Aeon Gun ACU

Some tips for those struggling with land ranged units.

  • Use air. E.g. bombers or transport drop. Personal favourite is com drop.
  • Flank. Leave nowhere for ranged units to kite back towards.
  • Deny intel. No intel = no range. Most players (including pros) only make minimal intel. One T1 bomber or LAB is always worth sacrificing to kill radar.
  • Attack in multiple places simultaneously. Ranged units are often slow. Exploit this.
  • Flow like water. If you can't break a position, ignore it and focus your efforts into the path of least resistance.
  • Tech up to widen your tactical options.
  • Eco UP. Fortify a little (e.g. walls) to buy time and develop your eco for a later game overwhelm strategy. More stuff beats less stuff.
  • Pick your battles. If you've tried something and it didn't work, trying again often won't get you a better result.
  • Stop playing on 1 to 2 lane maps or turtle maps.

If none of these are viable for you, get good by acknowledging your mistakes and improving.

@comradestryker I think this sentence

Another note here - which I have mentioned in a previous post above ^, is that the counter to something should be cheaper, at most the same value

is a very good summary of your point. However, I disagree.

We're talking here like in these fights only the commanders are relevant, but you do not see a guncom push without units. One example: auroras are fragile; a single bomb from a T1 bomber kills small groups of units. Taking out a decent amount of the auroras with some bomber micro is not difficult, and suddenly you've got an army to support your own non-aeon guncom which is much bigger than the aeon's army.

Do we really believe that the com's advantage is so large that in this situation, players do not stand a chance?

Furthermore, T2 upgrade isn't something that only exists to counter guncoms, it provides other directions (early TML is always fun), and remains relevant much longer than a Guncom will.

Sure, this takes more effort, and it isn't as simple as 'right click com, get kill'. But why should it be? The guncom isn't impossible to play against, it's difficult to play against. The whole idea behind a strong unit is that it is more difficult to play against, and this is fine.

"Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time."

Newest map: luminary.png

Bring back old Loya stun and I'll agree with you. It wasn't impossible to play against either.

Why do you assume the problem with gun com is t1 spam?
The real problem is lategame pushes that get obliterated and with snipers you are perma stuck with t4 or risk donating mass, not to mention that the moment you get chrono, you are basically impossible to kill with ground and no, snipes aren t a thing there cause you need to invest x10 mass to remotely have a chance of killing it

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

12

In this thread: high rating players claiming aeon gun is broken and low rating players calling it a skill issue

Moderators please lock the thread i cant take this anymore

profile picture credits to petric

@indexlibrorum said in Aeon Gun ACU:

Why must everything be balanced into mediocrity? So what if one commander is a bit better than the others. Other factions have other units that have their own strengths.

In a game of rock-paper-scissors we don't complain about the rock winning from knife, we use paper. Let's not end up with what is essentially a reskin of the same unit.

That is not to say that the faction as a whole should be overpowered when compared to other factions as a whole. The chrono looks too strong, so does the GC. But these issues can be resolved without taking away an advantage; decrease their strength, don't remove it.

For those who are now thinking "yea but that's what I want with gunrange": I refer you to the "this distance is worth 200 mass" image above.

Mediocrity? Generic gun ACU is possibly the most OP upgrade/unit in the game for cost efficiency barring maybe TML upgrade.

The whole problem here is that you are not providing an answer to why exactly Aeon needs a strictly superior gun while having potentially the best t2 stage to transition to already. Your logic is “keep stuff unique until it’s oppressive” but if you’re an Aeon player and you do not go gun in basically any circumstance, you’re bad. The only reason nobody can complain about it is because you can’t tell people not to make gun since then Aeon autoloses to any faction that can.

Refer back to my whole post about what makes ACU upgrades good in meta or bad in meta.

@arran said in Aeon Gun ACU:

Some tips for those struggling with land ranged units.

  • Use air. E.g. bombers or transport drop. Personal favourite is com drop.
  • Flank. Leave nowhere for ranged units to kite back towards.
  • Deny intel. No intel = no range. Most players (including pros) only make minimal intel. One T1 bomber or LAB is always worth sacrificing to kill radar.
  • Attack in multiple places simultaneously. Ranged units are often slow. Exploit this.
  • Flow like water. If you can't break a position, ignore it and focus your efforts into the path of least resistance.
  • Tech up to widen your tactical options.
  • Eco UP. Fortify a little (e.g. walls) to buy time and develop your eco for a later game overwhelm strategy. More stuff beats less stuff.
  • Pick your battles. If you've tried something and it didn't work, trying again often won't get you a better result.
  • Stop playing on 1 to 2 lane maps or turtle maps.

If none of these are viable for you, get good by acknowledging your mistakes and improving.

Everything posted here justifies why any faction should rightfully get a 40 range gun. Or even better, give every faction a 40 range gun aside from Aeon.

I’d be able to give a rationale for why Cybran needs a 35 range gun, for example. Good luck doing it for Aeon.

Let's go in opposite direction and nerf gun and oc for all factions so t2 unit can have some impact on the game and not get rolled over by acu that goes pew pew f your t2 for the fraction of the cost and time it gets for t2 unit to take hold, if ever.

Analyze, Adapt, Overcome...

@ftxcommando
It is a shame that I try and post constructive advice and you shitpost in response. I sincerely hope you meant it as a joke and that your humour needs work.
Let us take the time to work on it right now, Mr. UEF boy 🙂

For instance,
@ftxcommando said in Aeon Gun ACU:

you are not providing an answer to why exactly Aeon needs a strictly superior gun

You are not providing an answer to why exactly UEF needs strictly superior HP.
Same format, equally pointed and just as unamusing and asinine.

A more humorous iteration would be,
You are not providing an answer to why UEF need the thickest of bois. It is because everyone knows UEF boys are the thickest!

The difference between ACU hp is inconsequential and can be mathematically equated via the different regen rates. I don’t care about structures having different hp and wouldn’t lose sleep over them being normalized again.

Now stop deflecting away from the inarguable position, please.

Ah reminds me, the Aeon range does not cost “200 mass more” because it’s two unique upgrades. I’ve had games where an Aeon ACU rushes range gun and forces enemy gun to cancel or lose 30-40% of their hp. Even better if they didn’t start it yet because then you are completely fucked.

And even if it did, any 2k+ player would, in a heartbeat, pay the extra 200 mass for the range.

@arran said in Aeon Gun ACU:

@ftxcommando
It is a shame that I try and post constructive advice and you shitpost in response. I sincerely hope you meant it as a joke and that your humour needs work.

Taking multiple paragraphs to say the equivalent of "get good" is shitposting to begin with. Aeon gun being good to the point of always being worth to make and countering everything all the way up to T3.5 land with other upgrades is a problem. Just like original Corsairs used to be. Or Beetles at some point. Or 3603 Restos. Or old ACU TML.

@ftxcommando

Ok so explain why nobody play aeon on anything bigger than 5*5 because the rest of the tools of this faction are shit / why no more than 5% of the games in LOTS involved aeon?

And on the other hand why everybody play UEF now?

Another option to throw out there (instead of improving t2 as a counter to guncoms) - increase the range of Aeon gun even further (say +2 or +3 above what it is now), and increase the dps from ROF to x2.5 or x3 instead of x2, but increase the cost and build time of each upgrade to be that of other faction’s combined gun upgrade.
That way you make it much harder for Aeon to get both upgrades vs other faction’s guncoms/much more of a risk to doing this (and more counterplay options), but still keep things different and provide more meaningful choice for the Aeon player when upgrading.

Meanwhile t2 pd as a counter would still be almost as powerful against a double upgraded acu but no longer have such an investment disparity (so becomes relatively better). Non aeon guncoms would have a clear window to push forwards while the aeon acu is upgrading; range only aeon acu + army is weaker than non aeon guncom + army at the t1 stage, etc

It’s much more interesting to have factional variance that provides tradeoffs and is relatively well balanced than just changing it to mirror other factions range

@unknow said in Aeon Gun ACU:

@ftxcommando

Ok so explain why nobody play aeon on anything bigger than 5*5 because the rest of the tools of this faction are shit / why no more than 5% of the games in LOTS involved aeon?

And on the other hand why everybody play UEF now?

Cuz LotS have ban system so you can ban annoying OP shit like Aeon.

No idea which tournament you want me to look at. Rainbow cup I was basically 50/50 between UEF and Aeon with the deciding factor being whether my slot involved any interaction before full t3. If it did, Aeon was the dominant pick.

Ah you said LotS; I’ll need to go and review it.

@unknow said in Aeon Gun ACU:

Ok so explain why nobody play aeon on anything bigger than 5*5 because the rest of the tools of this faction are shit / why no more than 5% of the games in LOTS involved aeon?

because no one wants to play with aurora lol
also as endranii said, faction vetoes

@unknow said in Aeon Gun ACU:

And on the other hand why everybody play UEF now?

i dont know anyone that doesnt play random faction

profile picture credits to petric

I’m guessing he meant that UEF was dominant in the LotS games.

Did I just see build walls and eco given as a suggestion to stop an Aeon gun com?

Here's a new idea: what if you make the increased range an active ability with a cooldown.

"Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time."

Newest map: luminary.png