Tremor needs a nerf

This is probably raining on wet at this point, but here goes: Tremor needs a nerf.

Its too dominating ATM. large team games are often defined by tremors, and once a tremor is firing many facs have nothing to do but get destroyed, since only heavy units can operate in a tremor's firing zone.

Its also not expensive enough that it significantly sets back the person who builds it, so the "you can rush/outmaneuver/bomb it" argument doesn't really work.

Its also difficult to counter-arti it effectively because it doesn't really need sight, whereas the units firing at it do. Its also durable enough to endure a few shots and fast enough to evacuate in a timely manner.

I think less dispersion would be a good way to balance it, would prevent one single Tremor on force fire from denying a sizable area forever. However, less dispersion is a double edged sword so it should also get less damage per shot.

Ensuring death by Likho sounds like the simplest option.

I did think about the merits of amending it mechanically so that instead of just endlessly spewing shells at the same rate, it has to build up ammunition like the Zenith before blowing its load with the twist that it wouldn't just be one salvo, more a case of charge up for 1 minute (for instance) to get, say 30 seconds of bombardment. To incentivise use, this version of the Tremor would dish out the same number of shells but in half the time.

The idea would be to require active management to put it to best use, instead of just force fire somewhere and leave it. You would need to choose exactly when to let fly to best support your side. Multiple tremors could be timed to overlap to achieve the effect we see today, but at far higher cost in metal and the attention needed to time it right. However, with a shorter, but more intense bombardment, it could be used more proactively to quickly soften up a defensive position or army to be hit immediately by an assault force dispatched at the right time to land exactly as the barrage concludes.

It might add a bit more interaction to the artillery duel phase you often get in a large team game. On the other hand, it probably steps too much on the toes of the Merlin and perhaps there might be performance implications as well.

Would it be more interesting if, instead of just spamming explosive shells, it delivered a debuff barrage along with only nominal damage? Tank lacks a disarm platform, maybe tremor shells could gain that ability, tuned so that each individual shell is weak on disarm and it has a low disarm duration (no more than 2 secs) but with the barrage maintained a sizable area of porc (or an army that doesn't bother moving) could be silenced enabling a much more favourable environment for advancing heavy assualts (e.g Minotaur push). Yes, those heavy assaults would take some chip disarm damage fighting in the rain, but because they have fat HP pools, it'd take a long time for them to end up in the same state as their targets, by which time they should have won anyway (if not you clearly needed more TAAANKS!)

The barrage would hopefully however not have too much of an effect on a counter attack because mobile units would not be sitting around long enough to get disarmed in the bombardment, though low HP raiders might get muted in one hit.

Spam minotaurs or pop-up turrets to eat the phantom shots, preferably under heavy repair. Your emissaries have enough range to stay outside the range of the phantoms and still get stuff done. If the enemy spams phantoms hard, the're opening themselves up for a kodachi swarm to make cost, or even a blitz swarm. If they have riots near the phantoms, the emissaries can shot at the riots.

Tanks aren't the best fac against cloakers but they have options, I don't buy the idea of that tremors have to be how they are for this reason.

Making the tremor more vulnerable with less health/speed could work too, I guess. I dislike disarm in general so I'd rather not go that route, specially since the tremor also flattens land.

Tremor is so insanely good at flattening, it can make spiders obsolete. The other day I had spiders skulking on one of the narrow mountains on central Tabula, a tremor came along, suddenly my spiders weren't on a mountain anymore.

FFA has become more porcy with the introduction of the new funnelweb - maybe tremor could be the antidote? Right now that role seems to go to the catapult, which also happens to counter most other heavies.

quote: FFA has become more porcy with the introduction of the new funnelweb - maybe tremor could be the antidote?

It's supposed to be...

Tremor down the shields... Or tremor them a little bit, then 2x shockley.

If Tremor is nerfed then pretty much the entirety of tank-fac will have been nerfed in the last year. :(

quote: But did it had to be shielded walking buildpower?

It's apparently pretty fun to use...

Not sure how easily the game distinguishes between terraform and original map, but it might be cool to reduce tremor's effect on the natural terrain.

I agree, might be a little arbitrary but it would probably be better for gameplay.

If you don't think tremor is OP u use it wrong
Start from digging a pit(-45 or so) for it, later top it up with a small hill facing the enemy side (+20 or so) with a pitbull/razor on top
Add some background AA somewhere in between those actions
If you are feeling cheesy add a couple of terrasinked outlaws on sides... to prevent a swarm of glaives from chargin in

All this time u spent tremor was working on area denial or killing enemy's stuff
Right now there are few options available to the enemy - another tremor or silo which costs a ton and can be easily countered with funnel creating almost impenetrable porculon... At which point u start to make that DRP/meteor/loblight :D