Forged Alliance Forever

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2014-01-07T07:18:44+02:00

Speaking for UEF. The best counter to Fobo, on small water maps, is the GG. It is especially effective vs. the fobo, because, the mechmarines can be dropped onto land to take out the fobo at close range. Operating fobo on water maps means leaving the tanks behind and this makes them vulnerable to LAB's. Whether in the sky, or on land.

The bomber is a better proposition vs. Aurora. Because grounded mechmarines are not so effective against Aurora.

Statistics: Posted by Hawkei — 07 Jan 2014, 07:18

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-12-17T00:15:27+02:00

Can speak for UEF, but for a Cybran counter to fobos and auroras as raiding units on water maps, the Jester could be changed from a (basically) T-1.5 unit to a true T-1 unit.

Ill tinker with the stats in game after my final exam on Wednesday.

Spoiler: show

Edit: Tested values I went full retard on those values. Current balance patch is better.

Statistics: Posted by Kat — 17 Dec 2013, 00:15

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-12-11T22:33:37+02:00

Vee wrote:
Pillars have lower range than aurora...and early t2 doesn't work that well on small maps. Pillars do beat auroras mass for mass, but you have to invest in the upgrade so you are behind, lose map control, etc. If the enemy goes range gun and overcharge that is also a problem. If anybody has doubts that aeon t1 is too strong, just look at player's rating history who switched to/from aeon, like Swkoll, TA4Life, Deathly. You can clearly see the point where they switched to/from aeon IMO addressing this is by far the most important part of this balance change, everything else is less important.

Most of the players I face in 1v1 are between 800 and 1400 global rank. I play UEF and I have good experiences with the Pillar. So good, that I have brought Pillars forward in my BO. I Now get T2 after the first 10 Strikers and I build Pillars well before T2 engineers. When there are two or 3 other T1 land factories, the temporary loss of production of one factory is not noticeable.

As for unit statistics: http://faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/unit.p ... 02,UAL0201

Note that the total damage of the Pillar = 70 and the HP of the Aurora = 140. I do stand corrected on the firing range. The firing range of the Pillar is 23 and the Aurora 26. But I find the difference has no great impact on combat outcome. Pillars don't just beat Aurora mass for mass, they totally wipe the floor with them.

Here are some replays:
http://www.faforever.com/faf/vault/repl ... id=1611805
http://www.faforever.com/faf/vault/repl ... id=1593883

I dunno about that stragedgy. First off, if you can tech up -so could he.

Not to mention a t2 rush means low amounts of units. When trying to counter a strong unit, lowering your defense to it seems risky at best. And on that note, aeon t2 isn't weak.
The likely result of a rush in my mind is getting pressed into a corner, push back a bit after making a few t2 -by the time you'd be recovering your lost map control he has t2 (either reactionary or cautionary).

So a wash.

Again assuming flawless plays and this isn't absolute blah blah blah.

And about targeting intel. Always a great tactic, even against other races -so hardly a aeon counter. But more importantly, scouts are dirt cheap to make and killing all of them (via air) isn't really feasible. Once I note that you are targeting them, if you're killing enough of them to make a dent in my intel, I'd just up my mix of scouts...

Killing intel against any player is a good move. The difference is that most players need intel to make strategic decisions. Mr Aeon needs it to fire. Mr Aeon needs constant intel at the tactical level for basic operations.

Statistics: Posted by Hawkei — 11 Dec 2013, 22:33

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-12-11T16:00:19+02:00

It's certainly a change I'd like to test. Lower Aurora LOS to 12, so that without Radar, Striker, Mantis and Thaam outrange the Aurora by the same amount that Aurora outrange them with Radar... Could be interesting to see the result.

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 11 Dec 2013, 16:00

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-12-11T15:52:35+02:00

And for anyone who says that bombers defend vs aurora raiding, check out this replay: http://faforever.com/faf/vault/replay_v ... id=1627309 Keep your attention to the Joly vs Chosen side.

Statistics: Posted by Vee — 11 Dec 2013, 15:52

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-12-11T15:53:26+02:00

Pillars have lower range than aurora...and early t2 doesn't work that well on small maps. Pillars do beat auroras mass for mass, but you have to invest in the upgrade so you are behind, lose map control, etc. If the enemy goes range gun and overcharge that is also a problem. If anybody has doubts that aeon t1 is too strong, just look at player's rating history who switched to/from aeon, like Swkoll, TA4Life, Deathly. You can clearly see the point where they switched to/from aeon IMO addressing this is by far the most important part of this balance change, everything else is less important.

Statistics: Posted by Vee — 11 Dec 2013, 14:22

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-12-11T11:20:41+02:00

I dunno about that stragedgy. First off, if you can tech up -so could he.

Not to mention a t2 rush means low amounts of units. When trying to counter a strong unit, lowering your defense to it seems risky at best. And on that note, aeon t2 isn't weak.
The likely result of a rush in my mind is getting pressed into a corner, push back a bit after making a few t2 -by the time you'd be recovering your lost map control he has t2 (either reactionary or cautionary).

So a wash.

Again assuming flawless plays and this isn't absolute blah blah blah.

And about targeting intel. Always a great tactic, even against other races -so hardly a aeon counter. But more importantly, scouts are dirt cheap to make and killing all of them (via air) isn't really feasible. Once I note that you are targeting them, if you're killing enough of them to make a dent in my intel, I'd just up my mix of scouts.

But yea, it's not a bad idea.
In fact... lowering their vision by a fair amount more would be an interesting change... like I said- likely wouldn't change much. But less vision means you don't know WHAT your hitting until it's right on you. This makes tech up stronger.

Oh and did anyone see that recent gyle cast and learn about the AoE stun the aeon have? It's crazy strong... Decreases enemy dps drastically. It seems like units spend more time stunned than not -which means more than halved DPS (and taking more fire from arty and stuff). So anything near the commander (even air) can't fight at all basically. This isn't relevant of course, just thinking about it.

Another upgrade that the Cybran should have instead... EMP is our thing. >:D
I mean, they even get it on their RAS slot. Still get damage upgrades and/or t3. Cybran don't have any fun.

Statistics: Posted by errorblankfield — 11 Dec 2013, 11:20

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-12-11T07:06:16+02:00

errorblankfield wrote:
I hear what you are saying but I still disagree.

As your mass calculations where getting at, even mass v mass, you can fudge it around such that UEF wins. That's great and all, but that's not the full story.

...So your options are land spam, which straight up loses cause Aeon have better tanks.
Or Bomber spam, which leads to an intie race you cannot win...

Long story short, mass bombers is really easily countered in the current game as both of you devote mass away from land spam to the same unit so your only goal is to out produce that unit. No variation really. If you get the air advantage as the non-aeon, great! Bombers now work if you maintain air (which is a strech on it's own but okay). If Mr. Aeon has it, now you have bombers to worry about.

Either way, it's a wash decided by the air part of this game and the air v land dynamic is great as far as I'm concerned... Since air is just a risk on if it will work or not, while (aeon) ground spam is a sure thing, I think the problem lies with having no ground solution to the tank, so LAB it up in my opinion. Make both options strategic and possible.

Cheers.

I need to say a couple of things about this. Firstly, The LAB is not a counter to the Aurora. They get slaughtered due to the superior firing range. LAB vs Aurora is possibly the worst matchup you could ever contemplating. Not withstanding you find some means to counter the range advantage. By shielding, distracting with tanks or using terrain interference as you approach. LAB's can score cheeky Aurora kills, but they can't beat them straight up.

Aurora are countered by understanding their weaknesses. The first is air - yes. But they also need radar support. By using aggressive air-space denial, targeting scouts and radar, and then ambushing the blind Auroras with tanks. It is possible to make significant gains.

However, the strongest Aurora counter is early T2. But not with Mongoose, with Pillar. It has 1200HP, does 70 damage per shot, and has a firing range greater than the Aurora. Considering that the Aurora has 140HP (which is a two shot kill) the Pillar is a solid counter. Also, with it's 1200HP and very high HP to mass ratio, squads of PIllar will eat swarms of Aurora and get veterancy at an alarming rate. It is an 'in-your-face' unit, and doesn't need to engage in kiting behaviour (as is needed with the Mongoose). I don't face Aurora swarms with dread, but rather, rubbing my hands with glee! Aurora land-spam a sure thing? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Statistics: Posted by Hawkei — 11 Dec 2013, 07:06

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-11-16T11:56:12+02:00

some first jester attempts on theta passage

in short, always third scout from the land fac scouted it pretty well, and instant reaction to it, so first jester always lost... maybe still interesting to watch

Statistics: Posted by Myxir — 16 Nov 2013, 11:56

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-11-14T17:44:17+02:00

errorblankfield wrote:
I hear what you are saying but I still disagree.

As your mass calculations where getting at, even mass v mass, you can fudge it around such that UEF wins. That's great and all, but that's not the full story.

Getting to those requires a lot more on the UEF side that you sweep aside. For example, merely getting a single bomber and having land spam means you have to have two factories -one air, the other land- which aeon could have just invested in two land factories and call it a day. Then you have the added engery to worry about and the mass cost of making said energy... either way, you are in the whole just rolling off bomber number one.

But ignore all that as well.

To have any bombers really matter, you have to air superiority. At the very least, that means you have one intie over your foe + any bombers needed to negate their land spam. Obviously, a game can't be summarized in such a fashion, but we are theorizing so whatever. So to keep air, you need one intie over the other guy so mass for mass, you need just one intie.

Then add in however many bombers/tanks gets the job done and hope things work out. So from the get go, you have to make sure your bombers pay off the cost of one intie and the power that's needed to make them (which is really relatively expensive in the early game).

Compared to Mr. Aeon who spams T1 on a loop and dances on water. >_>

Of course Aeon can just force you to mass interceptors by massing them himself (cause you need x + 1) to the point you can't build bombers cause such a cut in production would lose air. So it's an air race -Mr. Aeons favorite cause at T2 he'll win air no sweat. All the while, any mass you both devote to land is ultimately better spent by Aeon with their tanks. If you break for a bomber or two, you've technically lost the mass race and he'll always have an intie advantage -theoretically!

So your options are land spam, which straight up loses cause Aeon have better tanks.
Or Bomber spam, which leads to an intie race you cannot win.

And yea, a lot of hand waving has to be done and skill and eco advantages get in the way of a perfect war but it's all I got.

Long story short, mass bombers is really easily countered in the current game as both of you devote mass away from land spam to the same unit so your only goal is to out produce that unit. No variation really. If you get the air advantage as the non-aeon, great! Bombers now work if you maintain air (which is a strech on it's own but okay). If Mr. Aeon has it, now you have bombers to worry about.

Either way, it's a wash decided by the air part of this game and the air v land dynamic is great as far as I'm concerned. No one spends 1:1 on air, so gaining an advantage is possible. But the joy is that once you have it, since you are forced to invest in ATG units, it's really easy lost. Since air is just a risk on if it will work or not, while (aeon) ground spam is a sure thing, I think the problem lies with having no ground solution to the tank, so LAB it up in my opinion. Make both options strategic and possible.

Cheers.

I think you have some really good points here. And, like you said, this is all theoretical and to an extent probably doesn't reflect the real game. To an extent, I'm just playing devil's advocate. I still think my point remains that the idea is, if you are not aeon, to match your opponent on inties and just replace a few tanks with bombers, and that this is very mass effective. In my experience, no one really tries this.

BUT, you're right in that it is a somewhat tricky procedure. Also, you're right that in not factoring in the additional power that air costs, I was making a mistake. But, I do think that here you're making the situation sound a little stronger than it is.

1.) "Then add in however many bombers/tanks gets the job done and hope things work out. So from the get go, you have to make sure your bombers pay off the cost of one intie and the power that's needed to make them (which is really relatively expensive in the early game).

Compared to Mr. Aeon who spams T1 on a loop and dances on water. >_>"

This is a good point, but if the aeon player is just spamming land and doesn't bother with an air factory at all, your bombers are going to be way more than mass effective. Also, you can send a scout over his base, see he has no air factory, and not bother with the interceptor. So, the (high) cost of an air factory pretty much needs to be incurred by both sides, right?

Even if he does have an air factory, I'm not sure you need that intial interceptor. I'd just open bomber. Keep in mind, he needs only 1 pass to pay for himself! In my experience, people tend to get more than 1 pass with a bomber on me, even if I have an interceptor, but maybe it's because I suck with my interceptor. At the very least, it's non trivial with one interceptor to kill a bomber before it makes 2 passes, and even if the aeon player does, it paid for itself in 1. And, that was like a worst case scenario for the bomber player! Say you open bomber and you get one pass in before your opponent realizes he needs to make inties! You can probably get a second before the inty comes out, and then, a third, a fourth? Maybe get some vet? That's the best case scenario for the bomber player (other than your opponent not having an air factory), but even in the worst case scenario, where the aeon player decided to build an inty early, you just need 1 pass.

2.) "Of course Aeon can just force you to mass interceptors by massing them himself (cause you need x + 1) to the point you can't build bombers cause such a cut in production would lose air. So it's an air race -Mr. Aeons favorite cause at T2 he'll win air no sweat. All the while, any mass you both devote to land is ultimately better spent by Aeon with their tanks. If you break for a bomber or two, you've technically lost the mass race and he'll always have an intie advantage"

See, I feel like you're still oversimplifying it a little. Let me put it another way. Here are a few strategies that the non-aeon player could try.

A.) Open land factory air factory, invest in a bomber. If your opponent has no air factory, bomber spam until he makes one.

B.) Open land factory air factor invest more mass in air than your opponent. If you're investing more mass than your opponent, you can break for a bomber or two and still be on equal footing in the intie race, right? That's great for you, because your bombers pay for themselves in one pass, and if you have air control, you can get 4 or 5 passes, right? Maybe more? If you get 1 or 2 bombers to 4 or 5 passes pretty early, you've won the game right?

C.) Open land factory air factor, invest in two bombers really quickly and then ignore air. I think your first two bombers should more than pay for themselves, because your opponent will probably have 0, and will have at most ,1 interceptor, and you'll be able to get off at least 2 passes per bomber. Then, push your com and your land spam to the front. Your opponent probably built a few inties and land aa, which is now a total waste. I feel like you'd have a huge advantage. Think about it, your bombers took out at least equal mass in tanks, and now your remaining army is entirely land spam+com, while your opponent has invested in inties+landspam+com.

You're right that the scenario thing is simplifying things, it's a very dynamic game. Just think about the strategic possibilities that opening a bomber or two could give you though (maybe you'd really want to go third factory air to do this, so that there are more tanks to hit, but the point is to have bombers hit the field when your opponent has 8+ tanks). If your opponent does no air, you keep going, if he goes interceptors, you can either shut down your air and leave him to have wasted his time, or try to out interceptor him. You're on the front foot, I think. You could react however you want, and if he reacts incorrectly to your reaction, he's in trouble. If you're pushing your land into him with your com, he has to be microing his auroras while paying attention to your air composition, or lack thereof. If he builds 5 inties because he put them on autobuild when he saw the bombers, and you build 3 bombers and call it a day, he's in a lot of trouble.

Overall, do I think auroras are OP at t1? Perhaps a little. My thinking on this only applies to close quarter battles and I don't know if it holds up at all in a bigger scale. You made some good points here, and perhaps my initial argument was made and a oversimplified manner. But, I still think the logic holds. I'm all for buffing labs a little and making the tanks less accurate while moving, but let's not exaggerate the power of the aurora too much. There is plenty of room for the metagame to develop, and people to better utilize early air. It takes games a long time for the best strategies and counters to be discovered. At least on my level, I am fairly confident that they could be used much better. You're right that it takes some skillful play to work air in with land, but if the aeon player doesn't counter by doing the same, all is lost for him.

I appreciate you engaging me in this dialogue. Your points are interesting and I think it's fun to think about. I would have liked to write the post more cleanly or something but I really gotta do a little work .

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 14 Nov 2013, 17:44

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-11-14T14:00:40+02:00

So have games vs players worse than yourself where they spam aurora all game and you try to stop them with Bombers + Land, then show us the replay...

Statistics: Posted by IceDreamer — 14 Nov 2013, 14:00

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-11-14T11:31:12+02:00

I hear what you are saying but I still disagree.

As your mass calculations where getting at, even mass v mass, you can fudge it around such that UEF wins. That's great and all, but that's not the full story.

Getting to those requires a lot more on the UEF side that you sweep aside. For example, merely getting a single bomber and having land spam means you have to have two factories -one air, the other land- which aeon could have just invested in two land factories and call it a day. Then you have the added engery to worry about and the mass cost of making said energy... either way, you are in the whole just rolling off bomber number one.

But ignore all that as well.

To have any bombers really matter, you have to air superiority. At the very least, that means you have one intie over your foe + any bombers needed to negate their land spam. Obviously, a game can't be summarized in such a fashion, but we are theorizing so whatever. So to keep air, you need one intie over the other guy so mass for mass, you need just one intie.

Then add in however many bombers/tanks gets the job done and hope things work out. So from the get go, you have to make sure your bombers pay off the cost of one intie and the power that's needed to make them (which is really relatively expensive in the early game).

Compared to Mr. Aeon who spams T1 on a loop and dances on water. >_>

Of course Aeon can just force you to mass interceptors by massing them himself (cause you need x + 1) to the point you can't build bombers cause such a cut in production would lose air. So it's an air race -Mr. Aeons favorite cause at T2 he'll win air no sweat. All the while, any mass you both devote to land is ultimately better spent by Aeon with their tanks. If you break for a bomber or two, you've technically lost the mass race and he'll always have an intie advantage -theoretically!

So your options are land spam, which straight up loses cause Aeon have better tanks.
Or Bomber spam, which leads to an intie race you cannot win.

And yea, a lot of hand waving has to be done and skill and eco advantages get in the way of a perfect war but it's all I got.

Long story short, mass bombers is really easily countered in the current game as both of you devote mass away from land spam to the same unit so your only goal is to out produce that unit. No variation really. If you get the air advantage as the non-aeon, great! Bombers now work if you maintain air (which is a strech on it's own but okay). If Mr. Aeon has it, now you have bombers to worry about.

Either way, it's a wash decided by the air part of this game and the air v land dynamic is great as far as I'm concerned. No one spends 1:1 on air, so gaining an advantage is possible. But the joy is that once you have it, since you are forced to invest in ATG units, it's really easy lost. Since air is just a risk on if it will work or not, while (aeon) ground spam is a sure thing, I think the problem lies with having no ground solution to the tank, so LAB it up in my opinion. Make both options strategic and possible.

Cheers.

Statistics: Posted by errorblankfield — 14 Nov 2013, 11:31

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-11-13T21:00:19+02:00

errorblankfield wrote:
Cantor wrote:The problem with bombers against auroras is the following: if your opponent makes some t1 mobile AA and interceptors you'll lose air control because you'll be fighting over his t1 aa to protect your bombers from his interceptors. Once you lose air control bombers become useless. If your opponent makes purely t1 mobile AA and no interceptors, bombers still work ~reasonably~ well.

I'd like to second this. The solution to a T1 tank can't be T1 air. Air in itself is balanced (or ideally should be).

If your opponent is using a lot of bombers (or just one), you switch to make some interceptor which will pretty much shut down ALL bombers until he buys enough interceptors of own. So basically, your saying you have to have complete air superiority to counter T1 spam -which is bad especially when Aeon have the best air.

Furthermore, the dynamics of air are such a way that if you are massing bombers (to kill tanks) your air defense isn't any better than if you had no bombers, you have to build a new unit for that. So you have to win air and maintain two units to counter one unit spam.

I vote for labs to be the aeon counter unit. Much better dynamic.

Hey, 2 things.

1.) I think you have a little bit of a false dichotomy here. The bombers are, in general, a mass effective counter to the auroras. You're saying that the bombers are countered by intys, which is obviously true, but doesn't take away from the point. Those inties are mass that aren't going to auroras, which leaves the UEF player to outnumber his opponent on tanks, or just build inties to fight the inties. If the aeon player builds the exact thing to counter the exact UEF strategy, than sure, the aeon player will win. Like think of a few scenarios. I'm not going to use the database to make the numbers precise, but these should be more or less equal mass battles.

A.) 20 strikers vs. 20 auroras- advantage aeon
B.) 16 strikers + 2 bombers vs. 20 auroras- advantage UEF
C.) 16 strikers + 2 bombers vs. 18 auroras+ 4 mobile aa- advantage UEF?
D.) 16 strikers+ 2 bombers vs. 16 auroras + 4 mobile aa + 2 inties - advantage aeon

It seems like D is what you're thinking about, but there are obviously way more scenarios, like

E.) 13 strikers+2 bombers + 3 inties vs. 16 auroras + 4 mobile aa + 2 inties - advantage UEF
F.) 10 strikers+ 4 interceptors+ 3 bombers vs. 16 auroras + 4 mobile aa + 2 inties - big advantage UEF

Now maybe an aeon player sees one bomber and then suspects that a UEF player is going to go for a build like F.), so he does

G.) 10 strikers+ 4 interceptors+ 3 bombers vs. 11 auroras + 4 mobile aa + 7 inties - Huge advantage Aeon

but that build would get crushed by

H.) 18 strikers + 1 bomber vs. 11 auroras + 4 mobile aa + 7 inties - Huge advantage UEF

Basically, unless I am wrong about some of these scenarios, it seems to me that bombers present a fairly significant threat to auroras, at least in relatively big battles (more than 5 tanks per side), when it only takes one pass for a bomber to pay for itself. I'm thinking about like an early battle on one of the sides on twin rivers or desert joust , because that's a map I play a lot. On my level at least (~1200), people are never, ever aggressive enough with bombers to counter aeon hover tank spam. If those scenarios are right, it looks like aeon may have a slight advantage at this level, but a lot of who will do the best will be based on who is most flexible in their play and who does the best job scouting, which is like every other part of sup com, right? All this said, I do acknowledge that this applies to big focused battles. Perhaps for a wide open 1v1 map, auroras are more OP, but I have less experience with those maps. I kind of wonder, though, if one guy groups of like 3 auroras or whatever to all the different mass points, and then the other guy countered by sending a bomber to each point and having a group of inties ready to take on any aeon inties he sees, how that would go.

2.) All that said, I feel like making auroras slightly less accurate while firing and making labs more agile, faster, and slightly tougher seems like a nice solution. They don't have to be so good that they counter auroras mass for mass, but making them a little better against auroras and in general seems like a good idea.

Statistics: Posted by sasin — 13 Nov 2013, 21:00

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-11-13T06:30:29+02:00

Cantor wrote:
The problem with bombers against auroras is the following: if your opponent makes some t1 mobile AA and interceptors you'll lose air control because you'll be fighting over his t1 aa to protect your bombers from his interceptors. Once you lose air control bombers become useless. If your opponent makes purely t1 mobile AA and no interceptors, bombers still work ~reasonably~ well.

I'd like to second this. The solution to a T1 tank can't be T1 air. Air in itself is balanced (or ideally should be).

If your opponent is using a lot of bombers (or just one), you switch to make some interceptor which will pretty much shut down ALL bombers until he buys enough interceptors of own. So basically, your saying you have to have complete air superiority to counter T1 spam -which is bad especially when Aeon have the best air.

Furthermore, the dynamics of air are such a way that if you are massing bombers (to kill tanks) your air defense isn't any better than if you had no bombers, you have to build a new unit for that. So you have to win air and maintain two units to counter one unit spam.

I vote for labs to be the aeon counter unit. Much better dynamic.

Statistics: Posted by errorblankfield — 13 Nov 2013, 06:30

Re: uef/cyb vs sera/aeon

2013-11-12T03:00:42+02:00

One thing that you can't see in uef/cybran late-game is raiding.
of course some is not possible in some maps(themo, setons) but in maps like open palms this can be "OP".
like PilOt said, just teach them about raid.

Statistics: Posted by Gerfand — 12 Nov 2013, 03:00