Please change the Penalty to: Remove Shield Battery and Khayladin Monolith.
Reasons:
Shield Battery alone is just an awkward support building that finds no use in Coop. I tried to make use of it with the army but due to the battlefield constantly moving around, I just don’t see the worth in using this thing as a mineral dump.
Karax P2 army is strong but that’s not the reason to gimp him from using any defensive building that can shoot stuff.
I don’t want P2 Karax to be so helpless in Missile Command because he has no defensive building that can shoot stuff.
Disable the shield battery and Khayladin is already enough to nerf him from being a strong defensive commander anyway.
The thing is… His p2 unit doesn’t need a support building. If they need support, then the sentry already cover that role… and they are mobile unlike Shield battery.
In offensive role, shield battery doesn’t have enough time to charge up and still require range upgrade to be effective. Also, as I said: the battlefield is constantly moving so by being so immobile, it just doesn’t worth the effort to do it.
Yes, we know. And as I said, cannot use it.
There is certainly a niche case on Miner evacuation where I manage to use it with immortal collosus but due to shield battery taking up space, it did more harm than good.
Trying to balance aspects of a commander around mutators is a really bad idea. Some commanders or prestiges are just going to be very hard to use against certain mutators that hard counter them, and that’s perfectly fine. The irony in this case is that P2 Karax isn’t helpless against Missile Command by any means. Mirages can work just fine for interception duties along with Orbital Strikes; it just isn’t automatic and requires micro and paying attention (which a lot of other commanders have to do against Missile Command as well).
Like others have said, Karax’s cheap and tanky units supported by Shield Batteries are really good on defense. P2 is already skewed on the side of being overpowered, due to how cheap and massable his forces are, and just how durable they are. Losing his defenses really feels like a slap on the wrist compared to the perks.
It really says something when the most common complaint from awhile back about Karax P2 is the mere annoyance of Ghost nukes on certain maps (and that’s a thing that is easily remedied by Observers sieged up and Orbital Strikes).
I’m not saying you’ll always want to use batteries, but simply writing them off as useless would be a serious mistake. Especially DoN were you can defend an entrance easily with 2 colossi and a bunch of batteries.
Well, I’d argue that 2 well placed cannons to cluster enemies and mop up stragglers so you can clean waves with half the Spear of Adun energy would be a very good investment, and that instant cannons are vastly superior early game to unupgraded sentinels. But there definitely is an art to the efficient use of a cannon.
I put it in front. If that’s not how you do it for shield battery and immortal, then it is my bad.
If it make you feel better, Collosus does work with shield battery but even then, it is Niche.
Unlike defensive building, mirage cost supply. They need to be in a good number to take down nuke and missiles that has point defense drones escort.
You can orbital strike them down if you pay attention to minimap 24/7. In late game stage where escort happen more frequently, I am sure you can defense your base if you make half your army supply into mirage and stay at home.
Yes, there is solution but it is just terrible design wise.
Karax p2 army are not even that OP compare to other commander army and you think Karax should be the only commander to have no defensive structure out of all of them?
I disagree. The whole point of prestiges is to force the player to play the commander differently than they would otherwise. P2 Karax turns his traditional strength on its head, and it only makes sense that its weakness forces you to leverage his units more. Shield Batteries actually play into this pretty cleverly, being a structure that enhances your units defensively. If P2 is allowed to build cannons, then for all intents and purposes it becomes a better version of P0; there’s almost no scenario in which monoliths and shield batteries would be worth giving up the unit discount, but the defensive ‘package’ of cannons and monoliths being available gives P0 a meaningful purpose as the ‘safest’ version of the commander.
Besides, it’s not as if P2 can’t defend, you just have to be more proactive about it. Parking observers and being smart about topbar usage, or stationing units ahead of time where you’ll need them, are ways you can defend without cannons.
I’m still puzzled by why every prestige need to have all the common tools of a commander. Why bother with making prestiges if they don’t change anything at all?
So P2 will have all the defensive capabilities and 40% cost reduced army. Isn’t that a tad much?
so basically what you are saying is you want the tiny disadvantage this prestige has be removed. i think i have seen it all, but no, someone actually complained about karax prestige, which are all broken,
Yeah I feel like this one is over the top as far as being picky.
No cannon is annoying but that’s about the only tiny disadvantage P2 has. Changing this would funnel everyone into P2 at all times, and P2 is already the most popular.
removing the shield battery removes any defensive capabiliy p2 karax could possibly have. you won’t be able to park a colossus on top of a ton of batteries on DoN and that’s actually the most awful thing you could do.
“why are you playing p2 karax on DoN” because a thing called “random mission” exists.
Karax’s army discount is such a great deal with incredible benefits that it makes cannon building trivial.
This prestige is strictly for attack and push purposes and you can’t have eveything in the prestiges otherwise it’s going to be a straight up power up.
If you want defence, then you can station immortals/colossus/observers next to Multiple shield batteries.
At least we should all be very thankful that the Spear of Adun is still at our disposal despite the tremendous advantage.