Comparing Logos and Nova

[Pxtl]

Iirc, Fanger tried that in EE, and that's part of the reason that his NI faction never emerged - he had so much trouble balancing an all-hovers faction.

Now, I could see giving one faction amphibots and boats, while the other faction gets hovers (sans torp-invincibility) and subs... or something like that, but outright removing tanks is just too huge.

Either way, the navy seriously needs some re-examination. Right now it's a frustrating mix of rock-paper-scissors that seems to devolve into corvette spam half the time.

Also, how the hell do you use the Logos torp-boats? Their forward-firing nature is a nightmare to manage.

[Google_Frog]

Hovers are much better than amphs, if you take a unit and split it into two with one being amph and the other hover the hover one will be much more useful in more situations.

An interesting idea to consider is to make all vehicles hover (or in Logos case float on their edges) and all bots amph. I think we'd need to add a dedicated torp/dcl amph and hover because trying to multi role one of the bots into torp was a main reason the original bots as amph failed, also they needed more underwater slowdown. Hover vs. ships games can turn into vette spam so I think we could make them hittable by torpedoes to make it more interesting.

Ships might need buffing so people make them on mixed land/sea maps. Another problem could be land invasions. Currently stumpy is very similar to the assault hover but stumpy costs 25% less. Hopefully defence is strong enough to make that not OP on some maps.

Another big problem is slope tolerance. On most maps the shorelines are too steep for vehicles to climb. People could use ramp but that's a lot of effort to make a large enough slope to pass tanks through.

Even with all these problems it can't be worse than hover/amph currently is. As is they need a lot more work and fleshing out.

Either way, the navy seriously needs some re-examination. Right now it's a frustrating mix of rock-paper-scissors that seems to devolve into corvette spam half the time.

Arm now has a torp ship so it's a bit better. I still agree that there's too much torpedeo micro to make your units fire intelligently and then there's lots of work dodging them. The micro involved with torps is probably why it degrades into corvette spam in larger games.

[HeavyLancer]

I think that what the whole balance needs in CA is a total factory rethink. Consolidation is the key here.
My idea is this: You have cost-effective but inflexible pure sea fac, one or two flexible factories and cost-effective but inflexible land only fac. No more land-only vehicle facs, just ships, hovers, amphibs and bots.

The idea is that ships are quite good for their cost, but they are expensive and can't really touch land (except for arty).

Hovers are flexible and fast, but lack firepower for their cost, making them primarily maneuver warfare units that can be used flexibly as skirmishers, but are not so good for assaults because of their lack of serious firepower for the cost.

Amphibs would be slow and heavy, making them ideal for assaults, but they can get beat up by stuff that can move faster than them such as hovers, fast torpedo armed ships and gunships.

Bots are your land-only units, cost effective and cheap but slow and weak unless in numbers. Essentially you could leave bots as is for the moment.

You could emphasise factional differences by using different approaches to roles within the facs i.e Nova amphibs have cloaking, stealth and EMP capabilities, but Logos have shields and heavier firepower. Both are suitable for assaults, just in different ways.

How does that sound then?

[Otherside]

i think the land "tier 1" labs are perfectly fine if anything some balance tweaks but nothing majorly broken there (till people start abusing crawlies)

i think the land "tier 2" needs a bit of working it doesnt feel 100 percent right but its still pretty good and ok as is.

Both Air labs are fine id merge the torp and precision bomber into one unit apart from that a few tweaks to some units and a bit more faction diversity.

"tier 3" is so rare now that i dont feel i can comment, vanguards/cata used to be quite common as support units and razorbacks for micro/repair but i think the lab needs a rework/rethink and more faction diversity on the "super" units

I do think sea/hover needs work. Atm i feel that Sea's RPS is to strong and the first unit could decide the outcome of the whole game due to the generally high cost of the units aswell as the strong counters.

If you go sub first (though really you should scout) and sum1 goes hover thats wasted metal.

if sum1 goes air (especially arm with blades) and you didnt go an AA unit first your pretty screwed. Though that problem should be fixed by cheaper sea AA.

its to much blind RPS and unlike with land were you can easilly scount an enemy lab or have safe/versatile units that can get you through some early mismatch situations Sea doesnt have that (mainly ships),

Since hover/amph was merged its sort of made the lab half assed in the sense hover only has 1 assaulting option and no arty and possibly the worst raiding unit in the game. Couple that with the fact that amph's and hovers have poor synergy with each other you get a lab that cant work within itself.

The removal of Croc for Core has made there lab useless. Halberd is sucky and so is gimp (this can be rectified with some balance changes)

Arm is all about anaconda spam as theres little/no point in making anything else other than aa hover.

and giving one faction only hovers and one only amphib would be a balance headache.

id Just go with making 3 Labs (maybe in the long run as getting IP free is first priority)

a ship lab = Strongest lab as you cant go on land (works like current sea lab with some balance changes maybe lowering the scale to make things cheaper/weaker to soften the RPS)

a Hover lab = a fast raidy lab similar to the vehicle lab (arm could get an emp hover and core could get a shield hover) and possibly torp hovers to give them some sort of defense against ships but still should be beaten for cost by the ship lab

a Amphib lab = Slow heavy lab for core similar to Tank/Walker lab (tier2) and a spec ops stealthy ambush lab for Arm