Where do you all stand on the infantry upgrades?
I tend to get power gens fairly early on, but having a desire to get LS out fairly swiftly, I can never justify the power expenditure on infantry upgrades even though I open with a Tac heavy build. Am I missing something, or is it a T2 luxury once I've got a few LS on the field and can make a situational decision?
Comments
higlhf_
The up grades are a 15% bonus (damage and HP respectivly).
They are just ridiculously powerfull, espacially the first ones: for 100 enegy you have like 400*0.15=60 requisition worth for every tactics that you build... And it does not count the help for micro (less death so less to remake, remake more worth it)...
Now that beeing said, the flammer are so broken that you can eventually just do defense and just base your damage on flammer... But flammers are very expensive when you spamm them (in energy).
And even more, it depend of you strategy at some point: upgrades are a must have at some point... But when do you want to do them is up to you. Rushing T2 is a totaly legit plan.
In an other point of view, you can also rush the power node on a ultra defensive position to rush t2+upgrade (like for an ASM spamm). I think that most of the time we tend to focus too much on the eraly map control (at list me).
Guziol
I always feel like i get way behind in tech if i go for damage/hp (or shield) upgrades before i go t2
Gregoire
yeah, it would delay my LS so much. Certainly a T2 thing once my immediate power needs are fulfilled (enough LS out to make the effort worthwhile).
As part of an armoury focused build though, I can see it working nicely in T1.
Stoner
Thing is, LS isn't always mandatory. I need it if there are points too far behind enemy lines which I can't get on foot and contest, or I get my arse kicked too hard and need upperhand vehicle to soften up an opponent a bit, but we can never know how match unfolds. Early LS is usually good thing to rush to, but not always as effective. I pretty much wonder the same thing as op, trying to figure out when to upgrade me inf. I'm trying to minimize power consumption on T1 and thus do not build even armory, but on T2 I have foggy idea when to go for upgrades as well, because energy is so ++heresy redacted++ useful and never enough.
Prizm
So what is the ROI of getting them?
That should be the question you should ask yourself. Let's imagine a probable scenario. The map is split in 2, so both of you have even amount of resources, but for the sake of this scenario only thing that is important is energy because requisition flows like a river anyway...
You investing that energy and he doesn't.
Now what do you accomplish with this?
You need to either make him invest equal amount in resources or gain it by;
1) Taking an energy point from him
2) Take a shield generator
3) Buy time (hard to define..)
The upgrades are expensive, so it needs to have something in return. Getting both gives the enemy the chance to tech ahead of you, so you need him to invest for it to pay of in my opinion. If you get the upgrades and passively keep the status quo, then this has no value...
n0ave_
I recently started to get the 15% HP before teching to T2 and it works wonders.