*** RELEASED ***
Apollo Armor removed
Destructor Plasma Rain Launcher no longer does AOE
Destructor Plasma Rain Range increased from 1200 to 1400
Centaur missiles no longer penetrate armor
Centaur missile AOE reduced from 120m to 60m
Centaur tracking range made to be the same as its actual range (was mistakenly reporting 2250, it's actually only 1850)
Artemis Missile Barrage no longer penetrates armor
Artemis Missile Barrage reduced from 1200m to 1000m
Artemis Missile Barrage rate of fire increased from everty 5.9 seconds to 4.9 seconds
Artemis Missile Barrage Shots per Volley decreased from 3 to 2
Artemis Missile Barrage Accuracy increased from 40 to 66
Artemis Harpoon SAM Rate of Fire increased from 5.2 to 6
PHC and SS Mobile Nullifer logistics increased from 18 to 100
PHC Mobile Nullifier HP decreased from 900 to 300
Substrate Mobile Nullifier Shields decreased from 1200 to 400
Hera HP increased from 900 to 1200, Metal cost increased from 400 to 600 Rad cost increased from 30 to 150
Hera armor increased from 12 to 16
Air Rampager Logistics increased from 4 to 30
Air Rampager HP increased from 800 to 1200
Air Harbinger's logistics increased from 20 to 60
Air Harbinger's HP increased from 1800 to 2400
Punisher logistics cost increased from 12 to 20
Punisher Max Shields reduced from 1200 to 1000
Strategic Bomber logistics cost increased from 20 to 100
Strategic Bomber HP increased from 2500 to 4800
Air Marauder Armor increased from 0 to 16
Air Marauder HP increased from 800 to 2000
Hades logistics cost increased from 12 to 20
Charon logistics increased from 18 to 100
Athena Armor removed
Athena HP increased from 800 to 2000
Strategic Bomber Armor increased from 0 to 16
Strategic Bomber Metal cost decreased from 400 to 120
Caregiver construction time increased from 48 to 100
Caregiver Logistics cost increased from 3 to 30
Can someone tell me unit or missile is the Centaur one? I can't find it. Do you mean the Cronus?
Seems you have made T2 air stronger which was certainly needed
Destructor has some serious range there, will have to see how that plays out.
Hera looks a lot tougher now so might finally make it to a defended line before dying.
Unless it is the Centaur you have done nothing to nerf the artillery post? At the moment the artillery is a bit of a fun killer for me tbh. I think a lot of MP people are not enjoying it. We need radar jammers yesterday really.
In my eyes the biggest problem with game balance right now, assuming similar skill level, are:
1) Artillery kills everything except T3, well lets be honest, all the extra defences kill everything except T3 but artillery stops the army getting close at all. So after the initial expansion and probe the artillery comes up and everyone basically pulls back and turtles up while trying to eek the most out of their eco for push with air and or T3. So PHC can go for artillery creep T3 and lots of furies, while Sub can go T3 and Punishers. Custom games pretty much play out like this every time.
2) Small armies. Well, as mentioned above T1 and T2 become toast quite quickly, unless heavily upgraded in a looong game. But we are always resource starved and T3 cost a fortune so armies are really very small in a game which is meant to be about big armies. I think we need more from either one of the current resource mechanics, or another new level in eco. This might help with problem 3, though you'd have to increase the defence structure costs relative to the new eco so you don't get even more of them.
3) Defence structures are so strong. This game, for me the balance has swung too much to turtlers. I guess for people who just play AI, which I know is the majority, they love the turtling, but for MP games it is not so fun with the current OPness of defences. Perhaps some of the new changes above will help with this and problem 1 as T2 air might be able to help take them out now and Hera is more like a T2.5, but I dunno, we shall see I guess.
Personally I don't find in MP that turtling is too OP - I could see this in custom/team games though - especially on maps with choke points. In 1v1 you still have to go out and contest the map and balance armies with defenses. As mainly a Substrate player, Destructors do their job really well vs defenses/turtlers so have to see how these changes play out. Mobile nullifiers seem hit hard here - have they been confirmed to work in blocking orbitals? I've seen several Steam forum comments that they aren't.
Yeah, you do a lot more 1v1 than me so I won't disagree. In all my recent custom games the vast majority of players have been PHC so my complaints are particularly noticeable.
Aye, seems mobile nullifiers still unreliable. Very expensive too, and now fragile too.
orbital nullifiers is another odd thing tbh, a mini game of creating overlapping nullifiers every game...
Yes, it's the Cronus. For some reason, it's listed as 'Centaur' in the game files. Previous name that was never updated in the background, maybe.
The armor-piercing nerf is interesting considering it still has a level 2 ability that (supposedly) gives armor-piercing to its whole entourage (does that affect itself as well?). If scaling back artillery units was the point, I would have preferred they'd gone with their mobility but we'll see how it pans out.
ah cool, so basically everything that i mentioned is being worked on or adjusted.. i said mobile arty is an issue. i said bombers need to be nerfed. i said T2 air need to be buffed. i said heavy cruisers need a buff. i said subs need a better answer to arty.
only ones i didnt mention are the athena and care giver. thats interesting as it seems people are already complaining that athenas are too strong. wonder how this will work out now.
@ekko_tek bro seriously i think u need to start thinking about the bigger picture. stop thinking about what seems is ur narrow perspective and consider how other players are experiencing the game. turtling is a huge pain in ranked as well. not only in custom matches. at least 50% of YOUR games were won just on sheer rushing the opponent. about another 30% were won vs new/inexperienced players. ive looked at ur stats. this is just approximations but judging from ur play time per match/kills and looking at the opponents, i didnt look at each and every one of them, just at about 20 or so. i dont think u understand what its like to not be u. it happens to a lot of players, they forget what its like to not be themselves. if u could observe the other matches u could see what im talking about. u need to consider the 90% of players that are not
turtling + arty creep is real and a huge pain. "destroyers is the answer" doesnt always work, maybe for u, but not for everyone else. with 3000 range, i would like to see in a mid-late game how u would handle 10 odin posts bombarding u while they are shielded by heavy defenses. and please dont come with a stupid answer like "dont let the opponent reach that state" because thats easier said than done
agreed. this applies in some ways even more to 1v1, since in custom its usually a friendly match so i see players playing for fun and using more of a variety. in the lower tier games in 1v1 it almost always ends up with arty creep vs dominators, high tier games may be different, but so far they have all been lame air rush games so hardly an indication of what units are effective.
i think they need to buff T1 units, which would increase their usage. or nerf the units that are killing T1(there are so many things that excel at wiping droves of T1 off the map) which would in turn increase the army sizes, as opposed to increase res which would mean players could turtle more or just spam more T2.
and just like we need to spam quantra relays, it does feel like we need to spam orbital jammers all over the map making it a mini game like u said.
but yeah as u said, hopefully these changes will reduce the turtling.
It's a fine balance they have, at one side they have to think of the multiplayer community and on the other the 97% of their player base. I'm sure quite a lot of skirmish players like the artillery post as it currently is. I think some other counter to it instead of making it rubbish would be preferable.
It's good to see the T2 air buffed.
Are the orbital nullifiers working now or are they still bugged?
Don't let the opponent reach that state
But seriously (even though I was already serious) it has been a while since I've played vs a good PHC player in 1v1. In base Ashes, many times, but not so far in Escalation. I know the upgraded PHC artillery posts are really good though from playing around in custom team games. I was half expecting them to be toned down in this patch.
Also, most of my games are not won from rushing opponents, they're won from bad match making/lack of online player population. The earlier stages of the base Ashes game had more active and competitive 1v1 players - hoping more of them eventually come back and join Escalation...I was in the top 20 throughout base Ashes and am now at #5 in Escalation so that tells you something about the drop off in 1v1 players playing it consistently. I don't feel that I'm that exceptional a player either. The game doesn't have that high a skill ceiling imo. I feel like I could teach any new player somewhat experienced with 1v1 RTS to get to my position without much trouble. Anyway, this is totally off topic in this thread now but you were calling me out for some reason so thought I'd reply.
thats true, although I havent ever really seen the AI use the arty buildings. wonder if people would have more of an issue if while turtling vs AI they now had to suddenly contend with the AI's arty. if the AI is upgraded to use all weapons, it would mean the issues faced in ranked play would become more apparent in custom matches.. i also wonder if people playing vs AI might become bored with the game if they perceived victory = turtling.
haha yeah i know we shouldnt let them reach that state, but if the match somehow ends up being a pretty fair fight with similar map control, then naturally the PHC will go arty posts. i also thought the arty might be toned down a bit.
i understand the issue of the bad match making, but i would think it would be more apparent the issues of the balance in the game, if more of ur games had not been won so quickly, meaning if u had played less aggressively and let the opponent play more, a lot of gamers are not as bad as top tier players think, they think its worse since the lower tier players are just not as fast in the start but by mid-late game the difference in skill is much less noticeable. as u said urself the skill ceiling is not that high, but playing very aggressively negates that. and it actually comes down to APM, not skill. thereby giving a warped sense of what is or is not balanced.
at least Escalation is now sitting with a "very positive" rating. so i think its just down to getting the game into the public view, in order to help the player base. so u can drop back down to the top 20 im watching the ladder, and it does seem to be slowly filling up at least..
on this same note, have u considered letting ur opponents live longer, in order to encourage them to enjoy the game? as opposed to squashing them in 10min, and possibly making them think the MP community is too rough on new comers and thereby not enjoyable?
I remember a discussion in sc2 about "swarm hosts" it was a unit which is able to deliver dmg over a huge range. It spawned units that died after a few sec. The range of the unit was s=v*t. Protoss had colossus and terran a medic against it and you could even reduce the dmg of the "swarm host" with killing the the spawned units. People complained about it and they patched it out of the game.
What we have in the game now is a arty which can deliver dmg over huge range with no real counter in time.
This forces really static gameplay.
I most of the time close a supreme commander videos after they started the static long range commander snipes
The APM requirements are not very demanding. Maybe more than Sins of a Solar Empire but still less than most other RTS games. There is some micro in using air, workers, the Avatar but once you can manage the basic APM requirements, the skill differential comes about in balancing eco and military growth as efficiently as possible, having the right combinations of things in the right place at the right time (with good scouting helping you), and use of orbital abilities at the right time - those especially can really swing games as I'm sure you know.
I have and do. I very rarely if ever air rush a new/low rank player. I usually just expand and turtle up and let them go for the same. Sometimes they quit after the first battle though when they see the score difference. There are some veteran Ashes players still in lower ranks that haven't played much Escalation yet that will surprise you sometimes too.
yeah the APM is not THAT demanding, but the effect of the difference between someone air rushing, and someone who is playing normally becomes very big when the normal player is dead within 10min. they might have been a decent player, but because the opponent exploits a mechanic they are now dead.
also u are talking about the mid term stuff. air rushing kills the game before it even reaches that stage of orbitals etc. watching other players, i think the air rushing is an even simpler build than i thought, but still kills of most players, compared to any other simple strategy in the game.
so maybe i had u wrong and im generalising u along with the other prestige players. ive never met anyone that surrendered so i find that hard to believe that anyone would quit after seeing ur score, but ill take ur word for it. even with TOTAL map control ive never had an opponent quit, they were down to only their nexus or 1-2 nodes, and they still didnt quit.
i think the arty ENCOURAGES static play from PHC, but FORCES aggressive play from SS, since how else can SS counter arty except by playing aggressively? i would think as SS u certainly cant turtle up, since arty will win that war..
I remember in FAF for a very long time high skilled players would go first bomber and micro the thing to drop it's bombs off in a shorter pass and to take sharper turns, I think it ended most matches in 5 minutes. They had to take away a lot of it's effectiveness when it was discovered it was getting rid of most of the new players.
The issue is not bombers or dominators. It's the small player pool with new players being matched with high level players. It's also not having replays. Once we have replays, at least new players (and there's nothing wrong with getting stomped in your first few matches, you kind of have to expect that to a certain degree) will be able to learn from their losses. We also need more "how do I counter this?" or "what's a good strategy for X?" threads rather than please nerf this so I don't need to learn to play better or adapt. Not saying there aren't genuine balance issues at times, just that you have to rule out lack of experience or less than optimal play first.
We can not even talk about balance at this moment while defense buildings do not shot and even with this strange behavior they are way too good. It can simply not be the case that a win or a lose is decided if your defense is willing or not to attack your opponent ...
fortunately ive never seen this happen except for when terrain blocked the shot. but i agree defenses do seem OP. and thats why it seems the game is becoming about sniping the jammer so u can orbital.
yeah thats also true, but its easier said than done. we also cant just spawn more overlords ie spawn more players. we cant just match low skill vs low skill players. and i still believe air rush detracts from the game. its supposed to be a grand strategy game.
what other strategy in the game allows for such a quick victory that is also so difficult to counter (in conventional terms) u need to see things from someone else's perspective. working with the player base that is currently in effect, what % of players can actually counter that? and if they can, why would they choose to play ashes? why not play some other rush intensive game? how many people play ashes because it IS NOT starcraft? yes i know there are players who play both (myself and alphaape included)
if we are going down the road of rush victories, then why allow creeps? why not block creeps so we can rush victory with land units as well? so that PHC has a rush option too.
why have the unified army option, if u think the micro in <5 min for dominators is what the game should be like? why not give furies the same air to ground capability so PHC has the same <5min rush option?
think of this.. there is only an incredibly small % of players who benefit from air rushing. do u think its a good idea that prospective future players are deterred from playing since they get instawiped by air rushing?
You have to really think about balance at the moment it is horrible
arty has still 3200 range. It still has the same AEO.. same damagethe Centaur missiles are not from the arty... I don´t even know which unit the centaur missle has. could be the weapon of the cronos, however in game its has another name.the harbinger dont shoot....the Strategic Bomber is now nearly invulnerable... maybe you should check this???there is no aa unit or building which can destroy this unit... it destroys your base at go back to get healed....just a example: a athena as strong as two mauler : I tested it several times vs dasunding the hp of the athena was always above 1000 hp vs a mauler.... but the substrade don´t have any other units vs athena.... caretakerß?? 30 logistics? and 100 sec??? the more or less useless unit, which heal 10 hp evrey 5 sec???? however the most units kill the substrate units immediate!!!In the video you can see the mauler its the substrate unit with the most shields+hp...instant kill vs 10 hp each 5sec... great support unit!!!nullifier on both sides they never really worked (buggy) and now they need this high amount of resources and logistic?????The game is not playable any more... the balance is broken....
I think you have to complete change everything and start by zero and build it new, making new concepts.
There are a few things:
-every unit has to be usefull in every point in time (pan, zeus, and more...)
-not the same concept in form of units for every race (not a mauler like and a athena like unit for every race...)
-at least two ways to play a race
-every unit is counterable with a unit of the other and the same race
Yes, the Centaur is the Cronus Dread.
On top of the items you mentioned, the mouseover tooltip on its weapons says it also still has armor-piercing, too.
I have seen this as well with the Artillery. I dont' think it's a bug in the game but rather a bug in the design of the artillery post in that it needs to be able to tilt more.
When I've seen it fail, it's because the unit it wants to target it can't get a clear shot at because of a hill or other obstruction which you don't really notice when looking from above.
Re air rushing, I have some thoughts on this that will go into the next balance update for the Substrate.
cool, im finally on leave so dont have to worry about people dying(so less stress), so i dont mind about air rushing but lets see how it goes
but the substrade don´t have any other units vs athena....
caretakerß?? 30 logistics? and 100 sec??? the more or less useless unit, which heal 10 hp evrey 5 sec???? however the most units kill the substrate units immediate!!!
nullifier on both sides they never really worked (buggy) and now they need this high amount of resources and logistic?????The game is not playable any more... the balance is broken....
what about the star vurst vs strategic bomber? i havent tried it, but it kills everything else so quickly?
as i said the athena and the caretaker were interesting balance changes..
the nullifiers are bugged, but when they do work (once fixed) i think the balance to them is justifiable. otherwise we have people spamming them and making orbitals almost unused..
i wouldnt say the game is unplayable.. it just heavily favours the PHC now. but still playable. especially for SP.
i agree with the changes, but a complete change might be a bit extreme to implement. i would like each unit to have a purpose and each unit to be countered by the opposing faction, and i would certainly like multiple ways to play the different factions, but maybe this can be done without a "complete change to everything"
currently i like how the races have unique units in general, yet at the same time i dont mind that they share similarities to the opposite faction, like the mauler and athena
thats what i said
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