How do we feel about T1 engies also not breaking tree groups?

Feels to me like a noob trap you "just gotta know about" to avoid random e-stalls, that also doesn't really add anything to the game at higher levels.

Tree breaking should just be fully removed from the game.

I don't think that's needed. Using these units specifically to destroy groups of trees is relevant only on 1 map. In other cases, take into account that labs and scouts in factions are very different (aeon and seraphim for example). Player 1 (aeon) builds labs and does not break the forest on his half of the map. Player 2 (seraphim) builds tanks and breaks the forest on his side.

I think for Setons reducing the on-water speed of the spirit would go a long way to allowing time for the other team to destroy it before it gets into all the forestry.

Any non-sera can put a lab in a transport to do so.

Otherwise you can get situation like above where player spamming flares keeps their tree groups intact and the player making tanks breaks theirs.

Arguing about the balance of units/mechanics on only a single map is pretty irrelevant imo.

Still, breaking trees in the early game is just an unintuitive feel bad mechanic all around, so why keep it?

Well it is a thing in the game maybe it is bad but if it is removed is make the game more linear less interesting

@unknow

It’s just an aesthetic thing honestly. Maybe breaking tree groups should still happen but allow the engineer to still suck up the whole group at once, fallen trees and all

@zeldafanboy Def not only aesthetic when u see that on all maps with trees and +1800 players they all try to break opponennts trees (last setons tourney, watch nexus vs petric on LOTS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjX79ZgVd0Y)

Recently there has been a suggestion to perhaps make the center of tree groups visible when you are in reclaim mode (CTRL-Shift). A problem with this is, that it will make the trajectory of unscouted enemy labs visible to the player. See this discussion in Discord: https://discord.com/channels/197033481883222026/1190144799588745277

A possible solution is to make treegroups impervious to labs. It might even make sense considering the labs have "legs". But I'm not sure. What do others think?

Tree groups need to be visible on the reclaim overlay since they are important to reclaim on many maps. A more generalized solution that shows energy contents on the reclaim overlay instead of just mass would be preferable to showing some arbitrary dots. Though currently tree's are pretty much the only prop containing energy.

You can already determine the trajectory of units by noticing the trees falling over, or if the tree groups have enough mass they appear/disappear on the overlay already. You also already get free intel by seeing what bits of mass your opponent has reclaimed. 99.9% of people probably don't utilize this information, but weirdos like me and ZLO sometimes look at the falling trees to know there are labs coming, or to know precisely where to raid engineers that are reclaiming.

Having labs not break tree groups makes sense to me since they are tiny units and I don't think the deliberate breaking of tree groups is an important game mechanic anyway.

@thomashiatt They are not tiny, selen is the same height as a tree, it's impossible for such a vehicle to not break trees on passage.

What if it’s made of a super advanced light material

@robustness said in Scouts and labs should not break tree groups:

[...] there is no such problem on the gap [...]

What more needs to be said?!
Jokes aside i think it will be a massive improvement if there was (1) for example a small yellow dot in the middle of tree groups (basically something you only see if you are looking for it) and if (2) tree groups do not get broken by small, fast, raiding units (labs, scouts)

Alright, seems like there are relatively few objections to this. I've notified the people who might work on this to pay attention to this feedback.