Feedback [Feedback] Oceanic Future Part 3

[qaccy]

Thank you for that Zarok. Problem is, regardless of the range, mantas get easily 2 hit killed by turtles. Might even get 1 hit killed if Orangery boost applies. So, i was thinking (my previous idea about increasing poison to 2 won't really change anything, so discard it), they need a way to protect themselves from turtles. Crabs for example have reactivate armor which prevents them from being 2 hit killed. Mantas need something like that too. So 2 suggestions:
Increase range to 7 (needed to retaliate against crabs) and
1) give them some sort of a shield like behemoths or
2)give them more movement like 32 (similar to AF drones) so they can move before turtles

You're missing the fact that turtles are supposed to be strong against light units. You can't go giving mantas abilities that allow them to beat a unit they're weak against - hence why flying was removed from them.

CRABs vs Eels: Eels out range CRABs, attack sooner and can get out of the way faster. Had this manual fight where the eel was kiting me the entire time and caused me to wipe. I even had this fight of 8 CRABs vs 8 Eels and the eels still won. I think to balance this, the CRABs need a bigger defense buff against Fast. On top of that, the Eels will be constantly reducing the CRABs' offense making it easier to take them down with every bit of damage they take.

How'd you get 'kited' by an eel? Their movement and attack range especially isn't enough to allow them to stay out of range of a crab, which can see through stealth. Crabs have a low turn order, but they still have 20 movement which allows them to cover an eel's entire attack range in one turn, not even factoring in their own attack range. I'm having a hard time believing this one, to be honest, unless you performed very poorly in that manual battle and/or had some extraordinary terrain that you really couldn't maneuver around.

The rest of the post seems fairly accurate, except for every time you mention 'outrange' you seem to forget that units are able to move on their turn and not just attack. In reality, the only unit in OF that cannot chase and hit another unit on its turn is the turturret when facing units that can stealth. Nothing can hide from and still attack subs, eels, mantas, or crabs (except for artillery in the case of crabs, but only before they get into attack range). Everything's currently able to avoid the manta's contact skill, but it's likely that the manta's range is going to be increased to account for this. Also notable is that when attacking, the crab AI *will* be vulnerable to contact because attack AI always tries to close the distance as much as possible if the unit has blast.

 

[DeletedUser7961]

Have a question about the new unit. Is the poison ability even any good? Even if the poison worked on every hit which it currently doesn't (50% chance), it would still be too weak. How long do you want us to fight for it to be worth it? I also don't like abilities based on rng. On one hand you can get very lucky and it applies on almost every hit but on the other hand you can get fights where nothing triggers.

 

[DeletedUser8150]

Have a question about the new unit. Is the poison ability even any good? Even if the poison worked on every hit which it currently doesn't (50% chance), it would still be too weak. How long do you want us to fight for it to be worth it? I also don't like abilities based on rng. On one hand you can get very lucky and it applies on almost every hit but on the other hand you can get fights where nothing triggers.

Yeah my feeling as well. Other than perhaps -v- battle fortress where it saves 1 hit (3 -v- 4) I can't see when the ability will change the number of attacks I need to give to win except at the very marginal cases...If it stacked I could see the power of the unit but maybe that would then be too overpowered unless you lowered the % chance of the poison to say 25%

 

[planetofthehumans2]

Manta/poison is weak on the premise that I try to kill units in two hits. So even if I poison another unit it's going to die very quickly anyway and not relish in the poison damage. Poison is worse when it's the opposition, does it carry over to the second battle?

 

[DeletedUser3741]

[...] Poison is worse when it's the opposition, does it carry over to the second battle?

Nop. On second battle wave your poisoned unit start the battle with not poison effect

 

[DeletedUser7779]

You're missing the fact that turtles are supposed to be strong against light units. You can't go giving mantas abilities that allow them to beat a unit they're weak against - hence why flying was removed from them.

Im not saying to give them a chance to beat it, im saying give them a chance to defend themselves. Turtles also have bonus against crabs, but crabs' reactive armor prevents them from being wiped out in 2 hits.
The way it is now, mantas are way too weak - like i said easy 2 hit kill by turtles (regardless of their range because they move last). What are mantas currently good for atm? They are too slow and range is too short. Would you use them in your attack army? I surely wouldn't...

 

[xivarmy]

I've spent the last couple weeks exploring other games and paying less and less attention to FoE on live - i check in on beta today and see OF3 has come out with no redeeming features - and i think i might just take 3 months off and wait for OF 4...

Primary concerns:
OF goods value : Without a good GB of the age, i can't do squat with the thousands of them i can get weekly - and it would be thousands daily if i cared... I trade them away at 2 OF per AF and this update isn't going to change that - do i care that you might never make a GB again? not if you give the goods another large sink (100 a day to your favorite harbor creations isn't doing the trick - and i long ago stopped sending my harbor) but as the development team seems to have a complete lack of creativity i'm not holding my breath.

Hovertanks rule : The one thing the manta needed to do to make GE interesting was at least hurt hover tanks... As it is it looks like the tedious take in 8 hover tanks with 250% boost is a cure for pretty much all of OF still.

Edit: one other thing that would make things more pleasant - let me turn my main city back to AF I'm sorry i went OF, i didn't realise you'd be so hateful to those who progressed into it

 

[clebert]

Im not saying to give them a chance to beat it, im saying give them a chance to defend themselves. Turtles also have bonus against crabs, but crabs' reactive armor prevents them from being wiped out in 2 hits.
The way it is now, mantas are way too weak - like i said easy 2 hit kill by turtles (regardless of their range because they move last). What are mantas currently good for atm? They are too slow and range is too short. Would you use them in your attack army? I surely wouldn't...

 

[clebert]

i have anxiety waiting for a military unit wich base gives an attack bonus
nothing on OF1,nothing on OF2.Is Manta building giving bonus or
we need wait for OF4 and still building hover tank and behemots
forever?

 

[qaccy]

Im not saying to give them a chance to beat it, im saying give them a chance to defend themselves. Turtles also have bonus against crabs, but crabs' reactive armor prevents them from being wiped out in 2 hits.
The way it is now, mantas are way too weak - like i said easy 2 hit kill by turtles (regardless of their range because they move last). What are mantas currently good for atm? They are too slow and range is too short. Would you use them in your attack army? I surely wouldn't...

They don't need a defense against turrets. Crab armor doesn't help at all against them, as they're able to shoot and wipe them out before the crabs have even had a chance to move, despite the armor - as it should be, since they're supposed to be strong against heavy units. If anything, mantas should have defenses against the units they have bonuses against. A range increase is most likely coming, especially if they keep the contact ability. Giving them range to not only match crabs, but also eels would allow them to fit in with the other OF troops very nicely.

And give subs the flying ability! I know it sounds crazy, but I'll trade away contact for it - subs don't even really get to make much use of it currently as artillery outranges them (a contact unit's biggest weakness) and dragon drones don't activate retaliation (this is actually an extremely powerful ability). They'll get one good use out of it against mantas, but against everything else it's pretty wasted and in fact surrogates tend to be much better suited for use as a contact unit.

 

[DeletedUser7779]

They don't need a defense against turrets. Crab armor doesn't help at all against them, as they're able to shoot and wipe them out before the crabs have even had a chance to move, despite the armor - as it should be, since they're supposed to be strong against heavy units. If anything, mantas should have defenses against the units they have bonuses against. A range increase is most likely coming, especially if they keep the contact ability. Giving them range to not only match crabs, but also eels would allow them to fit in with the other OF troops very nicely.

And give subs the flying ability! I know it sounds crazy, but I'll trade away contact for it - subs don't even really get to make much use of it currently as artillery outranges them (a contact unit's biggest weakness) and dragon drones don't activate retaliation (this is actually an extremely powerful ability). They'll get one good use out of it against mantas, but against everything else it's pretty wasted and in fact surrogates tend to be much better suited for use as a contact unit.

Although it's quite logical to give subs flying skill, that will mess up all battle strategies so keeping that in mind i'd say no. Subs are good the way they are, why change something we already have only becoz new unit is imbalanced? Not to mention that subs are pretty good for GvG so if contact skill is removed, that will piss off lots of players, trust me! Especially the champ farmers in AA lol....(1 sub 7 rogues wipes out 8 champs with no damage).

And i guess you're missing my point about mantas. Turtles have bonus against crabs and mantas. They can 2 hit kill mantas but not crabs (becoz of reactive armor). So then what are mantas good for then if they can be wiped out on first turn before they even get chance to move? (2 turtles kill 2 mantas instantly, but 2 turtles cant kill 2 crabs). Note, mantas' movement is just a little better than crabs'. Range increase (even to 10 so they can match eels) won't help here. Hence, they need either more speed or some defense skill.

@Clebert Manta barrack is giving 7% attack

 

[DeletedUser5160]

You're missing the fact that turtles are supposed to be strong against light units. You can't go giving mantas abilities that allow them to beat a unit they're weak against - hence why flying was removed from them.



How'd you get 'kited' by an eel? Their movement and attack range especially isn't enough to allow them to stay out of range of a crab, which can see through stealth. Crabs have a low turn order, but they still have 20 movement which allows them to cover an eel's entire attack range in one turn, not even factoring in their own attack range. I'm having a hard time believing this one, to be honest, unless you performed very poorly in that manual battle and/or had some extraordinary terrain that you really couldn't maneuver around.

The rest of the post seems fairly accurate, except for every time you mention 'outrange' you seem to forget that units are able to move on their turn and not just attack. In reality, the only unit in OF that cannot chase and hit another unit on its turn is the turturret when facing units that can stealth. Nothing can hide from and still attack subs, eels, mantas, or crabs (except for artillery in the case of crabs, but only before they get into attack range). Everything's currently able to avoid the manta's contact skill, but it's likely that the manta's range is going to be increased to account for this. Also notable is that when attacking, the crab AI *will* be vulnerable to contact because attack AI always tries to close the distance as much as possible if the unit has blast.

Eels can attack CRABs the moment they first move and the CRABs have a naturally low defense.

Let's assume no % buffs. A CRAB has 130 + 80 defense against Eels and 210 +80 attack. An Eel has 180 attack.

If the damage formula that has been floating around is somewhat right. 180 Eel Attack vs 210 Defense would mean the Eels would already have a 3-6 attack range. The reactive armor would be necessary for them to survive against Eels. Also have to hope the AI controlled Eels would get close enough for the CRABs to attack first turn, but the Eels will always damage the Crabs first turn and cause a 20% damage reduction. This then causes the 290 attack to become 232 and lower for each subsequent attack on the CRAB.

Also my loss came from AI v AI. I know I could win the fight if I huddled the crabs into a corner, but I wanted to let the fight play out to "simulate" how a Strongly Typed vs Weakly Typed fight would go.

 

[qaccy]

Although it's quite logical to give subs flying skill, that will mess up all battle strategies so keeping that in mind i'd say no. Subs are good the way they are, why change something we already have only becoz new unit is imbalanced? Not to mention that subs are pretty good for GvG so if contact skill is removed, that will piss off lots of players, trust me! Especially the champ farmers in AA lol....(1 sub 7 rogues wipes out 8 champs with no damage).

And i guess you're missing my point about mantas. Turtles have bonus against crabs and mantas. They can 2 hit kill mantas but not crabs (becoz of reactive armor). So then what are mantas good for then if they can be wiped out on first turn before they even get chance to move? (2 turtles kill 2 mantas instantly, but 2 turtles cant kill 2 crabs). Note, mantas' movement is just a little better than crabs'. Range increase (even to 10 so they can match eels) won't help here. Hence, they need either more speed or some defense skill.

You're still arguing the wrong point here. Units are supposed to have weaknesses. Are you saying you'd send in crabs against turrets because they have armor? No, you'd most likely use a unit with an artillery bonus or at least something that isn't vulnerable to turrets because using crabs is obviously a bad idea. Similarly, using mantas against turrets is a bad idea. What, should they have stealth instead so that they have a fighting chance against a unit that's supposed to (on paper) beat them? It's important that a unit is able to stand a chance against the units it's strong against, not the ones it's weak to. In this case, that means balancing the unit so it's able to face heavy and fast units. As both the heavy and fast units in OF have low range, it makes perfect sense to give the manta increased range only to match those units, paired with the contact ability. This allows them to effectively use their ability against units they're strong against, while still rightfully being vulnerable to their two weaknesses, artillery and range, which both outrange them and can thus avoid the contact ability. Different perspectives, perhaps. I personally don't care much how a unit does against unfavorable matchups as long as it's able to win the favorable ones. I don't really care that turrets can't see through stealth and get absolutely destroyed by eels, because they kick the crap out of heavy units and soon mantas as well.

Eels can attack CRABs the moment they first move and the CRABs have a naturally low defense.

Let's assume no % buffs. A CRAB has 130 + 80 defense against Eels and 210 +80 attack. An Eel has 180 attack.

If the damage formula that has been floating around is somewhat right. 180 Eel Attack vs 210 Defense would mean the Eels would already have a 3-6 attack range. The reactive armor would be necessary for them to survive against Eels. Also have to hope the AI controlled Eels would get close enough for the CRABs to attack first turn, but the Eels will always damage the Crabs first turn and cause a 20% damage reduction. This then causes the 290 attack to become 232 and lower for each subsequent attack on the CRAB.

Also my loss came from AI v AI. I know I could win the fight if I huddled the crabs into a corner, but I wanted to let the fight play out to "simulate" how a Strongly Typed vs Weakly Typed fight would go.

It does make the math simpler, but boosts absolutely cannot be ignored in the late stages of the game. If we try to remove them from the equation, silly things happen like Hover Tanks hitting ranged units harder than Battle Fortresses do. But no fighter of any caliber is going to make it to these stages of the game without military bonuses. It's also worth pointing out that unit and terrain bonuses are unaffected by boosts (or reductions, when talking about the Heat ability) - they're applied to the base stats seperately. So a +80 attack bonus against a unit will ALWAYS be a +80 attack bonus against that unit. Anyway, I'll restate that if an eel attacks a crab, it will always be in range for the crab to strike back on its next turn, barring some very odd situation where the other AI units end up somehow walling off the eel from your crab. It's true that an eel will almost always have the initiative and be able to land the first blow, but an eel will also always require at least 3 hits to destroy a crab while a crab can fairly easily do it in two (factoring in the fact that its unit bonus cannot be lowered by Heat). A player also has access to the Orangery, which can add in the possibility of simply destroying the eel in a single shot. AI never has access to this bonus (outside of city defense, but I think that's a rather small part of the game at this point), so a crab under your control will always require at least 3 hits to be brought down...unless you're still facing Rail Guns somewhere.

 

[DeletedUser5160]

It does make the math simpler, but boosts absolutely cannot be ignored in the late stages of the game. If we try to remove them from the equation, silly things happen like Hover Tanks hitting ranged units harder than Battle Fortresses do. But no fighter of any caliber is going to make it to these stages of the game without military bonuses. It's also worth pointing out that unit and terrain bonuses are unaffected by boosts (or reductions, when talking about the Heat ability) - they're applied to the base stats seperately. So a +80 attack bonus against a unit will ALWAYS be a +80 attack bonus against that unit. Anyway, I'll restate that if an eel attacks a crab, it will always be in range for the crab to strike back on its next turn, barring some very odd situation where the other AI units end up somehow walling off the eel from your crab. It's true that an eel will almost always have the initiative and be able to land the first blow, but an eel will also always require at least 3 hits to destroy a crab while a crab can fairly easily do it in two (factoring in the fact that its unit bonus cannot be lowered by Heat). A player also has access to the Orangery, which can add in the possibility of simply destroying the eel in a single shot. AI never has access to this bonus (outside of city defense, but I think that's a rather small part of the game at this point), so a crab under your control will always require at least 3 hits to be brought down...unless you're still facing Rail Guns somewhere.

Thanks for that, Forgot that the bonus was added on top of the damage reduction. (assuming that was the case) What I also forgot was on top of that, the unit is now weaker for by being damaged.

We also don't know how Inno simulates the fights. it could be they do it without buffs since they may want to remove as many variables as possible.

 

[clebert]

Although it's quite logical to give subs flying skill, that will mess up all battle strategies so keeping that in mind i'd say no. Subs are good the way they are, why change something we already have only becoz new unit is imbalanced? Not to mention that subs are pretty good for GvG so if contact skill is removed, that will piss off lots of players, trust me! Especially the champ farmers in AA lol....(1 sub 7 rogues wipes out 8 champs with no damage).

And i guess you're missing my point about mantas. Turtles have bonus against crabs and mantas. They can 2 hit kill mantas but not crabs (becoz of reactive armor). So then what are mantas good for then if they can be wiped out on first turn before they even get chance to move? (2 turtles kill 2 mantas instantly, but 2 turtles cant kill 2 crabs). Note, mantas' movement is just a little better than crabs'. Range increase (even to 10 so they can match eels) won't help here. Hence, they need either more speed or some defense skill.

@Clebert Manta barrack is giving 7% attack

Hello Zwuki,thanks a lot for the info that Manta will give 7 percent attack bonus

 

[HuscarlTW]

The poison skill seems like an attempt to counter reactive armor, but because of how it functions, and because of the RNG factor, it's a very poor counter.

My proposed solution: remove the poison ability and add a previously popular ability called "power shot".

This ability would allow mantas to actually beat the units it is supposed to counter:
- shoots through eel stealth
- shoots through crab armor

However it would still be weak against the counters due to the low range. This would let cruisers and turrets kill them easily still.

 

[DeletedUser6015]

Omg, so many things to talk about oceanic future and things that have gone wrong and are talking about a unit ????????????

 

[DeletedUser5429]

Yes.
For example, what can I do with my oceanic future goods?
A. spend them for orichalcum
B. research great techs to unlock avatars
C. build a crappy GB, or a second crappy GB... Oh no, wait, there is no second GB
D. shove them somewhere -_-'

 

[DeletedUser8150]

The poison skill seems like an attempt to counter reactive armor, but because of how it functions, and because of the RNG factor, it's a very poor counter.

My proposed solution: remove the poison ability and add a previously popular ability called "power shot".

This ability would allow mantas to actually beat the units it is supposed to counter:
- shoots through eel stealth
- shoots through crab armor

However it would still be weak against the counters due to the low range. This would let cruisers and turrets kill them easily still.

Hmm Interesting idea. I can't quickly think of a problem with this

 

[DeletedUser7779]

Yes.
For example, what can I do with my oceanic future goods?
A. spend them for orichalcum
B. research great techs to unlock avatars
C. build a crappy GB, or a second crappy GB... Oh no, wait, there is no second GB
D. shove them somewhere -_-'

LOL ... don't forget E. Use them for last quest in Galileo Galilei ^^
I partially disagree with C though...I love my Atlantis, getting at least 100 goods daily (if not 200), not to mention the fps. And double looting a palace is priceless

@qaccy one last thing about the manta and I'm done with the topic. We're talking about same thing but let's look at it your way. Mantas have boost against heavy and fast. But would you use mantas against crabs? No. You'd use turtles. Would you use mantas against eels? Even if they had a range of 10? No. Because mantas can't hit eels directly when in stealth mode. 1 crab 7 rogues loses 2 units vs 8 eels average case (varies on attack and def - might be 1 or 3). Even if we assume eels would need 3 hits to kill a manta and mantas will always 2 hit kill eels, that would still lose a lot more than 2 troops. Hence a range increase wont help here.