Re-Balance Blitz Tank

I agree blitz need a change. But in current scheme, I don't agree with buffing damage output and hitpoints. May lower cost to 280, and raise stun time to 1.25s: it is a raider/support unit.

Bad bad tank factory lack of high dps/cost unit, so I'd like to have a blitz with higher dps 80/s and its lightning gun behave differently: 0.5 reload time with inaccuracy of 1 and small Aoe 16, cost remain 300. Is blitz the only lightning gun mount without inaccuracy?

quote: I think it was an engine limitation, that effects such as stun and other effects can't last half or quarter seconds, only full seconds.

The lowest possible time in Spring simulation is 33 milliseconds. Integer seconds are easy for humans to keep in mind, though.

What about only increasing the HP like 1400 or something like that? It would feel less "easy to kill" and will not be so OP

Doesn't Blitz do 180 damage?

I've used blitz lately in small teams games, and there's a specific way to use blitzes. They are much too expensive and do too little damage to be used like glaives, threading the gaps in defences and raiding mexes and whatever they can touch with little regard for their end state: death. 5 glaives to a much better job of raiding than 1 blitz. Blitz needs to be used in combination with a welder or 2 to make combat in a 0 loss game. Rely heavily on retreat and repair, to grow a slow attrition advantage, so then your low DPS high HP units eventually become an unstoppable force. Blitz as the tank raider feels very lackluster in this regard.

Blitz maneuvers 'poorly' in combat I would say. This is something true of many tanks, they have momentum to them(High turn radius), and they have massive frames/colvolumes. It's harder to get all your blitzes fireing at enemy units than say glaives, which turn on a dime and have a low fire rate. Fighting vehicles tends to be about taking advantage of the 'dance' between 2 players where they try to dive and try to evade enemy's fireing arcs, and when a vehicle is out of position and facing your forces, you know that they have to drive at least a little bit towards you to turn around, and you can capitalize more on an attack at that moment then rather if the vehicle was facing perpendicular or away from you and has an easier time accelerating away.

Blitz is expensive, and synergies with numbers. You start feeling this synergy at around 3 blitzes, and I feel super comfortable at 5 blitzes. That's 1,500 metal, and you can combat single riot units, or even 2 riot units and survive with all the blitzes. you can also comfortably skirmish other raiders for no attrition, with OK speed for raiders as well as EMPing every other raider they touch. That's a lot of metal to repeatedly counter smaller forces, though, and requires micro and you to spend EVEN MORE metal. you need some welders to be nearby to repair the blitzes, as well as bonus solar collectors for the e required to repair. so let's say 440m for cons and 280m for e, that's a bonus 720 metal for my 1500 raider force to feel comfortable. And I would not be so confident battling a force as large as 1500 metal from any other factory with just the 5 blitzes. But having advance welders near the front can help make up for that in repairs, radars, and light defenses.

Tank has always had problems in the raider phase. on top of that, the 2 light units in the factory are blitz and kodachi, which are always either OP or UP. koda had the time where it could fightmove against glaives and bandits, and blitz balance always dances around the OHK potential of glaives(200 damage). A stronger blitz can easily allow the factory to become too dominant in the raider phase and dominate the whole 1v1 scene, this has happened in the past.

Just to actually throw out a real suggestion instead of just summarizing what I think of blitz, I think the unwieldiness of vehicles is ok, and should be mitigated in other ways if possible. Keep damage as it is, give it a 5% speed decrease, and in change for that +25 or +30 range of the weapon. Longer range of the weapon mitigates that unwieldy feeling, and even though speed is decreased, it's a HUGE buff imo because chasing units get EMPed. I think this change would make blitz stronger for how I use it.

Blitz and Cyclops both have role issues.
How are you supposed to use one?
In the case of Blitz I think it's supposed to be used on very large open maps as a heavy raider, avoiding the enemy army as much as possible using its high speed and stunning ability to leave them in the dust. In practice? It'll most often get encircled and killed and needs a lot of babysitting.

Note: Blitz has no vulnerability to riots (or indeed anything) so you don't have the flexibility when it comes to balance that you have with other raiders. I think this even-handed performance is its main issue. If it was very strong in combat vs X while very weak vs Y it would be much easier to balance...

blitz got a range-nerf because it was balling way too hard... cost-decrease sounds more logical...

I don't have an issue with changing Blitz weapon from Lighting to Disrupter. Slow is supposed to be Diet EMP.

There is a issue with any kind of stunning is that it makes a unit more rioty. Maybe this is a good chance to experiment with playing with the weapon class. Maybe change the damage to some kind of impulse like a damaging newton push gun.

UltraGodzilla I didn't understand your first post.

You meant a ~10% cost decrease and a 10% hp increase and an increase in damage per shot to 165? it deals 180 already.

Remember Disarm is also an option. Currently we have nothing that deals real damage + disarm, but it could act as a less severe EMP while still having the "need full bar" properties that slow doesn't have, and indeed NOT slowing things running away.

Edit: You could also give it a longer disarm time, maybe 2 or even 3 seconds, since it's so much less disabling.

I want to like the slow suggestion for Blitz, but I think it would end up dominating early game at least as much as the old stunlocking Blitz did. I think it could beat equal metal of raiders from all other facs without breaking a sweat so it might as well be a riot.

The disarm option is intriguing though. With the right numbers, the Blitz would become a meatier, punchier Cutter (which I like the concept of, even if I find them too weak for practical use) and there isn't really anything in the land lineup that does the same thing. I don't think disarm is quite as threatening in the early game raider clashes as slow because the Blitz will only be able to keep 1 opponent from shooting at worst.

Disarm doesn't snowball as badly as EMP. It takes 3 Racketeers to silence a Minotaur in 1 volley (cost 1050 metal vs 850). To be sure it stays quiet permanently, at least two of them will need to devote their attention to it. They can't stop things running away so the outcomes are less binary than EMP.

Blitz with a moderate amount of disarm (maybe no more than the 500 stun power it already has and the 3 second duration of the cutter's missiles, though they might be attractive even with 2 second disarm and no rate of fire change) seems like something that would have utility throughout the game without dominating any phase by themselves. Early, a Blitz really would be a raider/assault with the ability to dispose of light defences and then the eco they were protecting (much as now and it's better than EMP with minimal stun time). Mixed Koda/Blitz usage might also be well rewarded with the Koda hitting undefended targets and deterring light raiders, while the Blitz cracks tougher targets.

In the midgame, it could be particularly formidable even by raider standards for hunting packs of skirmishers (moderator aside perhaps), utilising speed and resilience to get close and ruin their day, even with light riot cover. Although low density encounters between skirmishers and raiders favour the raiders, I find that when the densities get higher, raiders turn from isolated small targets into a mob where a skirmisher missing its intended target is still likely to hit another for the same effect. The Blitz's resilience coupled with its speed makes it better able to close. X metal of blitzes will also never be as dense a target field as X metal of other raiders.

As it stands, tank has to leap across a gulf from its raider game to its mid-late mainstays of Emissary, Ogre and Minotaur which in other factories is filled with skirmishers. Blitz could fill that gap, but in a unique way.

In the late game, it could mob heavies, disarming some light weight striders and certainly things like grizzlies or hostile Cyclops, becoming a handy sidekick for heavier tanks instead of a liability, minimising the damage they take and allowing them to keep going. With the right micro (not letting the Blitzes rush ahead to die unsupported), they could minimise the damage suffered in an advance.

Throughout, it would remain vulnerable to heavier riots, massed light raiders or fleas/darts which it would overkill in a big way.