A Plea to good players

You may want to rethink that shields are balanced. They are well underpowered comparing to, say, Jumps. Just my opinion.

Nevar

Thanks Sak.

Imo Terrain specialists should only be penalized in specific areas and should mostly be weird/unintutive to use optimally rather than outright underpowered.

Spiders for example -- currently they have an interesting scout, an interesting emp riot, a great spy.. but then a fragile, high weight riot & skirmisher and an underpowered assault that prevents them being very competetive. The overpowered heavy means they can swing back in the mid-late if allowed to survive, but imo thats not ideal.

Amphs in particular are very strange to play and are surely the least refined. Their main weakness is the lack of assault unit, which forces a predictable mid-game grizzle/same unit composition every game.

quote: Spider, Jumpy, Hover and Amph.

Spider - all "raiding" gets shutdown by 1 LLT, the rest of fac is too slow. Works fine on smaller maps with chokepoints that can be avoided by all-terrain. Even then, probably loses to jumpy.

Jumpy - has 3 good units: pyro, puppy, skuttle. Pyro is an excellent raider so the fac is viable on maps where you can get away with only building pyros.

Hover - has 3 good units: scrubbers, mace, pene. Can actually fight on par with vehicles on flat maps thanks to the first two.

Amph - has some weird units, and Drone has shown that many can be used well if microed properly. On land it is still inferior to cloaky fac (archer does counter glaives, but rockospam wins against amphs)

Shields - subpar raider, subpar skirm (rogue sucks compared to rocko), subpar riot (warrior is much better), subpar assauls (zeus is much better). Felonball is nice but has hardcounters. Roach is the only redeeming unit for the fac, but it is not enough to make the whole fac worth building.

Gunships - only works if you can surprise and rush your opponent. Many non-specialist AA units can hit gunships, so the switch to land is not as effective. Cons are expensive and have almost no HP, that slows down expansion A LOT.

Fixed wing air - again, works rarely and mostly due to surprise effect. The damage bombers can output is low due to having to refuel, giving the opponent time to adapt. Same expansion problem as gunships due to weak cons.

I wonder if the air cons arent due a) seperation and b) HP buff and/or cost reduction

quote: subpar skirm (rogue sucks compared to rocko)

This isn't true.. its a better skirm in many respects

quote: This isn't true.. its a better skirm in many respects

Rogue has higher range, that's it. Higher cost, worse HP/cost, worse DPS/cost, worse speed, shitty arcing shot.

Yogzototh

quote: Shields - subpar raider, subpar skirm (rogue sucks compared to rocko), subpar riot (warrior is much better), subpar assauls (zeus is much better). Felonball is nice but has hardcounters. Roach is the only redeeming unit for the fac, but it is not enough to make the whole fac worth building.

lol your so silly


shield play (good example of how to do shields):
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/253636
watch the rougue pwning silly shit like pyros and scorchers with saturation fire
won with rougue/convict spam migrating to dante/bandit once reclaim economy is established


note :
i didnt use fellon, i made dante instead
i didnt spam bandits to attack, they are best used defencively
i used convicts to tank damage and build forward porc, convicts have epic survivability
i took middle with 3 convicts 2 rougue and an outlaw, wining massive reclaims that the convicts hoovered

if you want to talk about shield lab and you dont mention convicts, you are doing it wrong


this little guy here, he is the shield lab, the shield lab is nothing without him (like the glaive and cloaky lab)

I always found jumpbots to be missing something. can't quite put my finger on it but it doesn't seem as flexible as say,spiders or cloakys.

Skasi then why didn't you win? in the early game you clearly had the advantage because one of my own noobs died to darts, and the other was not doing so well...

5000m reclaim in 18 minutes with convicts (protected by rougue saturation fire) is why i won

i use spider and amph quite alot, ill post replays here from small teams and 1v1 when i can :P