notDMB

I’ve actually come around on the tank crew in a small way. His auto healing is very useful when you’re on anti ship duty on a budget, or in general have 100 free credits laying around. I kind of feel like he should just be free though. In regards to units and their viability. I think it’s absolutely critical for low tier units to be “OP” like the Sheridan is, for exactly the reason you listed. The superheavies at 2k and up. I’d like to see the recon bike improved, it was rehauled into a Humvee TOW equivalent but it a kinda bad at that because it’s not on a turret and has lower effective range as a result.

Well yes but they were designed with such in mind. If they behaved as an “oh shit there’s a battleship at the base hurry” unit I wouldn’t hate them so much. Right now it’s more “which Neanderthal thinks this is fun right now?” I’d lay it out pretty linearly. 700 - Torpedo Boat: Cheap, fast only useful with torpedos attacking slow capital ships. Long reload time but absolutely chunks if it hits a ship. A torpedo would ideally deal about 400 damage after armor calculations each. Around 500/500 medium armor. 1200 - Destroyer: Fast and agile, and loaded with MGs and a small cannon for ripping apart aircraft and torpedo boats but terrible at dealing with tanks, defenses, or buildings. 800/800 heavy armor. 3000 - Missile Boat/Frigate: Powerful offensive laden ship with accurate weapons good at dealing with tanks and buildings and capable of dealing with other ships, but relatively fragile favoring speed and firepower over armor. 1100/1100 heavy armor. 6000 - Cruiser: An all rounder not great at anything but not bad at anything either. Slightly less damage than the Missile Boat/Frigate tier ship but able to deal it longer due to better durability. 2400/2400 heavy armor 8000 - Battleship: Although only marginally better armored than a Cruiser it sports significantly heavier guns. Though very inaccurate it would have huge range and be perfect for taking out a base if it can get in range, but absolutely requiring escorts to defend it against air and smaller sea attack. Would remove most of its secondary and tertiary batteries, only keeping the main guns and a couple AI machine guns. 3600/3600 heavy armor. Would feature a big buff to it’s per shot damage but a reduction in total screenshake due to it firing fewer shots so fighting one isn’t a seizure hazard. Also this would come with toning down ship models a little bit. I understand that might look weird and battleships are already half size, but their physics are beyond broken right now and already clutter the relatively small oceans they feature in.

In response to January 29th changelog. - I’m fine with the Bernardini going to Medium armor, but it’s armor should be increased at least back to 400 if that’s going to happen. - Not sure if Strid was buffed or nerfed from the previous patch by the way. It doesn’t seem like it needed a reload speed nerf or a damage increase. It just needs to be easier to aim and it would be a great unit. - Hind overhaul and gun overhauls are very big. - I’m not sure which Comanche had its gun changed, I’m assuming the Escort? It should have had its gun buffed if anything, it’s very useless at anything except headshotting infantry because it’s so flimsy if anything shoots back you die, and unlike the anti tank variant it doesn’t kill anything in a reasonable amount of time that wasn’t already almost dead. - Gun changes to the Apache and Orca are fine, honestly. The Escorts should be anti air, and the Anti Tank should require their missiles to kill tanks. - Hind. Very big change. The only issue with them was how durable they were, and how long ranged they were. I’m not sure the gun itself needed changing. I do like the ammo change, however. I would have to see how it plays out now but it looks overnerfed against vehicles, which it wasn’t super good at killing before unless they were light tanks.

Yeah torpedo boats are still completely worthless. I get battleships are a 16k ship, but, maybe reduce its price so you can justify reducing its health pool? It’s just too big, too much a wall of meat. They’re not fun to deal with because dealing with them just takes so much time. They don’t do 16k worth of damage, but they are 16k worth of annoying.

Which leaves me the question of what are you supposed to do against ships as Nod? The 10-RC, BDRM, Geko, all their amphibious units have very low damage to deal with ships. The ADATS primary fire is the only amphibious unit I've really seen up to the task of taking on ships, and only because they're so big and slow you can't miss. If the only real counter to naval is more naval, I think that's poor balancing. Air units get eviscerated by naval, even Battleships have an overabundance of AA and can take out Hinds and Banshee with ease. Though the worst part about dealing with huge ships is just their perpetual screen shake due to multilayered salvos turning my game into a Magic Wand Massage Tool.

Yeah I know. I wasn't asking if they would disappear, I was asking if they COULD be made to disappear. Mining the enemy base is just evil.

Yes, Nod really needs something on the water to contest the ADATS and (soon to be fixed) Hover MLRS. Nod's Geko is a ridiculously powerful AA vehicle and can do really great damage on vehicles.... at point blank range, effectively. I would say Nod's best water vehicle is actually the BDRM Firefly because it has good range and is hitscan, but being a tier 3 unit it's just straight weaker than the more expensive GDI vehicles sitting at Tier 4. The 10RC is too slow to move and reload and far too fragile to deal with the ADATS and Hover for the same reasons. GDI's 60mm High Velocity and Sheridan are also rather terrifying and easy to use. I think the real issue here is all of GDI's water vehicles are either hitscan or tracking for ground units, unlike Nod who only gets one hitscan. The Spitfire also has the lowest damage of the bunch, though, it's much harder to miss with it than the 10RC or ADATS primary (non tracking) fire to be sure.

The problem with Spy is mines don't counter him at planting Beacons. They can stop him from stealing all of a team's money but they don't stop him from planting at all. I see it happen on Mt. Bog almost every game because there are two reliable tunnels that are often ignored due to how out of the way they are. The Spy can reliable nuke the PP or HoN on that map. Nod's most OP wombo combo requires two players and requires you to destroy most of GDI's AA. GDI can go Spy + Beacon (4800). Nod needs a Stealth Comanche (2500) Mendoza Firesuit (1000) and a Tank Commander (1300) or Technician (400). Technician can deploy Proximities to guard the doors when GDI comes in and repair Mendoza facetanking the mines. It's really cancerous with Tech because they can also !ammo to get more proxies. This is really doubly cancerous on maps without air (the calling in ammo thing) since defenses won't shoot down the Chinook. Actually, side rant here, can proximity mines auto disappear when placed within the confines of any enemy base?

You guys do know there's a giant balance thread right now with the WIP balance changes on their way right?

In theory yes but not all maps have one and also I don’t wanna be a dumb smelly mutant.

Stealth heli needs to be removed, well, the anti tank version does, simply because it shuts down GDI from being able to use any air units. Unless heavy air balance is adjusted the Comanche Anti Tank will always be OP for its ability to kill ORCA for free. Maybe if they lost all tracking on their rockets, but even still. Ship balance is its own problem. Right now, I think ships just plain suck. They're giant walls of health that are anti everything, slow as balls, and frankly not even that threatening since due to their size it's much better to have the enemy team rush you with ships and get blocked by each others giant models than it is to be rushed down by 8 Railgun Mammoths. Ships should be readjusted to something a bit more like the land combat, and they especially need dedicated roles. Having every ship except the torpedo boat double as AA just reduces the available combat options even further. Ships also shouldn't be able to depress their guns through their own hull, they desperately need a minimum firing range so that they would actually require support if someone just rushes them in an amphibious vehicle. Also it looks dumb. And free infantry need to be better, or you need to be able to buy at least a few tier 1 and 2 infantry at a much higher price when barracks go down. This has always been a Ren problem though, where the most important building in the game is the Barracks/Hon due to how shit basic infantry are.

I am the nicest boy

That is a good point, and I think I agree to an extent. I think the main issue with spies comes more down to low or lowish population servers. That and spies can get a repair gun really easily, which shouldn't be an issue at keeping them from getting into buildings since people put them on the ceiling anyways, but it does mean they can easily navigate tunnels. And if they just never run into another player since defenses ignore them, they can very easily get a beacon plant and I highly doubt people will expect a spy at least the first time. There's also spy crates. Tertiary note, I think that Stealth Comanches should be reverted to their old only guns version. The Anti Tank Comanche is just too powerful at controlling the skies since they just really don't have any counterplay. They can wait for an ORCA to either engage something else or turn their back and get a free kill, no real counterplay to speak of.

Spies How do people feel about this unit? The reason I ask is because BillyRae took down 7 buildings (ConYard rebuilding) with 9 ion cannon beacons and racked up 43,000 points. Static defenses ignore them, and while technically yes mines stop them from getting into a building and stealing ~~80%~~ 60% of a team's credits (this is probably still way too much like lmao) it doesn't stop them from planting beacons outside a base and then shooting an engineer in the head when they come to disarm. This is a unit that I think was purchased more in one game by one guy than it's been bought all year. This could be a rather serious shift in the meta, and perhaps teams will just learn to play against it better and start spy checking more, but spies certainly wield a lot more power here now than they did before the patch. Also why does GDI get spies and not Nod, the sneak infiltrator fanatic faction, anyways?

This thread hurts my soul.

Grenadiers OP Pls nerf

It's dirty because it's no skill. You just hold down the mouse button and do ~100 splash damage per grenade until they leave or die. I love the infantry combat in Renegade-likes because it's quick, brutal, and extremely skill based. Except in this game where infantry combat is all about cheesing high explosives or just having a unit immune to headshots. You can still sorta get infantry combat going here on a rare matchup but uh, when I say "quick" I didn't mean "instantaneous." Having automatic weapons that kill in 2-3 headshots, or all the one hit kill rockets, or all the one hit kill regular basic rifles, or the "who needs to aim" high explosives, yeah you don't really get that many skill based matchups. Pretty much if you're a Sydney you can headshot Mendozas and Raveshaws to instagib them and they can't return the favor half as well. I ROUTINELY get destroyed by some players like Pushwall or Pyryle in APB because they're just better than me at the game. But even players that are really good here, I can still beat them in infantry "duels" because there's not actually very many of those, and you only need to land on average 1 headshot to win, unlike in APB where you need 3-5. I suppose this is why I spam the FUCK outta Shockies there since two body shots kill everything except Captains, but I mean, I still get destroyed by good Captains even when I spam that busted to fuck beauty. I'm getting off track. Yeah it feels dirty because I don't feel like I'm earning those kills. Fanatics are totally fun as hell because it's a game of psyching out and patience though. Those guys are totally broken for 300 credits but Mobius infantry are even more broken so I don't feel bad forcing GDI to diversify and do something else besides camp tunnels with a Sydney and click on heads.

I've really only ever used snipers to counter snipe. Since people don't (usually) buy Snipers (cause they mostly suck and have nothing to shoot) I don't buy Snipers here. Sometimes I get a Ramjet just to snipe aircraft as Nod in the rare event GDI is wasting money on ORCA.

What is the actual winrate on Cold River for GDI/Nod? Specifically when it's an actual game, more than 5 or 10 people are playing. It has to be the most Nod-biased map in the game.

This is exactly what I'd like to see. My issue with being limited to these four mostly bad units is that the game just doesn't end if you lose War Factory and Barracks. If it did, I wouldn't care, losing one building hurts but it's not the end. Losing both is awful, at that point you really have no chance of winning, even if there's a Helipad if you're GDI. Nod has slightly better air units for killing buildings. Even still air units either have crippling drawbacks (ORCA Bomber) or don't out damage even a handful of basic engineers repairing the MCT.

IMHO infantry and vehicles should be made as different as possible, not similar. You want them to have different and varied tactics, not be the same things with different models and animations. Okay but why is the difference "completely useless" and "completely broken?" Infantry suck in this game. There's some infantry with cheese potential, but that's it. I actually saw people using Rangers and Home Guard last night probably specifically because I called them out as useless. Guess what happened? I one shot them before they ever even did considerable damage to me. Oh no they did like 2.3 tank shells worth of damage to me good thing I can repair it in 2 seconds with a technician. Autocannon six-wheel BRDM: (You want to remove, or turn into an upgrade option). One of my favourite vehicles Few have discovered that this thing has one of the highest ranges of the Nod weapons. Actually that's my biggest problem with it, and stuff like the Wiesel. On top of just cluttering the space with weapons this thing represents a severe balance issues because such a cheap unit can do so well against such an expensive one. And it all comes down to range. Some ranges just don't even make sense, like the aforementioned BRDM. Why does it outrange tanks? This is such a ridiculous balance issue to even have. Mammoths should outrange everything except artillery, why? Because they're slow and will otherwise get kited. The two biggest reasons the original game's Artillery were overpowered is because the units had the best range and speed combination of any unit in the game. They could constantly duck in and out of cover, or just drive away from you while gunning you down just out of your range. This is actually an old complaint that fell into the back of my mind I had previously brought up to Kaskins. Ranges should be normalized heavily, having all these weird ranges hurts balance immensely. More so than a unit doing a little too much damage for its price tier. The Wiesel wouldn't be half as OP as it currently is if it had 10m less range than your average tank, even with its damage being so ridiculously high. Getting close to an SSM however is pretty hard. Perhaps they could be changed so have much slower missile turn rates and a much higher launch angle, so the 'safe distance' away from them is larger and easier to get into? I think that could be a good change that makes them more interesting, rather than just nerfing them. Yes and no. While they certainly deserve to not be able to outrun tanks, their biggest issue is just being pinpoint accurate with tracking. If they actually had to aim they'd be well worth 1200 credits because they'd not be able to hit tanks at max range anymore. They'd retain their use as great anti building but need to actually be closer to deal with tanks in large part. I don't even think they need a damage nerf as a whole if they no longer tracked because tracking is bullshit. Increasing their price to 3k doesn't actually fix anything, it just delays the game about 5 or 10 minutes more until Nod reaches critical mass on SSM maps. They just need to not track, maybe get a speed nerf even, and I think they'd be balanced. But I do also think they should do less damage to heavy tanks even still. It's something like 200-300 armor damage per salvo which is ridiculous. Two of them can kill a Mammoth before it even gets into range and cost the same as one mammoth, less than some variants.

SSMs are completely broken at 1200 credits. This is undebatable. Which is why no one will try to argue against this point. Same with Banshees. Keep making minor nitpicks and ignoring my actual key balance issues I have though.

Oh wow, Red Tide are good at cheese? Tell me something I didn't know, they're great on the worst map in the game and terrible everywhere else. Why? Because they one shot free infantry. This never matters. Nobody uses infantry in this game except for a small handful the Red Tide is worthless against. They're building snipers, that's it. Any cheese strat works in that regard but cheese strats only work because nobody expects it, as you said. If that strategy suddenly becomes common and expected it ceases to work. That's why it's called cheese and "unexpected" as you said. And yes look at who those Tank Commanders are. One person who's extremely good at this game and actually knows Tank Commander dynamite is a one shot. The vast majority of the playerbase doesn't know that. And why would they, honestly? Why would a tank commander have a one hit kill charge? There's two, maybe three people in all of the community that routinely uses dynamite, everyone else who even bothers buying the unit does so for the awful regeneration they give. You also say my stats are bad but I'm one of the newest people to this game and I routinely top my team with tons of kills, and I could do better if I just spammed SSMs and point whored, or got a Pion and point whored, but I don't want to do that. The only bullshit units I enjoy using are the Goliaths and Fanatics. Actually respond to my main points, how about, instead of looking at two of my extremely minor issues with redundancy and "they're fine but what they're good at is irrelevant because infantry suck and half the things in this game one shot people so having a one shot rifle isn't exceptional it's just the mark of something even worse if you can't one shot with a headshot." That screenshot Testament posted feels dirty because I got a solid 8 kills with one grenadier. I would have died in 0.3 seconds in a real fight doing nothing except I was just lobbing grenade down a hallway and killed 4 Sydneys and 4 or so other infantry, but seriously, those things are complete and utter cheese, I already highlighted that in my main post.

To sum this whole thing up into one smaller, relatively concise final thing, I'm not actually doing GDI right now because I'm sleepy but most everything that applies to Nod also applies to GDI that wasn't mentioned to be an area GDI is lacking in: 1. There are far too many useless or redundant units. I believe that by combining some of the less useful units together, and on the whole buffing infantry against tanks, the meta can be changed so that buying a Flamethrower is something you do because you're organizing a flamethrower rush, not because you're suffering from alcohol poisoning. 2. The SSM and Pion greatly disturb the balance on any map with large, clear sight ranges, turning almost any map where this is the case into a guaranteed Nod victory. The last game I played featured no less than 8 SSM's all happily pounding away at GDI's tight, defensless base with no counter or reprieve to be had. This happens all the time. I fully believe that if a Nod team used nothing but Wiesels and SSMs, and basic Stealth tanks, their winrate would actually improve on most maps. 3. Banshees and anti tank Comanches have near uncontested dominance in the skies. In conjunction with Nod having quite potent anti air vehicles on their own, this actually has left GDI extremely lacking in the air. GDI has to defeat Nod with weight of numbers because pound for pound, Nod air is just wholesale better. Sensor Arrays are actually quite pricey due to needing near constant replacement at the front line. This all goes back to GDI requiring significantly more teamwork to win, whereas Nod has the tools to allow Lone Wolves to excel, or at least not be a bother to their team. One guy misusing a Shield can easily lose the game for GDI, one guy trying for the sixteenth time to nuke the barracks is probably eventually going to succeed. One guy dicking around in a Banshee can easily destroy 20k credits in vehicles before the GDI team coordinates and ambushes him, and that's assuming they even do that.

I forgot about the air units but as far as Nod is concerned there are three air units in the game. The Anti Tank Stealth Comanche. The Banshee. The useless things. The Banshee is full stop overpowered, it can take on anything. SAM sites, ORCA Fighters, ORCA Bombers (lol), AA Gun tracking actually just misses the thing, it can fly straight into a GDI Chaparral, kill it, and then fly back to base, while the base still has anti air defenses and the Chaparral fired first. Don't tell me it can't do this, I sat there and watched it happen, impotent to stop the raw destructive, unholy demonic power that is the Banshee. Holy crap seriously nerf the hell out of these things. Less ammo, less damage, less speed, right now its drawbacks are minimal. The deadliest thing to a Banshee at the moment is a mix up between the AMX 90mm and a basic GDI Rifleman. AA Specialists don't fire fast enough to kill them. And GDI's dedicated anti air vehicles are awful. The Stealth Comanches aren't particularly good, but they are invisible. Since whoever shoots first wins in an air battle, since once shooting starts you can't maneuver or flee or evade or dodge, or do anything except hope they have less shots than you, or a degenerative muscle disease that causes them to jerk erratically, the anti tank Comanches can prey on ORCAs much like an Eagle does a field mouse. That and they can get close enough to snipe ground vehicles, whereas ORCAs, while certainly powerful offensively, are made out of wet paper, broken dreams, and $5 lobster defensively, meaning a single 600 Credit Wiesel can turn a 2500 Credit ORCA Fighter into scrap metal in about 0.4 seconds. Actually this is more a problem with the Wiesel isn't it?