After some conversations and reading comments through various threads, I had the thought of what Pixonic initially wanted to achieve with the Shocktrain being an anti-squad weapon, but then where it went wrong, to become such a dominant weapon in high leagues.

As it stands, when used with bots that have three or more medium weapon slots, the Shocktrain has a huge advantage over other weapons. The damage inflicted to it's alpha target is tremendous, which then chains on to other bots at a decreasing rate of 50% per subsequent chained target. I've made a different post about it's damage digits.

There's three ways to fix it;

1. Remove it from the game entirely
   Refund anyone who purchased it, or give them the equivalent number of an alternative new weapon that is shiny but balanced.
   This isn't going to happen for a variety of reasons.

2. Alter it's statistics
   Change the behaviour so that it is no longer viable as a 1v1 weapon. With a spectre being able to inflict 80k damage to an alpha target every 13 seconds, with a 1 second exposure time, from 500m away.. not to mention beta, charlie and delta targets, makes it absurd.
   Change the stats to incorporate all or some of the below;
   - alpha target damage is halved, but the chain damage is doubled, with a slight increase with each subsequent chain target. This will make it an effective anti-squad weapon, but not viable as a 1v1 weapon.
   - the target horizontal lock threshold should be smaller. As it stands a Shocktrain can track targets easily from the extremities of the target system. Reducing the lock threshold will require skill to maintain a lock on a specific target. Think about how a trebuchet is not easy to aim at close range, or a Dragoon or Taran require precise aim. ST does not require precision.
   - increase the time required to deliver each shot. Currently it discharges the full damage in an instant, consider modifying it so it acts similarly to the Scourge, but with a chain effect. Requiring constant target engagement means the shooter requires a degree of risk to cause mass-damage, instead of 'pop up laser tag'.
   This also isn't likely to happen, because it was offered to players at a high price so they could have a big advantage. People who buy power don't care about balance, they likely lack influence in their real life so want to feel powerful where they can. Sure you can say it's about saving time by spending money, but if you don't enjoy the gameplay at any level it's no longer about skilful enjoyment, it's about power play. Unfortunately Pixonic doubled down on this by not solving tanking issues and making power so important.
   As I've said in previous threads, if Pixonic made Chess it would not be fair. Let's be grateful their business model has been abandoned from other aspects of industry and sports. Having your favourite football team defeated because the other team could afford steroids and augmented strength suits.

3. Add another bot/weapon combo to counter it
   Adding a new bot or weapon to counter and nullifies the effect of the Shocktrain would make their prevalence on the battlefield diminish. Great news, sort of.. ..over time people will acquire Bulwark and the new healer bots which are designed to regenerate quick enough to overcome high damage weapons like Shocktrain. The problem is, whilst the new incoming META may solve Shocktrains being dominant, it will also make all other weapons and bots ineffective against it. So it will dominate over everything, repeating the same issue with Shocktrains.
   The "cure" works because it kills the whole body. This is of course the business model, always be selling the next improvement.
   And sure, people are supposed to get the Bulwark and healer bots quicker due to the proposed new economy, but their weapons and robot stats will be weak unless payments are made. Super long upgrade times and the ability to only upgrade one thing at a time mean that speeding up upgrades with gold will become mandatory. Sure you can have concurrent upgrades by using only gold, but the cost of this is even dearer.
   The time of upgrading a Bulwark from MK2 LVL 11 to MK2 LVL12 is 14 days, and costs 2,500 gold to speed up the upgrade.

I know there's some good people at Pixonic, and I know that they're owned by a bigger company whose only interest is the quarterly figures. But damn it's frustrating to be subject to business practice that erodes trust. It's what keeps me eager and forgiving for the delays in getting Battle of Titans ready for full release.