@comradestryker said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 6 (The Kennel & Drones):
Basically all of these suggestions do nothing and keep kennel irrelevant because hives being able to instantly swap bp while being cheaper means they’re superior in 99% of situations.
I would argue that these changes will at least make the Kennel a far more viable option overall. It'll have its own strengths over the Hive. The Hive would still be the "King of assistance" but at least the Kennel would have some strengths of its own, as well.
Specifically if the cost reduction, rebuild time reduction, and the Patrol/Attack-move order goes through. That last one would be quite the change, actually.
This would make it a far more competitive and balanced option rather than a one-sided story, as it is right now.
How would it be quite the change? Why would I build an engie station to get reclaim which can die to some dude that is putting 6 mass a second into int spam? The HP buff does essentially nothing useful for survivability, it means my drones will die when the int does a turn rather than as soon as the int gets into range. It's nice in terms of making it less frustrating for a gust of wind to cripple your eco balance, but you're still keeping the kennels in base on your actual win conditions not dicking around on the map.
Really all engie stations need is a hive nerf so it has the mass efficiency of kennels and maybe making kennels slightly more mass efficient so that there exists some tradeoff between the sheer utility of hive and the objectively worse translation of bp that drones provide.
Even with the BP reduction of the Hive (if it even goes through) it would still keep the Kennel out of the equation as the drones would not be as effective as the Hive.
I wouldn't reduce the BP, I'd just make it more expensive. I would disagree, there is definitely a premium you can attach to the utility of hive where you can tradeoff decisions between hive/kennel. But that's mostly me looking at it from a teamgame point of view. I assume if both have a tradeoff against the other, it would still be healthy in a 1v1 just the same. Currently you just never really make a kennel in a 1v1.
Like the engie stations costing mass to rebuild drones isn’t the problem because the removal of drones means you’re now floating mass with nothing to do. I’d rather the stations had the bp to make a drone in 3 seconds given I had the resources to rebuild them (which I will since all my bp just died).
Well, this would depend on the situation as well - but losing drones overall is quite a penalty at 40 seconds per drone. Floating mass may not be an issue but having the drones to divert the mass (even if you're stalled) is still a benefit.
When does it depend on the situation? Floating mass is always an issue and that's a gigantic component to why kennels are trash; you are required to float mass while hives are not.