Walrus

Stealth detection removed from Borillo and added to Terror Drones, if possible.

2000-credit Radars and 3500-credit Battle Labs. This should encourage players to use low-tier units more often and alleviate the current problems with certain factions being somewhat overpowered at T3

Yes, Oxidizers + Gatling tanks are cheap to produce and having fair number of them can make an opponent's air units basically obsolete- including Wolfhounds and Kirovs. Oxidizers are a very powerful unit, but I don't think they should be nerfed- SC has a very weak air force and it's already tough enough to play as them. 

I haven't played as US very much, but I have had some success killing wolfhounds with Aeroblazes + Strykers. Granted the Aeroblazes are not as effective as Oxidizers since they can't fire on the move.

I don't think stealth-detecting terror drones would be THAT much of a problem for ghost miners. As a SC player, I ALWAYS build 2x repair stingers very early on, because my mantis/gatling tanks need repair support to be effective. Stingers are quite fast and miners are quite tough, so even if my stingers are not in my base they can probably reach my miners in time to counter a terror drone or two.

Furthermore, I don't think it's correct to say that ghost miners will have "no defense" against terror drones. A soviet player still needs to know where my miners are before he can send a TD at them. TD's are slowed by ore, so planting one on an ore field makes it vulnerable and the soviet player will have to pay attention to it if he doesn't want to lose it. 

Terror drones will also be a threat to war miners and chrono miners if the defending player pays no attention to them and does not micromanage them.

I agree with Zenothist that giving the Soviets a robotic T1 stealth detector and un-bloating the Borillo is, from a design perspective, a no-brainer.

Let's also keep in mind that the next patch is expected to make reaching T2 more difficult. My gut says moving stealth detection to terror drones could be achieved with only minor rebalancing measures- perhaps a sensors range of only 5 or 6 for terror drones.

As Epsilon you know that you can use the Driller-Adept combo and unload them behind Nuwas then use Shadow Ring on them?

 

I have attempted this tactic several times, and succeeded a few times- I think it's a lot of fun! However, I think it's hard to pull off against a player of equal skill. It requires A LOT of attention- much more than the Chinese player requires to churn out Nuwas and roll them forward. 

I think Epsilon factions would have an easier time countering China if Nuwas had a bit less range or a bit of a slower turning rate- hint hint!

Of course, I believe Nuwas SHOULD be very hard to counter- they're very expensive, very slow units from a faction that takes a long time to get rolling. My feeling is that, in theory, near-unstoppable units are China's reward for surviving the "first strike" that every other faction should be able to beat them to.

I haven't played as China so I'm not claiming that that's how it works in practice, but my general feeling about MO is that balance could be improved if it were a bit harder to tech up quickly - it could be as simple as making radars and battle labs a bit more expensive. That might give lighter factions like SC and US the early-game advantage that they're "supposed" to have.

Of course, I'm a casual player who does everything a little slowly, and is trying to be proficient with SC. I might have a biased view of things!

This is fantastic Petya! Would you and/or the staff consider a series of posts like this for the other factions? I think they would be extremely helpful as a reference. I've spent almost three months trying to become a half-decent SC player, and I'd love to try out some other subfactions to see how they stack up balance-wise. However, I simply don't have time to "start from scratch" each time I want to get proficient with a new sub faction. Having a few tips from the pros would speed things up, and I think it would allow the rest of us to form more educated opinions about game balance.