Anti-Truck Rush Idea

[psychopompos]

just make trucks more expensive, slower to build and slower moving.

cost & weight between that of the light & medium cannon would do the trick perfectly imo.

less of them early on, easy targets, less able to rush across the map snagging all the oil.

[themac]

I think the problem is not realted to trucks only but to rushes in any way. It is always a surprise if I get rushed with trucks or with tanks. Rushing is a general problem and it often seems to be nearly impossible to defeat it.

[tehloserer]

RTS != Real Time Strategy. RTS == Rush To Sovereignty! Everything you do to win in RTS is a rush to something better than your opponent. Either rushing to get a bigger army faster, or rushing to get a better army faster. Even making a bunch of defense all over the map to take oil while you tech to ripples. You're rushing to get ripples before your opponent aren't you? I see this as pressing your advantage to it fullest. It's all how you look at it. Is not the point to assert ones dominance? It surely isn't to exist in harmony with ones opponents. Make friends outside the game, but play to win.

Back on topic though. When their truck start making a tower in your base, send a truck towards their, jump straight into cannon research. If you can get a peak at your opponent's base early then you can see how many factories and labs they have. This should provide a hint as to their main goal. If they have more than one factory, expect there to be an army coming to help the truck. If they have more than one lab and only one factory then you can expect a smaller, better equipped, army. If they have more than one of both factories and labs then I'd expect something in between the two.

At home you want more to take out the truck(s) than the towers. You can run from the towers and build up numbers. Send a truck out to look around for oil. Towers take a while to take out factories and other base structures. When you go to fight the tower(s) keep an eye on your unit healths. When one starts to drop health, grab it and run it away a bit. When the tower starts shooting at something else, send it back in and grab the new target.

Once all the towers are clear you have to take back some map to get on par with them. The whole while building to match counter their factory/lab counts. But most of the time players quit once you break their rush and have two to four LC tanks to go with seven or so MG tanks headed for their base.

Sry for the length.

[lav_coyote25]

what?? that short little story?? i see you havent read the books on this forum yet.... xD xD xD

[iMac]

Why don't we create/edit a wiki page that contains multiple methods of defending against truck rush. Not nessesarily on how to beat truck rush but diffent ways for beginners/noobs to start out with a working strategy. Advanced players that go against each other know many more counter attacks & strategies for truck rush. Beginners start out on the campaign & learn how the A.I. attacks. This promotes the idea of turtling or research everything first before attacking(gun > bow & arrow) or build a massive army(strenght in numbers) to over run your enemy. The campiagn doesn't teach the right tactics for multiplayer battles. A wiki page that contains the tactics listed here plus what others want to share could bring even more gameplay elements that no one(in WZ) has thought to use.

I would be happy to make a page or edit if we already have something similar. I will get on it this week. I would do it now but my only Internet machine is this iPhone & typing on it is a pain In arse(nel)...

- Scott

[Zarel]

Why don't we create/edit a wiki page that contains multiple methods of defending against truck rush.

There's a hidden Guide page that describes truck rush strategy. Truck rushes do need a bit more balance, so I'm holding off until then before I publish it.

[Kacen]

This will just be one step closer to turning Warzone into a game with restrictive building; the type of RTS games I despise like C&C.

Please, no. Keep it as it is.

[Crushy]

No one is restricting buildings. Yet.

I think the most obvious options toward reducing tower rushing are:

[*]Make mg towers available later (move them down the tech tree):[/size]
Easy, simple but not very logical since we run the risk of shifting everything around for balance purposes. The tech tree is big and complex enough as it is.

[*]Make trucks able to rush later in the game:[/size]
Make the truck turret heavier and therefore reduce the truck's speed. Straightforward but annoying in the long run if overdone. Has the side effect of maybe increasing the importance of hover and bigger chassis for trucks.

[*]Increase the ability for a player to defend against it:[/size]
[*]Make the truck turrets give less body points - HIGHLY annoying in the long run
[*]Give base buildings some self defence - too much work, adds needless complexity.
[*]Reduce costs of factories and or decrease production time and resource costs of early equipment. - Sounds reasonable and might encourage use of lighter vehicles later on, but doesn't fully remove the problem.

[Zarel]

Easy, simple but not very logical since we run the risk of shifting everything around for balance purposes. The tech tree is big and complex enough as it is.

Actually, shifting things around for balance purposes isn't a big deal. The problem is, for balance purposes, there needs to be an early-game defensive structure that can be set up before your enemy tank rushes you.

Make the truck turret heavier and therefore reduce the truck's speed. Straightforward but annoying in the long run if overdone. Has the side effect of maybe increasing the importance of hover and bigger chassis for trucks.

Already being done for 2.3.

[*]Make the truck turrets give less body points - HIGHLY annoying in the long run

Already being done for 2.3. The annoyance is easy to fix - you have a better truck to research for the late game.

[*]Give base buildings some self defence - too much work, adds needless complexity.

YE GODS THE BALANCE ISSUES.

[*]Reduce costs of factories and or decrease production time and resource costs of early equipment. - Sounds reasonable and might encourage use of lighter vehicles later on, but doesn't fully remove the problem.

Meh, wrong solution.

[Crushy]

Hey, you guys actually did EXACTLY what I thought would be best

Actually, shifting things around for balance purposes isn't a big deal. The problem is, for balance purposes, there needs to be an early-game defensive structure that can be set up before your enemy tank rushes you.

That's what I meant, shifting stuff in the tech tree would lead to a series of needless balance changes and should be avoided.

Since this is settled, maybe it would be best to close this topic? There's not much else to discuss and it leads to people thinking it's not solved yet...

[Zarel]

Oh, it's not settled in the least. Just making the truck a bit heavier and have less HP isn't going to completely fix the issue.

[guciomir]

how does the game handle multiple trucks building the same structure? is it an arithmetic series? (n-th truck adds 100% building speed)
1 truck = 100% building speed
2 trucks = 200% bulding speed
3 trucks = 300% building speed

maybe it would be a good idea to use harmonic series? (n-th truck add 1/n % building speed)
1 truck = 100% building speed
2 trucks = 150% building speed
3 trucks = 183% bulding speed

[Zarel]

how does the game handle multiple trucks building the same structure? is it an arithmetic series? (n-th truck adds 100% building speed)
1 truck = 100% building speed
2 trucks = 200% bulding speed
3 trucks = 300% building speed

maybe it would be a good idea to use harmonic series? (n-th truck add 1/n % building speed)
1 truck = 100% building speed
2 trucks = 150% building speed
3 trucks = 183% bulding speed

I think it's currently an arithmetic series.

Changing it to anything else would be pretty difficult, I think.

[zoid]

Trucks need to be more costly, not so cheap. Then people won't send them deep into enemy territory. The problem is cheap in T1 doesn't equal cheap in T3. Maybe construction speed upgrades should be replaced with Medium and Heavy Truck turrets. They would build faster but also cost a lot more.
Because a large group of trucks can build structures way faster than equivalent units can be manufactured, trucks are currently the best rush unit.

[nux]

And what about giving trucks the ability to destroy enemy structures ?
If an enemy comes in your base to make a mg tower, just destroy it with the 3 or 4 trucks you have available at this time before it is completely build. It should not change too much the balance of the game.