Assault bots thread.

[:1]Hey people!
I would like to ask your opinion on something that has been bothering me. I am very curious in what exactly is wrong with assault bots. This is mainly so I can fix it in my mod, but also because I am wondering what their actual purpose is.
For cybrans, its easy. Its their main combat unit. Assault bots are supposed to be fast, but inferior to tanks in combat. But they should be rather good at raiding, and harassment has always been a powerful tool. In theory, UEF and Aeon should be able to hold the front line with tank/arty/PD/shotjas while sending assault bot raids around the back. But I never ever ever see Titans and Harvogs used, unless you are exploiting them to kite Loyalists. And sometimes when someone is being cheeky spamming only mobile artillery. But theyre never used for their purpose, which should be raiding.
So, main question: What is wrong with Assault Bots?
Is it their inability to outrun tanks? I have buffed their speed a bit in my mod, but that just doesnt seem to do the trick. Is it the Harvog/Titan's lack of DPS, and so lack of ability to destroy anything before tanks arrive? Is it the fact that theyre simply too weak compared to tanks? Assault bots can be microed to dodge tank shells, but for some reason loyalists perform way better when doing this.
Edit: How do you people feel about the "dodge micro" on assault bots? You can improve their combat ability by dodging shots, but is this an addition to the game, or redundant micro? Pr0 1337 skills, or should bots just perform reasonable to begin with and dodging be impossible/less effective?
Opinions please =)
PS: Yes, Mike, I ended the thread title with a period.|||Mex health. It means you either need a significant number of bots to get round the enemy or the enemy to derp and not notice for a very long time.
Indeed, when being botswarmed as UEF I quite often end up using mexes with an engy to tank damage while I slaughter bots without reproach.
I guess you could also change the speed so that it would be impossible for tanks to defend outlying mexes, so that the foe is forced to use their own bots to defend such positions. But honestly, if you do that they'll just tech and kick your *** with AC1k's or something.. And, shock horror, it might make cybran OP!!!
Also, I rather liked the way FA worked in this regard: Light Assault Bots were unlocked from the start for all factions (and mech marines were awesome!), and would generally be unable to stand up to a tank in a fight but were useful because there was a lot of ground to cover, there were more targets to hit (FA mexes were DIRT cheap so everyone built them everywhere), and also because of the land scout unit which meant they didn't have to run blindly in. They had movement speed to cover this ground, and they also had micro dancing to avoid shots/exploit slow turret turn speed in the very early game.
On the other hand all this did have a tendancy of meaning that a player who was bad at micro could be hamstrung so early in the game that playing the next few minutes became pointless, and although they could have put up a good fight if not raided they would simply die due to massively inferior eco. And everyone would slip up with their raiding party now and then and put themselves at a massive disadvantage.|||Lower mex health would also make harassment by air a lot more powerful. That actually doesnt sound that bad. With all the nerfing I have done to bombers and buffs done to AA, I suppose it would make bombers more of a harassment unit. Could work out. In case I change something, what would you like to see for the health? Its now 4K.
Other ideas? Keep it coming |||I've now done about 6 edits on my original message neph |||Well, I cant make the maps larger or units smaller (Well, technically I can, but thats called "Revamp Mod"), so I cant make it work like in FA. I probably cant make assault bots weaker, faster and cheaper either, since Cybran dont have tanks. Word had a fancy idea, in which we just do that to UEF and Aeon (Cybran would have "Heavy" assault bots), so their assault bots have a different feel and purpose. I myself was playing with the idea of making titans and harvogs almost the same as loyalists, decreasing their range but buffing DPS. Extra DPS would make them better at raiding, after all. I can also decrease Titan and Harvog RP cost. Furthermore, Gundam threw in the idea of a cost and build time decrease - especially build time. Harvogs take 10% more resources and time to build than tanks, after all. I could make that 10 or 20% less than tanks, with appropriate stat changes ofcourse.|||Raiding outlying Mexes is something already readily accomplished by fighterbombers. In turn those same fighterbombers are used to defend against mex raids and work well against air and bots trying to raid.
According to this theory, UEF should be easiest to mex raid against since that don't have a unit that can defend against both bombers and bots.|||Nerf acceleration, breaking and turning on tanks. Right now, they're all set to 10 for accel. and breaking and 270 degrees/sec for turning.
Actually make a difference between walking and non-walking units. Right now, you could swap the health, dps, range of units and they're perform identically.|||Manta|||BulletMagnet|||That's what he means. Walkers are meant to maneuver, tanks are meant to be... well... tanks.|||Manta|||How does that affect brackman dodging though? I don't wish to go back to the times where cybran just spam brackmen to hold the fort while teching...|||Probably makes them quite a lot stronger compared to now.You could still use bots as a viable counter to mass arty, but rockhead/demolisher would be just as kickass as nanogun vs land units...
Edit: Making only walking units react so fast would also result in an indirect buff to air - you wont be able to spread units out quickly, and mobile AA will be less effective.|||Remember, this is still on a per-unit basis. You could make Brackmans run around like ninjas if you liked, or you could make them turn slower than the UEF ACU.|||Well, the idea sounds interesting enough, its just that I absolutely dont want to buff mobile arty..|||Well if anything you'd be nerfing them. Making artillery more cumbersome would making kiting with them much harder.|||Assault bots need more BOOOM BOOOM.... KABOOM
Thats all I have to say.|||There's also the other unit build you can consider for bots.
Units with low health but high regeneration (And quick shield rebuild) are very good at dealing with occasional AoE damage, making a raid and being quickly ready for another battle. Maybe you could consider this for bots.|||I like all these ideas. Just keep in mind that im restricted because Loyalists are still the main combat units for cybrans. I can leave loyalists as they are and change titans/harvogs, though.|||Actually that is a point - If you make such acceleration changes on tanks, you could make them the same on bracks, only even more severe so that doing more than light harrying or ground fire is rather more difficult to do because running away is very difficult. It might also encourage players to split up their tank blobs which leads to interesting micro dynamics and choices but you'd need to make sure assault bots really couldn't stand up to tanks in direct fights, or you'd just end up blobbing large botswarms to kill the divided tanks..|||Many interesting points. I understand that because the Cybran's dont have tanks making universal changes across the board will be iffy at best. I think the most notable difference from FA to SupCom 2 is the cost and build time. Assault bots are more expensive and take longer to build (not by much, a >5 mass and energy and 2 seconds). FA bots were half the cost and took half as long to build. In equal mass, going up against tanks they would lose unless excellent micro was used by one player; however, they easily outran tanks and could hit places and get out before the tanks could react.

I do want to note something. The two branches of the Cybran Tech Tree look as if to give two different options for Cybran Bots. The top tree looks to make Heavy Assault Bots where as the bottom is for the speedy in/out assault bots. Dont know how, but maybe that will make it easier to factor in some decisions neph.|||I have absolutely no problems with loyalists, dont get me wrong. The problem I have lies with Titans/Harvogs. Whether they really suck or are just unappreciated, I do not know, but thats why I made this topic. For me personally, I have to quote Duncane:
duncane|||I don't like the idea of nerfing tanks's turning speed and acceleration as these are factors which affect a player's perception of gameplay. Slowing down the most basic unit in the game slows down the overall pace of the game.
Instead we should look at it from the point of view of assault bots. One idea is to give bots radar stealth and a large vision radius. This would mean that they would have the advantage of being able to pick their engagements. They would see a tank blob before it sees them and could run away. It would force players to physically scout approaches to their base and stay aware of what is going on on the map. This would naturally work better if we had an actual scout unit.
I mentioned the idea jokingly in another thread. I think that this would give bots a unique role without affecting gameplay as dramatically as the proposed tank change. Decreasing or increasing the cost/damage/health ratio could also help differentiate them. Bots could be a unit used to swarm your opponent while tanks individually have more staying power but overall would be no more or less effective.|||Harvogs... one of the "issues" with this assault bolt is that because it does not hover, it does not have nearly the same mobility as the other Aeon land units. If you are playing on a map with water, why bother building Harvogs that have to traverse land (which may require them to become separated with the rest of the land forces) and possibly 'punch' through chokepoints?
One of the things I liked about Harvogs was that they have AA and are on the way to Urchinows. Oh wait... problem detected. Aren't the majority of the opinions on Urchinows that they are too slow and/or too little range? So why go down that path in the tech tree?
In my opinion, in order for Harvogs to be worth the resources and RP, they need to have a small build time to effectively mass up larger amounts of them (let's face it, you build them for the DPS, not their longevity. The more you have, the more DPS you have available and the more you can afford to lose while still maintaining effectiveness) and their AA needs to be powerful. If you are forced to split your Yenzoos, Fistoosh, Bodabooms, and Crahdowns from your Harvogs, the Harvogs are then very vulnerable to gunships or F/Bs. Thus, their AA needs to be able to keep them alive long enough to do their job.
TL;DR - Harvogs need a faster build time and better AA.
EDIT: I like Neph's idea of farther visibility range. Imagine raiding the flank of a base with Harvogs and using them to "scout" what they want to strike first. Sounds like a good implementation to me.|||Your points about the Urchinow path are valid, but that is already solved in my mod. Willy, Urchi and Airnomo have all been buffed substatially. And though Harvogs cant go on water, their AA makes any air except for air with splash upgrade essentially useless, and makes for a quick path to urchinow or airnomo at the same time, so it is definately a useful path now. Im still not quite sure about the unit itself though.