Special Unit Balance

[vivafringe]

Okay, I hit Super Titan today. To commemorate this event, here are my opinions on special unit balance. The tl;dr is that Feedback is trash and Scallywags is the best.

Feedback:

Maybe it’s obvious that Scramblers are trash. But I wanted to explain anyway. The basic problem is that they are guaranteed to die after they hack a target. Also they have a chance to die before they even hack once.

I think the contributing factors to this are:
- It’s the only special that needs a melee attack to work. So after it runs in there and does its dirty scrambling business, it’s in totally exposed territory.
- 1 hp.
- 1 hp on your hacked unit. So you can’t ever use it to wall (a scout will just kill it).

The one thing they are good for is they can situationally do a lot of damage to a base. But proper play mitigates a lot of this threat. A scrambler is terrible against 2 layers of soldiers. And since soldiers are this game’s bread and butter, the natural counter to scramblers just happens to be what I want to do anyway.

On the rare times I’ve lost to a scrambler, it’s involved them taking my heavy. The easy solution is to not let them take your heavy! Hide the heavy in behind a layer of soldiers and the scrambler can’t ever get to it.

Both Adorables and Scallywags dominate Feedback, imo. That is to say, they are even or have an advantage on every single map of the game.

Adorables:

Adorables are all about the surprise cheez wins. But again, it is possible to protect yourself from this to a large extent, just by infinite walls of soldiers. There is nothing a Mobi can really do against 2 rows of soldiers, other than attack somewhere else. So as player skill increases, the amount of miracle Mobi base kills decreases sharply.

How often can a Mobi player attack somewhere else? All of the two-spawn maps are wide open enough that it’s hard to defend everywhere. However! Foundry and Sweetie Plains are such quick beatdown maps that special units don’t usually enter the equation at all. Even at high levels, most Foundry/Sweetie Plains games end without a special unit being made at all (note: this might change once FTA is fixed). That leaves Long Nine, which is indeed a very nice Mobi map. You never know whether the Mobi’s going to come top or bottom, so you have to try to defend both and just hope for the best.

On the one-spawn maps, Mobi is at a huge disadvantage to Scallywags. Anyone who’s fought a well-placed Bombshell on Glitch knows how difficult it is to beat that position with Mobis.

Scallywags:

People are terrible at using bombshells, which I think negates their effectiveness at the lower levels. But if you are good, play patiently, and place your bombshells well, this is the best race.

Bombshells are simultaneously amazing at fending off early rushes (any wouldbe rush of soldiers just gets blown to bits) and winning the late game. While an Adorables player has to build a considerable force before she can safely build a damage-free Mobi, early bombshells are very stable and difficult to beat on the 1-spawn maps. On the 2-spawn maps, bombshells are much worse - just attack where the bombshell isn’t! But on the 1-spawn maps that’s really not an option. For instance, on Peekaboo, your only valid attack is through their extra witpoint. If you place a Bombshell near that witpoint and your opponent is Feedback or Adorables, you’ve basically won the game already.

Furthermore, as mentioned before, the 2-spawn maps (especially Foundry) are generally very light on special units. So the fact that Bombshells are especially bad on them doesn’t matter much.

As a result, I think Scallywags is by far the best race. I am winning more than my fair share on the 1-spawn maps, both as 1p and as 2p. It's gotten to the point that when I see I'm paired against a non-Scallywag on a 1-spawn map, I do a mental fistpump because I know it will be an easy game.

[GoHeat 3]

I agree with you 100%! Congrats on becoming a Super-Titan!

[bmike]

(09-07-2012 07:49 AM)vivafringe Wrote:  Maybe it’s obvious that Scramblers are trash. But I wanted to explain anyway. The basic problem is that they are guaranteed to die after they hack a target. Also they have a chance to die before they even hack once.

Does it need to have +1 health or perhaps be able to scramble a range of 2?

Is there something that would fix this unit in your experience to make it worth 7 wits? (or should it be discounted to 6 perhaps)

It would be interesting to see statistically how often each piece is spawned sorted by league. It would be a bit tricky since you first would need to see what race was played at what level (removing the people that didn't pay for the packs) and then also see what rate of play vs rate of usage was.

[Alvendor]

I used to think Scramblers were underpowered but I'm not so sure anymore. It might just be that they require the most skill.

It is the most flexible special unit that can help with both defense and offense and switch between the two quickly which the others can't (okay mobi can do it in certain situations).

It will likely die when used offensively so you generally need to kill a heavy/sniper/special that turn to make it worth it. And as you describe it, it is common to hide the heavy behind a row of other units. But now the scrambler player can counter that by starting attacking the row of soldiers with his soldiers, and as he has a scrambler the other player can't use the heavy to defend with.

When playing defense it is not at all as fragile and can many times defend the attack without getting killed (in higher level play the scrambler might just prevent certain attacks as the opponent know you will be able to defend and keep the scrambler alive).

There are also many situations when you can hide the scrambler behind a unit wall and force the opponent to do some guessing as his play are very different depending on exactly what tile your scrambler occupy.

Now, it might very well be that the Scrambler is the worst special unit, its hard to say. But I think its likely it is the unit that requires most skill and understanding of the game. Anyway, I'd bet any of the globally ranked top 3 players could play any race and still be in the top 10 without a problem.

[vivafringe]

I think Bombshells are pretty amazing for attacking, though. It's a slow and painful process, but once a good player starts his Bombshell deathpush, I think it's impossible to stop. It's easy to confuse the speed of a push with the effectiveness of it. Again, if the opponent can move the theater of war away from the bombshell, then he has a chance. But the 1-spawn maps don't let you do this, so you just have to roll over and die, from my experience.

Can you link me to some good Scrambler replays? In particular I'd be interested in scramblers being used to fend off slow, measured Bombshell deathpushes on 1-spawn maps. Whenever I watch a Feedback replay in the super-titan thread I see lots of mistakes.

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(09-07-2012 07:59 AM)bmike Wrote:  Does it need to have +1 health or perhaps be able to scramble a range of 2?

Is there something that would fix this unit in your experience to make it worth 7 wits? (or should it be discounted to 6 perhaps)

It would be interesting to see statistically how often each piece is spawned sorted by league. It would be a bit tricky since you first would need to see what race was played at what level (removing the people that didn't pay for the packs) and then also see what rate of play vs rate of usage was.

A big confounding factor in the statistical data would be that Scallywags is the default race. I'm willing to bet that even within leagues, the better players are the ones that have paid 6$. So Scallywags is going to look worse as a race than it actually is.

Proposing fixes is tricky. My recommendation would be to try a lot of different fixes and see what's best. There really isn't a substitute for testing. That said, here are my knee-jerk responses:

- Reducing wit cost seems like a good proposal. You could try 6 or even 5 and see how games were going. I don't know if the designers want every special unit to cost 7 though.
- Increasing HP seems bad for flavor reasons. It "makes sense" that this tiny microchip thing only has 1 hp.
- Increasing range to 2 flashes alarm bells in my head. Maybe it would actually be fine, but it sounds way too good.
- Increasing movement to 4 isn't as powerful as giving it range 2. However, it would give it a really good shot at hacking other special units, which would make it very strong. It's possible that's still too good though.

[Necrocat219]

(09-07-2012 09:49 AM)vivafringe Wrote:  I think Bombshells are pretty amazing for attacking, though. It's a slow and painful process, but once a good player starts his Bombshell deathpush, I think it's impossible to stop. It's easy to confuse the speed of a push with the effectiveness of it. Again, if the opponent can move the theater of war away from the bombshell, then he has a chance. But the 1-spawn maps don't let you do this, so you just have to roll over and die, from my experience.

Can you link me to some good Scrambler replays? In particular I'd be interested in scramblers being used to fend off slow, measured Bombshell deathpushes on 1-spawn maps. Whenever I watch a Feedback replay in the super-titan thread I see lots of mistakes.

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(09-07-2012 07:59 AM)bmike Wrote:  Does it need to have +1 health or perhaps be able to scramble a range of 2?

Is there something that would fix this unit in your experience to make it worth 7 wits? (or should it be discounted to 6 perhaps)

It would be interesting to see statistically how often each piece is spawned sorted by league. It would be a bit tricky since you first would need to see what race was played at what level (removing the people that didn't pay for the packs) and then also see what rate of play vs rate of usage was.

A big confounding factor in the statistical data would be that Scallywags is the default race. I'm willing to bet that even within leagues, the better players are the ones that have paid 6$. So Scallywags is going to look worse as a race than it actually is.

Proposing fixes is tricky. My recommendation would be to try a lot of different fixes and see what's best. There really isn't a substitute for testing. That said, here are my knee-jerk responses:

- Reducing wit cost seems like a good proposal. You could try 6 or even 5 and see how games were going. I don't know if the designers want every special unit to cost 7 though.
- Increasing HP seems bad for flavor reasons. It "makes sense" that this tiny microchip thing only has 1 hp.
- Increasing range to 2 flashes alarm bells in my head. Maybe it would actually be fine, but it sounds way too good.
- Increasing movement to 4 isn't as powerful as giving it range 2. However, it would give it a really good shot at hacking other special units, which would make it very strong. It's possible that's still too good though.

Here you go. I found this a very interesting match in the ST thread that I certainly learnt from watching, credit goes to Alvendor.

[QuantumApocalypse]

(09-07-2012 07:59 AM)bmike Wrote:  

(09-07-2012 07:49 AM)vivafringe Wrote:  Maybe it’s obvious that Scramblers are trash. But I wanted to explain anyway. The basic problem is that they are guaranteed to die after they hack a target. Also they have a chance to die before they even hack once.

Does it need to have +1 health or perhaps be able to scramble a range of 2?

Sorry, just skimmed through this thread, so not sure if it's been mentioned already, BUT:

The scrambler used to have +1 health and have scrambled enemies have full health, but that was changed obviously due to balancing reasons. It totally dominated the other teams. Right now, you have to be cautious about using the Scrambler and actually have a tactic, rather than chucking him out there and scrambling units. It still has great potential to turn games over and IMHO doesn't require any buff.

[Cookie]

I am "only" in Masters, but probably pretty close to ST, and I have played about 75% of games with Feedback and 25% with Adorables. I only play with Scallywags when I select them by accident.

I have got several nice wins using the scrambler, and I kind of want it to be the strongest unit. Maybe because it encourages both some bluffing and offensive play. Like placing the scrambler in a spot where it can be killed, but only if the opponent attacks specifically in a place where he wouldn't attack without the sniper.

I am still afraid that good play in Outwitters would be more locked down with larger armies on the board. In this case, I too feel that the scrambler might not be able to do very much. Even the mobi is fairly hard to use against a wall of Scallywag soldiers with a bombshell or two behind.

[awpertunity]

(09-07-2012 09:49 AM)vivafringe Wrote:  Can you link me to some good Scrambler replays? In particular I'd be interested in scramblers being used to fend off slow, measured Bombshell deathpushes on 1-spawn maps.

Try this one between me and vide0gamer. He pushes a gigantic army into my line of soldiers with a bombshell behind it (turn 40) and hides a scrambler behind this push. He is able to scramble my BS and win the game as P2 on sharkfood.


It sounds to me like you like bombshells because you don't save enough wits. Notice on that turn with our big confrontation we both had 12+ wits saved up to be able to actually fight. His push would've failed if he didn't have that scrambler, and my defense would've failed otherwise if I couldn't fight of all the soldiers like I did.

[Alvendor]

(09-07-2012 09:49 AM)vivafringe Wrote:  Can you link me to some good Scrambler replays? In particular I'd be interested in scramblers being used to fend off slow, measured Bombshell deathpushes on 1-spawn maps.

Unfortunately, even though I've played 150+ games, I don't have any good scrambler vs bombshell replays. But I've switched to mainly playing Feedback so will hopefully get some in the future.

Here is one:
outwitters://viewgame?id=ag5vdXR3aXR0ZXJzZ2FtZXIQCxIIR2FtZVJvb20Yk7VxDA
when I do the "turtle hard and then bombshell slow push" vs Calmon (Adorables) on Peekaboo. It is quite long but have a lot of bombshell and mobi action.