Suggestions for new topics in this forum

[Myrdral]

I see this Balance Discussion forum as being productive only if it acts as described in the stickied posts. I was thinking that a general format to new topics would aid individuals in proposing an area of the game balance to be assessed and discussed by the community. We seem to have things backwards in first suggesting our own fixes to our personal issues with balance. I see little constructiveness in beginning a new topic in this forum by immediately suggesting a fix with little other explanation.

I think a new topic is appropriate when you wish to propose a discussion about a certain area of balance which has no constructive thread already in existence. Original post needs to do no more than provide this area of balance to be discussed and their reasons for wanting that area discussed. What is it imbalanced and why do you think so? Original post should probably answer these two questions at minimum. Please consider how this area of balance may not seem balanced for you but may seem balanced to other players. Even the AI has different styles of play, players have near inifinitely more. A certain game mechanic may not be opimized for a rushing strategy, but it may be optimized for a teching strategy. Even so, rushing may be favored by the current game balance as a whole despite that particular area of balance favoring teching. Balance is never perfect, the best we can do is consider the game and playerbase as a whole when looking at specific game mechanics.

Replies of course debate the topic proposed by the original post. Debate is most effective when backed by facts and clearly illustrated logic. In furthering your points in a debate, replays and mathematical analysis are a couple great tools. It is important to keep a broad vision of game balance as a whole even while watching a replay of a game or sandbox test. Even a mathematical comparison of the cost-effectiveness of only two different units loses its meaning if you forget to consider factions/unit roles as a whole. A snoop may be able to completely counter it's cross-faction counter part, the mole, but that certainly does not prove that the mole should be buffed or that the snoop should be nerfed, not even close. However, that comparison is useful as part of a larger assessment. Eventually, the best fix may be one that does indeed buff or nerf one or both of those two units. More likely, we would find no obvious game imbalance.

A final point, the vast majority of observed game imbalance is impulsive. In general, impulses should be carefully considered before acting. I would never post a suggestion for a balance fix immediately after observing what I initially hypothesis to be possible imbalance. It takes an immense amount of thought and facts to determine whether something is actually imbalanced. Usually, this involves at the very least a few trips to the unit database linked on the FAF home page( which is up to date as far as I know?).

[-_V_-]

Despite its name, it's not the right forum to do post (a short msg for once ) about the changes.

[Myrdral]

I know Ze_Pilot said this forum is more to get the discussion of game balance out of FAF lobby chat than anything else. There is no better place to do that than here. From what I read in the stickied posts, I expect threads in this forum to be entirely ignored by Ze_Pilot and the balance team. However, I think it is a useful place to discuss balance and eventually petition Ze_Pilot to spend his time looking at a summary of the thread's conclusions.

I could be in the wrong place like your said V. Where should I discuss balance with the general FAF populations, not the balance team? I do not wish to submit anything to Ze_Pilot at this time. I only wish to create threads in this forum like the ones already in it. The difference would be formatting the discussions to further the goal of discovering real balance issues before asking Ze_Pilot and the balance team to investigate

[Myrdral]

I am no longer certain that I titled this topic properly. A more fitting title is: Suggestions for new topics in this forum. Changing the title to this from Deciding what to petition to have balanced. Terrible title.

The discussions about t3 AA and cosmetic weapons made me realize how commonly we suggest fixes to our personal issues with balance before discussing with the community whether there is even an imbalance in the first place. The two discussions that I mentioned both include an original post with a suggested way to fix what they as an individual viewed to be an imbalance. One wanted more dps for t3 SAM while the other wanted more dps for weapon systems with very low dps. Neither mentioned the possibility that t3 SAM or low dps weapon systems were currently well-balanced. I think it is hasty to assume that there is an imbalance without first discussing it with others.

Everyong makes hypothesis about their observations. Game balance is not an exception. It is important for posts in this forum to not start at a thesis but as an observation and hypothesis. The discussion part of a topic is where people can experiment and report their findings. I expect there would be some viewing of replays, unit database, sandbox tests and practical game testing. I see many of these balance thread topics skipping important steps to constructively discuss game balance. Fix suggestions cannot be taken seriously when they have no logic based in fact to back them up.

[Pavese]

It's okay to discuss things out in the balance forums. Some people think the game is good, others think the game suffers from flaws that never got addressed during post launch of FA.


These are mostly mayor blunders and issues. What does that mean? T4 needs an overhaul because it does not require a lot of buildpower (low buildtime on T4s) to create an Exp. fast (you need 3 to 4 times more buildpower to match a t4 production with t3 land). T3 air is vastly superior for what it does (faster, more HP, more damage) with no real trade offs. Combine current T4 with t3 air = t3 ground useless the longer the game goes.

The game suffers from game design issues where they changed so much in FA (Because vanilla SupCom was a bit of a boring game) that there are leftovers from the older days like sACUs (takes an absolute crap ton of time to build for pretty much nothing), T3 artillery that is bad game desing in itself but is still left over (should have just axed it) or missing units like a real mobile ground answer to t3 air, a 4th exp for Seraphim, other seraphim units like a t3 gunship, UEF satellite, Navy exp etc etc.


So before you go into crazy details about how useful the torpedo on wagners could be, just be aware that those are edge cases that really don't need to be talked about when the rest of late game is in a bit of a mess right now.
Also having playing experience greatly benefits you when you make balance calls. For instance high numbers of wagners are an investment you don't want to make. Either put on real navy, or bigger eco for better units.

And never touch early/mid game. There are few things in this game that i consider balanced, and t1/t2 air/land is what comes close to it. You could argue that auroras are OP because of their range, but these are balance calls that are nowhere as mayor as late game currently is.

And be prepared for a lot of disbelieve and "why you want to ruin the game" when you propose even the slightest thing. People will flip tables over a 2 DPS weapon on a scout.

tl,dr: lategame balance sucks, deal with it.

[Myrdral]

Pavese, I am not sure what tl,dr: stands for if you could clarify please.

I agree with your very good point about game balance being thrown off by the expansion. sACU is a very good example. I am sure some people stil find them useful, but they could very possibly be playing suboptimally.

Many of the other units you mentioned do not seem as glaringly in need of balance to me. This may be due to my lack of experience or perhaps I am trying to hard to find balance where there is not. I also may be considering some things that other players overlook due to their unwillingness to look at the unit database or run tests. I do not claim to have any good ideas, but if I do they are certainly a direct result of using that units database and finding applications for every part of a unit be it a strange small dps weapon system, utility such as amphibious or stealth or other distinctive attributes. The wagner seems to be a unit which depends largely on how its used not the choice of building it or not. I realize that the wagner is inferior to other options in most situations. However, it does have a few unique advantages which makes me believe it is balanced and useful. I agree that you would rarely want a large amount of wagners. I see them more as a sneaky raiding unit that you do not wish detected until it is too late. It's contribution to naval warfare is almost negligble. A group of them might be able to kill 1 naval unit or help defeat anti-torpedos, that is about it for their naval usage. I do see scenarios where wagners can be a great asset for an amphibious raid on strung out reinforcements or coastal economy/build power. I would even go so far as too suggest that wagners could be the main contributor in a victory in which you do heavy raiding on multiple coastal targets. Wagner also seems like an option to get under and destroy enemy shields once you have naval superiority as cybran. If you have naval superiority, there is a good chance your opponent has air superiority. In this case, it may be difficult to make drops to destroy those shields with land units from the inside and wagners may be your best option if you want to destroy a heavy t3 shield installment that is resisting your naval bombardment.

I acknowledge that I am defending a very narrow unit in the Wagner that could probably use a buff. However, I am not convinced that it needs a buff, is useless or was left behind by the expansion at this time. I probably would not be convinced until I tried some creative wagner usage and failed enough times in real pvp games. A unit like the Wagner is hard to test with theory. It's viability depends largely on in-game factors such as player attention and the unpredictability of a submerged wagner raids onto coastal econ or reinforcement routes. Amphibious tank units are all weaker than their equal tech tank counterparts due to their ability to perform this unique amphibious assault function. Amphibious offers clear benefits which may or may not be useful to a player based on their strategy and game settings(such as no naval or maps with no water). I do enjoy the maps with a good amount of water the most. It sucks that 1/3 of units are completely unusable if there is no water. As you said, the t1/t2 land/air game is most balanced supposedly so I can see why many players choose to play these maps when they want to really see who is better.

I appreciate all of your good information Pavese. I suppose I am one of those players that needs substantial proof before any balance fix is desirable. I certainly have not been exposed to as much of that proof as you have. I also consider some of those proofs as inconclusive due to lack of information provided in some balance suggestions. T3 artillery in your post is an example of something which I do not see as conclusive from your post. I realize you were not even attempting to provide anything complete about the t3 artillery. I just am not the type to accept someone else's conclusions if I cannot see and agree with their logic behind their conclusion.


Thanks again for your most helpful reply. I never considered how the expansion messed up game balance. I most likely gave the developer too much credit in that regard. I also never played vanilla so it is hard for me to spot how it affected sACUs and a ew other things. I know they added Seraphim! ...and other new units...

[Pavese]

In the original you could stay at home and create mass out of nowhere by building t1 mass fabricators and so on. The result was a stagnant game that got "patched" with a new unit: the t2 bot.

Long story short it was a disaster. The new unit was so good it became the dominating unit and the game pretty much a t2 bot shoot out. But to be fair it was a step in the right direction, just not consequent enough when the rest of your game is so different.


So in the expansion they took advice from a few pro players that now a days play starcraft and other games. The game got a lot more fluid and the focus shifted from eco building to map control. It were steps in the right direction as t1 was needed to secure that map control and then you should be able to tech into t2->t3 and so on.

But t1 is currently the best option as ACUs can easily one shot expensive Tech units making them a very risky choice. Also most maps are not big enough to risk this t2 tech as it takes time and mass, both are not really affordable on a 5x5 map.


So they got the whole t1/t2 stuff right, but failed a bit with the maps that endorsed too much t1 spam. But in the end they had now left overs from their previous stagnant eco focused game. Stuff like the t3 artillery.


The T3 artillery is incredible expensive and does not even break 2 overlapping t2 shields. To put that in mass cost: arround 90.000 vs 800. That's why it's terrible.
FA is a lot more fluid when it comes to gameplay and speed. The T3 artillery feels completely out of place, is never used in "real" games and i hope nobody would shed a single tear if it we just buried it and never brought back.

In the end you get the feeling that they never got to the point where they tackeld late game. Seems more like they took some random numbers, threw them at the screen and thought they could patch it later. But they never got around patching as there was a Lawsuit and what not, so the game stopped being developed at version 3599. There was supposed to be a 3603 patch, but that never got "official" thanks to the whole law stuff. But the 3603 patch is the basis for FAF and all the improvements where made on it's basis.

[Myrdral]

I did not know that t2 bots were added to the game. I thought they were such a basic unit as to always have been around. I do like the current map control economic model for the game.

I had heard about vanilla mass fabricators and they do sound terrible for the game. Mass fabricators are in a good balance now as a super late game and inefficient mass rate increase after you have upgraded and storaged all of your safe mexes fully. I see fabricators being useful if you needed to build excessive pgens for another purpose like overcharge spam, shield/radar maintenance or high energy upgrades to ACU. I know some upgrades take in excess of 25k energy per second even if you are not assisting. If you build enough pgens to put out that much energy finish the upgrade quickly then the fabricators seem slightly more efficient as you already have invested in the power generators to run them. I usually do not build that much power even for those expensive upgrades and just accept the fact that it is going to slow down my production all over and shut down as much other energy usage as I can without giving myself a severe disadvantage like not having t3 radar or shields running when I am being invaded.

I know I said something about teching up to better deal with an enemy ACU. I suppose I should have thought that out a little better and realized that it would only help when talking about t2 gunships or other higher than t1 units which the ACU cannot overcharge safely. Certain long-range units would be able to hit the ACU from out of its overcharge range? Perhaps not many of the units even mobile missile launchers could really hit the ACU well without being hit with overcharge. It can just dodge most of those missiles anyway right? I suppose teching land for t2 shield can help as each one will stop an overcharge. A few t2 shields could essentially take turns absorbing overcharges could they not? Thank you for clarifying about how bad an idea it is to try and attack an ACU with higher tech bots and tanks. I forgot about that when making a couple of these posts in this topic even though I definitely overcharge those high tech units with extreme prejudice in games.

[Adraius]

Pre-edit: I started this post hours ago, but had to let it sit for the day, so apologies for any flow-breaking it may cause.

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Seeing that Myrdral has broached this, I will contribute.

FYI:
For background info, I'm the one that wanted more damage for cosmetic weapons. =) The OP (not me) originally stated that they should be removed, and I proposed a damage buff instead on some weapons as an alternative solution.

Despite its name, it's not the right forum to do post (a short msg for once ) about the changes.

I know Ze_Pilot said this forum is more to get the discussion of game balance out of FAF lobby chat than anything else. There is no better place to do that than here. From what I read in the stickied posts, I expect threads in this forum to be entirely ignored by Ze_Pilot and the balance team. However, I think it is a useful place to discuss balance and eventually petition Ze_Pilot to spend his time looking at a summary of the thread's conclusions.

I have a question that I've been puzzling myself and have been a bit to timid to ask openly: why isn't there more balance discussion around here? I was expecting to find an entire forum area filled with a deluge of balance topics for this unit or that unit. I was planning to wade through the threads to get a feel on what the current metagame is concerning, for example, the Restorer (looking for imbalances to exploit, in a sense ). Obviously, that isn't the case. And in the last week or two of watching/posting, I've seen several balance threads get shut down (if I remember correctly, this is probably a rather harsh interpretation) because "it might be a good idea, but it's all hypothetical, and it's not going to be added in a patch, so I'm locking this thread." This is the first forum that I've been on that actively discourages constructive conversation. 0.o What am I missing?

In conclusion, I think ordinary members should be able to converse about whatever aspects of FAF they feel appropriate, as long as they keep it civil and in the proper area. Is there no proper area here?

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EDIT: For example, this is from the post that locked the Thoughts on Veterancy thread:

I'm closing this thread because it's a waste of time for me. If you have concerns with the veterancy system, I suggest that you use the real balance forum, not the one where we make UEF head flying of to rebuilt the ACU.

By the 'real balance forum,' I assume he means the one specifically about the latest balance testing version.

It clearly states across the top of the FA Balance Discussion (not FA Balance Testing) area:

REMINDER : This is NOT a community balance forum.

So... is there one? Or does Zep feel having one would be a waste of people's time that would better be spent focusing on his latest test balance modifications?

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P.S. Myrdral, tl,dr denotes an extremely short summary to communicate the gist of one's post. It stands for "too long, didn't read." If people are too lazy (or simply pressed for time, in the case of some of your posts, no offense meant ) to read your entire post, they can absorb the gist (generally very bluntly worded) via the 'tl,dr message,' if you choose to append one to your post.

[Ze_PilOt]

That's exactly that.

3615 was on open beta test (balance mod) for a about a month.

During that time, I had very few feedback to tweak values like veterancy.

So I had to rush the release of that patch so more people will use it.
You really can consider 3615 as a big beta testing patch : The holo jammer for exemple is a test, I don't think it will made it to 3616.

So I refuse to read any speculation about any aspect of that beta patch, I want real datas and experiences. Too much time was wasted on nothing already.

If you've got any concern, about any aspect of the game, with a real analysis, replays, ... feel free to post it in the other forum (replay section, I will split it eventually).

Very few threads on this forum have enough value to serve as a base to test a balance change seriously. The t3 land one is an exception if you want an example