I really hope that the differences aren't test server specific, because they were good. For those unaware, on the test server the ants mine the cortium approximately twice as fast, and the crystal sizes are 4k, 8k and 35k, instead of the 2k, 6k and 35k we know from the live server. All up mining happens a lot faster. This is good because mining the coritum was easily the least interesting part of building, so shaving some time out of it is a positive. 2nd big change: No more ant cloaking. This is good, as cloaking roadkill boxes were stupid. I hope this can lead into taking cloaking away from the flash too. Good changes, and an actual unironic: "Thanks Wrel!".
The ANT cloaking didn't need to be removed. It was easy to dodge and bait and play around cover with. And it was easier to understand that a cloaked ANT was in the area than a cloaked Flash imo.
1 Like I said I hope it leads to the flash losing it too. 2 it was way to easy to cheese lots of kills in dense fights by cloaking and ramming through when people have too much to look at to notice the invisible truck slamming through.
I have sometimes been the one doing the cloak road killing and I assure it's too easy. That is, when possible it's too easy. So much of this game is point holds in L buildings and triple stacks, but if the battle ever pushes out between the bases for a box art battle, the cloaked pain train is just stupidly easy.
I dodge 3 out of 4 stealth ants. Or ambusher jet rokket them as they drive off. So they are easy to avoid. & nobody mains ant roadkills or rarely. I never really got that interested with playing the battle ant, even tho I have bulldog. So idm this update. However the battle ant isn't able to be played with turbo, not really. So this makes battle ant obsolete. Not that ant's need a main battle spec. When not building. However the cloaking made it possible to avoid other vehicles. While losing around 2k cort to avoid. More or less. So running away from other vehicles is less likely to happen. While harvesting is faster. Seems fair.
Cloak was the only defense that ants had against libs, Ants will be free kills if the cloak removal goes live. If the roadkill cheese was a problem then THAT problem should have been addressed. Removing cloak entirely just makes new problems. Why not just make taking/dealing damage cause temporary decloak?
I like that ants cant escape from ground vehicles stealthed. IF harvesting is improving, that is. As some enemy ant's simply run away too easily. I'll have to see how often I die from tanks or harassers, to tell, while testing harvest speed. Yet, I never want to shoot enemy ant's anyways / mercy. Since I'm also harasser main, I often don't drive after / shoot enemy ant's. Tho yes you're totally right, libs. Especially during low hour times of the day. Not just libs either. Have you ever shot at, a enemy dervish? While the dervish is behind allied lines, hunting allied ant's? Your ranger gun, after hitting the devish with a ton of aa bullets, only tickles the devish & does 15% damage, before he kills your ant. Everytime. Test a ranger's damage on a ant, verse a dervish in the training room. You'll be suprised that they survive with 80%+ of hp, before they kill your ant, even if you hit them with every single ranger bullet - before dying. I'm not even sure if ranger dmg, should do more dmg to a dervish. They are a pancake in the sky during high pop hours, easy target. So they dont need more AA against them. On the other hand, 1 enemy dervish, can easily spend 1 hour, killing allied ant after allied ant. If that dervish has no pilots to fight.
You can't do that idea. Its really simple why. If the cloak is supposed to be an "evade danger" type of utility, that means you are in danger when you are using it or at least trying to preemptively escape it. If you pop it when you are in danger, aka what it is supposed to be used for defensively, you are going to take at least a little bit of damage while trying to escape. In the case of a Lib, most likely using a Dalton or something with AoE damage, if they aim close to you at all, even though you decloaked, you are dead. Its just a moment of tracking at that point. Its a good idea in theory. Depends on the length of the decloak I guess. Maybe if it flashed the cloak, that'd be fine, but I still think that'd make it way easy to track on the ANT and on the Flash if it were changed too. His argument goes for any danger you would need to escape from, so its not simply a Liberator issue. On a semi related topic, I think gamers these days are being babied too hard. You should be able to roadkill people as an ANT. You should have cheap ways to kill as long as you are able to counter it, and in the case of an ANT or Flash, you can. Listen, assess, move. Thats my way of doing it and I don't get roadkilled much. In fact, the thing I get roadkilled by most is a Harasser.
What worries me more is that the amount of experience in my opinion has not been reduced by cortium production. If they don't do something about it, we will have more problems with blocked cortium spawn points and also farming this cortium for nothing for XP.
This is an excellent point. I have in the past suggested that this be addressed by making cortium only give experience on delivery, and only if delivered to a silo owned by a different player. If the exp value then needed to be buffed, sure, but this system would award exp for helping someone.
but do you see libs getting balanced in the near future? hell, ever?! this change will be a death sentence for ants, especially on maps like Oshur with large areas to travel without cover, especially the water. the cortium changes were good, its good that Howlers are finally becoming an upgrade, but the stealth change is terrible. yes cloaked roadkills are a stupid cheesy gimmick, but ruining the whole thing because of one tactic isn't the way to go. they should eliminate the tactic, not the utility. for escaping from libs cloak is invaluable, and it shouldn't be removed because of a lame unintended useage.
I don't know if stealth, is right for the ants theme. Anything to reduce people arguing about invisible stuff, on the forums, without editing invisibility as it is. This seems like a solution to that. Idm taking away stealth, if they buff ants somehow, or the other specs that weren't stealth. If they don't buff ants, than is the faster harvesting, even a buff? Retrospectively; if dying more often is added to the equation, from stealth being no longer available. Then is harvesting faster even a buff? It seems 1 buff & 1 nerf = nothing. equals 0. +1 -1 = 0. (when silo defense / ant utilities really need +10 or +20 lil buff updates)
this is NOT good, not for those who use it legit for escapeing while farming Cortium and repositioning to ambush tanks/sunderers .. instead cloaked vehicles should not be able to one hit roadkill, that should have been the change
Well, not so often the enemies monitor the hexes you build on. Because you often build on the allied territory. So the cortium mining buff is very good.
