State of vehicles and hovers

Flat map balance still seems a bit off. Ever since people realised how great hovers were on flat maps (that realisation started gradually happening around a year ago) they have been giving vehicles and most bot factories a very hard time.

Beating bot factories on perfectly flat is fine, but IMO not to the extent that hovers do it. Vehicles also have their small advantages over bots on flat, but ultimately the better player usually still has no issues winnning. Hovers on the other hand make cost against bots almost by default, with very little effort. Their units are simply better than those of vehicles or bots.

Hovers beating vehicles is also a pretty old thing and Mace is definitely one of the main problem units here. Nevertheless, Dagger, Scalpel and Halberd are very powerful for their cost as well.

Vehicles have one trump card, the wOPverine. It's a shame that it promotes boring and static gameplay. I'd rather see vehicles be potent through their fun, fast and active units rather than a unit that just sits there behind porc and slowly suffocates the enemy and any fun the game has to offer.

Suggestions:
either another slight Mace nerf
or
some very slight vehicle buffs

Since vehicles seem to be internally quite decently balanced I don't think significantly buffing one unit is the answer. We had that back when Scorcher was still unnerfed, it resulted in Scorcher monoculture and essentially a one unit factory.

An approach similar to the last Slasher and Ravager improvements might be the best where stats of several vehicles are very slightly altered to fine tune them towards ideal balance. Wolverine is probably OP, but I guess this needs more proof in high level 1v1 games.

Change dagger's speed has implications for sea play. Dagger has speed 4.5, snake has speed 4. Skeeter is 5.2. Lowering dagger speed by too much would make it unable to catch snakes, and may make it really easy to scoot around with skeeters.

Nerfing Dagger might make the cloaky matchup... slightly playable? As cloaky one has tools to deal with mace (rocko, sharpshooter) but pure Dagger spam is very, very hard to deal with.

(That being said, I had some success with Ticks yesterday against a Dagger-ball. Not enough to win, but given my opponent I'd hardly have expected to. I'm not sure whether ticks are applicable in general.)

The fundamental balancing problem with both Dagger and Duck IMO is that they are the only high-alpha raiders (except Kodachi, but it's a special case). At least in water Duck is kind of balanced by its low range.

A thought I entertained a little while ago was to give Mace a waterjet attack similar to the Archer, rather than its current single-target beam. That would make it a considerably better riot, which would allow nerfs in other areas (range, damage) without crippling hover against raiders. If the watertank aspect were also to be implemented it might be necessary to allow the water level to be "repaired" to make hovers playable on, say, Comet Catcher.

(Yes, I'm aware this makes the Archer less unique, but let's face it... the Archer really doesn't get used all that often. Not never, but I don't think the unit is in a great place at the moment.)

I agree that there is a small problem. The units involved seem to have very fine balance though.

I would like a small Dagger nerf because it seems to be too good against most raiders. Speed and alpha seem to be the strong points of the unit so I would not like to nerf those. Small cost nerfs sound ineffective because it would still trade very efficiently. Health is a possible nerf but it may just make it more swingy. Range sounds like a good nerf to me as that would let more things return fire and it would clump less effectively.

Mace also seems to be a problem. This may be ever since Ravager lost a little weapon velocity or perhaps discovering how to use Dagger just unlocked Mace. It is a weird riot, a bit too good against assaults due to its range but potentially bad against raiders. It has both range and speed going for it but I feel like one of those needs to go down. DPS is also a possibility but it may become bad against raiders. Another posibility is reduced maneuverability to make it less able to work by itself.

Buff weaknesses, nerf strengths. Increase Dagger reload time, decrease its tankiness.

Mace's problems lie in its use of non-riot virtues for riot work. I second the maneuverability nerf. It shouldn't really dodge things so well.

Mace's turnrate is what makes it semi-immune to Dominatrix atm. If anything, maneuverability is a skirm (domi) virtue and not a riot (mace) virtue.

Maybe Domi turnrate can be increased.

Maybe Mace;s weapon could lose some DPS in exchange for some riot-specific powers that aren't useful vs. heavier units - like a firestarting weapon, or an impulse weapon, or some blast radius. If flamethrowers didn't multi-hit large targets I'd suggest that. Rapid-fire Gauss would be similarly good if it wouldn't be a huge buff for being able to hit underwater targets (and the spherical targeting for Gauss would make that impossible to balance).

Then assault units would be more able to power-through the damage and hit the Mace.

Alternate neonstorm idea: Mace weapon takes Energy to fire. This would mean long attacks against assaults expensive while the typical short bursts used for cutting down raiders would be cheap. Ironically the best counter to the Mace would be the Halberd.

> Faux-AOE for Gauss-like weapons can be extended by making the projectile physically larger, thus capable of touching more victims, significantly buffing its riot value.

You're thinking of a sonic weapon again, aren't you?

quote: You're thinking of a sonic weapon again, aren't you?

Not necessarily. It could be just a Fat Gauss Slug.

quote: Mace has just a lot of dps for its range.

Mace isn't the most extreme offender of this...



667 dps at 430 range...


305 dps at 355 range...

Mace can't counter rockos or any other skirm.. at all.

Now, the issue of LV vs Hover is simply the lack of an actual skirm (only wolverine really fills this role and its not that good at it). Cloaky has rockOP, shields have the perfectly accurate racketeer OR rogues, JJ has moderator, HV has banisher, hover has scalpel, amphs have buoy, and ships have a variety of lovely ways to take care of maces. What does LV have? Slashers (have to sit still to fire = dead) or wolverines (low accuracy). An alternative solution to nerfing everything is to instead introduce an actual skirm for lv, much like moderator was introduced to Jumpers. Perhaps domi could fill this role. It would make it an unique skirmisher. Just give it a better turn rate and slight range increase.

@ArchShaman
Felon isn't comparable to Mace. You can send Maces with no other unit support out on the map to kill stuff, it's a legitimate tactic. Now try sending a lone Felon or two without any support out on the map...

quote: Mace can't counter rockos or any other skirm.. at all.

Maces kill short range skirms no problem. I've seen them consistently trade about evenly vs Rockos on tricky terrain, I've seen them wreck Moderators, Scalpels, Dominatrixes and slightly mismanaged Banishers. Few skirms have the range to comfortably counter Mace. Rogue and Sharpshooter seem to be one of the few skirms to truly hardcounter Mace.