Rebel Barrack Vangard vs Empire Rodian Recon Sharpshooter is no contest

[TNT]

But even if you ignore all that, let's go back to the point I made that you ignored.
Exactly which single unit does enough damage, is fast enough to cover the distance and can break or ignore the walls to the well buried barracks before multiple additional waves?

The answer is there isn’t. Not against a well designed base and not in one shot. With really tough bases you might have to deploy only a few jets or jumps at a time in between ways and whittle your way to the barracks. This isn’t the case with all bases of course and in many cases I’ve come across rebel bases with barracks that are nearly out in the open or behind maybe a single row of buildings. That’s not good defense. To answer another question: I wait for the second wave to spawn against tough bases. The last thing I need is a bunch of GR distracting and stopping my jumps in front of a line of sonic turrets and at the exact moment vader trips the SC. It’s almost like the harder the base is, the more you have to approach it like a squad war base. I’ve also had many a rebel lure the first wave and mow through my near maxed 10 imp base with barracks buried as far as they can be. This was before my GR was in the 9-10 range and my rodians were lvl 8. Before that it was a 50% roll-fest with the typical attacker using 1-2 landseers on a bunch of jets at the moment my GR rodians engaged them, allowing the jets to simply run them and the barracks over. I’m assuming most of my opponents have at least lvl 7 jet skins.

On the topic of Rodians making all non-jets useless, the same holds true for most other units, including imperial ones against buffed turrets and even rebel guard reserve. A few waves of high level rebel reg GR with trooper skin can be absolutely devastating to a jump attack. The only argueable unit is the cold mhc, which still has a wacky tendency to get within range of buffed rockets and other turrets before firing, especially if buildings are in front of those turrets or there is a break in a wall somewhere else. Hoth is a strange beast right now.

Personally, I think imps would be ok without GR snipes at least having the burst turret advantage to work with now and because as other rebels here have admitted, GR snipes aren’t that tough to deal with anyways. IMO it’s better to have more GR that spawns more often to slow an attack vs. a few that only work if the attacker lacks strategy or flat out messes up. There’s more flexibility and reliability that way even if the overall defensive potential is lower. On hoth we would just run dew GR with int-4 skin and mhc GR with cold mhcs skin. On all other worlds it would probably be GR storms and dews/bikes.

I'll state my point again: there is no complex strategy, Rodians effectively make all non-jets unusable.

I can't judge if taking out the Rodian Snipers GR will fix the GR to be more doable for other units as most Imperials run them.
Ironically, Imperials can actually judge that better as they never face sniper GR of any kind.
What I do know is, that when I face unskinned snipers I still occassionally fail, however it feels a lot fairer.

On the At-Act I don’t think it’s the damage and health that makes as much of a difference as the additonal units that continually spawn. In most cases, the walker pops a few shields and gets left in the dust by jumps, walking around and not really doing much as long as the jumps stay alive. The storms however seem to engage more buildings and do a good job of distracting sonic blasts away from the At-Act. Cold At-Mp MKIII should be a beast but without those additional troops the At-Act produces, it seems pretty reasonable.

I would argue that only against a base that has it's barracks outside of shields that other units might be viable.

Indeed, skinned light infantry GR seem unimpressive, but I'll be the first to admit I've underestimated them more than once. The sheer numbers with which they show up with buffs gives them a real punch for both Imperials and Rebels alike.

I've been thinking for quite a while that the current way that GR works may be too much period. But it's hard to gauge accurately.

I'm never really impressed by the extra units my lvl8 senator leia spawns. But I think that it might be a case of one of the times where the ATACT being so slow is an actual advantage for it. It allows it to spawn more units compared to Leia who is liable to run into sonic/burst turret range when a new wave of units spawn.


You know what, I think we agree and understand eachother. Nice talking to you.

[Plagueis]

We’re both passionate about this game and it shows. I 100% agree that guard reserve is too much in general. I actually think most armory equipment is too much because I remember when at maxed level, armory equipment added maybe 30% health and damage. That was not only reasonable, but fair to all players from the crazy dedicated to those who simply can’t dedicate the time to the grind, missing out on a 30% buff and not a 100%+ one. I have tremendous respect for you TNT. Thank you for the respectful conversation. I look forward to our next one.

[Zorro]

I wish to add the following to this healthy and interesting debate.

I have Rebel bases at L8, L9 and 3 at L10. The L10s are not maxed and have L6 skins for Jets and a good range of L10 Barracks and Factory troops available. I am actively upgrading all 5 bases so I play a lot.

The ONLY option I have to win PvP matches, at all 3 levels, is to trip the SC and bait the SC troops and GR troops to a medic in 1 corner and deploy Jets or HWKS or Fangs to kill them and try to reach the barracks before the second wave spawns from the barracks. If I get at least 2 barracks destroyed before the second wave spawns I can 3 star 90% of the time. (A footnote to the baiting strategy is that you can deploy Jets and or Vehicles as soon as the GR locks onto your medic thus saving precious time, they do not attract the medic away from the corner you deployed it in. The SC and GR troops will walk right past your troops and get annihilated.)

My ONLY UT load that works is Jets + TXs + Vans + Medic + RS . I have tried every conceivable other combination and nothing else works as consistently. The game for me is getting BORING because I have no other effective troop combinations or attacking strategy.

My experience on defense is that the Empire attackers have a greater range of troop combinations to defeat my bases.

Setting aside the fairness of the troop strengths for each faction, the greatest threat to the future of the game is BOREDOM. Variety is the spice of life and gaming. Please give us back the ability to vary our troop loadouts and strategies.

I have no problem with the Empire having GR Snipers and believe Rebels do not need GR Sharps. An easy fix to the "GR fairness issue" would be to take away the Armory buffs for GR troops altogether. Armory can work for SC troops but NOT GR. This may mean GR Snipers will need to have their Health/damage increased a little to find a fair balance.

It would be nice if the targeting could be changed for the Rebel GR Vanguards though, to the closest vehicle rather than to the biggest, this would more closely copy the Empire GR Sniper.

[Plagueis]

I have to agree that attacks have been distilled down to just a few boring options. Let’s say I find an opponent from one of the higher up squads and I decide to attack him. I could probably 2-star many of those bases with a very creative strategy and a heavy-based offense. If I want a chance at a 3-star on hoth, I can mix in some cold mhcs and a bunch of jumps. For tat or kit, I’m bringing pretty much all jumps, a twilek and a kubaz. I also plan on using a full load of t-5’s and maybe even my SC if it’s anyone from a top 50 squad. Either way, going against glowing barracks or an SC full of jets or sullys makes the attack vastly more difficult and where I can use partial loadouts of jumps to defeat level 10 dev bases with glowing turrets, live HQ 10 player bases typically cause me to throw in everything I have including at least a few starships and maybe even my SC if the target is really tough. Either way, using a bunch of jumps usually becomes the only option to stay competitive in a conflict or earn a 3-star win in general, especially considering every target I face now has high level buffed turrets at the very least. This includes dev bases.

I feel like taking away armory buffs from guard reserve would open up more offensive options mainly for rebels, but it would also open the door to getting completely obliterated on defense by anyone who brings a few t-5’s/landseers to the party, which is pretty much every HQ 10. Those things are a major crutch that people use as a substitute for strategy as is and Rodian & cold mhc armory equipment balances that very commonly used and abused aspect. I thoroughly want those ships nerfed hard. Of course, if armory equipment for GR went away, imps would still use it to buff their SC troops just as rebels do, but would be at a much greater disadvantage IMO as what’s better: a few level 5 snipes that spawn every 30 seconds at best or a full attack with 18% more health and damage or whatever? Knowing from experience that unbuffed GR snipes, even at level 9 are comically ineffective against the opponents that typically attack my base and watching four snipes take out a single jet before being mowed over and having my barracks destroyed before the second wave is the reason I would chose the 18% hands down. It’s also the reason why no rebel would run anything but jets unless that armory equipment was balanced to decentivize its use. The same goes for imp jumps.

With guard reserve, the rebel options don’t seem as good as the imp options and that might be the case. But when attacking, even my high level jumps seem pretty sucky against buffed GR regs and banthas. Tauntauns are pretty much infinite health meatshields that my jumps can’t get through. So maybe our GR is good and it’s balanced by our best offensive units being weak in comparison to jets? Seeing rebels in conflicts leads me to believe this might be the case.