I think Corey already uploaded or plans to upload a guide for the Hutts on his YT channel.
Generally the units are balanced exactly the same way as for every other faction and so it should be balanced, but maybe it just isn't your Playstyle.

We'll see, but I don't think it's a playstyle as I'm not rigid when it comes to ground battles. If something doesn't work, I reload and try again with a different composition or approach, eventually finding something that works and sticking to that for every similar situation. For CIS, for example, what works most times is droideka rush-capping followed by HMP or MAF spam - or, early game, walls of B1's hellfire droids behind them. With republic, it's clones hunkering down around an AT-TE, using a juggernaut or gunship early on to rush an extra cap zone.

I've tried a few comps, all on the same planet just to see what might work best. It was invading Kashyyyk, enemy had an A5 juggernaut and 2 P1 clone platoons, as well as their government building and barracks(2 other buildings too, but none that spawn anything noteworthy.)

First was a varied mix: Sail barge with guard infantry, some bacta skiffs, pongeeta speeders to defend a forward base up the beach, and a T3 commander. Utterly wiped out, couldn't even take the first capture point. Tried to deploy pongeetas but they vaporized instantly under infantry and soon TX-130's. Sail barge destroyed around the same time. Pulled back with the commander but quick-loaded anyways as those were already unacceptable losses - a very sloppy start is never a good sign for the rest of the battle.

Second was the "ol reliable" air gunship spam with VAAT/e's. Worked noticeably better, but still destroyed. Indigenous wookies wiped out my infantry spawn so I couldn't take any points. Quick-loaded again.

Third attempt was a more mechanized one, using some superhauls and anti-infantry skiffs, relying on field base infantry for capturing. Wiped out again, similar to the first attempt; my superhauls couldn't do much against the A5 when it rolled around, and only managed to damage but not kill TX-130's. Anti-infantry skiffs proved useless vs clones.

Fourth attempt was to turtle up and wade through the strongest of the initial forces, with the plan to push up after breaking their offense. 2 squads of pongeetas, all clustered and deployed with a mix of anti-infantry and anti-vehicle turrets, with armored hutts taking cover just barely behind them, a single MAL artillery unit in the back. T3 commander as well. Attempted to ferry one small infantry team to a further off landing zone in the southwest corner, but got pounced on by TX-130's and had to pull back lest I lose said commander(those medium tanks with the single AV blaster and 2 AI blasters can't defeat TX-130's 1 on 1, learned that much earlier.) Enemy approached defenses, TX-130's outranged the AV turrets, destroyed one, A5 juggernaut rolls up and destroys 2 more and wipes my infantry, MAL artillery is useless since it wasted its initial salvo on a group of 4 infantry and got stuck in reload, juggernaut outran its next missile salvo(kinematically defeated the missiles by turning as it rolled back. By then was down to 2/5 of my initial spawns, everything else badly damaged, and with infantry coming in, I just gave up.

Funny thing is auto-resolve only loses 3 cheap units, which tells me it shouldn't be as much of a struggle as it is since auto-resolve is always more economically punishing than doing the battle yourself...or is at least supposed to be(hence why I usually only resort to it late-game when mopping up the last few worlds.)

Not the first time it happened today either, but by this point, I had lost my patience with it. At least the space part of the faction works nice, but alas, this mod lacks a space-only version and resorting to auto-resolves for every ground battle gets very expensive very quick. I wish to know what others who have success with hutt ground battles(at least on worlds with actual defenses - worlds without defenses aren't an issue) are doing.

Well as I said it is balanced like all factions and it went through a long testing period where people were happy with them (this includes a lot of non-devs) so it seems to be an issue for you mostly there.

As for space only version: That won't happen, because a lot of stuff in the mod relies on ground buildings etc.
Also cutting the great work of many Devs and well 1/3 of the game is a bad idea

Originally posted by Cooler12351:

Well as I said it is balanced like all factions and it went through a long testing period where people were happy with them (this includes a lot of non-devs) so it seems to be an issue for you mostly there.

Which is why I want to know what the trick is to making this faction work on the ground, because I'm at a total loss. It's like everything they have is blatantly inferior to any similar units to other factions outside of a couple niche ways that aren't going to win any battles. I know what the units are supposed to be good at, at least according to their stat card, so an overview of what they do isn't going to be helpful. I need to see them in practice.

I turtle with the hutts on my first invasion around a pair of build pads. Survived the initial defending wave and used the pongeetas to scout their base and manage a bombing run to destroy they hq. After that, used the concussion missile vehicles to sweep slowing around to wipe out stragglers. But had to run back to heal up often. Took the first planet with hutts easy, no losses but a bit time consuming. The vehicles that can build turrets was useful in protecting my turtle base, as it was cheap to rebuild the turrets after each attack. Infantry, what can I say, weakest of the three factions, but at least they have vehicles with bacta tanks was able to keep them alive. Did not have artillery, so can not say anything about them. If they are like the vanilla version, then I have a love/hate relationship with them as they are accurate but slow.

I just send waves f anti inf skifs with the proton rocket guys behind, seriously at 6 the company just deletes most things except republic super heavy stuff or mtts


the MAL struggles vs fast units and infantry no surprise but does more damage and goes thru shields vs teh cis hag and republic av-7 orbs

Wlos are basically persuader/aats analogues so use them like that, the sail barge is a large anti inf transport but its not as tanky as a juggernaut


honestly hutts are fine on ground but they do require movement and a plan rather than charging in blind like juggernauts or mtts army anchors do

Originally posted by :):

I just send waves f anti inf skifs with the proton rocket guys behind, seriously at 6 the company just deletes most things except republic super heavy stuff or mtts


the MAL struggles vs fast units and infantry no surprise but does more damage and goes thru shields vs teh cis hag and republic av-7 orbs

Wlos are basically persuader/aats analogues so use them like that, the sail barge is a large anti inf transport but its not as tanky as a juggernaut


honestly hutts are fine on ground but they do require movement and a plan rather than charging in blind like juggernauts or mtts army anchors do

I tried the skiff thing but most of them die really quick unless the infantry is very scattered, and I find the reload of the superhauls to be too long to be useful as a dedicated anti-vehicle unit. They get off one salvo and get blasted when trying to pull them away since hover units like to wobble around instead of just going in reverse. Additionally, the problem I end up having with units like these spawning in groups of 4 or more is that they keep getting "stuck" behind each other or jammed up, meaning using their fast movement doesn't actually work since they keep getting stuck on each other and dying rapidly to AoE of any sort.

I've found the MAL to be completely useless. Almost no maps are flat enough to make good use of it as a back line support unit. Similar story to the maldrood "artillery" in TR - garbage.

WLO's are terrible compared to AAT's, only slightly better in anti-infantry but with bad anti-vehicle. With as many anti-infantry units Hutts have, I fail to see the purpose in a hover tank that is - once again - anti infantry. That reload time on its AV cannon makes it unworkable as a standard hover tank unit.

The barge can't even do anti-infantry right since any infantry it shoots at can destroy it quicker unless they only have blasters. It's that fragile and, imo, frankly unacceptable for a unit with a huge anti-infantry armament to die to infantry that easily. Basically nullifies the entire point.

Kind of reminds of Zsinj's ground game in TR, where it sounds neat on paper but doesn't work that great in practice(in this case, it's huddling infantry around A9's and letting AT-AP's sit in the back line picking off armor). Instead what works best for them is to ignore that design philosophy because the speed discrepancy and pathing difficulties of the units make it unworkable, and instead just spam a single type of unit to tactical pop cap. With the hutt's, it's just spamming VAAT/e's or their other airspeeder.

I didn't really mind the ground thing until I actually encountered worlds with garrisoned units on them. Any other faction, a garrison of units isn't a big deal: just throw the right hard-counters at them and it's easy win. Hutts, you throw anti-infantry vehicles at infantry and still fail, with your actual best anti-infantry being an air unit that only has anti-vehicle weaponry. Makes no sense!

It's water under the bridge now anyways. Uninstalled the mod after writing up the initial OP after some unrelated BS(republic AI being way too aggressive again, on top of other things about FotR in particular that annoy me to no end.)

Hutt ground could use some touch-ups, sure, but I didn't have a problem with them. Never had to spam gunships to win any battles either. The Shell Hutt heroes you start with/can get absolutely mog vehicles and anything big/slow dies to the MAL, which might I add I never had any problems with using.

Then again, I normally use hotkeys for specific unit types(gunships/speeders and artillery) and micro unit targetting during ground battles so maybe our experience with the unit differs because of that. I'm not going crazy with SC2 levels of APM though.

At the very least I agree the big barge is kind of bad, but it isn't useless.

To be honest your posts baffle me, it's as if we aren't even playing the same mod.

Hutt ground seems to be more glass cannon based all along
Not tanky, but good damage all along, which means you need to micro your forces

Another thing to note is that both of the air units are pure AV and are meant to be used that way. Using them to support more anti-infantry-leaning vehicles is intended.
WLO is probably the tankiest of the Hutt vehicles. It's basically an AAT that trades the missiles for extra health. The rest of the roster is more damage-leaning, though.
(Also, don't sleep on the bikes, especially the Airhook. Once again, it is something that requires more micro, but you can get a lot out of hit-and-runs and dodge tanking from them since they are bikes with good alpha strike AV damage with longer cooldowns.)

wait phllo shouldn't you have the dev tag in here?

just park 2 sails barges, a VAAT, and those build pad units around a repair pad with a Hutt used for capping the pad. use the VAAT for taking out vehicles, the barges for dealing with infantry, and the 3 very cheap turrets for what ever is the biggest threat(prefer 2 anti-infantry sandwiching an Anti-vehicle). once the AI has wasted its garrison trying to bury me to no avail thanks to bombing runs and orbital fire. its reduced to making money off the AI buildings. often get 1500+ credits pure profit.

I have an idea for the use of skiffs... drive by. lets face it, their armor is terrible and shouldn't be used in a face to face fight even against infantry. My best work came from distracting hostile troops with infantry and using just about any type of skiff(except flack) to just pass the enemy instead of stopping to fight. works even without to distraction as long as they keep moving. On another note I use those disruptor speeders almost exclusively to the regular ones. just haven't had much success with those. but a full barrage from a platoon of the disruptors melts whole infantry squads and vehicles alike.... so i say take advantage of the Hutts superior mobility.