sasin wrote:
And if you need me to, I can go back and find many replays in which it was used. ~1400 rating. I think that puts me well above the median. I wasn't going to make a post about it, but since there is already one here, I figured I'd at least chime in and push back against the argument that no one who isn't a super noob could use this.

realcat wrote:
So i'm 1100 and have around 750 games. I'm not a total noob. And as aeon i always had 2 tactics. Either i build ras-com and sit in base or i go fighting with com and get that upgrade. And yes you can sit around 3-6 min in your firebase upgrading. That's what you do anyway most of the time. If the enemy has his firebase and you have yours there is no walking around with com and getting kills.
And tech-com is halfhalf because you can't defend against a t3-uefcom or exps and need to get t3land anyway. So i rather go fighting-machine and get one t2 engy front.
Also i only do this as front and very scarsly as eco, because then i need my power for air. And you can produce harbys if you want since you only need one t2 or sth per factory. Also you can just balance the eco to the limit by pausing the upgrade and putting as much engys on it as possible.
It's not hard at all to get 1million power from somewhere. Normally you overflow that amount in one game anyway if you don't manage your eco really well. And the later the game the cheaper the upgrade gets. When you have 6k overflow you get it for free basically.
I rush this also as a monkeylordcounter and can get it faster than the first ml even if it is too rushed by enemy team.
So now one tactic remains and that is sit in base and get gc. before that you can drop 3 harbys but in a teamgame you will need to get gc.
I don't know why it is underused because it is the best aeon upgrade. 3gcs is overexagerated. But i had games with com and gc vs gc. Com shield nearly depleted and gc 80% health. 2gcs may also die but that's situational. A ML and Chicken is completely helpless vs shieldcom because of the range.
People should have used this more often but they never got how good it was.
Partly maybe because people don't know it and underestimate the shield all the time and just send their expensive stuff in. Idk but it certainly hardcounters some things.

And it's the price for having this much health in one shield. First 15k step cheap, second more expensive, third even more expensive. It's logical. Also as i said before it's only e. And e is less worth than mass because it can be spammed fast.

or if some people will complain because aeon will have 1 more upgrade for free...

Well the first upgrade is only good in the early game and the last in the late game. Without it aeon has no lategame options for com while the other races got double-nano, shieldcom with ravagers and gun, or tele/stealthmazer. Stealthmazer btw is also nearly never used.

realcat wrote:
The powercost was compared to the cost of 3 nukes in an earlier post. But if you compare it with the mass included it's easy to spam up power with all that mass so it's not a good comparison.

As i said i did use it vs experimentals. And 29k isn't enough for that if it has recharge or not.
Aeon gets stripped of an endgame option here.

It's not "insane" cost since it's only energy. Cost was one t3 pgen and 6 min for me. That's easily managable. If you count it at 2 t3s the cost is (6000m + 100000e for pgens) + 4500m + 3min wait time. Not THAT much! Rather cheap actually. + You have the pgens wich you can now use for air or reclaim or whatever.

I still don't see it as ineffective. It's a slow long upgrade wich you can only do when you can secure your com.
As i said it is highly effective vs experimentals. Now that that option is gone you have to build 3 gcs instead of one gc + com.
You should make 3 stages. You get your benefit of more uses but the option stays. And if you don't use it who cares? Some people use it. Like i did a trillion times. And i had my best games overall with that shield. You can lure in lots of enemy fire and snipes since they never know how far it is depleted. You can survive a nuke with it. You can kill several MLs with it or a damaged gc or half health crab. Together with gc it's unbeatable. Com is bulletsponge for gc, when it's far depleted com hides behind gc. If they attack gc, com just happily OCs and has enough health in the end to survive 20 seconds of exp and still kill it.. though it's better when they attack the com first wich is often enough the thing they will do.
All just... gone.