The power of Scathi
CydeWeys and I were recently involved in a nice 4 way free for all on Four Leaf Clover. The other two participants were Fargone and Dl_Smokey. While it was a long match, there was plenty of action throughout.
You will notice at the start that I very quickly fall far, far behind the other players. This is because I had selected ‘random’ for my faction, and ended up with UEF. Unfortunately for me, the UEF tech 1 mass fabricators and power generators look deceptively similar, and I built two mass fabricators immediately and let them run long enough to completely drain my energy before I realized what had happened. It subsequently took me almost two minutes to build my first tech 1 power generator.
I was certain I would rapidly be defeated after that, but the other players left me in peace long enough that I was able to build up a basic defense. Smokey also engaged in substantial early game harassment, severely hampering Cyde’s early progress, and then launching a crippling attack against Fargone. With these factors in my favor, I was able to actually gain the point-score lead for most of the remainder of the game.
After the initial action, all four players go into turtle mode. Cyde concentrates on his economy and Scathi, while Smokey builds arrays of Tech 2 artillery and other defense, and eventually nukes. This proves a good decision, as I produce several Fatboys, but they are rapidly brought down by the combination of artillery and Cyde’s Scathis.
Once the game passed the initial stages with three players relatively intact, it seems like the outcome was basically predetermined. Trying to attack Cyde with Fatboys while under fire from Smokey’s artillery proves impossible, and it is only a matter of time before Cyde gets two Scathi. With these, he can easily pierce any defense. Unfortunately, the other two factions don’t have an attack option that is competitive with the Scathi on these sorts of maps. Since we agreed to play without Mavors, the only other real late game turtle breaker becomes nukes, which are several times as expensive as Scathi. While it is possible to hold out against a single Scathi, two is just too much, and Cyde rapidly uses them to gain victory.
All in all though, it was a fun match, with plenty of good action throughout. My only regret is messing up the first couple minutes. A thought that I have all too commonly now enters my head: “If only I had gotten siege bots two minutes earlier…”
May 13th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Um, isn’t one of the players building a mavor on the top right hand side?
May 13th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Terse: Yeah, guess he didn’t hear the rules. His loss though, as he didn’t have nearly enough resources to complete it before he died, and had it ever become active, everyone would have focused on him for violating the game rules.
May 13th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Did I see that right? Did Fargone’s commander explode in CydeWey’s base? How in the world did that happen? Sometimes I wish replays would have a rewind button…
May 13th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Although my future FFAs probably won’t be no Mavors. Grokmoo has made a good point that it does harm the UEF, and they’re really not that overpowered, being so hideously expensive (and easy to take out).
May 13th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I guess I’ll have to watch it again. Were you all on random faction? Sorry to keep posting a lot, just lots of questions. I was a bit surprised that Smokey didn’t build a Scathis, is that why you focused your attack on Grokmoo?
May 13th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Nope, I think it was just Grokmoo who was on random faction. I chose Cybran specifically because of the Scathis. I basically always choose Cybran on smaller maps that are liable to run on for the end game for precisely this reason. Scathi are simply the best stalemate-breaker. Nothing can beat them in terms of winning a game with less mass. Two Scathi only cost 162K mass; compare this to the cost (390K mass) of the three nuke launchers you need to be able to win with nukes (as two or fewer nukes can just be stopped by anti-nukes). A Mavor is also a game-ended, but it costs a lot more than two Scathi. Monkeylords, Galactic Colossi, Soul Rippers, CZARs, and to a lesser extent, Fatboys, can all be easily stopped by base defenses.
So the Scathis is the undisputed king at ending stalemates.
May 13th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
looking forward to watching this! =)
will i desync if I have a mod for AirSuperiorityFighters?
May 13th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
AHAHAHA okay Fargone will fit right in for a NoRush game ;)
Nice buildings but poor strategy.
May 13th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
The problem with Scathi are that they really do not perform well at all against a base well layered in T3 shields, with a crew of SCUs keeping watch replacing any stray shields that get blown up. Cyde has his 2 Scathi trained on Grok’s gateway for a while in that game, and even 2 Scathi don’t actually punch through very much there before he turns them on the stuff in the middle, and most of those were T2 shields. They are amazing at ripping up poorly shielded or unshielded bases, and causing general disruption and panic among opponents. But I’d recommend checking out the ranked 1v1 replay on the vault of stratboy versus thebigone on Isis, it’s a 1:14 duration game where BigOne has 2 scathi railing on stratboy’s base, but he has an excellent layer of T3 shielding that he replaces with SCUs as soon as they get blown up. The scathi do very little actual damage. Their inaccuracy is a big drawback.
As for that map, I would give strong consideration to a siege bot + SCU gradual push into the middle building T2 PD and T2 arty before T4 starts showing up. I feel that T2 artillery does not get used enough in many games. Also don’t forget that you can use adjacency bonuses to boost the fire rate of T2 artillery as well. You can just queue up 2 parallel diagonal lines of power gens, and then queue up a line of T2 artillery in between them to quickly build a line of T2 arty with full adjacency bonuses. This is great at cracking shield+T2 PD defensive lines, and with your own T3 bots and SCUs guarding it you force your opponent to either charge you or fall back, either way you have the advantage. An earlier cleaning out of the middle area in this regard would have later allowed the fatboys to take less fire when moving into position to deal with the Scathi.
May 13th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Diotoxx: I don’t think adjacency bonuses make artillery fire faster; don’t they just make them use less energy when reloading?
May 13th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
If you look at my shielding arrangement, while it is not optimal, it is actually pretty good, and I would argue that the Scathi really had no problem ripping through it. You need to make use of a lot of T2 shields, by the way, since they can be entirely inside T3 shields, and not take splash damage until the T3 shield goes down.
In any event, one should note that I spent about 210k mass on the 3 fatboys I built, which can easily be stopped by a wealth of options, yet the ~160k mass on 2 Scathi provide for a far more effective method of attack, since you can put them in your base where they are much easier to defend. Also, I think diotoxx is underestimating how difficult it is to put a force in the center of the map while under fire from 20 or 30 T2 artillery. : )
May 13th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Power generators adjacency bonus with T2 artillery makes them shoot faster. The higher tier the pgen, the better the bonus. I just had to double check this in a sandbox skirmish to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind here. Set up a test where you build 5 T2 artillery in a straight line, give the first one 4 power gens, the next one 3, and so on so each one should have a different firing rate, and then order them all to shoot at a point on the same direction as your line of artillery is so they spend the same amount of time turning to the target. They will all shoot, and then they start shooting staggered, with the first to fire a second time being the one with 4 T1 pgens around it. If you do it with T2 pgens there is even more of a staggered second round of shots, but doing that with higher than T1 pgens is impractical and silly.
Also there is no bonus for T3 artillery or mavors, despite the fact that if you build pgens adjacent to them it does display an adjacency link up graphic.
Now I’m all bothered by the fact I cannot find documentation of this ANYWHERE. I don’t remember where I initially read this, I’m not seeing it in the manual, and the manual’s section on adjacency bonuses is incredibly weak.
May 13th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Ugh, I wrote far too much. I shall summarize my page of comments in a few nifty bullets.
() Grokmoo needed more shielding (obviously). I wish he had dragged the fight out a little longer to give Cyde a little bit harder of a time - I like a good fight.
() Forgone was a hermit for a while. This isn’t a bad thing per say, but he didnt capitalize on it. When he was first attacked by Smokey he waited an excruciatingly long time to place even the most minor defenses. He also had no radar, which didn’t help his situation. He did however have the clever idea of placing a fire base on the area behind his base. I think it would have been interesting to have more of this area capitalized.
() I wish there had been more mid-game fights. I understand there is an issue with tier two and the artillery making things difficult, but you don’t have to assault the front lines. Cyde was pretty smart in defending each side of his base, but there was a sigifigant difference in their strength. Grokmoo put some hurt early on my sweeping his siege bots around his defenses, though this effect can be debated due to the arrival of tier three economy.
Overall I think it was a fun match. I would like to compliment each player for his efforts. Each had their own strategy and their own set of weaknesses. I was suprised by all of the players in the area of radar though. I know the omni sensor is not the game ender, but in my mind it certainly is one of the key elements of tier three - especially on a smaller map. Good game guys! I wish I could play more pickup matches like this. It makes me want to get play a few rounds right now actually, ahh but there is a paper to finish…
May 13th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
@ diotoxx:
You’re not crazy. The adjacency bonuses are all in the unit DB. In any event, adjacency works the same on T2 and T3 artillery. What determines whether the actual rate of fire is increased goes as follows:
Stationary arty has a ROF stat (which determines the maximum possible rate of fire) and an energy drain stat (which determines how much energy is drained per shot and how fast that energy is drained before the arty can fire again).
In all T2 Arty, the ROF stat is 0.5 (same as Scathis), which means that theoretically it could fire once every 2 seconds. It doesn’t because the energy drain stat is 20 times the energy drain per second stat (example: energy drain is 1000, energy drain per second is 50, so it takes 1000/50=20 seconds to charge up between shots). Pgen adjacency lowers the energy drain stat, so that it takes fewer seconds to power up the arty.
T3 arty has a ROF stat that is higher than the energy drain stats (example, Disruptor has ROF 0.0625, or 1 shot every 16 seconds, but it recharges every 10 seconds). This means that although adjacency will cause it to use less power overall (adjacency can save you 6000 energy every 4 seconds if you surround a Mavor with T3 Pgens, for instance), it cannot increase the Rate of fire, because it is already firing at the maximum rate (the limiting factor is the ROF stat, not the energy drain as it is with T2 arty).
May 13th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Would one of you guys care to write an article on this? Present it here and in the forums? It seems like the two of you are mighty knowledgeable on this subject. I for one am pretty clueless when it comes to crunching numbers dealing with artillery. Also, if you could include a replay of a demo, showing the details which you describe, it would be a great visual.
May 13th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
amanasleep: Great info, and yeah, I like Maelos’ idea. If you’d like to write this up into a full post, please go for it!
May 14th, 2007 at 2:42 am
amanasleep: Please, I’d love to read an article on all of this. This is actually the first time I’ve heard about the T2 arty fire rate and the adjacency bonus. Thanks for that tip!
May 14th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Well, guys, there’s not much more to tell. That’s pretty much the entire story of Artillery adjacency. Since Artillery is being rebalanced in the patch, maybe I’ll write something about it after the changes are in.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Fantastic, great to know! So how much can actually be gained? For example, how much faster does a T2 arty fire when surrounded by 4 L1 power generators?
May 14th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
10%. T2 power gives 20%, T3 gives 30%. It’s all in the unit DB.
May 14th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Oh ok, so its the standard 2.5% discount per T1 Power Gen. This really is great to find out. I don’t really see it feasible using T2 or T3 Power Gens, though perhaps T2 could be used for multiple guns. Would certainly be more dangerous.
Thanks again for the insight on this (I really like T2 artillery a lot and use it constantly).
May 16th, 2007 at 6:30 am
@Cyde Weys
“So the Scathis is the undisputed king at ending stalemates.”
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No, its not, the Mavor is, without question. At this point in time, anyway. Tiered sheilds are so easy to construct and maintain, the scathis simply cannot penetrate them. Two or more scathi makes it considerably easier, but the lack or range can become a problem on larger maps.
As far as the fire rate of T2 artillery, you can increase its rate of fire very slightly, however the sheer space required to increase the rate by a very small margin is space wasted that could be used for other defenses (such as more artillery).
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May 16th, 2007 at 9:14 am
pinioncorp: The Scathis is the undisputed king of ending stalemates becuse two of them will break through any level of shielding and because two of them are still way cheaper than a Mavor. We’re not measuring on a “stalemate ends per unit” basis here, because that’s unrealistic. We’re measuring on a “stalemate ends per mass” basis, which is a lot more valid.