Will the new patch favor turtles and artillery?
We’ve been waiting for this patch for weeks upon weeks now and it’s supposed to be this Wednesday. That means all speculation that still needs to be done needs to be done quick, so I’m back for another article! In this one I’m going to take a look at the possible negative effects of the changes we’ve been told about. You know, because gloom and doom is my specialty.
Change is good. Sometimes.
Surely you’ve seen the list Son of Shagrat (a GPG employee) posted about the patch changes, and if not, you really should check it out. There are some really important points on that list. Though many will have an effect to some degree, there are a few changes I’m going to concentrate on for this article.
- T3 is more expensive all around.
- Siege bots vision and weapon ranges have been decreased.
- T2 point defenses are now much more effective because they all lead targets – no more dodging them because they’d always miss if you moved your units.
- All anti-air will now prioritize bombers first.
- T2 ground units are being buffed.
Don’t see how those last few changes will turn the game into a turtlefest? Well, let’s explore that notion a bit, shall we?
Siege assault bots? More like nerf gimper bots, amirite?
First off, siege bots will no longer own the field without effort. Between the added strength behind T2 ground units, the fact that T2 point defenses will actually kill siege bots, and the lessened range of the siege bots, you can rest assured they will have trouble running through defenses now. This means the first person who gets the bots produced doesn’t have an auto-win on their hands, which is good, but it leaves us in a sticky situation. Can you imagine the imminent fury of a line of target-leading Oblivions behind walls and covered in shields? It’s pretty scary. With the patch you’re pretty much required to support your siege bots with mobile missile launchers simply for their attack range, which means those Oblivions will also be covered by tactical missile defenses (or Loyalists). Then, in case something happens and somehow a bot or two gets through, there will be enemy siege bots waiting for you to get into range, or maybe there will be enemy mobile missile launchers waiting to attack you before the Oblivions can even get a shot off. Regardless, you can be sure your precious siege bots won’t have an easy time breaking through or running around a defensive line anymore. I suspect many people currently don’t even bother building T2 point defenses because they know they’ll just miss terribly, but now that they can hit things, I would guess they’re going to become commonplace.
Bombers. Now 417% less effective.
As if SAM launchers and flak spam weren’t powerful enough already, the new patch will see to it that clouding the skies with scouts and interceptors will not distract any anti-air units from spotting the five strategic bombers headed towards their ACU. The bombers will be put first on the list of things to attack while the others are ignored until the bombers are no longer a threat. Strategic bomber ninja mastery is now nearly impossible if it’s not fully impossible. If it were only to stop people from getting a ninja kill on the ACU with two bombers, I think it’d be fine, but prioritizing bombers now prevents any chance of bomber-based strategies from succeeding. Just stick your key units – whether it’s your nuke defenses, your big artillery, your ACU, your upgraded/ing SCUs, your generator-fabricator farms, etc. – behind a line of anti-air and they will never be touched. Building a nuke? Too bad. Such things will no longer be effective because it’ll be nigh impossible to take out those nuke defenses that are deep in your enemy’s base with your bombers, and God forbid your nerf bots ever make it through the front line defenses.
SupCom ping-pong will rule the day.
If your siege bots won’t break through, your bombers won’t make it anywhere near their targets before being shot down, and your nukes are worthless because you can’t take out the nuke defenses, what options do you have, then? Well, you pretty much have two.
- You can build a load of experimental units. They’re being made about 20% cheaper across the board, so while in v3223 you could have had four Monkeylords, now you can have five. Ground units with big guns and a huge amount of health are pretty much the only thing that’s going to break through lines of T2 point defenses, walls, shields, missile defenses, and missile launchers.
- T3 artillery. Lots of it. Artillery is pretty much the only thing in the game that doesn’t have a direct counter. Ground units will get eaten by point defenses that always lead, bombers will be torn up by SAMs long before they drop their payload, nuke defenses are now much easier to defend, and no one falls for tactical missile sniping anymore. Maybe the naval arena will be different, but let’s assume we’re on a map with no water. The only counter to artillery is passive – shields. You can only build so many shields over one spot, yet you can target as many artillery pieces at the same place as you wish. Therefore, artillery will break through any shield cover. Eventually.
Since T3 artillery will own, everyone will be building them like crazy. The amount of artillery shells likely to be tossed back and forth will blot out the sun. Since artillery will break through eventually, you’ll have to target your enemy’s artillery first and artillery shells will be exchanged back and forth until something gets blown up. See? SupCom ping-pong.
Melodrama in the morning.
Of course, without having played with the patch changes, all this speculation should be taken with a grain of salt. No one knows just how nerfed siege bots will seem nor do we now if a line of SAMs will be an unbreakable defense against all air attacks. However, these things do seem plausible, and if they do play out like that, the new patch will indeed favor turtles and ping-pong more than anything else. Games will either be won by early spam or T3 artillery that breaks the shell so siege bots or bombers can get in. And when I say early spam I mean really early – before someone who immediately techs up a factory within minutes of the game’s start can get out a T2 point defense or ten. On a map bigger than 5×5 that will probably require engineer drops and some unit ferrying.
I guess we should assume that while the T2 point defenses are gaining the ability to actually hit stuff, they’re probably being nerfed quite a bit in the damage area to make up for it. This means that while a line of Oblivions will probably be tough to get through, it probably isn’t going to be impossible. Saying otherwise is just my pessimistic side coming through. Then again, with T2’s buff, when you add shields, missile defense, missile launchers, walls, and stationary siege bots to the list of things on the frontline defenses, it’s still quite possible your own siege bots are in for a world of hurt. Regardless, I still don’t see how any air strategies are going to be viable now. There’s a reason time outs were put into the game, and with the way things currently are, if you get a crapload of interceptors and scouts over your base, just call time out and manually target the few strat bombers headed through them. All that won’t be necessary in the near future, so I guess all you can do is build more bombers and pray one gets through.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
I definitely do see these changes contributing to less games being won at tech 3. My guess isn’t necessarily that artillery will take over, but just that higher tech units will be used to win. Whereas previously siege assault bots got the job done, now it will have to be a pack of combat SCUs ten or twenty minutes later into the game. And look for experimental units to see a lot more use in multiplayer. Also, don’t forget that one Mavor or three nuke launchers are guaranteed to win the game, so it might make sense to skip T3 artillery entirely. You can shield up against three artillery reasonably well. You cannot shield against three nukes launched in the correct sequence or a Mavor, however, all of which cost the same as three T3 artillery.
So my prediction is that games are going to go on for a very long while and then the stalemates will be broken by a boring and predictable race to a Mavor or three nukes.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Keep in mind that a Mavor only has 8000 health and that all the T3 arty does at least that much damage. It’s entirely possible that the two the enemy builds in the time you’re building a Mavor will kill your Mavor. How many times have you had the enemy arty get lucky and whack down four of your shields with AoE, only to watch the next round land on shields near the gens and AoE through and kill the first set?
Or whack a fab farm, or an SML?
May 21st, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Until we see the patch, we’re just going to have to trust that GPG is aware of these issues and has play-tested them accordingly. Hopefully it will all come out okay in the end.
One question I have: If bombers are being targeted, what about gunship assaults? Do bombers become the new cover-flight so a gunship strike can infiltrate and remove the AA (Or whatever the target may be)?
T3 artillery uses a ton of energy. It seems to me that a player expecting a ping-pong match is going to run into problems with his economy. Lots of T3 arty uses lots of energy. Lots of energy requires lots of generators/storage, which require lots of shields to protect them against enemy shells. Tip the scales a bit so you don’t have enough energy and suddenly your shields drop after your artys all fire…then a generator gets hit, and you won’t recover the balance.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:26 pm
GPG hasn’t just thrown together a list of fixes and hoped they will work. They’ve been working on the changes for a long time and have had a lot of input from a lot of very good players, none of whom I imagine have pushed for a favourable strategy for turtlers. Yes, T3 has been reduced in strength, but experimentals have become a lot more affordable and economic, so whereby it was just a case of spamming T3 bots, now the construction of a T4 unit could really swing the game one way or another. Also, not all maps lend themselves to turtle on, unlike Isis. Open Palms would be extremely difficult to hole up on without sacrificing a significant proportion of territory.
As for AA targetting bombers as a priority, this really was a required element. In no scenario would you target a scout plane over a bomber and introduced incredible amounts of micromanagement (which was often difficult to do seeing as it became difficult to find the bomber mixed in under an array of aircrat) that really shouldn’t be required.
I really don’t think these changes will turn SupCom into a turtle fest, but more vary the way people attack, rather than siege bot spam or ninja bombers.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:27 pm
That’s pretty easy to solve. If you link your fab farms to storage, it’ll cost you 50 units or so, but you can get an easy 25% bonus on the output from most buildings in addition to the massive storage. Also, RAS SCUs give 3K energy a piece and can take more than two rounds without shielding, so that’s an option, too.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
T2A makes a lot of great points. However, I think it is still very map dependant… any map that has a lot of open approaches to a base (like the main area of Emerald Crater) will probably still get overrun by seige bots since they can attack at any single point and overwhelm the local defenses, unless the game is very close. However, maps that are turtle friendly will probably follow the pattern laid out here of T3 arty vs. T4/SC assaults or nukes/mavors.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Theirs a very easy fix to all this though. DONT PLAY FREAKING ISIS :-)
May 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
If the patch does initially make games resemble long table tennis volleys, I will not be happy. My perfect game is on a small map with tons of early T1 spam, with both teams harassing each other, until a factory can be teched up. I don’t like everyone just sitting still, massing defenses, and teching up until they both think they’re ready to fight. That’s just not as much fun. That said, I think the author is forgetting that the T2 to T3 factory upgrade is going to take longer. I’m not sure how much longer, but if it’s significant, that means there will be quite a delay not only to SABs, but to T3 engineers, which may mean T3 arty won’t be the be all. I would love to see gameplay be as such: Early on, for the first, say, 8-10 minutes, both teams hit each other with large numbers of T1 units. The first land factory upgrade to T2 will be more significant, as MMLs, T2 tanks, and maybe even mobile stealth and shield gens suddenly render the T1 units virtually obsolete. This upgrade to a T2 force will either be met by the opponent accomplishing similarly and engaging in a T2 land war, or a quick victory (have you ever seen how fast T2 tanks take down an ACU? I once transported 12 of them to an unprotected ACU, and he bit it surprisingly quickly). If the T2 land war is still indecisive, the upgrade to T3 land will usher in the third wave of advancements. We’ll only now start seeing the vast fab and gen economies, as well as some support for the T2 land army in the form of the T3 bots and SCUs. Also, base defenses will start advancing, and T3 arty will start pounding them. If still no victor emerges, the experimentals, surely in larger groups than ever before, will decide the game.
Hopefully, this patch will establish 3 or even 4 very different phases of warfare, instead of the two we basically have now. A interesting dynamic I foresee is the differences in factions, specifically in regards to their experimentals. UEF, still the underdog in ranked play, does in my opinion have the best experimentals. Could we start seeing a more evenly-divided use of the three factions among top players? Man, I am excited about the patch.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:45 pm
“They’ve been working on the changes for a long time and have had a lot of input from a lot of very good players, none of whom I imagine have pushed for a favourable strategy for turtlers” – yes, but these ‘very good’ players, infact THE best players, are going to be good enough at attacking to overcome turtlers. the average player might not be so good at attacking. A top player on the other hand will be better at finding holes and weaknesses. It is for that reason that I am very very worried indeed about turtling becoming even more viable from now on. You won’t even be able to bomb peoples fab farms any more if they are anti aired.
May 21st, 2007 at 1:51 pm
But turtling is fun! You should keep in mind that not everybody is against defensive matches, just the majority.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:08 pm
I don’t mind a turtle game here and there, but if most matches I played ended up as such I wouldn’t continue playing SupCom. T1 attacks are generally quite exciting simply due to the large number of units involved. I would rather attack constantly than build for 20 minutes or more for an attack that lasts only a few minutes.
“Theirs a very easy fix to all this though. DONT PLAY FREAKING ISIS :-)”
Indeed. :D However, even something like Open Palms could prove troublesome if T2 PDs are indeed that good. I didn’t see that T2 factory upgrades were being made more expensive, and without being attacked too hard getting a factory to T2 can be done very quickly. This could likely mean very early T2 PDs that would make quick work of large groups of T1 units, especially when supported by T1 PDs and walls and shields. A mass of generators in or behind the start point could allow for all the turtling you need, especially once you get T2 gens up to save space, and if you can make it to T3 you don’t really need that much territory between fabs and SCUs.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
What I am disappointed in is that basically the Cybrans T2 PD has been nerfed. No, it hasn’t been touched (according to those release notes), but the other 2 PDs have been improved so they hit what they are aiming at. This was the *only* advantage that the Cybran T2 PD had. Its DPS has always been so pathetic (116 DPS, even *less* than the T1 PD!!!) compared to the other races (333 Aeon, 225 UEF), but at least it would hit what it was aiming at so it balanced out. Now, the T2 PDs are totally unbalanced.
I guess what this means is that the Cybrans are even more than before the anti-turtlers race. Thankfully, T3 has been deferred for a little longer with the increased T3 factory cost. The Cybrans need to use their advantages (speed, maneuverablility, and stealth) to win before T3 occurs. Otherwise, I think they will get wiped out if they have to go on defense for even a little while.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Well, leading targets doesn’t necessarily mean hitting every shot. Most units in the game lead shots but they still miss. I’m pretty sure the Oblivion will be slow and miss quite a bit, especially since it has some splash, keeping the accuracy of the Cerebus viable. Additionally, if siege bots won’t come in such large numbers and T2 units will instead, having accuracy will be more important due to the lessened amount of health to cut through. Although, with T2 buffed we’ll probably see a lot more mobile shield generators, and that could cause some trouble with the Cerebus.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Well, for what I saw, only t3 land factories will become more expensive. One can get t3 engineers thru air or naval factories, in order to bump up the economy.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:11 pm
This does worry me quite a bit about Cybran defenses. There are just too many things against them. Weak shealds that require lots of micro, incaccurate and low damage/high splash artillery, and very weak T2 PD which will now lose their main advantage over other PD. Plus the increased use of experimentals will be exploiting T2 PD’s low damage even more than before.
In addition, Cyb TML will be slightly nerfed in their firing rate, making them a little less viable as a replacement for artillery. If SupCom does become a turtlefest then Cybran are screwed. I have never won a game with them because of anything that happened inside my base, but what happened OUTSIDE of it.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I hate turtle games, they last too long and the list of game winning strategies falls as game time rises.
May 21st, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Patch testers have unofficially said that the triad and oblivion have had their dps lowered to match their increase in acuracey. They have also said that Cybran have both the best T2 tank and T3 SAB post-patch so I’m not too woried about the Cerebus being outclassed.
I’m pretty sure that it’s not GPG’s intention to encourage heavy turtling (outside of no rush games) but it’s important to keep in mind that the patch testers were high ranked players who pretty take it for granted that turtling isn’t going to win the game; the changes may not have been well tested against turtling strategies.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:07 pm
spamming air scouts should still work… you just have to send them in first, right? =P they’ll be targeted at least until they die
May 21st, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I was pretty concerned about the balance changes in this respect. There’s nothing worse than a turtle friendly balance. If a game is too offensive (i.e. like Total Annihilation where all static defences were pretty redundant) you end up getting quite wild and unpredictable play. Lots of movement around the map. Lots of action. If a game is too defensive then you get a very static game where things play out the same way every time. It’s just a matter of how good your building skills are.
At the moment SAB’s and SCU’s are nicely balanced. IF SAB’s have got nerfed and SCU’s haven’t I don’t see the point in bothering with the siege bots at all. Might as well dig in with a few T2 PD’s and tech up.
Anyway, this is all just idle speculation. We’ll have to see what happens. I hope the games don’t get too long. The fact they’re bringing down the price of experimentals is a good thing. In TA it was pretty easy to max out your resources after 40 minutes or so. Once you had 10 fusions/fabs it’d be pretty hard to spend it. People complain about mass fabs being very powerful in this game but I think that’s a good thing. After an hour the economic race should be over. You want to see the players concentrating on the action, rather than dragging it out for another hour of resource management.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Cybrans have a buff to T2 Artillery as well, and the shield upgrades have been changed to reduce micro. Also, since SCU’s haven’t really been touched, the shift away from SAB’s help Cybrans the most, since they have the most affordable and useful SCU’s and T4’s.
May 21st, 2007 at 6:31 pm
The majority of land TA games are level 1 wth level 2 only making construction units for fusion & adv metal makers. Worked pretty good.
Juika Bloth
May 21st, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Actually that’s not necessarily true. Pretty much all of the T4 units were buffed across the board, so it’s probably not just Cybrans now.
I don’t think it’s going to become a turtle fest, but there will need to be much more intelligent strategy required to crack a base rather than just throwing SABs at it or setting up shield/artillery farms before your opponent. SCUs are going to used far more in combat without a doubt, but I think other units are going to come into play now as well. The modification to bomber accuracy should mean that both t1 and t3 bombers will be used quite a lot more, and the carrier change should make all aircraft much more common.
I do think the games are probably going to be longer though, due to having to set up the occasional firebase near your opponent so you can hold ground and stage attacks closer to the enemy. SCUs are going to help a ton with that.