Hives need a nerf

[Spy_Emanciator]

Hey so noticing all wins on choke based maps are approaching hive use. Not really balanced right now as the supposed offset of mass cost isn't really preventing them from doing things like loading nukes at rediculously broken speeds. There's just no way for UEF drones to keep up as you need 4x t3's to match 1 hive and they seeming build speed and upgrade speed of mass hives just outpaces this drastically.

I'd say something needs to be done to put hives in there place a little bit and keep other factions viable.

[Uveso]

doing things like loading nukes at rediculously broken speeds

Hmm.... i tested it and i can't see the "rediculously broken speed" of hives.

Both are UEF nuke silos, one assisted with a kennel, the other with a hive.
After 4 minutes and 43 seconds i see almost the same loading state:

NukeAssist.png (451.63 KiB) Viewed 2266 times

The hive has a buildpower of 75 while 2 Tech3 kennel drones have a buildpower of 50 together.
So you only need to add a tech2 kennel with a single drone to match the hive.

If you use 12 Tech3 hives with a buildpower of 900 then you need 18 Tech3 kennels to match. (18 kennels = 36 drones with 25 buildpower = 900)
As you can see, the 12 hives have the same speed then 18 kennels after 3 minutes and 5 seconds:

NukeAssist900.png (478.94 KiB) Viewed 2266 times

(Tested at the same time in the same simulation)

Can you prove your statement that you need 48 kennels instead of only 18 to match 12 hives?

[C-Star]

"lets balance things around chokepointmaps"-Discussion again

[Spy_Emanciator]

ok academically speaking they have the build power listed with the uef needing more numbers of upgraded build assist units to match the Cybran.

What practically happens is the rapid expansion benefit of cybran as the typical nuke rusher is building about 2-3x what you are showing there in the 2nd example to throw nukes. In this case the Cybran Hive's upgrade with application instantly vs the drones with travel times, and less total places to upgrade. Also they are getting the mid level up as another smoothness benefit making the process more parabolic where the UEF process is softer and closer to linear because of the greater cost to initial felt benefits, and the drone travel time.

So basically when it comes to the 2 common late game items ( Nuke rush with OP build power, and Ras com printing) Hives are just breaking the meta badly.

The benefit to Aeon and Seraphim is supposed to be build efficiency vs the hives/drones, but the speed to the initial ras com out being faster makes this a moot point unless building an experimental or other high mass item like a BS. I think this mechanic was buffed around making up for weak cybran shields so they could flap tank and speed rebuild, but the real solution is nerf the hive a bit and buff the shields just a slight bit as well to keep that balance in check, while fixing the racial balance for late game play.

[Dragun101]

I mean....and? Kennels can have advantages over Hives, sense they can assist further, be most expensive scouts in the world, so on and so forth. Also they can reclaim across the map (and in theory in combat zones).Words. In other words a Hive has smaller/small zone of operation compared to Kennels. I mean the only change I'd make to Kennels is make replacing the drone 'free' (likewise with ACU Drones) so that it feels less bad to lose them to wild Inti's and MAA. But that is whole another discussion. And is more of an issue/related to the issue for why UEF drones were nerfed (due to on high reclaim maps, being immune to inti's) made them too strong, and would unbalance the game because UEF Coms could slide a drone into there BO and set them to reclaim mid reclaim.

Kennels and Hive's are both engineering stations/meant to help BP but they are not the same unit and that nuance of difference is relevant and important to how they are balanced in comparison to one another.

[Uveso]

loading nukes at rediculously broken speeds.[...] you need 4x t3's to match 1 hive

I am sorry but i can't reproduce this.

80 hives and 120 kennels, with high travel distance for kennel drones:
Build time for 5 nuke missiles for each launcher was 21 minutes and 54 seconds.
The kennel block finished the nukes first:

NukeAssist6000.png (638.11 KiB) Viewed 2159 times

As in the example before, you need 1.5 kennels to match a hive, not 4 kennels.

I am stopping here because i can't see any bugs or ridiculously broken speeds or OP build power, and you did not prove otherwise.

[Dragun101]

Do you have a replay Spy? Also Uveso if what Spy said did ‘happen’, more likely kennel drones where killed by some stray ASF’s. And UEF player hadn’t noticed or otherwise.

[Uveso]

Hello Dragun123,

thanks for the info.

When I read that it takes 4 kennels to get the build power from a hive, I thought we have a bug in the
gamecode or some wrong numbers inside the kennel/drone blueprint.

I just wanted more information about this "bug" so i can fix it.
(I am not interested in balance discussions, only in fixing bugs.)

[Spy_Emanciator]

This relates to another one of my posts:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17243

This will obviously stir outcry and dismay as it touches on a controversial topic more related to techno-magic than developer intended coding.

RTS players are always functioning on 2 levels (at the very least) making sure to follow their plan (EG macro for timing push at X time without any lost economy) and also doing another function which gets buried into the dance the player is doing (moving from camera postion to another, fast selecting units, and watching for moves they could make while keeping their APM up.

Within this second portion, there is a function of debugging and counter bugging that goes on that defines the top players from the ones who have simply read a guide on how to accomplish a certain build. IF you have amazing reaction speeds and perfect execution of a variety of skilled plans, you will still not match the best players, because they are essentially performing a task beyond the game itself.

If your functioning good ( or hiring support of this kind) then your units move without hesitation (faster), build times do not have glitches or laggy interludes, and the same kinds of plans play out differently on the basis of protection of variables such as attack speed, move speed, tracking, economy draw. ECT...

I've seen coms outrun monkeylords (techincally impossible) I've seen SMD's that simply would not load no matter how much BP was on it. The longer the timing the worse the effect of this is and these factors are contrary to good gameplay and competition. Its a game of breaking the rules just enough to not get noticed and popped with hacking. If you make your stuff run a little bit better, and the opponents run just a little bit worse, add in a bit of intercontinental lag, and you can get away with fixing matches in your favor based on the techno-spiritual cleanliness of your units.

This goes on in Starcraft 2 and you'll notice differences in the way those pro's function from what you could do with the same inputs at the same time. I'd like Supreme commander to do more to make this less of the focus and more about the decision making path, as I'm sure you are Uveso.

Its advanced debugging and real time debugging that were talking about so i'll move on to why I've proposed this balance change.

Seemingly certain units suffer worse from this and HIves are not one of them. The are the current albatross of Supreme and the bars move without hitches or studders where as the UEF drones do seem to get some of that. So i'll just ask you consider this in that context that the rapid expansion of build power with hives does seemingly seem to strong right now and normally this wouldn't matter, because your mass income and savings would be depleted too fast to do anything with this, but for loading a nuke or SMD it makes having that race's tech access seem totally out of balance from other factions.

For dualgap:
See with nuke timing the air players are having to spend time otherwise spent built on ASF on spy planes to hit critical timings to see is my opponent nuking or eco'ing. If they build lots of hives first, then they could be doing either, forcing them to make more and more t3 spy planes to hit faster and faster timings until its 100% evident which their doing. If they can just throw a nuke out a lightning speed (and drop the launcher itself much faster than normally expected) then that decision point for early SMD loading is harder and harder to react to. If a player without hives can't do that then something's wrong. I don't know exactly what method is being employed but the speed from Nuke drop to nuke launch with a hive nest, vs any other faction, and the speed of the 2nd nuke launched is broken. It just will not accomplish the same thing with lots of engineers as you literally have to debug every singe t1 engineer as a separate object, but somehow the Hives are untouchable.

[BlackYps]

based on the techno-spiritual cleanliness of your units

This is excellent shitposting.