[e] Balance Research

[IceDreamer]

it's not a bug at all. And remove the immunity of the deflected missile would be a shame.
only allow it to be return more than once would be so cool having a billy being send back and forth until 1 loya move would be funny

Having taken a look at the code, there's no reason this can't happen, provided that in between each reflect the loyalist is given to another, enemy player. It checks projectile.Owner and IsAlly(projectile.Owner), so for a funny Youtube shenanigans are certainly possible lol

[Apofenas]

I don't understand why billy shouldn't be targetted by its own tmd or at least blocked by own shields. It's 12k damage that will completely destroy fire base from which it was launched, leaving ACU without 12k health. Expecially since player can see billy projectile flying even in fog of war. I think loyalists should be able to defend cybran forces from billy, because it's only faction without mobile shields, but they should not deflect billy straight into ACU with no firing randomness and ability to shot it down.

It would be funny with tmls, but i still can't understand this. Why in that age you couldn't prevent your own missle from going through tmd and shields if you see it getting back.

This ability would only be good if loyalists would be able to redirect missles from mmls, but predicting where the target moves.

[IceDreamer]

As one of the weapon's biggest supporters... I dunno man. I still just find it funny. I think that relative to a TML, the Billy is so much OTT, so much cheese... Having it be redirected like that, your ace in the hole trump expensive strategy, is even more ironic than ever, and that amuses me no end. I think it should stay, and some agree with me. Some don't. Hey, we may have to poll this!!!

[keyser]

it's not a bug at all. And remove the immunity of the deflected missile would be a shame.
only allow it to be return more than once would be so cool having a billy being send back and forth until 1 loya move would be funny

Having taken a look at the code, there's no reason this can't happen, provided that in between each reflect the loyalist is given to another, enemy player. It checks projectile.Owner and IsAlly(projectile.Owner), so for a funny Youtube shenanigans are certainly possible lol

it doesn't work. I already tested it several time

[DeimosEvotec]

it doesn't work. I already tested it several time

I did some testing as well.
Your own loyas tmd doesn't give a damn about returning tacs because projectile.Owner doesn't change
but if you use 3 players one to launch the tacs and the other two for the loyas
then you can see that the tmd activates on the returning tacs but their course doesn't change
and I think I have an idea where the problem is: the loya tmd retruns tacs to their launch location
but redirecting a tac doesn't update the launch location to the position of the loya
so if the returning tacs fly over the second loyas the tmd activates and they send the tacs to the launch position which is still the tml
at least this is how I think it works.
IceDreamer would you mind checking for this in the code?

[quark036]

Yeah, that is what happens.
It's lines 99 to 102 in gamedata/lua/defaultantiprojectile.lua

If we really want that to happen, it would just be one more line of code to change the launcher position I think.

[quark036]

Sorry, whoops, line 95 is where it gets the launcher of the projectile.

[Softly]

Mavor change is silly, its already well worth the mass cost.

Before people start complaining about how bad it is compared to salvation, I just ran some tests and found that its better against a single high value target under multiple shields. (Significantly better, if you ignore shot flight time [~20secs] it took 25 secs to kill a t3 arty under 3 t3 shields and 3 t2 shields compared to salvation's 55 secs)

[SpoCk0nd0pe]

What do you guys think about the land balance? I personally think it is kind of boring that some factions are just straight better then others with their superior range units. Auroras are o.k. imho because they are paper, but bricks, percies and ilshevohs just seem too strong. Especially percies and bricks could handle a speed debuff imho, that's what loyalists and titans are for (especially titans are really rarely built).

[Exotic_Retard]

Mavor change is silly, its already well worth the mass cost.

are you sure about that?
could you please send the replay ID?

because if you look at the unit stats you see that:
1 mavor is the same price in mass as:
8 novaxes
3 dukes
3 emissaries
1 salvation
http://content.faforever.com/faf/unitsD ... 02,UEB2302

tests show that on a short range the mavor is indeed very capable in killing a single target - on longer range it still works, but less effectively.
The emmisary is indeed less capable of destroying single targets than the mavor under the same circumstances.
However:
8 novaxes destroy the same target in 2 salvos.
3 dukes destroy the same target at the same speed as the mavor.
3 emissaries destroy the same target in 2 salvos.

so really it seems the only advantage of the experimental arty is its longer range. Its actualy effectiveness per mass is about the same, maybe a bit worse than the alternatives.

However the cheaper units have a huge advantage: you have have one of them working when the mavor is 30% built.
So i would always build t3 arty instead of mavor (or emissary for that matter) unless i have a paragon.

for reference: all arty tests were done without adjacency bonus, it gives the same 40% reload time discount for all arty anyway, when fully surrounded by t3 power. replay id: 3458033

And now a question for you Softly: Would you rather build a mavor or a yolona given the choice? and in which situations would you choose what?