Hey Geeks,

Now that you've had a chance to play BTGTD a bit, I'd love to hear what towers you feel are too strong (in need of a nerf) or too weak (in need of a buff).

I'm fairly certain the boom tower is in need a buff... no one uses them. They are a bit expensive.

If you have any ideas on how to buff/nerf the tower, let me know. When it comes to modifying a tower, these are the things I can easily change :

- how often the shoot
- how much damage each shot does
- how far a tower can shoot
- how much each upgrade costs
- how long each upgrade takes to complete

Any thoughts? I'd like to make the changes soon, so let me know :)

I figured out the damage per second per cost assuming only one creep to target for each tower at the max level. It looks like:
Pellet : 2.2333
Rapid: 2.556
Cannon: 0.35
Boom: 0.5
Volcano: .73029

The boom tower IMO is just fine, and I use it quite often. When put at a corner and with groups of 5 or more on it, it does most damage. Enough even for me to use the surge on it sometimes. The pellet and rapid balance is quite nice, but It's not very effective to upgrade pellets since the stats are just worse and the other bonus is the range, which generally doesn't matter towards the end when the screen is filled with creeps. The cannon needs a buff, I want to use it but I just don't have a good time to put it up. It's area affect hasn't been useful either since it seems to be at most 10 pixels. Volcano also needs a buff, I loved using them until I realized that I shouldn't. The advantages are obvious, and the dps is the highest by a little over the maxed pellet, but per cost its way too low. I hope this is helpful o_o. I'd also like to hear other people's opinions on this.

The balance right now is pretty good. I calculated the same DPS/$ Mike did, plus a bunch of other statistics, plus a bunch of play testing. Here's my thoughts:

Boom tower - I'm hesitant to see this one buffed... It's the highest AOE tower in pure DPS and damage per hit. But it's less useful the more open the map is. You can cover at most 11 squares with it's 1 range, whereas in a good maze a Cannon tower with range 6 can cover over 70 squares, more than making up for the DPS difference. On a tight map, however, the boom tower can still come out ahead. Assuming the boom tower is perfectly placed (covering 11 path squares), it breaks even with a cannon tower covering around 31-32 squares. If you wanted to shift the balance in the boom tower's favor a bit, to make them more equal, I'd probably up the damage of the boom to something like 50/100/200/350/550/800. It's a nice progression, and it puts the equivalence at 11 squares of Boom coverage to 42 squares of Cannon coverage. The Cannon will still win out on large maps, but the Boom will be more effective in corridors, which seems right. That's a *lot* of DPS though, could be overcorrecting.

Volcano - I've done some experiments with the Volcano, and it's interesting. Up to level 5, it's the least efficient single target tower in the entire game in terms of DPS/$. Even the level 1 rapid tower is better. At level 6, it moves up 1 place (to between the level 1 and 2 rapid towers). This is obviously offset by the constant buildup and unlimited range aspects, but not enough to make it cost effective except in extraordinary situations. Specifically, if you are using an absolutely huge maze, and you never send a wave early. That last bit is important as well. The Volcano tower is the only one in the game that is demonstrably lower DPS if you send waves early. This one is harder to know how to fix, since it's not so much a DPS issue as an efficiency issue. Changing the price isn't so bad a fix, since there's already protection in place where existing lava isn't upgraded to the new damage number when the tower is upgraded (unless that's just a display glitch...). I'm thinking a price is around 75/75/100/150/200/250. That puts it at 850 total (down from 1205), bringing it's DPS/$ up to just above the level 5 rapid, but still less than half of either level 6 (pellet or rapid).

Alright, I'm going to run out of characters here, I'll keep thinking and might post more tomorrow. :D

-boom tower

i frequantly buy it in the wasy lvl , i make a maze of 10 or 12 tower, enough to greatly placed a boom tower, and i upgrade my boom tower to the max, i can send 6 wave in 2 second, because the boom will all kill them in 1 or 2 shot, then i buy a rapid tower, i upgrade it whit the money i have made, i upgreade the maze to place it goodly,then i can send the boss, and i restart for 5 wave, then i upgrade another boom, like this i have skip 13 lvl in 25 second, i gain a LOT of bonus :)

Hmm, very good comments. Maybe my thoguhts that the boom tower was too weak were wrong. I did just try a game using it and it owns (especially early on). The nice thing is that it owns all the little creeps, but doesn't do much to bosses (they have no much hp). Maybe I'll leave the boom tower alone for now.

Does anything else think the pellet tower (the yellow one) is too strong when upgraded fully? I notice many people only building pellet towers... nothing else.

As for the volcano tower, I do agree it needs a slight buff. The advantage to the volcano tower is not the damage per second it does... sure rapid tower does more. The nice thing about it is that it saves damage up for later when you need it most (ie. a creep got by your towers or a super hard boss level). Plus the range on the tower is unlimited. It's not a tower you want to build 20 of.... 1 or 2 is plenty.

Anyways, great suggestions. Keep them coming. I'll let you know of the changes I might make before I make them to see if you all agree.

oh, you make me think of a startegy, i go test it and tell it after :)

finaly, its not working as i expect, bu t maybe tis just the map or the method i do it,
Stategy : start the game normaly, add a boom tower, upgrade to lvl 3, then i buy a volcano tower to a place i will not used, upgrade until the boss come, when the boss come i wait until there is ONLY the boss, and shoot my volcano, then upgrade the boomn and the volcano, and ect, when a tower is full, i buy a new one :)

Maybe i'm just doing it wrong, but i cannot seem to "target" the volcano tower. Thought i'd read somewhere that that is possible?
I click a creep, i push F, and my selection of the creep is gone, so the volcano fires random/not at the target i intended it to..

i have noticed that they forgot the closer to the end one, i think, but it doint locate the arrow exept if there is nothing else, very bad thing ,

Ya, it's not well documented :)

If you just press F, it'll fire all volcanos at the creeps that have been on the screen the longest (which is normally the ones closest to the exit... but sometimes the arrow/rocket creeps pass the creeps in front of them).

If you want to target a specific creep, shift-click them. No need to press F. All volcano towers will erupt and focus that creep. If he dies, the remaining lava will shoot the enemies that have been on the screen the longest.

Hope that makes sense.

ooooh! Volcano towers suddenly became a lot more fun :P

^^ but you should make the closer to the exit, the arrow killed me frequantly because of that

Ya, I wish it was that easy or I would have done it that way. Maybe one day I'll look into doing that. It would be better that way for sure.

you cannot to that? oh, i was thinking it was the same thing

i think that you should have 5 upgrades for the slow tower. the first three are fine i think but then what? its the only tower with only 3 upgrades. so what i think would be good is to have the 4th upgrade like 2 more radius. and the fifth one 1-2 DPS. i hope that this helps make the game more fun with ether you doing it or it giving you a good idea that would be better. :).