Reload period for orca inreased. Fully reloading is roughly equal to the amount of time it would take to go from the center of an 80x80 map to your home base, land, reload, and return to the center. (About 30 seconds).
There is +1 rocket than before, because each rocket has been weakened. This makes the orca take longer to unleash its full payload.
This is combined with slightly reducing the amount of tiberium stored in Refineries. Part of the reason for this is that refineries are targeted lots by ion cannons (one-shot kill) and nukes. Whenever this happens, you lose the money that's in them. By making a silo that stores more, you can store the tib farther away and keep a bit more of it safe.
The other part of the reason is to bring silos into the game as a somewhat strategic structure. By having more money, they are more capturable, because you can steal what's in them. It might also make sense to maybe airstrike them so that the opponent loses what money is in them.
The way to counteract this problem is to build more silos. They cost a bit more though (double) so that you have to think about how many you want.
APC fires more rapidly. Does same damage vs. ground units, but does much more damage vs. air units now.
APC ground damage vs. infantry changed because since the damage is low (15), strange rounding errors occur that make it do next to no damage.
Missile optimized to fire a 2-burst quickly and kill orcas, but still does same overall damage as before. Uses missiles more efficiently by having them do lower damage and firing more often.
Spread increased from 6 -> 12 since it is too weak against infantry. Damage vs. infantry still low, but at least has some effect vs. groups of infantry.
Increased RangeLimit, instead of increasing missile speed, to keep the building's flavor.
Made turret do less damage (50), and shooting more often. 50 divides well into apc/tank health (200,300,400). 80% damage is 40, which divides well into common vehicle HP (120,160).
Bullet speed increased for greater accuracy.
SAM site receives a buff to counter orca spam.
Missiles now do half as much damage (30). This divides better into Orca's hitpoints (90), to avoid wasted missiles. Missiles fire ~3x as often.
Missiles are faster. RangeLimit reduced to compensate.
Mobile SAMs are at risk of dying quickly, so it's better to have 2 missiles worth half the damage each, in the hopes you'll get more shots off.
BurstDelay was lowered for this purpose, too.
Increased speed of missile, and adjusted RangeLimit to compensate.
In big numbers, the unit with the heavy machine gun could be a bit too powerful vs. buildings for their cost, or even armor at certain times. (Armor should be extremely resistant to machine gun fire, even in large amounts). Base raiding should favor recon bikes slightly, for cost effectiveness.
Nerf slightly.
The GDI APC and the Nod Mobile SAM Launcher are the premier anti-air units that are needed to defend each side from air attacks. Due to the problems of orca spam, they should be given a more prominent role.
Currently the APC is $700 and the M-SAM $750. This might be reasonable against a small amount of vehicles, but anti-air units need to be able to deal with spam. So they will be reduced in cost so they can be bought cheaper. This is important for the M-SAM especially since it's a dedicated anti-air unit.
To avoid the GDI APC being too good, the damage vs. heavy armor will be reduced a bit more, so it cannot serve the role of "light tank". It will still be able to fight light vehicles well, however.
To deal with orca spam problem:
-Mobile SAM missile fires a bit faster (Burst Delay of 1 sec. instead of 1.4 sec).
-Damage spread increased slightly from 14 -> 16, to deal with large concentrations of air units.
-Damage increased 55 -> 60, which divides as 2/3rds of an orca's HP. Important because Infantry rockets and Bike Rockets do 30 damage each, so one rocket + 1 patriot == kill.
SAM turret damage also increased 55 -> 60, for same reason.
Since the APC's cost was lowered to $600 to deal with orca spam better, its damage vs. heavy armor and infantry is being correspondingly lowered, so that it is not too good against those units (in terms of dollar-value, especially).
Keep in mind that APC is still good at crushing infantry.
Also removed "High" attribute from APC gun (but not from the AA version).
Orca rockets will do 15 damage vs. heavy. Hopefully this will take some edge off orca spam. This will:
-Give anti-air APC more lasting power vs. orca, ensuring it can at least down some of them and get their money's worth.
-Mammoth tank will bet better able to survive a mass assault and return fire with its rockets to down some of them (and get better money's worth).
-Give advanced guard towers better ability to defend themselves against air assault. (ATWR has heavy armor and does good damage, but can die quickly against a large group of orcas).
-Give armored units in general more resilience vs. orcas so they aren't completely helpless and quickly annihilated. Maybe then they can reach their target better (e.g. a couple tanks charging an artillery position that is being defended by some orcas).
Damage vs. infantry also slightly reduced as as result (also 20 -> 15 dmg).
Orcas generally aren't a threat to infantry, but E3s should be able to do some credible damage, even if they are in a small group. Enough orca spam will kill a small group of infantry, unfortunately. Since Orca has no business attacking infantry anyway, this slight nerf won't hurt orcas.
(Note: The damage model was simplified a bit, so that it does 100% of 30 dmg instead of 75% of 40 damage, vs. light & wood.)
Quad spam can be potentially very powerful. Gameplay-wise, one should be able to avoid their powerful missiles by hiding behind a building or a wall.
It doesn't necessarily make much sense that a vehicle low to the ground should be able to shoot over things perfectly. Same for infantry.
The advantage of shooting high should be reserved for units like artillery, so you can put them behind walls or other obstacles. Makes gameplay more interesting and dynamic.
TowerRockets will stay high.
