so again, we will be looking at a few different things here to work out whats going on and make some conclusions from there.

now someone complained to me that i just ignore their feedback since it doesnt agree with eq being amazing, but i hope you understand that just me taking the time to write this shows that it was taken very seriously, even though you may not have gotten the response you wanted. Im not going to throw away 100s of games of evidence because of what happened in 10-12 replays. that just doesnt make any sense, from anyone really.

1. replay evidence
so again, the most relevant replays are the ones from the tourney. i made a post in the tourney thread after watching all the replays a couple of times with what i saw in them. 10 games out of 18 were decided by t1 spam. for the sake of argument and since i do tend to be biassed towards eq we will increase than number to 12 out of 18, exactly 2/3rds of games.

you should maybe remove the water map from this, since we aren't going to see T1 land anyway. So to be precise it should be 10/14 (or 12/14)

the first very interesting thing i noticed is that while indeed there was a lot of t1 spam these games, it was very difficult to say if it was just the spam being op or not. this is because there wasnt much practising for the tourney, if anything. people, even top players, wont adapt to all the nuances of the balance in 3-5 games. thats just not sensible to expect. this alone is what makes it very hard to conclude that the spam games were there because of the balance, and not because of habits.

if it was out of habit we would have seen even number of game decided by T1 than in normal faf, that was not my feeling, neither what i heard from other people in chat or in twitch chat. (yes that's not very scientific, but i guess feeling here has some value since we are used to the game, and are able to detect when something change and does really impact the game)

to further explain this, to show that t2 is useless, it first needed to be built, and then the team that built it needed to lose vs t1 spam. loya rush was always very strong, but wasnt used because people didnt know it was a thing. in the tourney, the situation described happened twice, one of those replays featured a teamnate dieing in a 1v2, he needed quite alot more to survive against that, not going t2 would not have helped there at all. in the other game the winning team also got a t2 upgrade on their factory and won because of more reclaim and map control.

the rest of the 10 replays featured games where either some external factors helped out like t1 subs, torpedo bombers, gunships, or where no team attempted to go t2.
the replays with no attempt to go t2 are the most interesting potentially, since they were the cause of the complaints, but didnt really feature anything being to weak since there was only spam to compare to.

now i cant read minds so its hard to say what was going on there. lets assume the intuition of the players was perfect and they immediately sensed that going t2 would have killed them, before trying it.

at this point it makes sense to test this assumption, so from watching the replays yet another time we find that in some cases this indeed appeared to be true - the games were extremely close indeed and going t2 would have been a bad idea. however, in a couple of replays it was also important to note the choice to upgrade gun as opposed to t2. in eq t2 on acu is 100m cheaper than in standard balance, and i checked the mass bars of the players getting the upgrades, in a lot of cases they had enough to spend on some pds.

what i saw was a conscious choice to focus on t1 spam, starting from the very first games in the tourney, where both players on a team in question upgraded early gun and decided to go full spam before any pressure even started. if people want to do that, then it was their decision. granted, this was not in all games, but it certainly did happen

something else i saw was that the winning team often got a t2 factory upgrade but won the game before that happened, this is evidence of t2 being affordable enough not to cost you the game
if you have already won the game (have enough map control, and secured reclaim for example, you can really afford that)
however, none of these actually excuse the 12 games which featured t1 spam a lot, perhaps this isnt a real problem but it certainly did happen. really a significant issue is that the sample size is just too small. both in terms of player and map variety.
what i did next was compare replays of normal balance to see the situation there.

i found replays of games on those same maps featuring official balance, and at least one 1600+ player (1800+ was bscly non existent in 2v2)
here:

Code: Select all
6364805 --yeah this one isnt exactly high quality but high rated games are rare
6341850 --an actual high ranked game, t1 spam then a guy dies to t2 pd
6210392 -- t1 spam on one side then it ends with some sort of snipe, what interesting is im 99% sure the guy who went t2 could have been killed by the t1 spam guy if he went for it
6289709 --its crimson feud what did you expect
6253868 -- another crimson feud, its likely not fair to put any more of these in. funnily enough the guy who went t2 here died.
6356544 --a high ranked diversity. had some t2, and then t3. kinda interesting to watch? nah xD
6224326 -- dry canyon you have 3 guesses. well really there was a beetle snipe attempt but teamnate died too fast
6120457 --yeah you know when ui mods break the game when watching replays cos some guy wanted to update them for fun? xD yeah thanks bruh. i still watched it on +0 though which was a pain - this one was strange since there was a t2 hq but no units coming out of it for aaaages, ended up being 100% spam game tbh
6372008 --isis with spam in it, here we see a t2 acu get overrun by t1, shouldnt have build a t2 pgen in the frontlines tbh
6371952 --this one was horribly stacked but even so the lower rated team got a draw of 2 acus with their spam, and then the other guy was just rekt already from bombers and stuff
6370453 --third spamsis, i didnt look at any more it was fairly clear how these go. featured mighty yudi going into t2 pd and beating everything with gun acu + tanks
--apparently no ones mad enough to play open palms 2v2 :/
-- i watched some 1v1 games but its not really relevant. but yeah spam galore, its not exactly closed palms is it
6358016 --adrastea - this one had different starting spots, and hat t2, snipes and all that. i reckon the finals should have been with spots like these, or at least to have that snipe fail in there so we could see a second game perhaps xD
--the only 2v2 wonder replay i found stopped at 2:40 : (
-- skipped forest planet since the replay vault broke at that point, and same applies to all the other maps in the tourney : (



what was a reoccurring thought was that the sample size was just too small. in the tourney we played maps at most two times, nowhere near close enough to determine if its an issue with balance, player habits, or just the map was like that. however, out of the maps compared we do see that in normal balance its a similar situation, twin rivers and diversity having spam in the eq tourney but judging for 3 replays is a bit far imo. crimson feud and dry canyon were quite spam maps as it turns out, and so is isis it appears.

in conclusion, its inconclusive to say that there is more spam in eq based on replays of similar maps. based on replays outside of the eq tourney, there will have to be significantly more replays to show a correlation. since im biassed towards eq, im inclined to believe that this was primarily based on the map selection and player habits, especially considering that the winning team usually had a t2 hq, but won without that paying off, only being a drain on resources.

2. analysis of changes in eq
so this is like before pretty much changelog reading.
-1. above we arrive at the conclusion the acu isnt weaker in eq
-2. t1 spam is indeed buffed in eq. it has 60-100 more hp depending on faction, but the most common unit in the tourney was the mantis so lets look at that:
the mantis has:
--60 more hp (20-25% more)
--3.333 less dps (yes that exact number) (12% less)
--2 less mass cost (4% less)
--builds in 3 less seconds (30% less)

so its fairly buffed, but as before its important to note (again) that its not really stronger vs the acu than before

-3. factory upgrades in eq are cheaper, 270 mass cheaper to be exact, thats 5-6 t1 tanks more
-4. t2 units are not weaker in eq vs t1, since it got some small buffs to increase its ease of use, and also build faster
-5. t2 mexes are 100m cheaper in eq so its easier to opt to eco
-6. t2 acu upgrade is 100m cheaper, costs 7k less e in eq, and builds faster too.

while the t1 spam is better, its also both easier and cheaper to get t2. overall i would say t2 is better in eq, but for the sake of argument we can say its the same. after all i am likely to be biassed towards eq.

3. prior experience
this isnt actually the first time ive heard this complaint, i have had it once before, quite a while ago now. the person in question lost to a gun push when he sent his t1/2 units away to help a teamnate. interestingly it was also a 2v2 in twin rivers. i looked at the replay and determined since he just lost a game he had increased saltiness and the cause of death was units being out of position rather than anything else.

eq games very often get past the t1 spam stage. this tourney does not appear to show the overall trend. its however hard to compare since the games ive been monitoring werent 2v2s

conclusion:
eq doesnt appear to have any conclusive evidence showing that t1 spam is than faf in it. the sample size is far too small for it. also given that people who complained are known to be biassed against the mod, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt anyway, especially when they didnt really process much evidence for it. the bottom line is that this needs a lot more games to really work out whats going on, and specifically 2v2s and such, since in teamgames this is a non-issue.
Yes i'm not a fan or EQ, but i don't mind playing it from time to time, like i didn't mind playing the tourney. Not being a fan, doesn't mean that i will do shit feed-back just for the sake of shitting on EQ.
its tempting to attribute this to just having players pick spam strategies.

but actually its not infinitely important how it compares to faf. fafis different to eq. what we saw is a high proportion of t1 spam games, and while it also appears to be that high in faf, that doesnt matter, since it just appears to be high regardless. there will need to be some more looking into this, playing specifically 2v2s and whatnot to work out if changes are needed.


even if you dont agree with the conclusion, i would prefer it if people didnt think that complaints about eq are just ignored.



As for the first part, i don't get why you overall nerf com : nerf instant health and 1 more shot to kill T1 tank, even if buff regen and max health and +1 range. (and nerf the gun upgrade, that is THE offensive upgrade) But buff the OC. So that now the effectiveness of the commander depend on how much e you get and how much "luck" you get from killing several T1 tank in 1 shot (of course this is normal behaviour of OC, but it impact much more the game since the OC is now super affordable.)

also just tested sera com vs 18 sera tank without kiting, no OC (i know the +1 range here would impact a bit); acu die, and 3 tanks "survive" in normal faf; acu die, and 9 tanks "survive" in EQ

and btw, i felt the aurora being super weak, that range drop made me feel they were useless, and 200 hp make them 2 still shootable from ACU