Unbalanced Tesla Units

AdriaanV86 · Post by **AdriaanV86** » Sat May 14, 2016 7:23 pm

Me and a friend was playing a quick LAN game, and he was Russia and I was Ukraine. at some point he started to make almost just Tesla Tanks and Tesla Troopers.

Why?

well since they destroy everything with great ease, like seriously, even Mammoth Tanks are a joke.

Yes I know, they are rather weak, but have like 30 of these come down on you with the troopers for support, your army and base will be ash in no time.

They need to be toned down a bit.

FiveAces · Post by **FiveAces** » Sat May 14, 2016 8:40 pm

There has been a fair share of discussion about this subject, and I actually agree on shock troopers still being extremely strong.
Not the tesla tanks, mind you; these are actually in a really good spot balance wise, I think.
But a shock blob just annihilates anything ground-based. There are a couple of counters,
but none of them work reliably against a smart Russia player who will back his shockies up
with an Iron Curtain and some Flak Trucks on standby, as these hardcounter the natural
enemies of all infantry (artilleries and Hinds).
Your best bet is to snipe the tech center (as Ukraine, this is fairly easy - just send your parabombs and follow them up with a Yak).
As Allies, however, this matchup gets extremely hard in the lategame even with the NavSat up.

My suggestion would be to lower their damage versus wood armor so they can't melt through buildings that easily any more
(they would still dispose of armies swiftly).
If that does not sound good, maybe just upping the price tag might do the trick -
they are supposed to be lategame high-tech units after all,
and 400 might be a bit cheap in relation to their sheer power.

Any other suggestions?

AoAGeneral1 · Post by **AoAGeneral1** » Sat May 14, 2016 9:14 pm

Remove the 1000% damage vs non-armor targets. This will make rifle infantry and other infantry types a standing chance to counter shockies. This was also standard in RA96. The shockies took about three shots to kill rifle infantry and two for E3.

This also gives Tanya a chance to fire back rather then instantly getting killed from a drop.

zinc · Post by **zinc** » Tue May 17, 2016 3:11 pm

I haven't really noticed them being a problem since the health change to them.

Post by **Murto the Ray** » Thu May 19, 2016 11:45 am

Shock troopers are difficult to deal with but i dont think they are imbalanced. Not a lot of time has been put into coming up with counter strategies for the allied side. However, since artilleries are being nerfed in the next release it seems kind of fair to nerf shock troopers slightly.

I propose the following possible nerfs:

Range to be changed to that of a rifleman
Health changed to that of a rifleman
A charge time before firing similiar to that of a tesla coil

These changes are slight and dont change the fact that shock troopers are good units (hopefully). I suggest various combinations of the above are tested until some kind of nice balance is reached.

IronScion · Post by **IronScion** » Fri May 20, 2016 8:23 am

Once you let a Russia player mass shockies, it is very hard to come back. I think against Russia it becomes imperative to snipe the tech and stem the tesla men production. I don't know if they need another nerf, but they still a very powerful unit.

Novastar · Post by **Novastar** » Fri May 20, 2016 1:04 pm

I don't like the idea of making the tesla tropers just another "normal" infantry. I prefer them as some kind of russian elite units, not just weak soldiers with shock guns. Remember, in the original game they cost 900 credits.
Therefore I don't agree with AoAGeneral1 and Murto the Ray. The changes of Murto the Ray would (as far as I can predict it without testing it) make SHock Troopers much weaker. Yes, they would retain their pretty strong attack, but not feel like the russian elite unit anymore.

Tanya should survive one shot from them. She's the allied hero unit, being killed by one attack doesn't sound like that - at least not if it's not a tesla coil.

SoScared · Post by **SoScared** » Sat May 21, 2016 4:55 pm

I've given the tesla units a lot of thought the past weeks and months. My only issue with them (shock troopers) is that they're a bit hard to kill off with hard-counters. The most effective counters are hinds, yaks, v2, artillery and parabombs. When countered with these, a bit too many of the shockies survive the onslaught with decent hits. The thing is, shock trooper based blobs dont care much about the shock troopers HP in basic ground encounters because of their range and damage - the ground armies seldom gets to them efficiently.

In brief, the shock troopers 60HP compared to the Rifle's 50 and Rocket's 45, mainly offsets it's hard-counters.

I'm proposing an HP nerf to 45HP from 60HP, and leave the other properties exactly as they are. The nerf will be negligible in the context of the ground battle but noticeable with the hard-counters. The shock troopers will still reign king in late game Russia but will have to take into account the hard counters.

It looks like many of the observations are based off Murto's Russia play in which Murto has specialized it's use over the course of many months. He's also now undeniably one of OpenRA's very best players. In the past month I've had dozens of practice matches with Murto's Russia and the above reasoning is based off that. The past few days I've done some preliminary testing with 45HP vs 60HP shock troopers against the hard counters and the results were encouraging. You can do this instantly by playing with the debug menu and play with rocket troopers (45HP) and shock troopers (60HP) vs explosives, yak-crashes etc. I'll also try to test the HP nerf extensively on some modded maps (together with other changes) the next coming weeks.

Overall I think the current Russian shock trooper and tesla tank are fantastic and has made Soviet great with the most fun, complete and distinct factions with Russia and Ukraine. As mentioned above I think the next move is up to Allies to develop it's late game further.

Post by **Murto the Ray** » Sat May 21, 2016 5:39 pm

SoScared wrote: ↑-Snip-

+1, all explained well and makes sense. Developing allied late gaem is difficult though since most of their core units are focus on early/mid game. Perhaps some of the faction specific units should be relooked at

Henry_the_Slav · Post by **Henry_the_Slav** » Sun May 22, 2016 3:51 pm

+1 to what SoScared said, both factions have their ways to kill them, I use either arty or suicidal yaks. The tech sniping is key here. I am for little health nerf but they should still be exceptional units on the field. Only other considerable nerf is build time increase 4 me.