only kbot I ever see used is mass lines of rocko-storms with rez behind them. Hammer/thud could probably use some sort of very small bonus, if they are intended to be brawlers. Right now the warrior is the only kbot brawler and even with it's increased cost it still gets eaten by rocket bots because it's slow. +1 to the kbot constructor sucks balls also, especially when you consider the fact that for peanuts more cost as vehicles you get the hill-ability and retain better armor and movement. And you can go underwater. If there was some sort of hill right by a lake.

Fundamentally I think it's kind of boring to say that the only differentiator between bots and vehs is map type. The game has changed a lot through AA and BA but in many old AA incarnations kbots were not only hills but more of 'hills and tricky' with vehicles being 'flat land brute force'.

Sheilds- they work fine but it's kind of silly to have a unit that counters only one other unit be kind of shitty at it. I've gotta confess I liked how the old sheilds looked better, too, as cool as the new graphic is.

[Wingflier]

Until T2, Kbots get pounded by vehicles, and once you start getting Zeus/sniper and Pyro/Can's/sumo out there, then its Vehicles turn to suffer, even the heaviest T2 vehicles can't stand up to Zeus's low cost and high armor pushes.

T2 Vehicles can BUILD "Zeus's low cost and high armor pushes." Have you ever made a Consul? 1 Consul + nano turrets = Zeus Spam.

Sure, going T2 Vehicle doesn't give you the Sniper or Maverick, but then again you still get the Bulldog, Merls, Mobile Arty, Panthers, and lots of other useful stuff. Plus you can build adv. fusions, which come in useful more often than the Gantry. And your Adv. Cons aren't slow as balls.

With Arm at least, there are major advantages to starting veh and staying veh. I'm not saying that you can't do well with kbots, I'm only saying that it puts you at a significant disadvantage. This is pretty much made clear by the fact that many players reclaim their bot lab 10-15 min into the game.

I just don't see the reason why the con kbots have to be so slow and why kbots should always get rolled by a ton of levelers or stumpies.

Wing

[Pxtl]

To be fair, a swarm of stumpies at L1 pretty much rolls anything - flashes/gators work up to a point, but after you reach a critical size of horde, the flash/gator corpses slow them up enough that the stumpies clobber them. Kbots are no different.

I'm pretty sure that Rockos can just pound Levellers into oblivion if you can keep them at a safe distance.

Either way, the "kbot penalty" is just too high considering how useless they are on large maps. Rockos and rezbots are good, but every other kbot unit has a fatal flaw - Hammers are just inefficient, conbots are slow and weak with no benny to make up for it, and peewees/AKs chain.

Either way, though, why doesn't the Freaker build vehicles?

It makes as much sense as the Consul building kbots. If the Consul gets the Zeus and the Fido, then logically the Freaker should get the Reaper and... well, the Banisher or Pillager or something.