The Novax

[Mycen]

What kind of games are you playing again?

Setons. Granted, I'm thinking more of the times before the underwater reclaim nerf - things are a little different now.

Mobile SMD would be a cool and fitting idea in theory, but not in execution. It'd just get parked over enemy nuke launchers, which would be lame.

this is why noone takes you seriously
stop being a detriment to game balance because you want to attempt to be a faf hipster by making novax

"faf hipster" lol! I've always been a unit hipster in all the games I play, using uncommon units is one of the things I find fun. Games like faf, with large numbers of different units, are fun because there's always something that doesn't get seen often which you can throw out there. The Billy is my favorite ACU upgrade, btw.

Anyway, I always assume people consider the ideas proposed, not the people proposing them, it's not like you guys are my friends, opinions about me personally are worthless. I've had useful input and it's been considered accordingly. As Gorton pointed out, faf balance is about a certain subset of the fa experience, one in which the Novax is not currently useful because of unit redundancies, so my opinions about it aren't particularly relevant to the balance team's goals.

But it would be a real shame to take a unit that is fun to use and turn it into something lame just because you don't see it in your games.

t1 unit drop pods

But it's me that doesn't get taken seriously, okay.

I just want the beam to stay on 100% of the time. The reload period really annoys me.

You know that would make novax a practical game-ender because no amount of shields would ever stop it?

You know you can already do that by building 3 novax and staggering their fire cycles, right? Still doesn't make it a game ender, a little shield micro takes care of that.

The laser changes I suggested isn't just some nerf I concocted to try and justify it's lower cost. As mentioned earlier I want novax to have it's laser equipped to destroy groups of t1 engineers. In fact, the novax might do even more damage in this position because now it is able to come out a lot earlier in the game. Sure Novax will mainly take up the role of a t4 scout, but I don't see that as a problem seeing as that's what it already does. The current Novax just relies too much on your opponent being less skilled or behind. It relies on them not overwhelming you enough to stay alive, then relies on them turtling in a wierd way where they remember to build tons of sams, but not tons of shields.

The dynamic of attacking engineers and forcing your opponent to repay the satelite's cost by building shields and attacking engineers is way more exciting than any "Special ability" IMO. Supcom isn't about the gimmicks anyways.

I don't think this idea is bad at all, it's really the only one proposed so far that isn't totally lame. (Well, the jamming would be nifty too, but it wouldn't actually address any concerns raised in this thread.) I just would like to hear more detail about what you're proposing. It doesn't seem to make much sense - you say the current Novax is useless because the opponent can just build shields, but the weaker version would be useful because it forces your opponent to build shields. You see how I'm confused? How much earlier do you envision it coming out that this would make a difference? 20k mass is still more than a Monkeylord you know. Also, what kind of damage/AoE/firing cycle are yout talking about? With a change in target priority the Novax's current weapon is already pretty good at killing engis.

[FtXCommando]

I just want the beam to stay on 100% of the time. The reload period really annoys me.

You know that would make novax a practical game-ender because no amount of shields would ever stop it?

You know you can already do that by building 3 novax and staggering their fire cycles, right? Still doesn't make it a game ender, a little shield micro takes care of that.

3 novax = 90k mass. Big difference between paying 40% of the mass of a mavor in order to basically prevent the usage of shields and paying 10% of the mass of a mavor.

[zeroAPM]

True, Novax would become unstoppable, at least with current dps figure given.

If the shield regen is higher than dps it shouble be able to stand up to novax even with constant fire. I thought about this but I really don't like it as it encourages camping in one spot because any move order is preventing you from firing (And assuming old values for cost, the novax needs a lot of that constant beam time to fire).

The long recharge high damage/aoe is an interesting idea, (though I'd appreaciate some ballpark figures).

T1 drop pods are great, but the ability to turn novax into a ghetto gunship would be even better.

Shields can't recharge for 3 seconds after taking damage though.
So even if it did 1 DPS it would eventually break through, even if the shield had 50 million regen

[Evan_]

I don't think this idea is bad at all, it's really the only one proposed so far that isn't totally lame. (Well, the jamming would be nifty too, but it wouldn't actually address any concerns raised in this thread.) I just would like to hear more detail about what you're proposing. It doesn't seem to make much sense - you say the current Novax is useless because the opponent can just build shields, but the weaker version would be useful because it forces your opponent to build shields. You see how I'm confused? How much earlier do you envision it coming out that this would make a difference? 20k mass is still more than a Monkeylord you know. Also, what kind of damage/AoE/firing cycle are yout talking about? With a change in target priority the Novax's current weapon is already pretty good at killing engis.

That's a valid concern. The reason I believe the cheaper version forcing your opponent to build shields is (edit: missed this part) different is because while the original novax is equivalent in mass to about 27 shields (admittedly not counting pgen cost) I've argued for a much cheaper cost (13500) meaning the opponent building shields works much more towards paying back the novax's cost. At the same time, it wouldn't be unfair to the opponent because the new novax wouldn't be able to break through shields at all. I can't really explain it really well, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that the original novax would make people build shields when they already had to (because the novax would usually only be seen late game) and you/teamates are building artillery, so they need shields anyway.

As for damage and firing cycle, I originally suggested 200 total damage with a 15 second fire cycle, at a small 13.333 dps and 4 aoe. However, Because of engineer hp being 150, I considered dropping the damage and kicking up the fire rate to every 11 seconds. However I think that would be too fast (would allow you to stay in one spot and destroy shields that are under construction).

As much as we hate the really long fire cycle (the novax just feels like it's doing nothing) I think it's actually better to have a balance between short and high rate of fire. If damage is low but fire cycle is short then it forces the novax to stay in one spot to make full use of it's dps. If damage is high but fire cycle is long then the novax can be a little too annoying, able to fly around and attack throughout the whole map because as long as it finds a suitable target in 20 seconds it isn't wasting any dps. I want the novax to roam around, but not so much that it can freely attack any expansion without some penalty.

Using the map Twin Rivers as an example it takes about 15 seconds to cross from one end of the air players base to the other (the two mass extractors to the left and right of the base). So I think 200 damage per 15 second cycle is fair, but it's of course up for debate.

I imagine the novax mostly being built somewhere in the middle experimental stage, perhaps in between percivals and fatboys. At this point the UEF player gets slightly ahead (assuming a non UEF opponent of equal skill) until the opponent can bring multiple experimentals online and into one spot. For a short time the novax will give the UEF player a slight edge in intel and BP raiding while also giving the opponent a chance to fight back (because of course the novax will still need time to pay back it's cost and in the meantime the UEF player has took 13.5k mass out of their military budget).

If the novax gets this change, it'll hopefully do what I expect it to do: make higher tech engineers more viable, force armies to include mobile shields in unit compositions, and this is REEEAAAALY stretching it, but maybe just maybe make the game more aggressive.

[AdmiralZeech]

I just want the beam to stay on 100% of the time. The reload period really annoys me.

You know that would make novax a practical game-ender because no amount of shields would ever stop it?

Well, I don't care what else you do to make it balanced, just make it stay on 100% of the time. DO EET.

[Nepty]

I just want the beam to stay on 100% of the time. The reload period really annoys me.

You know that would make novax a practical game-ender because no amount of shields would ever stop it?

Well, I don't care what else you do to make it balanced, just make it stay on 100% of the time. DO EET.

Hmmm, we can make it use power reserves. It could drain power for it's beam duration. You would have to spam energy storage to keep the beam on longer.

Toggle the beam off when power is running low. Energy usage will have to be insane. Like 15k a second.

[Evan_]

15k energy per second (or 6 pgens) is still a pretty small price to pay for a weapon you could just right click on an enemy acu and win.

[Sovietpride]

Excuse me? What are we, the UN?

What's wrong with torturing my opponents to death with space lasers?

[ZLO_RD]

i kinda like novax

imho it is in a nice spot cause when you have little they work as nice harras weapon. if you build more of them they slowly turn into game-ender.
they do have problem that they can't break good shielding, even if you invest mavor amount of mass into novax...
I have heared that currently mavor ctrl+k abuse is OP, but i never seen and never tryed it, i think we can just remove it.
think about it
Novax does not have engines that keep him hovering, so if you turn it off it will just be there like a space junk. We could also make it fall a little bit random so you can't hit a target perfectly if target is perfectly shielded. i am not convinced that we need to change much about novax

Edit: improving novax would be cool but it might be too easy to make it OP

[Farmsletje]

A small speed boost might be good. It can take minutes before a build novax can actually start being usefull.