Cyborgs and cyberstan retrospective - the devs are back on track!

I think it's time for some positivity considering all the recent goings on. While we're often wanting the game to be a bit more challenging and improve on weapon variety, I think cyborgs really show that the devs are actually addressing these issues, just in a roundabout way.

Overall, AH have really knocked it out of the park this time. Not only are bots dangerous again, not only do we have heavy units that actually feel heavy, but the overall design of the faction has finally broken away from its past one-note metas to something that feels almost entirely fresh.

Bots have always had very boring metas in the past - pre 60 day, it was take autocannon (or similar) and go for headshots all day. Ever since, it's been complete recoilless dominance thanks to the massive series of nerfs their more dangerous units got, and the overbuffing of AT.

This update, and cyborgs especially, address all of these issues at once, and I personally think that this is the best balanced and fun state bots have ever been in since the game launched. After a good, long while of playing every build under the sun against them, here's my thoughts!

The primary meta shift (to light pen and chaffclear)

At launch, the entirety of bot infantry was comprised of devastators, with heavy devastators in particular being a bit of a nuisance after the rockets were fixed. They were so accurate and deadly that you needed to either one-shot them immediately in the head, or staggerlock them with explosive weapons (AC being capable of both of these simultaneously!) Since the bot accuracy nerfs they've been very ineffective enemies, but with this recent update, they're back to somewhat being scary - but now they're very effectively suppressible with automatic weapons, so they feel more 'fair'.

With cyborgs, not only do devastators spawn in lower numbers, but a LOT of other light bot units spawn in much greater numbers, in addition to the new aggressive and lightly-armoured cyborgs. This means that, as a general rule, light pen weapons are going to be more effective than their medium penetration counterparts against the vast majority of the roster thanks to their massively boosted stats.

A notable sleeper hit was the Stalwart - usually something I'd consider a meme pick for bots, but with the relentless cyborgs and the need to push through hordes to get underneath vox engines, it's proven an invaluable and incredibly fun build, feeling noticeably stronger than the MG-43 imo. Just take an EATs or something with it to cover your AT needs. Similarly, maxigun has been a ton of fun - these are especially great for rapid acquisition against the borgs, you just never stop shooting!

The reduced presence of heavies AND replacement of fac striders with vox also means that, although AT like the RR is rather overtuned in regular play, here it's still valuable, but much less pronounced. I would say that the three 'roles' - chaffclear, medium killing and anti-tank support weapon builds - are all roughly equal in value now, or closer to it than ever before for bots. (Unless you bring the new overbuffed grenade launcher and do all 3 at once lol)

Vox engines - superheavies that ENCOURAGE build diversity

In the past, there used to be a dynamic on bugs where you wanted a combination of anti-tank players and chaffclearers supporting eachother in order to stand and fight effectively, but only a select few weapons had real interactions between the roles (for example, autocannon finishing off bile titans with broken armour). While some liked this gameplay, others didn't, and AH has been struggling with something that satisfies everyone and has everyone truly engage with the same enemies.

Enter vox engines. Vox engines have a multitude of methods of tackling, all pretty much equally viable, ranging from dangerous but efficient, to reliable but inefficient brute forcing - and they spawn with just enough numbers that you'll want multiple player's worth of firepower to kill them quickly, and all methods and builds get their chances to shine at max diff.

On D10, vox engines drop in groups of (up to, but also most often) 3 from most bot drop, and will also occasionally spawn as solo patrollers. They're tankier than other superheavies (like titans and factory striders), but are generally slower and less immediately dangerous if you're close by. Basically, they're long range area denial, which has a pronounced impact on the way you play, limiting your movements and helping enemy chaff units survive, gather up and threaten you more.

There's four main ways of fighting them I've been using - sustained stratagems, brute force, dedicated AT sniping, and vent grenading. Usually across the team you'll get a mix of these approaches in any given fight, which will make short work of large groups of engines and chaff.

Sustained red stratagems - perhaps the most consistent way of killing them, combinations of eagles and barrages will reliably take out large numbers of vox engines without you needing to get too close. (Naturally, eagles are more difficult to use on cyberstan, but they're INVALUABLE for those raise flag missions.)

Brute Force is going for the one shot combos - orbital lasers, levelers, C4, hellbombs - these tend to be longer cooldown, inefficient, but immediate ways of removing specific threatening voxes, but sustain poorly over time.

Dedicated AT sniping - the voxes usually take 3 shots from the RR (or SPEAR) to kill, so about 12-15 seconds each. While fairly fast and efficient, requires good positioning and supply usage, so you take yourself out of the frontline and leave the chaffclear and objectives (now a very important role all of a sudden) up to the other players.

Vent grenading - the most efficient resource-wise, but also the riskiest. Generally it's a great idea to do this whenever possible to isolated voxes, but when two or more stack up in one spot (often right after a bot drop), it's best to try to thin them out first with your stratagems before engaging this way.

Like the superheavies of old, you basically want to avoid letting them accumulate - focus fire with your team whenever a bot drop happens (or at the very least chuck a few stratagems to help out) and you'll never see more than 3 on the field at any one time.

There's a few other ways to deal with them (such as weapons like the AMR or railgun taking out the treads and shooting most of their weapons off) but you can look at specific vox engine stat breakdowns and guides for that kind of stuff.

The Bastion

It's no surprise the factory world release accompanies the bastion - it's perfectly suited for it. With a good driver, the bastion can cut a swathe of destruction through the level without stopping, clearing about half the objectives on the map with a single use, and with the natural advantage of keeping more of the team together for pushing through hordes on a mobile platform (huge for gunners in the side seats using stationary reload weapons).

It's especially good at killing vox engines - face a bot drop before it lands and you'll take out one or more voxes before they can realistically even start attack you. If you're on comms and someone can throw down a shield gen or smoke for you, you'll be able to probably kill all three in a drop before taking damage.

I have definitely noticed that most of my deathless runs on cyberstan involved a bastion at some point in the match - it's VERY good.

The issues

It wouldn't be an AH update if it wasn't buggy. Our favorite eurojanky game this time comes with a host of problems that do occasionally harm the overall bot experience.

Gunship patrol modifier is still not working, and there's that map edge bug making extracts boring

The vox engines (and other enemies) have a problem with clipping through eachother and other buildings, which can make getting underneath them problematic. Usually this is not a problem as most of the time, groups of vox engines are gonna get blasted by stratagems, but occasionally this can lead to very awkward situations. Very rarely, a vox engine can also turn its cannons directly downwards, shooting at you while underneath them. Thankfully, they can't hit you directly when this happens as the guns are too far apart and will only hit you with the minor AOE damage, but it's still annoying.

The vox engine's streams of missiles telegraph large, golden spots on the ground appear where they're about to hit, but this does NOT appear on ground that's been warped too much by explosions and barrages. You can mitigate this problem by being aware that missile streams always try to go in lines and parabolas, so if you see two lights spread apart and broken ground between them, you can assume a third missile will hit between them.

The biggest issue of all, though, is probably the stratagem bouncing and hellpod steer lock, which are both made 10x worse in factories.

Finally, there is another issue with what I can only describe as 'randomly exploding'. Sometimes you just lose 60% of your hp randomly when walking around on borg maps.

Sunsetting enemies?

It seems to me as though the elephant in the room (AT being overpowered as heck and more valuable than other roles) is being addressed by AH, but in a roundabout way. We saw it with hive worlds, and we're seeing it here - the superheavy units of old, now able to be easily one-shot en masse by the recoilless, are being outright removed and replaced in newer content. Hive worlds brought dragon roaches (spawning at a much lower rate but being more aggressive and harder to one-shot than BTs), and now we have factory striders being removed for vox engines (tankier, less immediately aggressive, but more numerous and easily killable without AT).

It looks to me like AH is no longer touching the balance of 'regular' play and is instead focusing on subfactions and unique worlds, creating more balanced and challenging pockets of the game while leaving standard factions behind in power creep. While it's unfortunate, it's probably the right move in the short term.

Tl;dr

More weapon diversity. Less overtuned AT. More aggressive enemies. Gunships and devastators no longer gimped (mostly). The return of heavies with actual presence and impact on the game.

This is probably the most fun I've had with the game since the 60 day update, by far, and I just wanted to gush about it. The game's never been so back, and it makes me very hopeful for future content.