Current state of the Bandit

At the moment the Bandit is too strong for what it costs.

Some points to consider
-when microed well, they beat scorchers and kodachies 1 to 1 and while unmicroed still beat glaives.
-Their 'laser' shots are fast, numerous and hard to dodge, something you can do a lot easier vs glaives.
-The cost of glaive (65) and bandit (80) is to similar to get a decisive unit count advantage.
-Their relative high HP and range makes them one of the best raiders to fight riots.
In general you can say that there is never a risk when you move a bandit to any point on the map. Since they can retreat out of LLTs and MTs range alive (wich is a lot harder with glaives) and they are the best raider in the open field.

Being completely save vs raids in the early game or unable to loose a unit during the first 5 minutes of the game should come at some cost.

So i propose a small nerf to one of those stats: cost, dps or turnrate.
Trying to stick with the shieldbot theme a cost increase or turnrate decrease seems the most apropriate. (i think that if you'd cut their dps in half they'd still be worth making, allthough that would be too much of a nerf)
lets say
dps 120->100 or
cost 85m->95m

let me add that this is entirely form a 1v1 perspective, i do not take teamgames in consideration when judging balance.

i guess i have some "mad skills" then :P

when fighting glaives, retreat and wobble like the AI does, but at a different frequency and different angle, you'll notice how you have to micro after a bit of practise.

It is not that i have a major problem fighting against bandits. But it is very frustrating to fight with veh or cloackies vs bandits in the hands of a competent player. Your best option is to run from bandits most of the time.

When i play shields myself im playing ez pz mode with bandits running all over the map, me knowing the other guy cant do anything about it. It is just too easy to preserve them. Being in a riskless state should come at a bigger cost.

>Tand is #6 on the ladder and a good player, so don't dismiss his opinion here.

Well, first he is doing balance around 1v1. 1v1 is good, but it ignores much of the meta-game of team games. The majority of players play in medium-to-large teamgames.

Secondly, could Bandit be slightly imba? Sure. Is it worth fretting over? Nah. It's close enough and ZK has other bigger issues to worry about.

As is said every time a "unit is OP" thread comes up, abuse the hell out of it until it is blatantly obvious that it needs balance changing. Many of the current buffs and nerfs have come as a direct result of a single unit being used abusively. I was a heavy influence in getting Hammer and Com Nano nerfed because I abused them every*single*game.

We balance for 1v1. In team games, balance gets lost in all the noise. 1v1 is where the fine details of balance really get tested. The sort of 10% change that would fix the Bandit here is not even going to be noticed in team games. Raiders are the first unit out of the factory, and thus foundational to the rest of the game.

Tandstickor is higher ranked than either of you, as the #11 and #22 you guys deserve to get your opinion listened to but you don't get to treat him like he doesn't know what he is talking about. We're here to discuss the 1v1 raider game and if you guys don't care about 1v1 or don't play 1v1, go post in another thread.

I beg to differ Jasper,
Bandits > glaives any day of the week, The bandits kite the glaives and win,

Only exception is chokeholds where u can throw the glaives at the bandits at close range and keep them there, thats when they (glaives) seem to make cost barely .

Glaives are indeed a faster, and a bit cheaper. Given there are no MTs glaives are superior of course.
And no, bandits can kill a ridiculous amount of glaives before the glaives can kill the bandit. You don't fight bandit with glaive, you retreat and try another place to attack. Only when you are 3 to 1 with a proper surround you attack the bandit directly.
The big downside of glaives is that they die to MTs while bandits can retreat.

Also, bandits are less vulnerable to riots. They need two shots from a leveler and can get out of warriors range in time.
Mace would be the most successful riot vs bandits i think.

So the fact that you need a minimal ammount of resources to be raider save and keeping an awesome raiding potential of your own frees up resources for cons/expos. Add to that the unkillable convict and we have our winnerlab.

Bandit is what I call a local imbalance. It is an imbalance in a certain area of the game and I do think that Bandit is the best raiding unit, way superior to all the others. However, please also have a look at the factory as a whole, not just the unit.

The shield bot factory:
-Have a fairly bad skirmisher. It have a slight range advantage but it have a hard time hitting riot/assault units being microcoded, even if it is supposed to be a unit effective against these.

-Do not have any artillery to speak off and has a very hard time dealing with grouped HLTs. While the EMP launcher is kinda impressive it can not actually kill anything on its own and very expensive as well.

-Is very vulnerable to crawling bombs of all kinds since only Bandits and Felons can reliably kill them before they get to close. Outlaws are not good at killing bombs running up towards the packed units and shield bots needs to be packed in order for them to share shield.

So in my humble opinion:
Bandits are THE best raider units but the the rest of the factory is relatively week compared to the others. I do not consider them OP, just very good at what they do.
Cheers! -Emblis

I would favor a minor DPS nerf

The rogue is basically the shortest range artillery, effective VS other skirmishers and immobiles but useless VS units.. that makes it difficult to use well on open maps.