Scenario 1. Enemy goes air/gunships. You have some options, Make static AA or make slashers + odd leveler tank. Static AA is better vs Air. But is only where you build it not necessarily where you need it. Slashers SUCK vs Air and we all know it, best bet is to hope you get one with enough XP to morph it into a flak tank. Scenario 2. Enemy rushes a heavy. You have some options, Spam those Ravagers and Levelers, Make a DAMN good load of DFENZ, change lab. Ravagers and levelers are only passable vs some heavies, DFENZ is expensive and you need it everywhere, changing lab costs a lot of time and resources. Scenario 3. You raid the enemy with some scorchers. Enemy kills said scorchers. Why is this bad? Scorchers are an expensive raider (they cost more then 100) so not only do you lose a significant investment to a single com with a shotgun, HMG, or riot cannon, or LLT or a few glaives. The cost you SPENT on the scorcher becomes your enemies INCOME in a larger wreck.
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Scenario 1 in 1v1 against gunships. Expand faster than the enemy which is easy on most maps because aircons are expensive and doesn't have much buildpower. Harass the enemy with Darts, Scorchers and Levelers if the enemy is using banshees, gnats and rapiers, this will further slow down their expansion. If the enemy is using Brawlers or Blackdawn get some centralised AA like 1 or 2 razors kiss or cover your expansion and advancement with Slashers(you get 6 for every brawler/blackdawn). If the Blackdawns or brawlers come to close even Scorchers and levelers can hit them. Morphing a slasher to Copperhead is propably a good idea. Scenario 1 in 1v1 against airplanes: Against airplanes you should be able to expand pretty safely and be able to harass the enemy pretty well so fixed AA should do fine or a push all the way to their base is also pretty easy to do. Scenario 1 in teamgames: Ask someone else to deal with the air and just focus on harassing and expanding safely. Don't go far into enemy territory if the enemy got alot of airunits unless you got some dedicated AA to bring along. Scenario 2: Vehicles doesn't really got a counter heavies but ravagers and scorchers can swarm most heavies pretty well for cost. Scenario 2 against goliath: Swarm the goliath with ravagers and scorchers. 6 ravagers(1500 metal) or 10 Scorchers(1300 metal) can under good circumstances kill the goliath but the problem is preventing it from retreating or dying from supporting units. Scenario 2 against Grizzly: Swarm it. Just 5 Scorchers can kill it from point blanc range. Scenario 2 against Sumo. Sumo is hard to kill even for cost in ravagers or scorchers. Best bet is to retreat until you got a big enough force to overcome it. More than 10 ravagers(2500) is a good estimate. Scenario 3. You can use Darts to scout and raid. Darts got great Line of Sight and can see most defence before it enters their range. That way you can avoid Lotus and commanders easily if you pay attention. I agree that vehicles might be weak against Airplanes, brawlers, blackdawns and Sumos in teamgames but I don't think it is a problem in 1v1.
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I agree that light vehicle fac has some severe gaps in its inventory (no kiting skirmisher, no anti-heavy, no dedicated AA) which is particularly bad since the lab is also the most terrain-limited... but scenario 3 isn't really a good argument. Raid with Darts. They're tougher than you think.
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darts are an inferior form of flea imo asking another player to deal with the enemy air is hilarious, i have seen games where all players spontaneously started light veh out of pure coincidence, sometimes you have incompetent idiots as team mates. godde basically advises not building scorchers for raiding. saying 5 beat a grizzly is irrelevant since grizzly is the most pathetic unit costing more then a sniper in the game.
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Scorchers are good at raiding. I don't consider them that good at preventing enemy raiding though. If you think it is too hard to keep the Scorchers alive because you lose them to enemy commanders or defences just use Darts to scout ahead. Because of their great speed and Line of Sight you can even scout the enemy without losing the Darts.
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... I hadn't thought of mixed dart/scorch raiding-teams. They must be micro-intensive, though. And yeah, Scorchers suck at pursuit in defensive form. I more use them as a faster Riot. Basically, have a long line of wolverines (or slashers, now) and use the Scorchers to quickly respond to the counterattack wherever it occurs on the line.
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Ok, you didn't quite describe the real problem with vehicles: they are either extremely amazingly good at what they do or the fail hardcore. They have little middleground. They are probably the least well-rounded lab out of all of them. Some things to think about: Dominatrix has weird capture mechanics. Wolverine has strange artillery/minelaying capabilities. Slasher is terrible AA and cannot move and fire at the same time. Merl is the longest range, lowest DPS/cost artillery unit in the game. Mason is the only constructor without a special ability or movement type. When you get down to it, it seems like this lab is the hardest to balance because it has the most "special" abilities and the most shortcomings of any lab. A skirmish unit that can't move and fire? And is also the only AA in the lab? A capture unit? An extremely long-range artillery unit in a lab where all units are designed to get extremely close? Heck, we can't even give the freaking construction unit some sort of special ability. If I were to redo the light vehicle lab, I would try to make it a little more standard and well-rounded. I would move some of these (cool but hard-to-balnace) ideas to other labs. For example, I think the hold-to-fire Slasher ability would be better served on the Banisher, and the ability to capture certainly sounds like more of a Jump/Specialists lab thing.
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Vehicle is really good vs ground... Because it has a cloakable area-denial mines (Wolverine), long range precision arty (Merl), very efficient anti-assault capture units (Dominatrix), hi damage short range raider (Scorcher), fast anti-raider with skirmisher range rocket + tracking ability (Slasher), and very high hp swarming tanks (Ravager). Is extremely effective at vs. ground. People made vehicle lab with vs. land in mind, they know it is reliable. But vs Air is a decision you need to make at gamestart and I propose giving player a free scout so they can make better decision (whether to do dedicated vs. land or to do other factory) P/S: light vehicle is extremely cool, it even almost sound OP, but more cool is the game ability to make it not OP.
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The idea is to add vehicle AA to be like the old Jethro. With cloak Jethro lost it's super speed. Heavy can be beaten by Domi (against low range and speed), Scorcher (against inaccurate or poor vs swarms) or Ravager (for pure hp/cost). This depends on the heavy. Scorcher is quite a good raider. Don't use them alone, Dart can do light raiding and scout to ensure Scorcher is used in the right place.
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What I'd want to see for AA on the Light Veh factory: 1) Make Leveler into flex-AA. Just replace the canon with a missile, same stats otherwise. Lop the barrel off the model. Make the Dart into flex-AA too. Again, leave the stats as-is but replace its beam with a laser. Darts have similar DPS to AA units and are fast enough to get into firing range. 2) Add a new Newton-based AA unit. Automatically attracts/repels target to keep it at about 200 range. Newtonish AA would be fun - drag the gunships into range of your Cobra, or keep that damned Shadow from escaping back to his base to reload while the Leveler pounds it into paste. This could be entertaining as heck.
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as i see it, the various mechanics in light vec fac are very enjoying to play. even the weakness with the (now a bit) buffed slasher is a "part" of the factory subset. nothing to be changed at my point of view. on the other side, a newton aa + very short range aa (as leveler) sounds also promising for intresting gameplay... but i like the leveler as-is too...
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The reason I suggest the Leveler is that you don't have to change anything else about the unit. It's already got a perfectly-accurate weapon because of the ferocious muzzle-velocity of its cannon. That means switching its cannon into a missile won't really buff it in any way against land units on flat ground. So if you replaced the cannon with a missile sporting the *exact same stats* as the cannon? The only change would be how it handles units above and below its plane (a range nerf when attacking units below it, and a range buff when attacking units above it, particularly air). It would be a buff for the already-powerful leveler, but one that's distinct from its role as a riot. Then again, with the hypothetical gravity-capture AA holding the target close, you might be able to just spank them with the existing Leveler's cannon. A big problem with hypothetical-gravity-capture unit is that it doesn't quite have perfect synergy with the Veh lab. Veh lab has no raw-DPS unit other than the Scorcher, which loses potency at range... and by definition, anything off the ground is at range. Leveler is an impulse/explosion-based riot unit so it's not optimal for picking off single targets like something being held by a grav-AA. edit: forgot the Dom. Dom + newton-AA would be amusing.
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it is less newbie friendly then the heavy vehical factory in every way except the cost of units.
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Veh needs AA yeah. Watch this game to see why: http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/76742Google destroys my fac fairly early, which puts me rather behind, but I switch to plane and obliterate him. I suspect he was trying to beat my planes with only Veh on purpose, but a switch to air -mandates- a second factory for a veh player. If you go air yourself (which is a great second fac), you're left without any mobile ground AA, which if the game goes to an air-air game, is very important. Personally I'd like to remove the need for dedicated AA, but I think it would require too drastic a change to the game. Veh shouldn't NEED 'anti-heavy'. Ive said this a lot before: Our heavy units are too versatile at the moment, they have skirm ranges, assault HP and riot accuracy. Every heavy unit should have a vulnerability: Slow and low ranged so they can skirmed, poor accuracy so they can be swarmed, low HP so they can be stunned, sniped by bombers, penes, snipers etc (Lots of arty, like firewalker, pene itself, etc fit perfectly here, despite being mega-powerful they can be assassinated). Veh totally has a ranged skirm though, capcar, it's THE. BEST. UNIT vs jack. It's mechanics are sorta clunky, I agree, but it fills the counter structure for skirms pretty well where Slasher is unable to.
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Vehs HAVE anti-heavies. Why do you say they shouldn't need them? If anything they shouldn't need anti air. :( By the way, I'm all for removing AA from another factory when giving one to vehicles. For example Cloakbots have Sharpshooters and shieldbots have Felons, both are decent plane counters. I think that if Slashers don't work as a support- and AA unit at the same time, then this really awesome and unique concept should be applied to another unit.
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Which anti-heavies does it have Skasi? Veh has no response to even a crabe, let alone a sumo or dante.
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well vs immobile crabe they have a merl, but its worthless if enemy heals the crabe
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Anything Frog mentioned, Sak. Vehs can easily beat Crabes if it's used on a flat surface.
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Skasi Ravagers are propably the best counter against crabe, for cost 6 Ravagers can easily beat 1 Crabe. 4 Dominatrix or 13 scorchers can only defeat a Crabe in good circumstances. Dominatrixs can be rushed by fleas and scorcher can easily become bunched up or stunned by Venoms.
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You know, you can push Crabe with units. An unsupported Crabe dies to any sort of artillery. I bet even Darts make cost, but am too lazy to check right now. Domis are THE armor counter. Godde's right about that, but wrong when he mentions Fleas. Slashers cost nothing and make short work of them. By the way, I think pushing Crabe around enough with units makes it "unfold" to move back to where it was.
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