Some balance suggestions

Just some feedback, just my oppinions.

1) Halberd - weapon feels horrible, unit in practice feels either underpowered or gimmicky to use (too reliant on spam-click micro to get it close enough to enemy units for its stupid weapon to hit.)

A total rethink of its weapon would be great. Somthing accurate but low dps/reliant on alpha would be cool, as then they could swan into range, fire, close up and move away, which synergises with all other hovers much better than halberd currently does. It would work best if the unit AI automatically closed the unit when it isn't actually firing, as then fiddly hold fire micro would not be needed.

2) Wolverine - please buff it, it still is underpowered/highly situational/overly fragile

3) Hermit - still the worst assault unit by large margin, with gimmicky applications on a small number of maps. A buff is well overdue - I would like to see it with a moderate DPS buff, as it is much slower/weaker than other assaults vs statics and much worse vs mobiles than ravager/zeus/jack/reaper. 10% higher DPS would make this unit a little more useful.

4) Zeus - has a very annoying tendency to friendly-fire when in groups, maybe because their hitbox is too small and they walk half inside eachother when tightly grouped. Is there any way this could be prevented - maybe by changing the firing point on the model or making the weapon ignore friendlies?

5) Tremor - still largely ineffective and fragile imo, needs moar HP/AoE desperately. I hate that one of the coolest looking units remains one of the most pathetic.

6) Gauss Turret - with guass no longer penetrating shields and hopefully soon being 1 hit per projectile vs all hitbox sizes, it would be cool to finally make gauss a real anti-heavy weapon. A damage foruma somthing like:

X * (1 + (HP/6000) = damage

this would do eg.

1.01 * X damage to a Glaive
1.3 * X damage to a Ravager
1.83 * X damage to a Jack
3 * X damage to a Goliath

balance it to only make cost at 1.5+ and you have a functional source of anti heavy in a turret without using damage groups - all this does is improve and formalise the existing behavior of 'more damage to big units'

7) Moderator

Less effective source of slow than outlaw in many situations. imo it is weighted too high to be viable in early rushes (or often even early game) and is very difficult to syngergise with the other units from this factory.

Suggestion: drop weight of moderator to around 170m, keeping HP as close to current as possible and just nerfing damage or RoF - that way it becomes viable to add these into an early rush, they become less vunerable and easier to distribute. 200+m for a unit that does no damage is frequently hard to justify, especially when it is slow and cant escape like the rest of the factory (eg. dies during retreats).

quote: 4) Zeus - has a very annoying tendency to friendly-fire when in groups, maybe because their hitbox is too small and they walk half inside eachother when tightly grouped. Is there any way this could be prevented - maybe by changing the firing point on the model or making the weapon ignore friendlies?

I have said about this before but I think it came down to an engine deficiency, it also applies to warriors and rockos. This is the biggest balance problem in the cloaky factory at the minute, units are far less useful than they should be because they keep killing each other. If I counted the cause of death for all of my zeuses it would come down to about 1/3 being killed by each other.

1) The old Halberd had a Gauss gun, and was massively OP. It was spammed in huge packs and dominated games. The current weapon is meant to make it weak to raiders and useful only at melee range or vs stationary targets. A high alpha accurate weapon would be able to pick off persuing raiders 1 by 1, and overlaps with the scalpel.

The Halberd is still an amazing unit in a lot of situations, from tanking scalpel and missile cruiser shots to scouting, raiding and early assault. It scales great into late game because it's immune to stray AoE and artillery. It has great eco harass if not caught by raiders.

If you really are encouraged to micro it closed between shots though, that's bad... it would be best to change the script so that it only changes armour state when firing (for a brief period either side) rather than while aiming, but I'm not totally sure how to best achieve that.

2) You have the Impaler. The Wolverine is mostly a mine-layer tool. It's amazing at shot wasting and vs certain enemies.

3) Hermit can attack from any angle on a cliff map, and gets a height bonus. I am reticent to buff any of the spider units that counter llt/defender, because this factory first forces heaps of LLT's/Defenders along every cliff to stop fleas, then totally counters those and forces HLT's there as well. I think what spider needs is a decent flea counter for the spider vs spider and other raider matchups.

4) It's the pathing forcing units to cluster into tiny balls, this never used to happen to the Zeus.

5) Tremor has more HP than most artillery. More AoE than most artillery. Flattens terrain, so even if it sucks it has massive utility usefulness. I'm not sure tank needs a better tremor.

6) Almost all anti-heavy counter are EMP, which sucks. I think we need something like this. I dunno about it being on gauss specifically because it is accurate and can hit multiple targets.

7) What it really needs is synergy in the factory. It should slow targets for Jack but Jack frequently gets in the way of its shot. Maybe it's time to give it jump, but I honestly think we already have too many units that require that split-second micro in this factory (I always end up hitting H for share!). Still, Godde uses it incredibly well.

quote: The Wolverine is mostly a mine-layer tool. It's amazing at shot wasting and vs certain enemies.

Except the mines do nothing to actually kill enemies, and are easy to detect/avoid because need constant replenishment.

Anybody caught trying to use Wolverine as a mine laying tool and not a cheap man's tremor screen would be shortly massacred by anything opposition deems funny.

Shot wasting is a very niche and gimmicky application, which can be also achieved by every constructor ingame.

One useful quality it might have is long-range cloak hunting (snipers, scuttles, whatever) - but that's a niche thing yet again, and i've only seen that application in 10x10zkicyrun games.

Not saying wolverine is bad or useless: just that its current applications are very narrow and plain weird. It could be more fun, but i lack any fresh ideas on how to make that occur.

Making mines last longer but have a deployment limit per-wolverine has been discussed and found too arbitrary.

actually i have used wolverine as a mine-layer in proper games, they are great at setting up retreat points for your armies. 4 wolverines on attack ground can keep your ravs safe from any kind of chasing units XD

quote: except with 4 more ravagers instead of 4 minelayers, you probably wouldn't be retreating in the first place.

if you are not attack/retreat raiding with ravs you are doing it wrong...

quote: Anything the cudgel does, the jack does much better, and it is hopelessly outclassed by the thug.

no... just no...

another case of learn2units

im just stating that units like the hermit and the moderator have their uses, and if used correctly can be very effective...

its the difference between pros and newbies using units, just because you have not figured out how to use a unit effectively dose not mean that there aren't other people who have, and can use said units to great effect.

PS: [GBC]1v0ry_k1ng you have not provided any suporting evidence for your arguments

@LittleBunnyWabbit

It would be nice if you could:

• Respond in a non-insulting way.
• Actually respond at all.

Anyone can say "Unit X has it's uses". We all know this, it's not adding anything new. You have to make a case for those uses justifying it's cost.

The merits of your balance discussion are determined by the quality of your arguments, not your elo ranking.

Can a moderator clean the thread as requested please, bunnywabbit is not objective and does not contribute usefully here, lets move on.