Overrunning your opponent with siege assault bots
One interesting facet of how the game changes at higher tech levels is that the health-to-damage-output ratio gets a lot higher. This is something you’ve definitely noticed subconsciously, but maybe didn’t consider explicitly. Tech 1 units kill each other in a few hits. Put together a battle of many tech 1 units versus many tech 1 units and the fight is still over pretty quickly because each unit is like a paper tiger: it can put out a lot of damage compared to how fragile it is. But as tech levels go up, so do the ratios.
Tech 2 on tech 2 fights (not that you’ve ever seen one) go on longer because increase in damage doesn’t ramp up as quickly as increase in hit points, with the sole exception being tech 2 point defense turrets, which are as deadly to T2 units as T1 PD is to T1 units. But by the time you get to siege assault bots, this increased ratio is especially noticeable, and there are no tech 3 point defenses. Siege assault bots have 5,000 hit points and only do 100 damage per second, so a 1-on-1 battle between siege bots lasts a full fifty seconds. Contrast this with tech 1; you’d never ever see a battle between two T1 units taking 50 seconds, unless for some reason the units weren’t actually hitting each other.
But why does this matter? you may be asking. So what if the damage-to-health ratios go down at higher tech levels; that just means the battles take longer, right? Not quite. Consider the case of combat where the units are moving. Say, one army is moving towards another player’s base, and the defending player has his own army at his disposal. At tech 1, the two armies will chew each other up very quickly, and the base will be safe. At tech 3, however, the attacking siege assault bots will still be mostly intact by the time they run through the defending army and enter the base, tearing it to shreds. Siege assault bots will last about 50 seconds when fighting against equal numbers, and that’s way more time than is necessary to “remodel” a base.
So you see where the name Siege Assault Bot comes from. It’s because the units are designed for making (or breaking) sieges, not for high damage output. Siege assault bots are thus excellent attackers but only so-so defenders. To really defend against a siege bot assault, you need to meet them far away from your base with your own siege bots and chase them all the way to your base, inflicting as much damage as possible en route. This is a battle pattern you see repeated time and time again in replay after replay.
As is usually the case, the best defense is a good offense. If you and your opponent both have large numbers of siege assault bots, you don’t want to be the poor sucker stuck in the unenviable position of having siege bots rampaging through your base. Strike first, safe in the knowledge that there isn’t much the enemy can do to stop you with his own siege bots unless you meets your army head-on in the middle of the battlefield. And remember that the point of the game isn’t to kill your enemy’s combat units, it’s to kill their base (and commander). Kill the units and more will be ready in five minutes; kill the base, and no more will be coming. So overrun the enemy units and strike at the base.
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Sounds like a strong argument for walls (especially some T2 taller walls!) ;)
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
That also means that a non-Aeon SAB will spend around 40 seconds whacking a wall. Two layers of ‘em in front of your defensive line gives you enough time to fry the SAB. Since you’ve *hopefully* got shields up on your defenses, you can giggle and watch the SABs wash against your defenses. Yay!
April 23rd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
A good point for blocking of your economy base from the rest with 2-3 layers of walls.
And en masse of PD’s behind it.
April 23rd, 2007 at 1:00 pm
This is yet another area in which Aeon excel. Most people don’t quite realize how ridiculously powerful the reclaim ability on Harbingers is. Harbingers can also still shoot while reclaiming, so after reclaiming the walls and waltzing right through, have them reclaim enemy buildings for a resource boost while they are simultaneously destroying them with their guns.
April 23rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I like the way this is balanced. It prevents the late game from turning into a dull turtle wall where both of you spend 30mins playing Sim City and winning by having the best economy and outproducing your opponent. Adding in more advanced walls and T3 defences would be a disaster. You can still build 10 or 15 T2 PD’s and a shield gen and they’ll stop all but the most huge T3 siege bot army. At that sort of stage you really want to be thinking about masses of SCU’s and experimentals anyway.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:00 pm
GPG should probably split them into siege bots and assault bots. Right now they both siege and assault things and they probably shouldn’t. The siege bots would be slow and powerful while the assault bots would be quick and best used to surround and wear down opponents.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
I find this effect is amplified with upgraded SCU’s… It takes a very, very, very well defended base to stop 20 Cybran SCU’s upgraded with regen.
April 23rd, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Kremjarin, remember that once your PDs are farther from the walls than the units you’re trying to kill, the walls are working against you. Two layers of walls would seem to be the max, as they need to be separate by two units of space or so, and you’d still be able to blow a hole in them with a strat bomb, which would ruin your day if you’re hoping the walls are going to stop something.
The other alternative is to build a pile of Miasmas. Two Miasmas could theoretically neem 28 Loyalists per volley if they managed to bunch up *just* right. More likely you’re only going to hit two or three at a time, but tearing away 90% of something’s health certain helps turn them back into paper tigers.
Looking at it, a Miasma with 30 kills (Vet lvl 1) will one-hit SABs.
I don’t see how you could stop 20 SCUs, though. I mean, a pile of strat bombers?
Totally random, but why does the Aeon tac missile suck so hard? It has half the speed of the others, has the same AoE, and fires very slowly.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Although this is really outdated and stuff, doesnt this make the Aeon T3 siege bots better than the rest? If they can reclaim *AND* shoot, they could effectively drain and shoot hitpoints of a unit.