Frogboy gets wrecked against a strategy he claims is flawed

I saw this game yesterday on his broadcast (unless he also faced him again today). The fact of the matter is that fast expanding is the only way to play 1v1 competitively and has been for some time now. It is what provides the income in order to then outtech and outproduce the opponent. It is built into the game design itself with each successive sector providing more income. Incursion used to be a way to punish early mass T1 expansion but it was also a way to just end the game since you could do it at around the 2 minute mark. It was far too OP and Substrate had nothing equivalent either.

There are a couple maps that play slightly differently - the symmetrical ice map where your bases are opposite each other across a mountain range - is interesting and becomes more strategic because there are fewer points to cap and you still have 2 lanes/directions to fight over. It often becomes sort of a stalemate where the game is then decided by better unit composition/scouting/teching/orbital choices. Knife Fight is just a crazy rush to fight over mid until one gets the upper hand.  

I'd like to see more units and orbitals in the game that provide different strategic paths. What about an air unit that can decap points? Forces a fast expander to invest in AA while the other player has to expand slower due to investing in air factory. What about new ways to turtle up and expand your eco? Defensive structures that also buff income rates for sectors. Cost-wise these should be balanced with costs of a fast expanding T1 style. Each of these should have a pro/con to them. I'd like to see new viable playstyles rather than just nerfing the few existing one(s). Cheaper bombers would also be welcome. It would be another option for Substrate when dealing with these T2 medic deathballs of PHC. AA is pretty effective as is but I find bombers in 1v1 pretty cost ineffective.

Edit: another option would be to just simply reduce the number of sectors on some of the busier 1v1 maps.

I don't think my skill level (or lack there of) should be used as proof of anything.

The top player strategy right now, which I can't pull off, is to use your engineer to fast build a second engineer and try to take 2 regions.

We plan to make these changes to the balance:

• Engineers will take less time to build but cost substantially more thus, if you want to rapid expand, go for it but it'll consume all your metal).
• You cannot build in a region that you don't own.
• Factories will cost a bit more to construct.

And without giving too much away here are 2 PHC units we have in mind:

1. PHC Sapper. Via orbital fabricator (which will become cheaper and quicker to build but Incursion will require more quanta making it an invalid ability). The PHC sapper will use 50 quanta and can destroy enemy buildings fairly well (it can also attack units but not as well). Good for punishing rapid expanders.
2. PHC Instigator. New aircraft. Relatively cheap but can do some harassment but more specifically, it can turn a captured region back to neutral.
3. PHC Flea. Is ignored by Splinters and thus can go directly to your base.

Please understand: We don't want to make fast expansion an invalid strategy.  We simply want to ensure that there are risks with any strategy if your opponent has the skill to punish you.  We have to weigh the price of rapid expansion versus the cost of punishing it. For awhile, Incursion was so powerful we had to nerf that.  

Sounds good - assuming Substrate will get some tricks of their own...

yea, but I don't want to spoil it.

I agree that rapid expansion is necessary.  The way I lose the most often is by not expanding as fast as my opponent (and not knowing how to counter that rapid expansion).  Other times I make some sort of blunder.  And sometimes I get beat on strategy.  But mostly... it's the speed of expansion that determines my games.

BTW, Shutdown has clobbered me every time I've played him.  I don't suck, but there are a few guys that really have my number, and he's one of them.

Anyhow, here are a few thoughts related to this:

• I don't make very good use of Hermes for rapid-attack squads.  Maybe I need to experiment with them more.
• My armies very often get distracted from their mission.  If I try to run them through an area to make a quick strike and someone starts shooting at them, they often will stop, spin the formation around, engage the enemy, and refuse to leave.  This might be more common with brutes in the army (but I'm not sure).
• Retreating, as an army, seems like it's just about impossible.  Maybe this is realistic?  But attempting to penalize a rapid expansion by sending a counter force is risky because if you run into a bigger group (which is likely, because you're probably closer to your opponent's production than your own), there is no meaningful escape.
• The current maps in 1v1 are small enough that contact with the enemy happens pretty quickly.  This means you need to build an army fast, or die.
• There isn't as much strategy in early combat as there is in later conflict.  Pretty much whoever has the biggest army wins, and whoever has the most resources will have the bigger army.
• Smarties are slow and expensive.  Extractors are fast and cheap.  Amplifiers are slow, expensive, and require radioactives and a quantum relay. 

So, if you try to expand territory carefully, and fortify as you go, you end up spending resources you need for your army and you get little in return.  Instead, it's a race to eat up as much territory as possible.

Edit: in the time it took me to type out a response, I see Frogboy has already replied, and I think those changes will be helpful.

I love the Instigator and Sapper ideas. Less keen on the Flea just because Hermes are already fast enough to essentially ignore neutral creeps and go to your base if you want a unit to do that.

Lol.  Frogboy, one of the keys to good rapid expansion is to have factories sending a steady stream of units to every corner of the map.  Adding weird raiding units with no counters won't help things.  Players need to learn how to to defend against rapid expansion and fight on multiple fronts.  Changing thenmeta too fast won't give them time to practice.

could someone share the recording of this match, if it exists?

Frogboy, we had this same problem in PA for a little while.  People thought there should be other strats (and there are), but the first one that worked was rapid expansion. Maybe we should give time for the meta to develop before throwing it to the wind?

Please do not do that. It kills all sorts of interesting play. Like building a factory or more much closer the enemy than he knows for surprise attacks. That is hard enough to do anyway so it is not an exploit. Easier to do when Splinters are off and it makes for a fun dynamic game. Locking things down rigidly risks smothering the game. Already the enemy knows what nodes you control with zero scouting, blocking off this kind of thing kills surprise even more. No one uses it in 1v1 anyway as the maps are too small to do it so it does not effect rank play, but it is fun in the large maps. 

This would be a very significant and interesting change to the game, and probably another nail in the coffin of the Avatar. I always thought it was odd that the engineers could capture a node while building a factory without it slowing it down.

An alternative less aggressive change could be increased build time penalty and/or buildings slow loss of health in uncontrolled regions.

I particularly like the Incursion cost increase as it seemed very over powered to me.

This and the nerfing of mission 4 of the campaign seem rather knee-jerk and prone to more change later. Mind you, this is coming from someone who's not good at embracing changes in games. That may be at odds with the devs plans, but it's honestly how I feel.

Right now I just can't imagine there has been enough time and matches to truly let strategies develop.

Are any of the twitch games available Youtube?

I'm sure the raiding units would have counters; AA for the Instigator and a few land units for the Sapper (or the Nullifier) for example. The Instigator should be costly though imo, or even limited to a single one at a time, otherwise there's risk of the new meta being a ton of those flying around and the game becoming whack-a-mole.

So far from start of Season 0 to now, the only defense against rapid expansion has been to do it yourself, and faster. Like I said earlier, it's a result of the map design - the 1v1 maps in rotation that have only a few points to capture per side play differently. Maps with even number of Turinium points (and not one in the middle) can be played differently. A single Turinium point mid with 500 points to victory is just built for fast expansion and rushing from the start though.

It was a difference in skill. basically the game you described was an outplay and making changes based on outplayed games is never good. Leave the meta to players.

 I second tek that making fleas is somewhat the same with hermes, only that hermes is already in the game and it's almost an useless unit, I never build hermes early game, because it doesnt add anything. It's good mid to late game for disruptive maneuvers.

Instigator its really a good thing because it cancels the idea of making bombers early and sappers can do interesting stuff in sabotaging production facilities.

When the players are alligned in skill than you can see games decided by the army composition snowballing in defeat (ex: you lose your first zeus and artemis and they build up critical mass in cruisers)

Always happy to see new units and strategies getting added to the fold. Looking forward to seeing them in action.