"Small maps are really imbalanced: I lost a game with 2xZeus Medics 1xIncursion 1xAthena  and a few T1 against 2x Annihilator turrets and a lot few t1 units. Over time the ratio of the fights will be better but by the start phc is not able to handle the substrate. Why is Substrate able to run into defense and win the game by both players having the same ammount of minerals."

The game was vs me on that stupidly small map with 2 nodes each and 4 generators. I'd rather see such maps gone rather than balancing around them.
In my opinion you made a poor choice trying to kill the annihilator cannons so early on and that cost you the win. Zeus & medics is good but not immortal.

you shouldn't be looking at the quanta investment vs turret cost, rather unit cost vs turret cost and then consider the abilities for example not being stationary and short range. You should've backed off, sentinel up and Artemis. Incursion behind enemy lines and not to build your army.

Though I do question why we can't control turrets to attack certain targeta as that annoys me also.

regarding your comment about units dying and getting hit but you not taking out priority targets with your army.. Do you continually add to your armies and form and break? It's a massively important mechanic and one I didn't think you were using when we matched yesterday. I was able to kill your cruisers almost on command as they weren't protected by the army cluster.

i constantly form and break armies to make use of different unit speeds but most of all to keep my cruisers protected by frigates.

Alologies if you are and in that case t does come down to numbers and rng. 

2 nemesis, 12 brutes vs 1 mauler 24 matyrs and sub will most likely win. The nemesis has a long cd and will target the mature too, if the army is formed and yours is too, you have a 2/14 chance of priority target with a much higher rate of fire vs 1/25 with a slow rate of fire.

zeUs are great for thinning the crowd but that's why I crowd up.

Fury accomplished two things for phc: hard counter to both avatar and to any stray army without AA

The result was that substrate was forced to fight head on vs emp deathball. Even so Danail always countered this zerg style laughing and pissing away t2 with global quanta. I did fought him and sometimes I just wondered by what madness I even try to stay in the game after seeing 8 assemblies producing cruisers all the way )

Now fury is no more, athena can do some damage but its not really enough vs substrate monster economy. Sub is outright broken and the main problem is the really low cost to both their t2 cruisers and defense. Anihilator cannons and mrv ar too good for what they cost.

Again someone would argue that sentinel is op but they forget that in order to be op it needs phc t1 and t2 nearby and at any given second 3-5 maulers can erase that in seconds.

ps: unding if you go for athena  you straight up lose the batlle in open because you dont have zeus to soak maulers alpha. there are some noobies that complains about refinery but that is in team games and I really think they dont get substrate and what quanta can do for their economy.

Most people in that thread were not "noobies" as you dismissively label people who disagree with you. It is you who no not get infinite resource increase vs finite and inefficient temporary resource increase. Yes it was a discussion about big team games which play out over an extended period of time but that doesn't mean it isn't just as important for some people as ranked is for you. The game should be balanced for 1v1 and for 3v3 and in the future 6v6. You are demonstrating one dimensional thinking where you tackle something in isolation of other things and are missing the whole picture. We were not saying Subtrate are not powerful or not OP but there are many areas that a game needs to be balanced in and many ways to go about doing that.

Ticktoc, I call them noobies because they don't get it. This game is not starcraft, it's about macro. Look at that video and please explain to me, why do this game feels like tower defense when played against any of the top 15 substrate players? 

Das Unding had refineries and tried to bolster his economy, but at any given point danail had almost 5 to 1 dread ratio. If that map had been larger than the broken avatar would have a field day vs sentries and maulers would show up for harrasment.

stop it. if the map had been larger sub will won because as phc you cannot keep more than two strongholds on the map. It's plain imbalance at macro level, the larger the map the bigger the beatdown.

this was a small map and the amount of dreads fielded by danail was insane, imagine a larger map with avatar caping and disrupting phc while having acces to much more resources.

I can bet das unding only has victories vs substrate on smaller maps! he won it because danail forgot to make maulers and orbital jammers.

you mean something like that  (that everybody knows about what we talk)

and i have an additional video 

you have to watch the first game after 10 min

i understand your position, but its a little bit like the chicken and the egg. i prevent him from playing towerdefense with my avater and the phc plays towerdefense to has defense against avater and the substrate units....

Yeah, really nice unit avatar ) with no phc air to kill it, things are looking great! 

I think they should make a new dlc, named "Kill the avatar with hades" The objective should be to kill the hades without having a mental breakdown )

Just remember guys...textbook counter to Avatar is....Avatar + turret.

Also, whenever PHC loses, it is never because of skill differential or poor game decisions...it's always due to balance issues! 

The videos from Never show this quite clearly!

Seems fair to counter a 50 quanta unit with 125 quanta of your own and further more adding to the injury the population cap block that comes with it. 

From what I am seeing, apart from the poor balance we have with low metal cost of substrate cruisers, substrate defense and the cheap assemblies, the devs need to change two things:

- hades bomber, so it can actually destroy ground units and counter them, like fury did. the unit is so stupid because it exposes itself by only attacking flying over the target, as opposed to punisher (where a shift move command in medium range leads to heavy damage and target snipe, without exposing to heavy AA fire). So more work is necessary to hades, it has no reward correlated to the risk of flying over target. maybe at least giving them a faster animation so they cannot be dodged

- give substrate refinery but take out their ovecharge  ability

Here it is, the most broken substrate global

• Overcharge - Temporarily boost a single Power Generator or Amplifier's output with a short-lived unstable

So how this thing works? From my games vs danail and other top substrate players, I have seen they don;t even bother to play the avatar. if they make these, they use them to cap and construct things in midgame. What need is for an avatar if you could build free assemblies that cost 0 rads and can produce mini dreads, 5 to 10min from the start, cap with reapers and martyrs, overcharge and profit. the momentum gained from this move is gamebreaking.  

They usually have one big attack and if they lose that attack they overcharge and by the time you reach their base you are outnumbered heavily. That is v nice. 

What bothers me more is that even without overcharge, their units are so cheap, they can still mass produce and maybe switch to dreads/overcharge and give storage upgrades with quanta.

Overcharge provides substrate A move win the game at 8-10 mark.

I think the overcharge ability deserves a thread of its own, if the devs do not acknowledge how broken this ability is!! I am starting to be glad when ppl cheese me with avatar and drone swarm, at least I know I don;t have 20 cruiser up my ass in the first 10 minutes of the game and I can actually plan with EMP