Profile of OllyL

I get the impression that some of the effects are not finished yet. For example the Guard Rifle's AT rifle doesn't seem to have any particle trail effects at all on my game and the tracer for the sniper is very hard to see. Aside from that, +1 to this

tbh, I have had a flamer on it and they don't die as fast as you think. Sure they will die but it's not like a split-second gg, you have time and I have got both cars & both snipers out from some nasty spots.

From the games I have played, it's tanks (obv) and upgunned ACs which really hurt. Not found infantry much of a problem

Yeah the sniper car is weak as crap, to bring them in the front-line would just be suicide (although very rarely have I lost a sniper, usually the car goes down and you get the sniper out on retreat).

You use sniper cars pretty much as you use snipers:

- keep them at max (sniper) range
- keep them moving but stop to fire (not sure if this makes a difference but it seems to improve accuracy)
- kite, kite and be wary of flanks. As the other guy says, surround it and the scout cars die really fast.

Where they are so strong is that they essential give you a super mobile sniper team in a protective shell with extended vision and stealth detect. Plus if you have even half-decent micro (mine is not the best) they can still be really difficult to deal with because your snipers can be all over the field.

Bug fixing this out would be easy I think if the sniper died when the car explodes - say 2 men are always lost from the squad when the car dies which is fine for most squads but death for sniper. If this was the case then risk of losing both the sniper and the car to one bad engagement or mine etc. would be way too high.

So the last few games I have been experimenting with the sniper car and so far I've had a lot of fun with it. My build order has been:

-Conscript
-Engineer
-Rax (build with second engineer)
-Scout Car
-Flamer on Engineer 1 (when you have munis)
-Sniper
-Scout Car
-Sniper
-Infantry Company
-Guard Rifle
-T3 or T4 depending on taste and fuel

Basically you cap with your conscript + first engy whilst teching T1 with your second engy. Sometimes your flamer pops when the first scout car hits so you make a flamer car and try and roast some of his units (but be careful not to lose the car).

Once your sniper is built you ditch the engineer and pick up the first sniper and move the sniper car just behind your conscript/flamer blob and try and kill some stuff whilst stalling for the second sniper car. Once you have two you just kite around, de-crewing his mgs and mortars and killing as many infantry as you can. Remember to stay out of faust range (just reverse back when you see the faust animation). Try and keep your engys close so you can heal up any damage your sniper cars sustain.

You build a guard rifle next to give you some AT against his light vehicles and stall out till you can tech some tanks. If you've done well then often you've drained enough manpower that he won't be ready for your tanks when they hit.

The main trouble I've encountered is when they spams ACs but the sniper cars + blob are sometimes enough to fight them off.

If you lose a sniper car then just retreat the sniper and build her a new car.

Personally I think Blizzards can/will make a great single player dynamic but I don't think they can ever work in competitive multi-player.

Any mechanic that occurs at random and freezes out the game for a period of time (no pun intended) will always create imbalance in an RTS since time is such an important resource and blizzards essentially swallow up your time. Hitting the pause button for 200 seconds just allows the winning team to keep snowballing (pun intended) whilst the other is powerless to help their situation.

The only way to "fix" blizzards would be to nerf them so hard that they are basically redundant anyway so instead I would like to see them disabled for auto match and a toggle option on custom games.