Vorts [Needs rebalancing]

[xenon90]

Basically:
Vorts are too easy to build (the 45/45 cost is laughable);
The summoning is delay is way too short;
The amount of antlions spawned is too much;
They can heal;
Their ranged attack is awesome.

It has no weaknesses. Trust me I play as Rebels mostly and this right here is outright broken. What are you going to do when I have early 4 early vorts + canon fodder rebels? Simply too many targets, I'll have more range, I'll heal and I'll keep spamming antlions while maneuvering, if you even get to the point where all antlions are dead.

Hunters are the only units that have some chances against Vorts, and even then it's pretty low. Rebels are absolutely fucked if they don't have antlions themselves.

Take a look at this since right now the meta for Rebels are...you guessed it...Vort spam + canon fodder.
If I could make a suggestion: 2 antlions instead of 4.

[Mustang]

I agree. Canon fodder rebels is especially on point, a lot of the time it seems like the rebel troops are just way weaker than their combine counterparts in addition to be extra vulnerable to grenades and energy orbs. I've wiped out entire rebel armies with a couple of grenades. With the vortigaunt, your cannon fodder is much faster and deals a lot more damage and can spawned repeatedly. For such a cheap price, who wouldn't spam them?

[sants1]

This is a very big issue. I main rebels, and vort spamming is very easy and I can normally win games this way.

[Mr. Darkness]

In all honesty, I agree with the post about vorts.
I made up a list of Pro's and Con's of vorts and antlions: (Green - yellow - red, green - good, red - op [or otherwise])
Pro's: (vorts)
-Has a very large health pool.
-Can heal himself.
-Can summon 4 antlions.
-Low cost.
-Enormous damage.
-Can go rambo with throwing all units around in a huge radius.
-Has a huge range of attacks.
-Has low cooldown on skills.
Pro's: (antlions)
-Has 150 hp and big bullet resistance.
-Is fast and can fly.
-Can hide under the ground for an ambush (if controlled as a unit). (irrelevant)
-Can damage buildings & damage capture points.
-Can be partly controlled via a summon

Cons: (Vorts)
-Is moderately slow
-Can't survive alone without antlions by him
-Can only deal damage to one unit (with e-bolt) and multiple if within the range (with his 2nd skill)
-Can't melee
Cons: (Antlions)
-Low damage as a single unit

Suggestions:
For Combine - add a thumper to keep antlions at a distance.

Vortigaunts - increase the cooldown for summon to 30 seconds
OR
Antlions - decrease health to 80
OR
Vortigaunts - decrease the spawned antlions to 2

Other suggestions:
Decrease the Vort's blast thing radius to 128 units-ish (again, it's spammable).

[warbrand2]

seeing as the vorts are the rebels answer to the striders, think they should jsut be made more expensive and population intensive.

From what I have seen in half life's lore, do to the events of their past it take a hell of a lot of work to get a vort to fight. really look through out half life 2 and you will see that you only ever see vorts in combat once other the ep2 and that is if you kill the antlion gaurd on sand trap and meander around with the normal antlions. even then the pulse turret in the area normaly does the combat for the vort.

Think there should be a high req cost and population cost for the vorts as long as a 4 unit limit.

[JJ]

Before the antlions, vortiguants weren't very good spell casters, but now they're too good. I'm not against powerful spells as long you earn them through skill required to use the spell or earning the resources to use it. Also, you can keep summoning more antlions with the recall antlion ability. I'm not sure if that's intentional.

[Mr. Darkness]

Before the antlions, vortiguants weren't very good spell casters, but now they're too good. I'm not against powerful spells as long you earn them through skill required to use the spell or earning the resources to use it. Also, you can keep summoning more antlions with the recall antlion ability. I'm not sure if that's intentional.

Perhaps as there are upgradeable units, there should also be stuff like upgrades for vorts. Maybe similar stuff related to combine units, too.

[Mustang]

I think Mr. Darkness' observations are apt. Giving Combine a thumper defensive structure would be a great addition in my opinion, but of course other rebel players would have to have a reasonable counter to antlions too

[warbrand2]

barrel trap actually works well against ant lions, that is if the damn thing doesn't blow its self up after the 3rd shot like always.

[xenon90]

Alright, so a thumper for combine could work, you could lockdown places/flags with that building. Sounds nice.

What about Rebels though? It doesn't always go Combine vs Rebels.
I'd seriously think about reducing the amount of antlions spawned, 4 is just too much. And maybe decrease bullet resistance just slightly, we don't want to overnerf this.

Flamer+Shotgun works to an extent, but only against antlions themselves and absolutely useless against Vorts. Xbows get demolished by the sheer numbers.

[Mr. Darkness]

Alright, so a thumper for combine could work, you could lockdown places/flags with that building. Sounds nice.

What about Rebels though? It doesn't always go Combine vs Rebels.
I'd seriously think about reducing the amount of antlions spawned, 4 is just too much. And maybe decrease bullet resistance just slightly, we don't want to overnerf this.

Flamer+Shotgun works to an extent, but only against antlions themselves and absolutely useless against Vorts. Xbows get demolished by the sheer numbers.

If only explosive barrels werent buggy theyd be a great counter. Reduce explosion delay on barrels also?

[Mustang]

I feel like they just shouldn't be bullet resistant AND highly mobile in a game where most of the units are using bullets

[xenon90]

First off, props to the dev team for bringing out these patches so quickly.

I like what I see. Vorts are more or less balanced now. The addition of explosives on the crossbow...I'm not sure about it. Will need to play more games with it.

This game is shaping up very nicely so far, and I don't see any huge balancing issues anymore.

[tgkennedy]

First off, props to the dev team for bringing out these patches so quickly.

I like what I see. Vorts are more or less balanced now. The addition of explosives on the crossbow...I'm not sure about it. Will need to play more games with it.

This game is shaping up very nicely so far, and I don't see any huge balancing issues anymore.

There's still the Headcrab Canister. Which is INSANELY OP. But other then that, this game is pretty balanced.