This thread is not to invalidate any of the ongoing overall balance discussions but to keep discussion about a particular unit in one place. Github is not really that place.
Although overal balance is the effect of many different units interacting with each other, for the shake of these threads please try and focus on discussing if the individual unit is unbalanced or not. If an argument is made that the unit is overpowered to balance that faction, an argument could be made that it's a sign of a larger balancing issue.
My offer is to reduce the range (not sure how much) and helth (cca 25%).
This should prevent simple A-move, should help yaks/hinds/arty/V2 to counter effectively, and discourage player from building costly units and throwing them at enemy without second thought.
As I often say, Shockies are very late tech and faction specific and just NEED to be good. Damage nerf is not very welcome from my point of view.
You shouldn't get nto position where you allow enemy many of them. Snipe the tech, get him first, don't allow him to mass them.
Wrote this over at Github and didn't notice the discussion was moved over here a couple minutes before. Here:
Hello everyone, i thought i would pitch in here. I have played hundreds of games using Russia in the past year on a variety of maps which has given me a lot of experience using shock troopers. In my (unpopular) opinion shock troopers shouldn't be nerfed but i am willing to push this belief to one side and accept the health nerf due to the amount of people who are unhappy with shock troopers. I will try to be non-biased and since i will be playing Ukraine mainly from now on i don't really have a reason to protect Shock Troopers.
Shock Troopers are actually a really hard unit to get. They cant be rushed against someone who scouting properly and are expensive to produce. Also, the current meta is large armies and open maps which means that rushing shock troopers results in you being trampled by the opponents army as you have sacrificed production for tech which wont pay off until you have built shock troopers.
But on some maps (such as Behind the Veil or Winter Storm) it is much more possible to rush them as the map has more available chokes and longer rush distances. But even then it is still possible to counter shock troopers. Shock Troopers require a lot of income to build constantly and so mass expanding an opponent who is tech rushing is also a possible counter, although less intuitive and is the least utilized counter measure i have seen vs shockies. So there is still learning to do for quite a few people as most are too focused on winning by attacking instead of winning through attrition.
Back to the meta. As i have already mentioned, the meta is focused around large armies: infantry and tank armies to be exact. Opening with a tank/infantry composition is so common that you will see it in pretty much every game with moderately skilled players. This is such easy prey for shock troopers if the opponent keeps this up into the late game. Artillery is also common due to the infantry masses that are created but the flak/shocky combo is a hard counter to this. Harassment based tactics such as chrono shifting enemy harvesters and utilizing longbows(this will be much better if they get buffed any time soon) are far better vs shockies than the norm atm.
Well that's why they do so well in the meta. Now onto the proposed changes:
Range - Back when shock troopers were truly OP their range was they only thing changed and that's all it took to make an OP unit. RA is very dependent on range as it takes so long for units to get into range if they are being out-ranged. Changing it down, even slightly, could break the unit and make it useless again. Test it though.
Damage - Well you really need to have a lot of shockies to do a better job than the cheaper infantry. Rocket troopers kill vehicles faster in small numbers, same with flamers and buildings, grens and buildings, rockets and defences although am unsure about rifles and infantry. Though rifles change their role to meat shields to break up shock troopers and increase their survivability.
Slight fire delay - maybe but i don't think both this and the health nerf should be applied. I could see this working out well on it's own though and it would make the range not as overpowering. It would also make shock troopers an aggressive unit as a player with the intuitive vs defensive shock troopers could exploit the charge time to do real damage.
Personally that shock troopers should be powerful as a reward for teching instead of producing. However, if we want to nerf them, why not make them a little bit more expensive and time consuming to build? That would allow them to still keep that "super special unit" feel that they currently have.
An idea that I just had because of the Obelisk thread (TD)... how about letting the shocktroopers cost power? Standard 1 power per shock trooper (or 2 or 3) and if they shoot they consume another 1-2. If you're on low power they cant shoot
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But how about: they cost 1 power anyway. If they shoot they cost another 1 power. So if you have a large shocktrooperarmy you better have enough power. Because if you don't and to many try to shoot, then you'll go low power and none of them shoot.
Result: you have to move some away from he action or power down structures.
Just a funny idea - but have to get the amount of power right. Not sure how much power the powerplants provide.
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Nerfing Shocktroopers HP and possibly range will not do any good.
The shockies mechanics allows them to instantly fire and strike targets which delivers an extremely fast rate of damage. This enables multiple shockies to have "Smart targeting" and select the next enemy unit close by that is alive which is why it seemingly makes them effective.
Nerf the 1000% damage instead vs infantry. Currently right now Shockies are completely backwards then what they were in RA96. RA96 they were meant for anti tank supporters while infantry were a direct counter. Since infantry were able to absorb multiple shots of the shockies this enabled them to soak and waste potential damage which counted as an even balance.
also too the affect of this the shock trooper was the only unit in RA that could not be ran over by anything and yes they did have a charge up to fire i think like the tesla tanks witch imo were useless in the original game as they died vary easily just like the chrono tank.
Edit: just did a test and yes the tesla tanks are waek to infantry and it takes about 6-9 shocks with the shock trooper to kill a mamoth but takes i shot for infantry.
AoAGeneral1 wrote: ↑
Nerf the 1000% damage instead vs infantry. Currently right now Shockies are completely backwards then what they were in RA96. RA96 they were meant for anti tank supporters while infantry were a direct counter. Since infantry were able to absorb multiple shots of the shockies this enabled them to soak and waste potential damage which counted as an even balance.
I am all for what AoA suggested. Adjusting the damage versus infantry to a value much more close to original RA96 (two-to-three hits per death for inf, instead of insta-kill) would make a huge difference in their over all performance, which seems to be a tad too high on all fronts atm.
I've tested these changes this morning. It makes shock troopers immediately not worth it. With three shots to kill a rifleman a single rifleman kills the shock trooper before the shock trooper kills it. With two shots two riflemen win vs a shock trooper. I can see why you'd want the change so that they are focused on anti-tank instead of an all-round ground killing machine but if they are taking two shots to kill infantry i'd rather have a blob of less expensive riflemen/rocket troopers that can tackle ground more effectively than shock troopers and have the added benefit of being able to defend themselves from air too. Also - fyi - rocket troopers do more damage vs tanks than shock troopers, the only difference is the time for the rocket to travel which doesn't make a huge difference when tanks are usually going for the crush. If you make shock troopers this weak on their own then you have to keep them together in big blobs which makes them useless against defending smaller focused attacks with the rifles, rockets and flamers which are more effective in small numbers.
adjust them to be more effective than rocket troops against tanks but only slightly more effective against infantry then rocket troops. that way they would make a good replacement into the army rather than using them as all-rounders.
aka. minigunner > shock trooper > rocket trooper vs infantry
shocktrooper > rocket trooper vs tanks
Random idea: Give shocktroopers a damage nerf (say 25%) BUT also give Tesla Tanks an aura (not RA2-alike teslacharge but proper Warcraft-styled aura), which boosts nearby shocks' damage with, say, 25%. As far as I know Tesla Tanks are still underutilized.
This is cool. It may be a good idea to give shook units a special ability in return for tuning down their stats. I remember yellow sharing a gif of a deployed tesla tank and something like that may be cool as well.
