Giving Seraphim a unique advantage

[Gowerly]

Turns out, we were talking about different things.
I was talking about the ASFs themselves, V was talking about micro, suggesting that Aeon/Sera gain more advantage from ASF micro than UEF/Cybran.
My micro is laughably bad, so I can't really test this. I can see why cybran would lose out with a micro battle if they cannot get the initial advantage with the stealth. However, I can't immediately see why UEF would fail.
In our tests it was 2-1 to Seraphim with micro tests, but they were horribly random. Would need someone with more V level of micro and less Gowerly level of micro to sort that one out.

[pip]

Noobynoobcake made me think again about this feature suggested by Funkoff: we could add restoration field ability to every radar structure Seraphim have instead of applying it to every unit they have. This would be toggable(?).

T1 Radar and Sonar : 0.25 % Restoration field (half the ACU level 1) for an additional 50 energy / sec cost.
T2 Radar and Sonar : same as ACU Restoration field 1 for an additional 100 energy / sec cost.
T3 Radar (and Sonar if it ever exists): same as ACU Restoration field 2 for an additional 200 energy / sec cost.
Range for all would be the vision radius.

The regen values wouldn't stack between themselves, the higher would be applied. But it would stack with veterancy.
How to prevent ACU Restoration field to suck after this change? By increasing its range to vision radius to begin with, and assigning it to a better spot in the upgrade slots. And of course, it doesn't cost energy and a radar is very fragile, so it's better overall.

I think that would be good because :
1) it fits the spirit of the faction : multi-role units / structures.
2) People scared by faction-wide regen would be reassured.
3) It adds strategy to Seraphim gameplay.
4) It requires modification of 5 units only instead of applying the regen to every unit.

Seraphim would still need a proper T1 sub, hovertank, torp bomber and a better gunship, but for the rest, this would really help the faction to be more competitive and interesting to play.

What do you think?

[Mr Pinguin]

Wow. This is interesting and fortuitous to read this here.

First I have to admit to being lazy and not reading the whole thread (sorry, but it's late and I'm new to the forum.. I'll catch up later).

I just want to say that I was working on my own 3604 balance mod way back when, and one of the things I tested was super regen on the Ilshavoh. I never tried giving regen to everybody, although I considered it for a few other Sera units.

I love the 3603 T2 tank rebalance, except that it screws the Seraphim even more because it slows the Ilsh down so much that the T2 bot really overlaps with the speed/range/role of the T3 Othuum tank. I've always envisioned the Ilsh as an early/light SAB, so I thought it should be faster (and the Sera need a fast bot for raiding and pushing back vs Mongooses and Hoplites).

So, to keep it balanced vs the Rhino, Pillar, and Obsidian, I nerfed the Ilshavoh's HP down by a chunk and then I gave it a very high regen that balanced things out so it would have the same effective HP in a 1v1 vs another T2 tank. I also gave it faster speed (so it could raid and scare kite bots), and I nerfed its range so it couldn't kite the other T2 tanks.

After testing I actually thought that this approach worked pretty well. Ilshavohs could compete with other units by using feints and hit and run strikes that let them focus down a few units and then retreat for a rapid regen of their HP. But, because their total HP was actually lower, they were very vulnerable to being focused down or alpha-striked by strong enemies.

..So, this may not be on topic, but after reading Funk's post I had to share. If anyone is curious I could post some more specifics or share the blue print later..

[FunkOff]

I like the regen on Radar/Sonar idea.

[noobymcnoobcake]

How abot giving big regen to everything under shields(acu field type regen) , small regen to everything In radar/sonar range. You could also give stealth to everything under the cyban ED5 as it's worse than the ED4 and cost 2x as much

[Mr Pinguin]

I tested this out for myself.
Rules:
10 v 10 ASFs, sera vs x, each done 4 times. Map: Darozas.
Aircraft spawned in top right and bottom right corner. Each given move orders away, then attack move orders towards the other corner, to make sure both are flying.
Sera vs Cybran:
1 - 3 Cybran ASFs remain, 2 - 2 Sera ASFs remain, 3 - 4 Sera ASFs remain, 4 - 2 Cybran ASFs remain
Sera vs UEF:
1 - 1 Sera ASF remains, 2 - 1 Sera ASF remains, 3 - 1 Sera ASF remains, 4 - 3 UEF ASFs remain
Sera vs Aeon:
1 - 7 Sera ASFs remain, 3 - 2 Aeon ASFs remain, 3 - 1 Aeon ASF remains, 4 - 2 Sera ASF remains

Apart from the anomoly in the first Sera vs Aeon match, the fights are reasonably equal.
I did some extra testing of attack move vs Targetting:
Sera Attack Move, Aeon Targetting: 8 Aeon ASFs remain
Aeon Attack Move, Sera Targetting: 5 Sera ASFs remain.
More would need to be tested, but if you can group your ASFs into groups of 10 and target individual ASFs, you are guaranteed a kill per pass with very little overkill.

In conclusion, evidence points to it being entirely random who wins, but you'll need a much greater sample (hundreds of test runs) to actually support this properly.

This is great. I've done tons of sandbox testing like this (only with a lot more replication and varying the size of battles and approach patterns and stuff like that, literally hundreds of tests in all). You don't know me so I don't know that you'll take my word for it, but I've never noticed any problems with ASF balance.

I have to admit that I haven't focused on ASFs vs ASFs too much since I was more interested in balancing other stuff (ASFs vs Ints, Swift Winds, T2 fighter bombers, Restorers, etc.).

The only real difference among ASFs is with the Cybran, but they still do fine in both big and small dogfights. ASFs vs other stuff is a lot more complicated, but that's another topic I guess.

[Mr Pinguin]

I really doubt it is easily possible to prove "up-ness" with replays. In contrast to op-units, up-units are not frequently used and situations where they are appear are avoided. For example I guess most sera players avoid t2 navy battles, but focus on strong units like t2 bots or fobos.
Do you really expect to find a a replay of two good AND relativly equal players where ALSO up-units are used in such an extend that you can conclude their up-ness was the determining factor for the loss of the sera player?
I don't think so, but that doesn't mean that there aren't many sera up-units , right?

I agree with you that you won't be able to find the perfect replay to 'prove' or 'test' underpowered units because real games rarely have fair match-ups. However, if you can figure out what a unit's role is supposed to be, and what its advantages and disadvantages are supposed to be (easily assessed by the stats), then it's relatively easy to set up 'fair' tests where you just evaluate that unit.

For example, I've tested the Seraphim T2 fighter bomber vs various logical comparisons (UEF and Cybran T2 fighter bombers, vs T1 Ints, vs Swift Winds, etc.), and I've found that it's strangely weak as a fighter (and only average as a bomber). The UEF Janus performs far better as a bomber and it can actually beat T1 Ints in equal mass-cost match-ups (which is surprising since it's a multi-role unit). The Notha looks like it should perform about the same as the Janus on paper, but for some reason it consistently lost vs T1 Ints and it also loses vs equal numbers of Janus bombers.

[Armmagedon]

dps and hp dont is all, you should see rate of fire, turn rate speed and that stuff,
percies pwn bricks cause his rate of fire is slow but they can kill really fast a brick, and the dps of both dont is really far.

the only signifactive difference that i saw with t2 uef bomber and sera t2 bomber is the rate of fire, uef shot one time every second and sera shoot 3 times every second, and the turret pitch, uef have an higher turret pitch
80ºvs55º

[microwavelazer]

Although I do agree that the Sera are underpowered in many areas I do not think that a mass buff to all sera units is a good idea. This is because the sera do have some legitimately good units and buffing them may make them OP. It would be interesting to try the regen radar/sonar idea but we would have to heavily test the range/regen rate and maybe even increase the cost of the radar and sonar structures.
On a side note, I still think we should look at the sera units that are severely UP like the Yenzyne.
.

[Mr Pinguin]

I've had some ideas for the Yenzyne that were meant to offset two weaknesses that I see with the Seraphim at T2.

1) The Sera are weak vs kite bots at T2 (like the Aeon, the Sera have a tough time running down Mongooses and Hoplites, and the Sera don't even have shields to hide under).

2) The Sera are weak at sea and especially weak at direct fire shore bombardment. (This is a critical weakness because, unlike the other factions, even if the Seraphim manage to win sea superiority at T2 it's harder for them to turn that into real damage on land. Their cruiser's TML is too easily neutralized by TMD, and their Destroyer's beams have a tough time if the shore is sloped or covered by a ridge, plus their range is just too short).

My 'solution' was to make the Yenzyne into a mid-ranged sniper tank. I never got around to testing this, but my plan was to give it slightly shorter range than the kite bots (e.g., ~30), and then tweak the DPS and RoF. T2 hover tanks are fast, which makes them a decent counter vs kite bots, but the risk with a longer-ranged Yenzyne is that it could get OP'd if it was too good at kiting other T2/T1 units, especially since it could harass from the sea (like Auroras and Fobos).