Current things I would like to point out.

[MrNo]

Hey @Zaskow you always make this claim that Baron is a good unit, but I've never seen a justification for it. Can you explain?

Right now, the only use I see for it is that weird anti-mech arc ability. Everything else can be done better by bulwarks or foremen except for the battery, and I don't think that ability singularly justifies the cost of a T3 unit.

 

[FerrokenFibrous]

In this case - no, coz Insanity applied for 2 turns.

Still makes the unit waste one turn, so by dispelling you're only making it last half as long, though granted that is still better than enduring the full duration.

I'm glad that you finally mention Mods. So your point here, "A fully modded T1 units are far superior than an unmodded T3", correct? Then revive that t1 unit still an option, which to be said, the common strategy of Syndicate is based on their Indentured.
And here, I will go a lil' further for the "IF". Subjugator weakness is their cosmite spent, this my point. So "What if" the "revive" ability is transfered to the Overseer? I'm fine "IF" with this new ability, the Overseer is 10 cosmite expensive.

Fun fact: Back to older AoW, "Revive" ability always been an annoyed and OP that was limited to certain races and tech. So I'm quite surprise here that you think they're not worthed attention.

And for Modding, what make you think the Subjugator don't have Sp and defensive mod? With Psynumbra Mods, ain't the Subjugator equal to the Tormentor with their 9 range AoE Mind break ability? A 7 hex if hit with Madness, Insanity is not a problem? Can Baron do that?
C'm if you go with mods, you would have various options, even a high atk sp unit. So to say, with decent mods, the Subjugator unexpected useful. Let's back to unmod unit, or we could go forever.

For the flank part, I mean the Subjugator can have the same chance with the Baron stagger atk, which have the enemy flanker swayed to your side. Let's go for another "IF" that flanker is a Hero with full points spent to Atk and Health, and a "Limite" Sword in hand. Man, do you really believe your Baron, in this case, could stop this flanker... or a Subjugator would?

You rarely want to fully mod Indentured, just slap the accuracy/flanker mod on them or leave them unmodded and that's about it, the Overseers and Wraiths/Malictors are the real stars that you should mod, with the Overseers getting the mod that grants the Indentured damage buff ability and/or the one that grants all Indentured in their stack bonus crit chance. In this case, it'd be cheaper and more efficient to crank out more Indentured than revive dead ones, and Orbitals/home turf speed boost will help them get to your armies faster.

Revives and Resurgence are rarer in Planetfall, and I'm not saying they're useless or unworthy of attention, just that not letting the unit die in the first place is more ideal and efficient. Revive is just a backup for mistakes, more so than heals and regen.

Dvar Baron can have Fire Burst and Railgun for Range 8 repeating AoE. Subjugator's AoE is range 7, not 7-hex wide, and can only inflict Insanity if you fully allied with Spacers and nabbed their last mod. None of the Psynumbra mods grant an Insanity effect, they have a Panic mod that is for Infantry only (which the Subjugator is not) and a Catatonic mod, but Catatonic is easier to deal with than Insanity or Panic.

If you payed zero attention to an enemy Hero and let them run around and flank you untouched, you messed up, plain and simple. Either way, Baron with Shockwave mod, melee/ramming units with the Piston mod, or nearby Bulwarks can still concuss that Hero, and you're not gonna have the Baron hold the flank entirely by its own, especially in big 2v2 or 3v3/3v4 stack battles.

 

[Zaskow]

How an Arc-dmg-base hard-to-hit unit with stunning mod and an ability to Mass STun, stagger, both land and air units, is too weak that need a buff?

Oh, please. Again late game mods mentioned. Did you try to play without them with LR? Result won't be amazing...

I rarely use Riders not because of their ineffective, but because the Assembly have better units.

You answer about efficiency of LR yourself.

Their kits works only for Machines, this is what I want to explain from the start. Each race, each Secret tech have their own way of working.

Abilities of Subjugator work only for infantry and Indentured. It's much more narrow group than mechs.

their strategy mostly focus on Indentured

I'd say that indentured spam is worst from possible strategies for syndicate. Too complicated, too expensive. I'm talking not about energy.

Yes, the Collar works on INFANTRY heroes that not immunity to Mind Control.

Ahem...

Hey @Zaskow you always make this claim that Baron is a good unit, but I've never seen a justification for it. Can you explain?

Right now, the only use I see for it is that weird anti-mech arc ability. Everything else can be done better by bulwarks or foremen except for the battery, and I don't think that ability singularly justifies the cost of a T3 unit.

Baron is cheap and early working horse for Dvars. No need for Elite building, early discounts of energy and production, coz Baron counts as Specialist unit. Decent attack with stagger and great choice from firearm mods. Mech recovery makes Barons only stacks completely self-sufficient.

 

[MrNo]

Baron is cheap and early working horse for Dvars. No need for Elite building, early discounts of energy and production, coz Baron counts as Specialist unit. Decent attack with stagger and great choice from firearm mods. Mech recovery makes Barons only stacks completely self-sufficient.

Okay but why can't I just do all of this better with bulwarks. You lose the stagger effect, sure, but you also get equal damage for cheaper. You're probably killing the target anyway, why bother with stagger?

Mech recovery is still slow AF. I guess it's a small bonus over throwing foremen with the mech ressurrect mod into the stack, but you also don't get to resurrect your mechs.

 

[Zaskow]

Okay but why can't I just do all of this better with bulwarks. You lose the stagger effect, sure, but you also get equal damage for cheaper. You're probably killing the target anyway, why bother with stagger?

It's autocombat thing. Bulwarks die too often on auto. Bulwark is pretty squishy and can't heal itself.

 

[NINJEW]

That doesnt exactly match up with my experience with bulwarks and auto. In any case I cant imagine it's a big enough difference to justify the Barron's much larger price tag

 

[Zaskow]

much larger price tag

Bulwark costs 90 energy, Baron 105 en + 20 cosmit. It's not that huge price difference for 20 hp + 2 def, aoe ability, healing and buff.

 

[NINJEW]

20 cosmite and however much research is a massive difference

 

[Zaskow]

You won't get t3 stats for nothing.

 

[DragonZee]

Just a technical question, because you guys have been comparing T2 and T3 units. Isn't it so that T3 units are supposed to fill a specific role in your stacks? I mean I ofc don't play multiplayer at all so I can't tell if it's better to spam one over another, but it's not that you need like 5 of them in each army. It does appear to me that devs tried to create each unit for a specific role, optimally to complement each other. You can use a Bulwark to pin down an enemy unit with Concussive Volley, and then boost it with Nitro Battery to make up for it's one turn of not shooting something etc. So it's not a matter of choosing one over the other...

 

[Zaskow]

but it's not that you need like 5 of them in each army

Human players prefer to spam monogenic stacks. I usually see full stacks of Siphoners, Engulfers etc.

 

[DragonZee]

Human players prefer to spam monogenic stacks. I usually see full stacks of Siphoners, Engulfers etc.

Thought as much... that's why I prefer singleplayer. You play as you like, not how others dictate you to. Ofc this is not directed against multiplayer, it's a matter of preference.

Putting balance aside, I would love if Triumph expanded the custom map settings. For instance it would be great if there was a "start with developed tech tree" option so that factions would have access to late game tech since the start (neutral mobs would be scaled accordingly ofc).

 

[Ericridge]

Insanity on 1 unit with 3 turns cooldown? How scary lol... Insanity is also easily dispelled.




1 unit per 2 turns, not stack.




'Owls' is my answer.




Again, which support ability Subjugator provides? 1 once per combat revive? Convert? Haha.

Also in our PvP games we have enough t3 units, even t4 take place, but Subjugator isn't worth it.

You'll be surprised when you have a laser tank with Plasma Disintegrator, Hard Light and Flash Module equipped going insane on you. You''re looking at units in 1vs1 analysis and neglecting unit as their role in armies as whole. Tormented can basically lockdown a enemy unit for a turn, and only way to address it is to set up formations to expect the possibility of a unit going insane so that the crazed won't kill a unit of yours or kill a unit you can tolerate losing the most. It is quite a massive inconvenience when you have tons of kirko units charging at you. On top of all the PSI damage ignoring your armor. And then the long ranged PSI attack encourages you to keep your soldiers somewhat spread out so it won't do too much damage when at same time you want your units close together so Insanity won't hurt too much. Just having the tormented present forces the opponent to modify their field in a way they don't want to.

I suspect this level of analysis and battlefield reading is beyond most of players though. Meh.

As for the engineers. Yes, Owls can boost accuracy. You're neglecting what Engineers can do though that owls cannot.

Engineers can.. place gun turrets, or modded to place missile turrets, use repair tools to heal cyborg or mechanical unit for 30 hp, Targeting Calibration has 30% accuracy boost and +1 range for one friendly unit. Just adding one can make laser tanks and walkers even more deadlier by being able to get in the alpha strike against enemy forces that refuses to move first. On top of being slightly tougher for being one tier higher than a owl. And finally it has a strategy map support skill of healing mechanical units for 6 hp per turn. PUGs only can heal biological units for 6 hp per turn.


As for subjugators not being worth it, I have a suspucion that its simply a nature of game type/style whatever that you are playing on. They are most definitely worth it in my games. Enemy t3s can't be everywhere. And there will be ablways be many t1/t2 units for subjugators to bully.

Subjugators has really nice psi damage output which ignores armor. Enslaving collars. Revival collars. And then ranged psi aoe that inflicts broken mind.

Human players prefer to spam monogenic stacks. I usually see full stacks of Siphoners, Engulfers etc.

And then proceed to declare and lay all blame and fault upon weak units and say stuff like I won't have lost if this or that wasn't too weak or enemy unit's too OP and needs to be nerfed. I always take pvp whine with a grain of salt.

Anyways what's up with the hate on lightning riders? They're extremely good fliers.. They need like at least one turn of set up and then charge in dealing massive impact on clusters of enemy units to make them lose one AP on their turn and then enter defense mode immediately. And if you have more than one Lightning riders doing this.. it can be enough to just swing the battle in your favor completely. Because of this, I have to primary LR if they're trying to aoe my units. It fits into assembly's scientist flair pretty well.

Vanguard gunships can't do anything massive like that, they're not fancy but utilitarian. Well, one could mass gunships to fire off alot of missiles in a single turn but that's just it xD Nothing fancy.

 

[NINJEW]

I suspect this level of analysis and battlefield reading is beyond most of players though. Meh.

i love you

 

[Zaskow]

You'll be surprised when you have a laser tank with Plasma Disintegrator, Hard Light and Flash Module equipped going insane on you.

Not really. Chance is pretty low and 5 range. Do you really think that some kirko can go closer?

Tormented can basically lockdown a enemy unit for a turn, and only way to address it is to set up formations to expect the possibility of a unit going insane so that the crazed won't kill a unit of yours or kill a unit you can tolerate losing the most.

Tormented can't lockdown anything. Chance of insanity is pretty low, after that unit stays at 5 range, ready to be killed.

It is quite a massive inconvenience when you have tons of kirko units charging at you.

Yeah, your 1 unit is going insane and your front line collapsed. What a nice tactician you are.

Just having the tormented present forces the opponent to modify their field in a way they don't want to.

Not really. Tormented itself is not tough unit can be easily killable.

I suspect this level of analysis and battlefield reading is beyond most of players though. Meh.

Haha, you're funny guy...

 

[Ericridge]

Not really. Chance is pretty low and 5 range. Do you really think that some kirko can go closer?



Tormented can't lockdown anything. Chance of insanity is pretty low, after that unit stays at 5 range, ready to be killed.



Yeah, your 1 unit is going insane and your front line collapsed. What a nice tactician you are.



Not really. Tormented itself is not tough unit can be easily killable.



Haha, you're funny guy...

Considering that Kir'ko has abilities like swarm shield and they have sorts of trickery and deceit skills that allow them to foil enemies from landing shots onto them + various abilities that enrages me because they make it inconvenient for me to set up a perfect gunline. All of them add up to allow kir'ko reach melee. It is up to kir'ko to have the intelligence required to disable units in my gunline for at least 1-2 turns sometimes is all that kir'ko needs to reach and stab me up close and personal. And that's just vanilla kir'ko without any secret tech help. We can go deeper into secret techs that helps the tormented.

Think of it this way, if lockdown could occur at 100% chance, it would be considered "easy mode" and pvpers would start whining for tormented to be nerfed thus sending us back into the eternal circle of buff/nerf at whims of pvpers. No point in making it guaranteed. So if it succeeds at making a unit going insane, what the lockdown that occurs is that I lose control of the unit at minimum for 1-2 turns. If it is full 2 turns, and the unit that's going insane is the Laser Tank and I refuse to dispel it for 2 turns, then at max I have technically lost control of 3 units. Because I now need to position another laser tank so it's parked next to the insane laser tank and order it to fortify so that it'll be shot at and hope it don't take too much damage. If it takes too much damage then I have to send it behind my units and send up second tough unit for the insane tank to shoot at.

And then there is no guarantees that stack with tormented will be fighting my stack with most T3s. What if it's picking a fight with a stack that's four troopers + one Pug + one Laser tank? If that happens, that's guaranteed loss of one pug or one trooper. They'll.. just.. get WASTED.

If visions of madness failed, oh well. suck it up and move on and if your entire battle plan hinges on a single vision of madness working, then it was a high risk battle plan. A gambit. It means the battle was such a close one that everything was balanced on a single tormented that entire fight went up in the smoke the moment it failed.

And then you're acting like its a given that battles will be always 3 stacks vs 3 stacks. This isn't the case. There is battlefronts with alot of units and then there is battlefronts with limited amount of units. Movable garrisons of players in quiet battlefronts will tend to be mostly t1-t2 units. A t3 being idle in those quiet battlefronts is "going to waste" but very powerful garrison. Supportative t3s is at their most powerful in quiet battlefronts because they would make t1-t2's life quite miserable. Coincidentally, that's Tormented, subjugators such units that's currently being argued over in this thread. My t1/t2 garrisons really hate it when those kind of units show up and its a one stack vs one stack battle. It turns into a fight that revolves around them and has to be planned for. If they have a laser tank or two on stand by ready to support, then Its considerably more easier for me and more dangerous for them.

Tormented and Subjugator might be lacking something extra and might get buffed, but I would have to warn you, the buff likely won't be the one that you wanted but the one that further buffs them in their support ability. Helps them excel more better at what they do already. Idk. Devs can just go lolnope and do something completely unexpected to me.

Thank you, you're not the first one to have considered me a funny guy. Thank you.

 

[NINJEW]

Eric my favorite thing about you is how you consider all circumstances, like "how well does this unit do in a situation that any comparable unit would win without losses in"

Please marry me

 

[Sinsling]

I'd say that "is shit at close range" is to make up for it having a 22 damage psionic artillery shot. If it weren't for the massive tech cost these things aren't too far off from being comparable to all the other artilleries.

Some bandaid fixes that would probably fix the unit from a purely statline comparison:

• +2-3 damage to the primary attack. This puts it's attack at roughly where it should be compared to other artilleries following repeating v single action and psionic v other channel conversion.
• Echoes of torment goes from full action to single action. Walker's have free action missiles so some extra engagement range for tormented should be fair game.

Again though, I really think this is more a "it costs way too damn much(research)" issue and not a problem of the unit itself. It isn't quite facing the same issue of old laser tank v walker.

 

[Ericridge]

Eric my favorite thing about you is how you consider all circumstances, like "how well does this unit do in a situation that any comparable unit would win without losses in"

Please marry me

That's just the nature of games like age of wonders, all circumstances has to be considered because units isn't simply balanced around their raw stats. One has to see the unit for what it is and what it can and can't do and then their role in the army and how they perform. And how they perform against enemies. And then how they perform on strategy map by being present. And how insanely annoying if a change is made and how tedious it would be after its changed.

Plus this is a army game not a mano vs mano dueling simulator or a fighter game where one fighter on each side duke it out. 1v1 situations can happen and it can be imbalanced but hey, that's because the game's units is supposed to fight as whole instead of 1v1. Just gotta accept that some match ups in 1v1 will result in a nothing but a bloody smear on the ground for one side.

I was mad about laser tank's overcharged laser cannon shot but after plenty of testing and practicing I became fine with it. And then if I have Autonoms as my NPC ally, i can have the snipe shot of death back so I'm fine with it again. It just won't be available for me every single game that's all. And walker's changes was brilliant, they went from junk to reasonable.

Thanks for the offer of marriage though but I'm already a taken man, I'm married to my M1918 in Girls Frontline.

I'd say that "is shit at close range" is to make up for it having a 22 damage psionic artillery shot. If it weren't for the massive tech cost these things aren't too far off from being comparable to all the other artilleries.

Some bandaid fixes that would probably fix the unit from a purely statline comparison:

• +2-3 damage to the primary attack. This puts it's attack at roughly where it should be compared to other artilleries following repeating v single action and psionic v other channel conversion.
• Echoes of torment goes from full action to single action. Walker's have free action missiles so some extra engagement range for tormented should be fair game.

Again though, I really think this is more a "it costs way too damn much(research)" issue and not a problem of the unit itself. It isn't quite facing the same issue of old laser tank v walker.

I don't mind Echoes of Torment being changed to single action, i always felt like it was a little bit too expensive for full action. If it has to be full action then it should be quite more powerful. Although that would result in the tormented being primaried over other units like Ravenous. Hell, the threat of losing control of my powerful Laser tank with modules for up to 2 turns is a powerful motivation to tell my six units to fire at the tormented over ravenous if both of them is charging at me at same time. If echoes of tormented became a pretty large aoe then, well, the obvious answer would be to kill tormented first over ravenous. I won't be shy about dropping a mass driver cannon onto tormented on turn 1.

Heck i have even fired Mass driver cannons at t1 units if it guaranteed me the win. Chances of instant death for t1 units is something like 99%-100%. xD But of course, this depends on player's overall strategy map situation if he's willing to sacrifice 7 OP for a turn.

 

[NINJEW]

this thread very quickly became very funny