RAS and its role in the game

[Ceneraii]

I've been playing with the idea in my head for a while now, so I thought I'd share it and see what everyone else thinks about it.

I'm not advocating to change RAS, I just want to hear everyone's thoughts about it

I'm trying to be as objective as possible, as is fitting for the balance forum. As thus all things I state are what I think of them, not trying to put down anything as fact.

Currently, I see RAS as a jump-start to t3 economy. You essentially get a t3 mex and a t3 pgen at the same time, more or less, in a single upgrade. It's efficient and it's convenient, unless you desperately need your commander. Since the stage during which RAS becomes a major focus tends to coincide with the stage that using your commander becomes rather risky if not outright suicidal, this is a good aspect of the game, there is some variance between factions but overall, it's generally a good decision to fall back and get it, if I were to word it subjectively, I'd say it's a ''no-brainer''. Usually with no meaningful alternative, other than investing half an experimental worth of resources into your commander to make it combat capable without huge risk, assuming your faction allows that.

The idea I've been toying around with is how it would affect gameplay if RAS' effects and costs were toned down to t2 eco level, and it's what I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts about. Here are the (very abbreviated) things I came up with;
-The time during which this would be an option is also the time during which a commander's presence on the battlefield has a large but fading impact, it creates strategic choice.
-It would give airplayers a better chance to focus on the t1 air-stage rather than go full on eco-mode, due to the easy availability of ''t2 power'' and the mass to go along with it.
-It might make it even harder, especially due to the current strat changes, to rush one.
-Make power less of a ''necessary evil'' for executing t2 strategies.

Obviously, it can also do the exact opposite of all the things I just mentioned with proper co-ordination, seeing as a cheaper, yet still efficient upgrade becomes extremely rushable by a team with good timing with all the (partially unforeseeable) consequences thereof. The reason why I think this is a concept worth debating is largely because of my first point (having your commander fight during this period, likely around the 6-8 minute mark in teamgames, is often critical to succes, it's interesting if you think about how often you've seen someone cancel a RAS upgrade, no?) and the fact that RAS timing is already (in my opinion, although I don't think I'm very mistaken about this) a very powerful force factoring into a team's success, assuming they know how to utilize the combined effects. Another clear problem point is where exactly this leaves double ras... And that's another of the major reasons why I think it's insane to just propose this, because I can't think of anything that's not outright removing it, which is, to put it frank, well beyond retarded.

I don't want to type much more about this, as I'd rather hear the discussion revolving around it, if you guys think it's worth talking about, but that's the gist of it. There are far more implications than I stated, but that will always be the case, my main point is to decide whether or not this is an idea worth pursuing and/or investigating.

[keyser]

Well yeah having ras nearly only way to go after fight period is kinda retard.
Not sure if what you proposed would do it.

[Valki]

RAS should be cost effectively inferior to its equivalent in power plants and T3 mex upgrades.

In fact, I find RAS for ACU to be quite an oddity.

If RAS is something 'normal', then why is there only a 'T3' RAS? The proposed normal RAS becoming a T2 RAS would reduce the oddness of RAS, but why stop there? Maybe Cybran and UEF factions could get "Basic RAS" as a T1 RAS?

(again, every RAS should be inferior to its own tier of mexes and power plants)


RAS for sACU I find entirely ridiculous.
You summon a real life human in a mech suit from across the galaxy, and then you strap a generator to his mech and tell him to sit in the corner... why not construct an empty unmanned sACU and strap a generator to that, or why not just build the generator in said corner?

On that note, sACU RAS should be cost-effectively inferior to its equivalent in power plants and mass fabricators.

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

(again, every RAS should be inferior to its own tier of mexes and power plants)

Why? Going the 'normal' route would give you a T3 HQ to do all kinds of cool stuff with. You trade that in for early T3 power income. It saves time. And that's kind of counter-intuitive and weird. Noobs never know that they need to rush RAS and that it snowballs from there.

[yeager]

I have never found an issue with ras, it's not like it's the only upgrade people get, it's the most used in team games, but in 1v1 it's not very common.
Also am I the only one who realizes uef and cybran get engineering stations in exchange for aras? Seems fare to me.
I too think scu ras is dumb tho

[D4E_Omit]

I think RAS is lovely, you can get it and like you said you basically get the equivalent of a t3 mex and a t3 power but it is way more convenient because you dont have to have a t3 hq yet. And it's a one off thing, I mean sure aeon and sera can get double ras but you cant do any more than that per player. It just smoothes out the transition to t3 a bit. I mean going t3 might it be air land or naval is a huge mass investment so I think overall it's a great upgrade.

[Exotic_Retard]

acu ras is basically the thing that enables strat abuse.

also its so fundamental to t3 air i doubt any high rated players would give it up easily

its also ludicrously efficient if you use the power - you wont be able to use all of it right away but if you use at least half then its more efficient that a t2 mex

in short if you are going for eco, ras is a must have, and many people rely on its power production to the point where they reclaim their pgens for the mass. i think its op, and it removes things like power sniping for a few minutes until you get a large air production going.



there is already a solution for this in ithilis mod - simply the energy gain is decreased, but it already caused a lot of people to rage when they get ras, reclaim power, get t3 air, and then realize they are stalling e.

Spoiler: show

not gonna point fingers but if you are in that situation it means you weren't really playing attention to eco for a few minutes :\

hope this helps

for briang:

Spoiler: show

acu ras

i would appreciate it greatly if you read

[DeimosEvotec]

How about making ACUs and SCUs with RAS more volatile, so that when they have the upgrade their death explosion is bigger.
In case of the ACU this doesn't do much, if it dies your base goes with it most of the time with the exception of full share
but with SCUs it's more impactfull since atm one couldn't care less about a SCU going boom since the most important things it could kill are tmds and shields. Which are probably quickly rebuild if you have SCUs anyways. But if it's more like a tac with huge aoe or even a billy, it's a big deal since it could destroy vital structures or if there are enough RAS SCUs in one place even start a chain reaction.
Thematicly it also fits, since you increase the reactor output it explodes bigger and if you consider that a RAS SCU produces 11 mass, a T3 massfab produces 12 mass and has a death explosion of 5000 damage while the SCU only has a death explosion of 1000 while also being harder to kill with more than double the health and the ability to build shields when needed?

When a SCU upgrades RAS, increase the damage of its deathnuke by 5000 and its aoe by 4.
Same for the ACUs with adjusted stats since the output is also greater than that of the SCUs/massfabs and double that for double RAS.
In addition to any cost or output changes you guys come up with.

[Mad`Mozart]

RAS is the most broken and unbalanced thing in the game now



First, its the numbers.

RAS cost: 5k m / 150k e

Shortest way to t3 pgen:
Com upgrade: (t2) 720 m / 18k e + (t3) 2400 m / 50k e + (t3 pgen) 3240 m / 57.6k e = total 6360 m / 125.6k e

So that will give us 2500 power yield, which is 1k short from RAS. But RAS also gives 12m/sec as well. Can add a capped t2 mex cost to that (which gives only 9m/sec) - 1700 m / 11.4k e. Numbers will go even higher if you want to completely match RAS bonus.

T2 pgens for fun: (t2) 720 m / 18k e + (7x pgens) 7x 1200 m / 7x 12k e = total 9120 m / 102k e. And throwing 2 t2 mexes on top with one of them capped = 11.7k m / 118.8k e. Also when you've done RAS you can reclaim redundant t1/t2 pgens for extra mass.

Second, its the accesability.
You can start RAS upgrade literally at 0:00 in the game (very pro strategy) while you have to get required tech to build a somewhat equivalent eco. Depends on a game when people have enough eco to make transition to t3, for most 1v1 and land teamgame spots it should be around 12-14 min in the game. Given the crazy efficiency of RAS it makes it even better.

Third, its invincible.
You only lose RAS when you lose the game. Any power snipe strategy becomes useless until very late game.


So to sum it up: crazy efficient, much better than t3 equivalent, doesnt require any tech and invincible eco = totally and rediculously OP. Needs hard nerf
I'd bring it in line with t2 eco, maybe slightly more but not much. Invincibility and accessability are already very strong points there.

Also im prepared for insane amount of hate for this post cause peoples used to their OP toys and wont wont give em up so easily. Go ahead, come at me

[speed2]

Mobile eco should be worse than static eco...