It is pretty undeniable that shields are OP. They are not a huge problem in the early game and are quite good until felons come into play. Once there is a ball with outlaws, a felon and an aspis or 2 it is nearly unstoppable. Even cloaked roaches cant beat it because of the outlaws. I don't think much explanation is needed, most people have experienced this first hand. My changes of preference would be to give the felon a role and change/remove the aspis. Currently the felon is anti everything. It has the DPS to kill most things regardless of health, the range to kill skirmishers and when used properly it is a zero-attrition unit. The aspis makes shieldballs immune to one of their only weaknesses; AoE. If it is only thugs and convicts shielding the felons and outlaws the ball can still be dealt with, but once it has an aspis or 4 you are going to have to invest a LOT to kill the ball. What do others think? No tangenting, neoning or offtopic please. Do not argue that they are fine just because there is not a problem in 10v10.
+3 / -4
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You forgot the current state of the racketeer for its capacity to shutdown the heavier approaches to countering shieldball. Shadows, Stiletto, Licho? Disarmed midflight, killed by felon. Sumo, Dante and the likes? Disarmed from zomg range. Racketeer is vastly superior in utility to moderator, has bigger range, is not blocked by terrain and quite possibly also has more dps, even if of different kind. Suggestions: less projectile speed, maybe less range.
+8 / -0
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Make the shield a target (you see the shield before a shield ball...allows units to shoot earlier - weakening the shields before the shield ball can engage you.
+1 / -0
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Anarchid i agree with less projectile speed to let air (stiletto licho...) a chance to destroy the shieldball but Racketeer is an artillery (vs deffences) and need the range. The Sponge felon isnt op cause it drains tons of shield and the shieldball gets vulnerable. Don´t forget aspis drains 12e per sec. If you bulid too many and don´t have enouh e = more metal costs the regen rate will drop.Aspis dosn´t make you completely immone to aoe you need use them well. You can stop a Shieldball easily with 1-3 Tremors before they can get in range to do anything.
+1 / -2
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quote:
but Racketeer is an artillery (vs deffences) |
For an artillery unit that's great at disarming static defenses it's just too good at dealing with mobiles.
+4 / -0
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quote:
Shadows, Stiletto, Licho? Disarmed midflight, killed by felon. |
Make 3 stilettos and attack at once (but 1 after antoehr, not clusterfucked). 1 of them will attract all racketers, 2 others will disarm everything. Vuala! Problem solved. If u want to change Felon in any way, (in particular its excellent aim) u have to add Outlaw a personal shield. Currently Felon is the only proper riot in sbot fac. Outlaw is just usless unless u have 3 of them.
+0 / -4
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As if it needed clarifying, this thread is about 1v1 balance. If you have nothing useful to say about shieldballs in 1v1 get out of this thread.
+0 / -0
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Random thoughts of possible approaches: 1) Replace the Outlaw with a more conventional riot and put Outlaw's power into a different factory (it's too interesting to discard altogether). This would make the typical anti-heavy mechanisms viable - cloaked Ticks, Skuttles, Infiltrators, etc. all come into play. Dirtbags counter these as well, but it's less of a win-button zero-micro experience than the Outlaw. It would particularly improve the Shieldbots vs Cloakybots matchup. 2) Nerfing Apsis radius might help. More vulnerability to explosives. Gives a real impetus to morph to Aegis to get more shield-radius.    Manu12Does the Shieldbot lab really even need an artillery unit?
+0 / -0
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quote:
Does the Shieldbot lab really even need an artillery unit? |
yes. Or tell me a nice way to kill a shielded ddm/ anni. If your opponent got a GOOD shieldball in 1v1. I would say you didn't scout him well. But You are right BIG shieldballs are a problem even in team games and need some kind of nerf.
+3 / -0
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what makes shieldball overpowered is the fact they can link & stack their shield energy directly with each other at certain promixity. Their shiels combine to make a super tank that is cheaper than a super tank. If you really wanted to nerf shieldball, nerf that, or simply go steady tone downs with lowering shield regeneration. I don't even understand the physics of the shield. Stilleto can penetrate the shields, but other bombers can't without diving within the shield. Gauss rifles use to penetrate shields. AOE from ticks & such can penetrate shields, when shields are meant to be unpenetratable unless shield energy is drained. Makes no sense. I think the approach to shields be cheap metal bots, that use a lot more energy actively. They would be better for low metal maps providing spear head, but low real HP. I don't see why shield bots are better spear head especially in cost comparison to tanks, which in real world are the true spear heads of any army with fire power, & heavy armor.
+1 / -0
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And in real life surely Obama is crying on forum, that Russian Scuds are too OP, and Brussel needs to nerf it.
+2 / -0
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Gauss rifles use to penetrate shields. |
No they don't. Or is it changed again? Than sorry for that.
+0 / -0
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Gauss used to penetrate shields and now they do not. Mostly the felon acts as a sort of blade to turn the shieldball into a deathball, up until that point it's scary but possible to deal with. The main reason the felon causes so much trouble is that shieldballs take very little attrition (as intended I'd guess) so it's difficult to stop a shieldball from gaining momentum. If this is an agreed upon problem I think simply making the felon drain more shield per shot would nerf it back to manageable standards. The shieldball would then lose power faster and using the felon constantly would become shield-prohibitive over a long-term fight.
+2 / -0
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If the shieldbot tendency to snowball is a problem rather than a design goal, well, we already know how to deal with that kind of problem: Diminishing Marginal Returns. It's the same way we solved the BA metal maker problem via Overdrive. This came up a short while ago wrt the multiple linked shieldgen problem, where spamming defensive shields becomes OP because of linked regen. One suggestion was to make shields increasingly less efficient (in a variety of ways) as the link count goes up. This is the same problem, just on offense rather than defense (thanks to the Felon, as norm0616 points out).
+1 / -0
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Pxtl Simply saying that sheidl balls are tanks that are more effective than tanks. That's the point. If shield ball is basically a spear head heavy attack, why do we necessarily need tanks for? Sure tanks are faster, but much more costly, nevermind they are vastly easier to counter. Straw arguments don't work. I never said anything about real life shield balls. Fact remains sheils balls are much more effective offensive attack than tanks for the cost. They are extremely difficult to remove because there is very poor tools to use against them, but the developers clearly want shield bots to "be tough", but it's simply tought, because of regen shield linkage, and it's stackable.
+2 / -0
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1) Units with UnitAI should fire at shields if they are in range. 2) Shields should cost energy to regenerate.
+3 / -0
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The gauss that funnelwebs fire still penetrates shields
+1 / -0
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What about making Felon smaller? Make its size similar to other shieldbots, and give it standard personal shield, not enlarged one. Lower its DMG, HP, and range by half, and its cost to ~300 metal, and rise power use by two. Moreover, give its range possibility to enlarge it, by adding more energy. That means, more shields u add, bigger range it has but more energy it uses, lower the range is.
+0 / -0
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quote:
and give it standard personal shield, not enlarged one |
Regardless of whether there are actual problems with shields, I think standarizing shields would be nice (seeing as Funnelweb had its shield changed too).
+0 / -0
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