The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed

@willowisppsi said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:

5 - Tele Billy is insane.

Tele billy is only insane if you have zero shields on your grid. 1 T3 shield stops a billy completly

I feel like there's better games to showcase billy being strong. I know there's MLT games we've played with 3-4 billies on a single team. THAT is OP. I only went billy because like FTX said, the game already felt won to me. And it cost me falling behind in air. Had I simply kept expanding air instead I would have just spammed up strats or gunships instead. Or even an arty. And then there'd be no complaint because it's "normal" gameplay.

@willowisppsi said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:

1 - Instead of 3k mass cost for the Billy missile, I'd recommend increasing it to a minimum of 6k and preferably 8k. This is because a well placed Billy in a core base can easily destroy 15k+ mass and Billy shot into a t3 army can reliably get 8k+ mass destroyed, if the armies big enough.

Let me explore some more balance suggestions following this logic:

1. Two tmls can easily destroy a t3 mex with storages attached (5k mass), therefore 1 tml missile should cost 2500 mass.
2. Nuke can easily destroy a 50-70k mass base, therefore 1 nuke missile should cost 50k mass

@sainserow or even a single lobo dropped in between 3 t2 mexes will kill them all (if nothing else interferes), so t1 arty should cost 2k mass at least

building a billy or telebilly and having it work requires your opponent to basically be completely unprepared to deal with any number of TMLs greater than 1 and also behind on eco, while you sink massive amounts of resources into the upgrade

@captainklutz Other units are too far off, but tml/sml is literally the same type of weapon so it falls under the same logic

I agree that billy is too strong, one shoting 30-40 or more bricks/percy ect is insane.

Sounds like a skill issue, kill enemy before they get billy. No issues

@caliber said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:

I agree that billy is too strong, one shoting 30-40 or more bricks/percy ect is insane.

bricks should never get billied, as cybran has the perfect counter. Sure you lose maybe your first group, but after that you should have a loyalist or 5 in your army and be pretty much imune against billy

I havent seen a Billy in over 20 games. I'm sure it's fine as it is.

My biggest complaint about the billy is it's insane range. It is too safe compared to other end-game upgrades, and less fun than it could be as a consequence. I propose making the projectile around 20% slower, thus a bit less useful against armies unless the player takes on a bit of risk by closing in. I wish effective use of it encouraged transport play more.

The counters to it should remain unit spread or mixing build power into the army rather than mobile shields in my opinion, because they require more attention.

@phong said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:

My biggest complaint about the billy is it's insane range. It is too safe compared to other end-game upgrades, and less fun than it could be as a consequence. I propose making the projectile around 20% slower, thus a bit less useful against armies unless the player takes on a bit of risk by closing in. I wish effective use of it encouraged transport play more.

The counters to it should remain unit spread or mixing build power into the army rather than mobile shields in my opinion, because they require more attention.

You say its less safe, but all other coms are waaaaay more tanky then UEF com when it has billy, if it has teleport and billy its even weaker coz it has no defensive upgrades at that point. So in that aspect it is decently balanced

@Firv, with other late-game upgrades, you get maybe a few minutes of value before the armies become too big to face, whereas billy you can potentially keep using to good effect almost indefinitely right now, sitting cozy under shields behind percy walls, lobbing rockets across the map. The risk hardly increases as the game progresses, like it does for other com upgrades, since there's not much incentive to get anywhere close to threats in order to use it. In addition, because armies tend to get bigger and less wieldy, the care you have to put into your aim actually goes down as time goes on. Plus, you can pair it with t3 which is a defensive upgrade. The change I suggested wouldn't mean you absolutely must bring the com into knife distance either.

Also, it doesn't impact tele billy at all, because in that scenario you're shooting at helpless and static targets. If you're hunting armies, teleporting is actually worse than airlifting because you can't adjust your destination as the move orders shift around plus your fire rate is shit.