Monkey lord cost reduction.

[CocoaMoko]

I see 2 flaws with the arguments here....

1. Why are you sending a monkey in without escort in med-late game? Send it with a group of bricks... even 5-6 bricks with a monkey will easily kill a GC. When entering a firebase, people naturally target the biggest unit, eg. the monkey, while the 5 bricks wreck everything and the monkey soaks up most of the damage. If you are worried about the stealth aspect use mermaids or mobile stealth to cover the bricks and whatever else you send. Alternatively, ask a UEF or Sera player for an engy and build some shields.

2. If you are worried about the monkey being weaker than it's equivalent mass in t3, ALL exp are weaker than equivalent t3. Just for kicks, after reading all this the other day, I played a thermo. As you know, everyone spams only t4 and there is just a huge clash in the middle. I built no t4, only set up a massive brick spam with hives and 2 factories. Guess what happened! EVERYTHING died. Ythothas, Megaliths, Fatboys, PD, everything.


The problem with the t3 spam is that it took 40+ fully upgraded hives to bottom out my eco. The t3 took far longer to build and it took way too long to set up the spam. If my team had not covered me I would have died to the first 2-3 t4.

The monkeylord is not any weaker relative to t3 than the other t4 bots are, and neither is it inferior to the t4 themselves. It is just simply not made to be used for a full frontal throw away attack.

Do you have a replay of this thermo? Not to challenge you of course, I just really wanna see the game ahaha.

Although, what someone mentioned about bricks being more easily countered by GC is true, thanks to the tractor claws as mentioned. They are a free one-hit kill to anything, killing a brick as easily as it would kill a T1 scout. A few loyalists mixed in with the bricks might make it more effective of course.

[BRNKoINSANITY]

Ok, Sunny and I just ran sandbox on this and here is the replay.

Conclusions--- GC verses Bricks -> bricks ALWAYS win with good micro and win 90% of the time just walking in.

--- GC vs Monkey and 5 bricks -> tossup slightly favoring GC, but again this depends a lot on micro and who is attacking/defending. Attacker going to stationary defender loses in both cases.

--- Monkey vs equivalent bricks -> monkey loses hilariously in frontal fight. However, monkey can easily evade bricks pretty much forever. As a side note, the Ythotha is almost as bad as monkey in terms of losing to bricks of equal mass.

I still think that the monkey is good as is and needs no buff. The Monkey is a totally unique unit that gets misused a lot. I fits with the Cybran method of focusing on stealthy attacks and speed, and the monkey is faster than any other EXP. Argue what you want over late game, but to me it seems like the monkey is an early unit, and the Mega is the late game unit. Monkey is just part of the army by then

[uberge3k]

The majority of the Ythotha's DPS is contained in an easily-dodgable ball weapon? A well-micro'd ML can easily 1v1 a Ythotha.

Bricks vs GC is nice, to be sure, but try again with Loyalists. GCs are affected by EMP.

Also note that if you can't avoid a straight up confrontation, the GC has a bad time targeting units right under its feet. The ML does not, and is faster than the GC. Apply this knowledge and you may be surprised with the results...

[Supreme321]

Just want to point this out, we are talking about micro in one part of the game, if this is late game and you have strat bombers coming torwards your commander, what will you micro? The bricks or the asf in order to save your life. Some people wont always have a chance to micro their units as quickly as they would like, again emphasizing an increase in the monkey lord to be done. So its more viable as something you can just send our rather than something you just have to baby for 2 min. Even if this was replaced by bricks you must mirco them constantly versus a gc. As well as this the build time for bricks is usually longer than a gc and thus makes them less viable than the quicker monkey lord at the moment.

[Sunny]

Also note that if you can't avoid a straight up confrontation, the GC has a bad time targeting units right under its feet. The ML does not, and is faster than the GC. Apply this knowledge and you may be surprised with the results...

Lol, this just means nobody watched the replay. ML sucks hilariously, seriously, watch it. I also don't believe ML can actually kill the Sera bot because the bot has good turnrate, dodging the 1st ball(if even possble, is it? I have no idea) will not save the day.

Sera bot kills like 50% microed Bricks for it's mass, which means, it's like 70% mass-effective against them.

GC loses any time bricks can run behind it. Otherwise it wins. Generally it loses, leaving like 5 bricks out of 21.

I think people are scared because of ML because, you know, it's so scary, it has 6 legs, evil eyes, big LAZOR, it's invisible, it lives under your bed and is going to eat any kid not hiding under a blanket. I would like to see it more, so I'm for buffing it or nerfing it's cost.

[BRNKoINSANITY]

It really is possible to micro around the ythotha's "overcharge" blast... I only managed to pull it off once, and it was kind of a one time opportunity, but I have killed one with only cybran acu at 4 vet with gun and RAS upgrade by overcharging over and over. Granted I only had like 800 hp left and just barely escaped the death weapon, but it is possible. You just have to stay at max range and predict where the terribly slow orb is going. At the max gun-up range it is really easy to dodge. The other continuous damage weapons really don't do much damage at all. I can't say how the monkey would do with it's shorter range, but I doubt it would fair as well.... the turret would burn up 50% of the life span rotating.

[Blackheart]

In a chicken vs monkey fight the monkey is able to win, but it is hard. The problem is that you have to get somewhat close to the chicken to use the mazer on your monkey. While getting closer you have to dodge the big "balls" of the chicken. If you get closer it gets really hard to dodge it, but a monkey at least is worth its mass vs a chicken.

[Sunny]

Recent sandboxing showed, that ML ~ Sera bot both with heavy micro.

The bot has slight edge, but ML is cost-effective. I start to think, that ML if we change specifically cost, should cost like 19k mass.

Other curious things.
1. Harbs kill Bricks for the same mass. 15 harbs kill 10 kiting OR focusing bricks with like 5 harbs left.
2. Sera tanks kill Harbs in straight fight, but Harbs can also kite them forever, killing them.
3. Sera T4 bomber is easily microed making it multibomb.
4. Current Scathis damage things like a direct fire experimental, hitting almost always (splash).