Explanation of balance changes in FAF

[Myrdral]

I am curious why some of balance changes were made to FAF. The changelogs tell you what changes were made but for the most part not why.

For example, why does a mongoose have health rebalanced from 950 to 650 or why does the UEF t3 bomber now have the same energy cost as other factions?

I do not question the merits of such balance changes. I simply wish to read why those changes were implemented from the perspective of those who performed the change.

Hopefully, someone can refer me to these explanations if they are already documented. If not, perhaps I can create a list of the ones which really baffle me for answering at someone's leisure.

This information compiled in one location would be very useful, especially to new players. I am willing to maintain a thread with each balance change's justifications. However, having never been a part of the team making the decisions, I can only speculate as to why certain balance changes were made.

I am not looking to compile a list covering every point of the balance team's development process. It would look something like this for each update including at least one balance change(speculating the reason for this balance change):

3605
...
UEF lobo t1 artillery health changed from 205 to 200 - ACUs can now kill all t1 artillery in the same number of shots.
...
Each change need only a short explanation. I see this information being useful to everyone, especially new players and the balance team.

[Myrdral]

Here is an example of how this would look once completed. Beneath each underlined change, I would add a few words about the imbalance addressed by the change and why that particular fix was chosen etc. Confirmed rationale from a balance team member would be preceded by *Ze_Pilot -(or UberGeek etc). Mere speculation such as the lobo in the original post would be preceded by **Myrdral -. This allows anyone to offer a rationale for a balance change in order to fill out the list without bothering the balance team if they do not wish to be bothered. However, if a member from the balance team wishes to contribute, their contribution will be clearly labelled and replace the other explanations.(The intent here is to provide the best available explanation for each balance change in one thread. Naturally, the best explanation would be the one provided by the person who made the decision. However, I really do not expect them to be bothered with this so speculation is the only alternative, however poor) Basically, it is the changelog with my two cents below each change or a greater amount of cents from someone more knowledgeable than me. I have not filled anything in at this time so there is no need to read further.

*Confirmed by [Balance Team Member's Forum Name] -
**Unconfirmed personal speculation [Registered Forum Member's Name] -

Remainder of this post is only the first part of the 3605 changelog with my feeble explanations. I will post the date of the most recent update here and try to list the new alterations(July 22, 2012 kicked things off with my attempts to explain the structure balance changes in 3605).

3605

General Structures

Overcharge and Energy Storage gameplay improvement.
**Myrdral - Land units were too easily dominated by an ACU at the start of a game. Now a player must choose when to make a larger economic investment if they wish to use overcharge at all or an even larger investment if they wish to use it frequently. Investing in overcharge is now more of a counter that you build instead of have by default.

Energy Storage now costs 250M 1200E (from 120M 2400E), stores 5000E (from 2000E),
explodes for 2000 damage in a 5 radius (from 500 damage 3 radius), and has 500 health (from 1200).

Start resources go to 4000E from 5000E, ACUs now generate 20E instead of 10 to compensate.

Overcharge now costs 5000E (from 3000). Damage vs Units is unaltered, damage vs ACUs is 400 (from 100), vs buildings 800 damage (from 500). Overcharge has an increased damage radius of 2.5 (from 2), and a reload of 0.3 (from 0.2).

Factories and Engineers no longer increase Energy Storage.

T3 Air and T3 Naval Factories changed: mass cost equals land t3 factory now.
**Myrdral - Opens new avenues of gameplay especially in the early game.

T3 Air Factory energy cost increased (72000). Mass cost reduced to 2750 from 3150.
**Myrdral - Upgrade cost is now more easily afforded by an economy designed to produce air units.

T1 Anti-Air Turret
Reduced mass and energy cost by 25%
Reduced build time by 25%
Reduced health to 800 from 1200
**Myrdral - Addresses the need for these to come online quickly against things such as an early t1 bomber or gunship at the cost of durability to not buff the turret too much.

T2 Artillery Installation
Reduced mass and energy cost by 25%
Reduced build time by 25%-
**Myrdral - Unit was too costly to be worthwhile in most cases.

T2 Anti-Air Flak Artillery
Reduced mass and energy cost by 30%
Reduced health by 30%
**Myrdral - Strangely, this seems to be a buff to the turret's dps per economic investment while maintaining the same health per investment(exclusion of build time for reasons which I will not even attempt to speculate). Unsure as to why the dps buff was needed.

T1 Mass Extractor
Health reduced to 600 from 800
**Myrdral - Smaller raiding parties can now accomplish the same level of economic destruction. Perhaps this was done to put a greater emphasis on early raids and early intel/map control.

T3 SAMs
costs reduced significantly from 1400M 12000E to 800M 8000E
**Myrdral - I think this is one of the most difficult units to balance so will not even take a guess as to why it became cheaper.

(3605 includes further balance changes to be edited into this post later)