game ender problems

[____]

Yes, another essay from me, I’m sorry, but I honestly feel like the insane number of unbalances in the game ender stage is one of largest gameplay problems we currently have in this game.

The Novax problem:
I thought about not mentioning this at first, but then I reconsidered, as this problem is one of the greatest ones in this post. As we all know, air units (or the falling wrecks of those) can block nukes and then make them explode, often killing the nuke and the entire base as well. This is also possible with the Novax, you simply need to ctrl k it when it is over the yolo while it launches. This results in the yolo basically killing itself and the entire base with it if timed correctly.

Now one might say, that this is probably very hard to do and requires a lot of experience. And well, it doesn’t. It took me about 5 minutes of sandboxing to get proficient in it and I am not joking when I am saying, that anyone can do it. For me this is clearly a broken mechanic, and someone should look into it.

The scout problem?
To a lesser extent this also applies to dying scout planes and such. While I also personally disagree with the fact that LIVING t3 scouts can block nukes, as there is simply no reason why a 200-mass unit should be able to kill a 187000-mass unit like a yolo + your entire base, this won’t be the main point of this post. I believe that unit wrecks should not be able to block nukes, as you simply have no control over it and their behaviour is unpredictable. I know this is a rare case, but I personally see no reason why dead units, especially Novaxes should be able to do it.

Of course, there will again be people who complain, that this will take away from the depth of the game. While this is true, I believe, that gameplay should be more important. Gameplay wise the above-mentioned mechanics do not add anything to the game and just make it unpredictable and unbalanced.

The teleport problem:
Yes, another dude complaining about how overpowered teleport is. But this time I want to shed some light on a mechanic, which I haven’t seen discussed about yet.
I think it happened to most of us at least once, that someone tries to tele snipe your 200k+ mass game ender with cybran telemazer. Because most of us already have experience with it, we will of course shield it in a way that the teleporting player fails miserably and doesn’t kill your precious game ender. He dies, and all is well and good, right?
Well, no. You can build as many shields as you want, his com explosion will still kill every single engie and drone in your base, making you unable to assist your shields, or to build new ones. So, the damage is done either way, and if your opponent has arties you will probably die. If there is a fix for this problem, I would strongly suggest thinking about implementing it because it both does not add anything to the game and is a major annoyance.

My suggestion would be to disable the acu explosion for 30 seconds after teleporting, if that is possible.

The tele sacu problem:
I know, they aren’t used much outside of gap games, but let’s face it. Sera tele sacus are too strong. They have a very high amount of hp and with enough e, you can spam them rather easily. I personally believe they are not a major problem but consider this. It is possible to combine both the teleport and the tml upgrade. This basically results in you being able to teleport almost anywhere and tml a lot of mexes and other structures. Now of course, tml is countered by tmd but when you have to build 10000 tmd just as a reaction to an upgrade like that, the damage is done nonetheless.

[Blodir]

I think the real problem with game ender stage is that the game gets so insanely fucking slow paced lategame that u are able to sit in base for 10 minutes doing nothing and build a game ender. Some of it is definitely a map design issue, but it can happen in non-gaps too (i recall a few ladder badlands and desert serenity games)

[Apofenas]

The Novax problem:

Spoiler: show

I thought about not mentioning this at first, but then I reconsidered, as this problem is one of the greatest ones in this post. As we all know, air units (or the falling wrecks of those) can block nukes and then make them explode, often killing the nuke and the entire base as well. This is also possible with the Novax, you simply need to ctrl k it when it is over the yolo while it launches. This results in the yolo basically killing itself and the entire base with it if timed correctly.

Now one might say, that this is probably very hard to do and requires a lot of experience. And well, it doesn’t. It took me about 5 minutes of sandboxing to get proficient in it and I am not joking when I am saying, that anyone can do it. For me this is clearly a broken mechanic, and someone should look into it.

https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2712

The teleport problem:

Spoiler: show

Yes, another dude complaining about how overpowered teleport is. But this time I want to shed some light on a mechanic, which I haven’t seen discussed about yet.
I think it happened to most of us at least once, that someone tries to tele snipe your 200k+ mass game ender with cybran telemazer. Because most of us already have experience with it, we will of course shield it in a way that the teleporting player fails miserably and doesn’t kill your precious game ender. He dies, and all is well and good, right?
Well, no. You can build as many shields as you want, his com explosion will still kill every single engie and drone in your base, making you unable to assist your shields, or to build new ones. So, the damage is done either way, and if your opponent has arties you will probably die. If there is a fix for this problem, I would strongly suggest thinking about implementing it because it both does not add anything to the game and is a major annoyance.

My suggestion would be to disable the acu explosion for 30 seconds after teleporting, if that is possible.

Just like in every discussion for like past 10 years, someone would mention it: add the fcking anti-teleport structure instead of using duct tape solutions like disabling laser for 10 seconds and disabling explosion for 30 seconds.

These discussions always go in a context of somebody having tele-maser and rarely tele-double gun. Would anyone try to make tele-ACU without laser and throw his life into tele-def JUST to take out engineers and damage shields? I guess this shouldn't work if there are SCUs in that base. I guess it is a very good use for useless 1400 gap players ..

However, this is strong point. Shields don't protect units from nuke explosion. Idk what happened to them, but years ago they could protect units under shields from nuke explosion if there is enough hp. F.e. UEF shield SCU could tank nuke damage so 18k+ hp units behind the shield could survive it. May be someone could take a look why it is different now?

The tele sacu problem:

Spoiler: show

I know, they aren’t used much outside of gap games, but let’s face it. Sera tele sacus are too strong. They have a very high amount of hp and with enough e, you can spam them rather easily. I personally believe they are not a major problem but consider this. It is possible to combine both the teleport and the tml upgrade. This basically results in you being able to teleport almost anywhere and tml a lot of mexes and other structures. Now of course, tml is countered by tmd but when you have to build 10000 tmd just as a reaction to an upgrade like that, the damage is done nonetheless.

Tele SCUs are never used as something else but as suicide weapon onto valuable target. How many times you saw somebody making one to kill unprotected mexes with TML? How many unprotected mexes did you see to pay it off lol? On the other hand you can make 2 and suicide them into anti-nuke = instant pay off. Sid says it works out much more often than air snipes. In theory you can make tele-tml SCU, but in practice you wouldn't find any mex to kill with it on gap .

This is ok that somebody is willing to suicide his ACU since there is only 1 per player and you lose that player after. But you can make as many SCUs as you want. And what's worse is that not every faction has that upgrade. I'd better rework it into some cheap short-ranged teleport or replace it with something else.

[____]

I think the real problem with game ender stage is that the game gets so insanely fucking slow paced lategame that u are able to sit in base for 10 minutes doing nothing and build a game ender. Some of it is definitely a map design issue, but it can happen in non-gaps too (i recall a few ladder badlands and desert serenity games)

Well it is definitely a gap issue, but I am mostly referring to the Seton’s balance in this post as I completely stopped playing gap. Maybe I should have mentioned that in my first post, sorry for not making it clear. But yes, you are right of course, the game getting slow definitely has to do with the map as well. But that does not have to be a problem in and of itself, I think having a slow game ender stage with lots of shield and base micro is also part of the game.

https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2712

I know about the issue, but I still made this post because it does not really change much of the mechanic itself. Randomizing the falling animation can still result in the Novax hitting the nuke and then killing everything. No offense to Strogo, but all this will do is making it a coin flip which I don’t believe changes anything. We are talking about literally losing your entire base just because of a dropping Novax here. Completely removing the collision on the dying Novax would clearly be the better choice imo.

Just like in every discussion for like past 10 years, someone would mention it: add the fcking anti-teleport instead of using duct tape solutions like disabling laser for 10 seconds and disabling explosion for 30 seconds.

These discussions always go in a context of somebody having tele-maser and rarely tele-double gun. Would anyone try to make tele-ACU without laser and throw his life into tele-def JUST to take out engineers and damage shields? I guess this shouldn't work if there are SCUs in that base. I guess it is a very good use for useless 1400 gap players ..

I personally disagree with adding more units to the game. I know it is a difficult topic and I myself haven’t really made up my mind about it but disabling the ACU explosion for the first seconds definitely seems like a good idea. I don’t mind tele mazer that much as it has been nerfed quite significantly over the past patches, mostly my entire build power dying to the explosion is what I am I care about.

Tele SCUs are never used as something else but as suicide weapon onto valuable target. How many times you saw somebody making one to kill unprotected mexes with TML? How many unprotected mexes did you see to pay it off lol? On the other hand you can make 2 and suicide them into anti-nuke = instant pay off. Sid says it works out much more often than air snipes. In theory you can make tele-tml SCU, but in practice you wouldn't find any mex to kill with it on gap .

This is ok that somebody is willing to suicide his ACU since there is only 1 per player and you lose that player after. But you can make as many SCUs as you want. And what's worse is that not every faction has that upgrade. I'd better rework it into some cheap short-ranged teleport or replace it with something else.

Well, I am referring to the Setons balance, as the game isn’t balanced around gap for valid reasons. Gap is just a completely different story, you see things like tele SACUs used much more than on other maps over there. But that does not mean that they cannot be abused on Seton’s as well, as the game ender stage is rather similar on most larger maps. Especially onn maps with spread out mexes (like Seton’s) tml SACU’s can definitely be a problem.

[Plasma_Wolf]

Novax and air units blocking nukes: I'd rather see the nuke's collision detection with the Novax go away. For air units I'm less concerned because you can kill stuff that's nearby.

Telemazer: IIRC we've had three nerfs to Telemazer, by now it's mostly a matter of paying attention. Does it kill engineers? Yes but by the time that telemazer is used to kill game enders, You're bound to have SCUs nearby, so I'm not concerned about this one. Telemazer has been nerfed so much it's barely worth it anymore. I get the impression that as Telemazer got nerfed, people started paying less attention so that Telemazer is still a thing now. From that perspective I don't think it should be nerfed further.

The SCU teleport is mostly useful because of it's death damage. You need it to be awfully close to an important unit, so in actual combat the death damage barely matters. Half the death damage of the SCU and you no longer have a teleport problem. Or will this actually create a problem with combat SCUs, which no longer chain after some get killed and therefore keep firing on experimentals?

[ZeRen]

building PDs is too hard, lets nerf mazer even more, so no one use it, like beetles useless now

me got mazer spnipped : damn I should build some PDs
you got mazer snipped : mazer OP! nerf it more!

defending mazer is easy, build PDs and other stuf

but it cost too much mass!

more then whole Cyb player's base he is risking? I dont thing so

mazer is only thing why Cyb ACU is usefull, at least in late game, but people cant let Cyb have at least this...

[Uveso]

However, this is strong point. Shields don't protect units from nuke explosion. Idk what happened to them, but years ago they could protect units under shields from nuke explosion if there is enough hp. F.e. UEF shield SCU could tank nuke damage so 18k+ hp units behind the shield could survive it. May be someone could take a look why it is different now?

Well, i don't know "why" it was changed, but it was 3 years ago:
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/commit/ ... 41623786e5

[____]

Does it kill engineers? Yes but by the time that telemazer is used to kill game enders, You're bound to have SCUs nearby, so I'm not concerned about this one.

Well you should be concerned about it, because it also kills drones which are often used in late game matches. And building your game ender with mostly SACUs might be common on gap, but on other maps not so much. There is simply no reason to why the ACU explosion should kill SHIELDED engies and drones, it literally doesn't make any sense.

Telemazer has been nerfed so much it's barely worth it anymore. I get the impression that as Telemazer got nerfed, people started paying less attention so that Telemazer is still a thing now. From that perspective I don't think it should be nerfed further.

Telemazor was insanely overpowered and deserved the nerfs it got, and even with the nerfs I still see it used a lot. Even with the tele in and out nerfs you can still be almost uncatchable and kill units all over the map if you are careful.
But this is not really about nerfing tele mazor anyway, because it will still do exactly what it is supposed to do, the actual reason why you teleport isn't changed. When I teleport, I want to try to kill a game ender, an ACU or jump all over the map and kill expansions, all of the engies dying is more of a positive side effect. I seriously doubt people will stop using telemazor when the ACU explosion finally stops killing every engie around it.
Shielded engies and drones dying to an ACU explosion is simply a broken mechanic that is both unintuitive, annoying and has no postive impact on gameplay whatsoever. There is no valid reason to keep something like this in the game. If I would be semi new to the game, and I see shields holding mavor shells and blocking dead air units I would also expect an ACU explosion which does low damage to be blocked as well.

And not only that. Other AOE weapons are blocked even when they do not directly impact on the shield. If I let a Treb shoot units which are on the edge of the shield bubble, the shielded units do not get damaged by the aoe even when it is right next to them. This is the natural behaviour of shields everyone expects. However, this is not the case with ACU explosions for whatever reason.

The SCU teleport is mostly useful because of it's death damage. You need it to be awfully close to an important unit, so in actual combat the death damage barely matters. Half the death damage of the SCU and you no longer have a teleport problem. Or will this actually create a problem with combat SCUs, which no longer chain after some get killed and therefore keep firing on experimentals?

The death nuke of SACUs only does 1k damage with a radius of ONE. Considering sera SACUs have 400 dps and 15.5k hp unupgraded, I doubt messing with the death nuke will have any noteworthy effect.

[Apofenas]

I know about the issue, but I still made this post because it does not really change much of the mechanic itself. Randomizing the falling animation can still result in the Novax hitting the nuke and then killing everything. No offense to Strogo, but all this will do is making it a coin flip which I don’t believe changes anything. We are talking about literally losing your entire base just because of a dropping Novax here. Completely removing the collision on the dying Novax would clearly be the better choice imo.

Years ago I had a game where cruiser AA projectile colided with Yolo nuke causing it to detonate above the base and killing the owner of it and his team mate. The proposed change makes novax wreck just as rare and random, as that projectile from cruiser - yes it is a coin flip, but it happens once a century ...especially considering the amount of games where you see yolo and sat at once

This is just general aestetics of the game where everything is physical object and not part of an animation. Removing it when you have other ways to solve some specific issue is not a way to go.

Spoiler: show

I personally disagree with adding more units to the game. I know it is a difficult topic and I myself haven’t really made up my mind about it but disabling the ACU explosion for the first seconds definitely seems like a good idea. I don’t mind tele mazer that much as it has been nerfed quite significantly over the past patches, mostly my entire build power dying to the explosion is what I am I care about.

Most of your build power near valuable target should be SCUs and hives any way. All you lose is unimportant build power and other side loses whole player. If that is too annoying for you, may be Game Councilor could enlighten us why that nuke change was made and if we could revert it.

Tele mazer was and remains OP. There is nothing to do with sudden snipe. But because it pays off without even appearing in the game: there may be no tele-mazer in the game yet, but everyone in the game already have t1 pds near their SMDs and ACUs and that might be even more mass invested than tele-mazer upgrades cost.

If you died to TeleMazer - bad for you, meanwhile there could be 10 other places where enemy would like to teleport, but there were PDs nearby and you had none near your ACU

I believe it was Yolo who calculated how much mass you needed to defend from mazer on setons before last patch. And i believe this is why delay for laser was introduced - you need less PDs to kill ACU before it kills what it goes for.

Instead if there was cheap anti-teleport structure with let's say 80 range than telemazer ACU would need to walk all the way into defended area giving you much more time to react - get some units and build some PDs before it reaches its target. This doesn't even have to be a new unit. At some point there was a suggestion to make an upgrade for stealth fields.

[____]

Years ago I had a game where cruiser AA projectile colided with Yolo nuke causing it to detonate above the base and killing the owner of it and his team mate. The proposed change makes novax wreck just as rare and random, as that projectile from cruiser - yes it is a coin flip, but it happens once a century ...especially considering the amount of games where you see yolo and sat at once

Even if it happens once in a century, there still is simply no reason to keep it in the game. Randomness is always a bad thing when it comes to games which are played competitively and even if it is rare, when it happens it breaks the game. There is absolutely no reason to randomize a broken mechanic, it doesn’t add anything to the game and removes control from the player. Imagine this happened to you, I doubt you will be very amused when rng suddenly decides to lose you the game.

You also fail to see that even if the animation is extremely random after the patch, you are still able to ctrl k the sat half a second before the yolo would impact it when it is still alive. You can have all the randomness in the world, if you time it correctly you can still kill the yolo and part of the base like that. This is simply no solution.

1. Let the nuke launch
2. ctrl k the sat a second before the nuke impacts it
3. Yolo will still die if you are semi lucky

This is just general aestetics of the game where everything is physical object and not part of an animation. Removing it when you have other ways to solve some specific issue is not a way to go.

There is no other way to solve it because its mere existence is the problem. Gameplay is always more important than “general aesthetics” and in the past there were a lot of changes made that reflect this.

Most of your build power near valuable target should be SCUs and hives any way. All you lose is unimportant build power and other side loses whole player. If that is too annoying for you, may be Game Councilor could enlighten us why that nuke change was made and if we could revert it.

Not everyone has hives and not everyone has SCUS just lying around randomly for build power. Game enders are mostly built with t3 and t1 engies, and even on gap you don’t always have all your buildpower in SACUs or hives.

I believe it was Yolo who calculated how much mass you needed to defend from mazer on setons before last patch. And i believe this is why delay for laser was introduced - you need less PDs to kill ACU before it kills what it goes for.

Yes it was a good change.

Instead if there was cheap anti-teleport structure with let's say 80 range than telemazer ACU would need to walk all the way into defended area giving you much more time to react - get some units and build some PDs before it reaches its target. This doesn't even have to be a new unit. At some point there was a suggestion to make an upgrade for stealth fields.

Well I like the idea of that, but it would also be a massive change to the gameplay, and stealth fields would need to be rebalanced completely for that.