Leaderboard

Actaully, I’m a bit sad that I didn’t remember to ask for a game ending nuke...

It's nice to see all this activity.

Is this your defense? WAR?!

The concept of a dog attack should be simple enough - when you let it get close and you die, you deserve it. If you complain that you were unaware or you were not paying attention leaving a dog inside your building then that's your problem. Now why would you need a squad to kill a dog, you should be able to kill it by yourself with basic infantry. Hence - a dog should have low health and no armor, it should resist few bullets or pistol shots max, everything else hitting it should kill it. Any soldier has range advantage. And perhaps you can also try this - instead of never-ending insta-melee attacks, give the dog an attack that requires a cool down, which would: 1. Limit the dog to attack one infantry at a time with targeting mechanic 2. Give it a visual and restricting vulnerability before he recovers from attack - if possible, make the attack animation last for few seconds with recovering animation as well -> then it's easy to take it out (imho this was also how it was in RA, the dog couldn't always attack right away and was vulnerable biting the enemy infantry on ground)

Dogs as they are implemented right now are unfit for gameplay. Which is why we're doing our best to develop new versions of the dog. It is true, as Verti and Coolrock put it, that the dog is extremely fun. At least for the first few games. You can run around, woof, and bark at enemies and kill them. But after a while, you discover that they are not as fun as one might first believe. This engine has real trouble when it comes to melee weapons. The dog has had a few internal balance changes already, but one of the changes fixed the issue with the unit. Currently, a dog either dies (unlikely to happen due to its deserved speed and its size) before it can get to you, or a dog closes in (which is usually the case) and initiates phase two. Phase two of dog gameplay is to bite the enemy infantry to death. However, due to the way infantry units and melee weapons are handled, both players will start jumping around to evade either the bite or the bullets. This results in a knife fight where players jump around while the dog spam clicks the attack button while the infantry unit sprays and prays. This is, after a few times, generally considered to be unfun and most feedback supports this. Even then, most times, the dog outright wins (which should be ok in many situations). However, that is not all. The initial version of the dog didn't have an AOW attack. Rather, it had a specific point where the bite would land. This caused issues with units such as the GI and Guardian GI, which can deploy and, when possitioned correctly, be became invulnerable to dogs, as dogs couldn't get close enough to bite. This was solved by the introduction of an AOW effect to the dog. This, in turn, meant that it was pretty much GG for any infantry the moment a dog got close, which it generally did. We lowered its damage output to see if it would balance the dog. Let's just say that it didn't. Infantry, even expensive dedicated anti-infantry ones continued to drop like flies after the dog-infantry knife fight whenever a dog was part of combat. This, however, isn't the only issue with the dog. For example, the map RA2_DunePatrol (soon to receive a massive update, you heard it here first!) doesn't have any base defenses. There's always a player on Dune Patrol that immediately purchases a dog, which is then used to rush the enemy base with. Once there, it starts a rampage killing all infantry in the base, including ones that have just spawned. Due to its speed and attack power, the infantry generally don't stand a chance, which causes a ton of disruption and player deaths. It takes a good coordinated squad to take one down and even then dogs are capable of simply eating through all defenders inside the buildings. This is a ton of direct and indirect damage for a 200 credit unit and even low-skilled players are capable of pulling it off repeatedly. This especially has caused a lot of frustration on those that are on the receiving end. It has also become the go-to unit for clearing your base from infantry. A few GIs or a Tanya that have managed to get to the weakpoint of your warfactory? Why buy three desolators or a Boris to fight them when just one 200 credit dog can deal with the invasion without problems? Most feedback from the people playing the dog acknowledge that it breaks the game in its current form, and that is despite it being useless against buildings and vehicles. We are working towards introducing multiple new dog concepts that will hopefully turn the dog into a balanced and fair addition to the game. We will test all of them but the current version will be shelved.

As you may have noticed in the recent update, a Kennel was teased. Of course, a Kennel would also mean dogs being included. This was quickly covered up on account of it being meant as a joke before getting to the real update. The Kennel icon alone did spark some interest, though we did not intend for that to happen. This is not to say dogs in APB are impossible. Chrono Tanks, MiGs, and Cruisers were impossible before, and yet here we are. What it really boils down to is how can we best implement dogs into APB? After some internal discussion, we have thought it best to ask you, the players, for your input. If you could put dogs in the game, how would you define them? What role would they play? How do we ensure the dogs do not overlap the flamethrower/starshina too much? How would we encourage field use since dogs cannot reasonably damage buildings? How would the attack work? Should dogs even be playable or be AI-controlled bots? These are the questions we're asking, and we would like your response. And yes @des1206 we can easily give the dog a bark on the alt-fire. [blurb]Dogs in APB. A possibility, though we would like your feedback first. More details in the thread.[/blurb]

Smh, cultural appropriation in mafia. These are the times.....

No deployable infantry in APB. Single point bite instead of an AoE bite should work better here. As far as jumping, this happens with any infantry engagement most of the time. Seems like a poor argument to say the unit isn’t fun. If the Attack Dog gets close enough to kill someone, you can’t blame the Attack Dog. Of course players on the receiving end are going to get upset, but that goes for any single time a lower tech unit goes against a higher tech unit. Units can get into a base without base defenses and “go on a rampage” besides just the dog. If the team allows the dog to get into the base, that’s on them. Lowering the health would again probably help out.

I can imagine that one of the future troll maps would include chitzkoi as secondary anti infantry fire mode for volkov XD

Testers agreed that it is not fun right now. Being under work.

I want to be a doge

Because AoE doesn't have Mammoth Tanks.

Don’t touch the music Don’t touch the Units and don’t touch Kane.