I get the feeling Fenix P2 is meant to make him feel more like a Protoss/Zerg hybrid, with swarms of weak units that spawn quickly. As a quick recap, here’s the exact prestige and how it currently stands:
- Tactical Data Web effectiveness increased by 200%.
- All combat unit costs reduced by 50%.
- All non-heroic combat unit damage reduced by 50% and vitals reduced by 50%.
Now, going off of the cost and damage/life reduction alone, it seems like they’re going for weaker, more expendable armies. However, the only reason this works for Zerg is because of one key thing: Supply. Zerg units all cost dramatically less supply than their Protoss equivalents. Fenix’s Legionnaires (Zealots) normally cost 160 minerals, 3 supply. With this prestige, they cost 80 minerals and have half damage - but still cost 3 supply! They also have the same cooldowns/build time for warp-in.
Part of the fun of co-op is smashing large armies against large armies. With this prestige, you can’t build a large enough army to actually do damage; your max army size does half as much damage as it should. You can’t even remax instantly, because build times aren’t reduced. The only way to instantly remax (a la Zerg) is to play exclusively warpgate, because unlike Artanis you don’t have warp stargate/robo, and even then you have to build far more production.
Now to address the first part of this prestige - the Tactical Data Web boost. While this is a neat mechanic, I feel like it just doesn’t play off the downsides very well here. The whole point of Tactical Data Web is to boost Champions when you have a large army. If you’re supply capped, you still aren’t going to have a large army, no matter how cheap it was to build. You can’t really take full advantage of Tactical Data Web, because it caps at 20 supply, which means 9 Legionnaires.
There are a number of ways to address this. Here’s a couple of proposals:
Solution 1: Reduce supply/build time, for more spammable armies
- Tactical Data Web effectiveness increased by 100%.
- All combat unit costs reduced by 50%, supply costs reduced by 66%, and build time decreased by 40%.
- All non-heroic combat unit damage and vitals reduced by 50%.
This would mean that armies are cheaper and build faster, but are weaker, a la Zerg. Legionnaires now cost 80 minerals and 1 supply, and have an 18 second cooldown rather than a 30 second one. A “maxed” Tactical Data Web boost is now achieved with 20 Legionnaires, costing 20 supply and 1600 minerals, and giving Kaldalis a 20-unit (40 unit) boost, as opposed to the original prestige’s 20 supply, 560 mineral, 7-unit (21 unit) boost. The maximum boost potential is dramatically higher despite the “effectiveness” reduction, however the investment to reach that potential is higher.
Solution 2: Rearrange Fenix P2 and P3
P2: Network Administrator
- Avenging Protocol maximum stack increased by 100%.
- All combat unit costs reduced by 50%, supply costs reduced by 66%, and build time decreased by 40%.
- All non-heroic combat unit damage and vitals reduced by 50%.
P3: Unconquered Spirit
- Tactical Data Web effectiveness increased by 200%.
- Champion AIs that die refund 75% of their base unit cost.
- Champion AIs do not gain additional life or shields and have reduced attack range.
P3 is now more about exploiting Champion abilities and using a wide assortment of units/champions, while P2 is oriented towards bolstering overall Champion strength with a spammable, weak backing army, and only taking advantage of a smaller number of Champions. Slamming that weak army into the enemy will quickly bolster the Champion, and the effectiveness increase will cap the speed boost at 200%, incrementing by 10% (as opposed to the current Unconquered Spirit incrementing by 20% to a maximum of 200%), inline with the reduction in supply.
Personally, I think Solution 1 is better, but Solution 2 provides a neat way to harness Fenix’s abilities. Either way, something needs to be done about the supply issue; I’m having more fun playing standard Fenix than the current P2.