"Mercies" are too good!

[uberge3k]

Watch it again, t3 pgen on the top side of the map. So radar was working, mercies flew right over 7 t2 and 4 t1 AA's that were in front of acu and got a kill. I'm sure you can move aa's even further and still get a kill, can even add some interceptors but they'll obviously get distracted by my air, just like in actual games

My apologies for missing that then.

My point, however, still stands. This is precisely the same behavior as with gunships, bombers, or any other air unit.

What makes mercies special, and requiring some engine hack to change their behavior?

If I were trying to snipe you on sandbox that is pointless, because you're knowing they're coming 100%. I dare you to TML snipe me in sandbox, will that EVER work? You're excluding the surprise factor out completely, you can never be sure when or IF snipe coming, all the games I played, it comes anywhere in between 15-50 min. Besides team games and 1v1 is huge difference, we're talking about mercies in teamgames

I dare you to TML snipe me in a real game. It won't happen, because I pay attention to my ACU if I'm using it offensively.

You're not the only one who's struggling to understand logic. If you think that 1 int can prevent mercy snipe, neglecting numerous factors that would not let that happen, why is gunship killing collosus is any different? Lets make it 2 t3 UEF gunships, thats almost 10% of GC cost and will kill him pretty quickly. You call that being realistic?

You're straw manning again.

1 int = 1/36th the mass of a mercy snipe.

Why on earth should that even have a nonzero chance of counter a mercy snipe? And yet it does. Yet mercy snipes are the things considering OP.

Did you know you can make t1 int fly at the same speed as mercies? So you would never distinguish them. Just make them move keeping formation.

So, the mercy sniper now needs to micro his ints? Your entire premise was based on the assumption that mercy snipes are easier to pull off than defending against mercies, with vague and varying levels of emphasis put on the mass and micro at different times as it suits your argument. That statement just invalidates that premise, rendering your entire argument moot.

[MonkeyFun]

Are you of the opinion that counters and mitigation are the same?

First of all, aa isn't the best counter to mercies - interceptors are.

Also, you cannot mitigate a snipe. Either it works or it doesn't.

Damage mitigation however, is possible, and although it doesn't apply to mercies because they are never used in situations other than a snipe, my opinion on this matter is that counters lead to mitigation. The better the counter, the more mitigation is possible, leading up to complete prevention.

To illustrate my opinion, here is an example: t1 navy aa can mitigate very little damage of torpedo bombers through dps reduction, but a cruiser (being a stronger counter), kills faster, therefore mitigating more damage, while not completely preventing it. The best counter in this situation, asfs, can almost entirely prevent damage from torpedo bombers by shooting them down before they do any damage.

[IceDreamer]

Any more anecdotes from 1v1 games will be ignored from now on, Uber, Monkey... We are not and never were saying Mercies are OP in 1v1 games. Uber, you say you are immune? Try this one... Team game, 10k map, 2v2. Even teams. Play 10 games. Each game, one of your enemies will attempt a Mercy snipe, and dedicate their strategy to that. The other enemy will be fouling up the ground war, and slowing down the air war until the boomer can get in. I don't know the outcome... But I am curious.

Yes, I do, because it's quite obvious what dots are mercies and what aren't based on the size, grouping, and speed of them.

Can easily be disguised to look like Interceptors, or even a Gunship swarm.

Put 900 mass into a variety of counters for mercies, and I can 100% guarantee you they won't get through. Especially if they're shields, as it is simply not possible to mass-effectively counter shields with mercies.

Shields are a non-counter. A Mercy strike from a dedicated snipe strategy will happen before you get the first shield up. If you do get that shield up, it means you have lost the ground war, or that your ally is about to get sniped. This is assuming equal player skill.

Any I can 100% guarantee that they WILL get through provided the enemy is clever and distracts your AA. I don't believe this distraction is right... Someone needs to look into changing the engine behaviour here. Where are Mithy and Exavier when you need them eh FunkOff?

Also, the great AA vs Air-Ground attack debate that was going on when Restorers were OP... You keep going on about an equal mass of counters stopping them. Here's the problem, it is IMPLAUSIBLE that anyone will spend equal mass on AA that you spend on ground attack aircraft, because AA will not win the game. THAT is why AA cost so much less than the aircraft.

However, the main reason I object to the current situation is even when the AA is not perfect, as in many of the posted replays, a strike by an equal mass of Gunships or Bombers would do NOTHING, but a strike by Mercies gets the kill... That's the real problem here, the psychology. A player has enough AA that they feel safe, and KNOW they are safe from Bombers and Gunships, but still get taken out by and air unit.


So, you don't think my change should be implemented because... wait for it... you don't think it should... Well, I think it should, so our opinions cancel out there. Give me a legitimate GAMEPLAY based reason not to implement it. A REAL reason rather than a half-arsed response which simply says 'My opinion is better than yours'. I'd also be interested in hearing why FunkOff's opinion here is being ignored, considering he was/is one of the best FA players in the world, and considering his input has resolved more balance disputes and has been proved right more times than even HE realises, I think his is the opinion we should be deferring to overall.

[Evil_mind]

My apologies for missing that then.

My point, however, still stands. This is precisely the same behavior as with gunships, bombers, or any other air unit.

What makes mercies special, and requiring some engine hack to change their behavior?

So now you do believe that mercies fly over flaks? That's a breakthrough.

I'd like to see anyone sniping acu with gunships or bombers (worth of 1800 mass) when ACU is hiding behind wall of flaks like on the replay. Mercies can, because they're profiting from game mechanic, before flaks change their targets its already too late. Gunships would never get a kill, they're DPS oriented, and you can dodge most of the bombers damage.

So, the mercy sniper now needs to micro his ints? Your entire premise was based on the assumption that mercy snipes are easier to pull off than defending against mercies, with vague and varying levels of emphasis put on the mass and micro at different times as it suits your argument. That statement just invalidates that premise, rendering your entire argument moot.

Selecting 3-5 int and clicking once is alot of micro?

Why on earth should that even have a nonzero chance of counter a mercy snipe? And yet it does. Yet mercy snipes are the things considering OP.

Show me replays of an actual game, where you counter mercy snipe with nothing but 1 int.

Wait. And this is not about interceptors, they're obviously counter for mercies, but I dont think they should be able to fly over flaks. Thats why range nerf would help. They still would get countered by int, they still would kill careless ACU's.

Wasn't ACU on the replay safe? And yet he got sniped. Once more, this is not about interceptors, range nerf would affect flaks effectiveness so they (mercies) will stop flying over them.

[ToejamS]

Basically you are saying....

Constantly have ints patrolling your comm. If your opponent has a couple of T2 flack nearby, you will loose your ints very quickly. So lets assume that we need room for ints to patrol the comm and some space so as not to come into range of any flack. So lets move the comm back a little.

You need to have aa between the comm and the mercy attack. Ints are great, they are however easily led away by other ints so not entirely relieabel. Lets build some AA. The death range of the mercy is such that you have to stand a goodly distance behind the aa. ( lets just hope a stray arty doesnt kill it ). Lets move the comm back a little bit more

You also need to watch your comm closely and be ever ready to move it to the far side of attack. The amount of time you have to complete this movement is really quite small, lets give ourselves a little more wiggle room and move him still further back.

And lets forget sheilds. We will just assume our opposition is so mentally retarded, they want to spend the extra 300 mass value of a shield to bring it down. And while we are discussing mass values. Something to remember, the amount of mass as a percentage of a 3-4-5-6 player team required to build 6-10 mercies.. isnt really that high. Ive seen more mass values presented here that are of zero relevance than if picking lotto numbers would have acheived.

At the end of the day you are watching a pixelated image of your comm and nothing else ( for fear of missing a mercy attack ) that is of little more use than a fast engineer since it needs to be so far from the front lines so as not to of an attacking asset.

Fantastic, we have avoided a mercy attack on our comm and they cant to drops behind your base since the acu is behind it.

BINGO, thats is just brilliant.

[uberge3k]

Any more anecdotes from 1v1 games will be ignored from now on, Uber, Monkey... We are not and never were saying Mercies are OP in 1v1 games.

Who brought up 1v1?

Uber, you say you are immune? Try this one... Team game, 10k map, 2v2. Even teams. Play 10 games. Each game, one of your enemies will attempt a Mercy snipe, and dedicate their strategy to that. The other enemy will be fouling up the ground war, and slowing down the air war until the boomer can get in. I don't know the outcome... But I am curious.

I would be quite interested as well, as I've made the offer numerous times to play games to test mercies. No one wishes to take me or anyone else up on it.

Can easily be disguised to look like Interceptors, or even a Gunship swarm.

Again, the mercy snipe now requires equal or more micro effort than defending against it does.

Put 900 mass into a variety of counters for mercies, and I can 100% guarantee you they won't get through. Especially if they're shields, as it is simply not possible to mass-effectively counter shields with mercies.

http://www.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/su ... bp=UEL0307

You need two mercies to penetrate a mobile shield. That mobile shield costs 120 mass.
Two mercies cost 600 mass.

Please explain to me how that is mass effective?

Shields are a non-counter. A Mercy strike from a dedicated snipe strategy will happen before you get the first shield up. If you do get that shield up, it means you have lost the ground war, or that your ally is about to get sniped. This is assuming equal player skill.

Completely false. It is impossible to get 6 mercies before you can get one shield, assuming, once again, equal players of equal skill with equal mass.

Any I can 100% guarantee that they WILL get through provided the enemy is clever and distracts your AA. I don't believe this distraction is right...

Then why does this not happen more frequently?

Where is the evidence of this? So far we've seen two replays posted... yes, two, one of which by me!

Also, the great AA vs Air-Ground attack debate that was going on when Restorers were OP... You keep going on about an equal mass of counters stopping them. Here's the problem, it is IMPLAUSIBLE that anyone will spend equal mass on AA that you spend on ground attack aircraft, because AA will not win the game. THAT is why AA cost so much less than the aircraft.

How many times do I have to repeat this?

INTS. AND. SCOUTING. COUNTER. MERCIES.

AA is nothing more than a backup or a nice addition to your mercy-stopping arsenal. Ints are the primary counter, and will continue being useful even if there is no mercy snipe. Same for shields. Same, to a lesser extent, with AA.

However, the main reason I object to the current situation is even when the AA is not perfect, as in many of the posted replays, a strike by an equal mass of Gunships or Bombers would do NOTHING, but a strike by Mercies gets the kill... That's the real problem here, the psychology. A player has enough AA that they feel safe, and KNOW they are safe from Bombers and Gunships, but still get taken out by and air unit.

Because gunships and T1/T2 bombers aren't specifically designed to snipe high value targets. They are more versatile units designed to be useful against a variety of targets. Sure, you might not be able to snipe an ACU with 7.5 T2 gunships, but you can massacre engineers and T1 spam with them. Same with bombers.

This is why scouting is important. You scout your enemy. You determine what his strategy is. You determine how to most effectively counter his strategy and exploit any weaknesses in it.

Why is everyone acting like scouting shouldn't be necessary? Doesn't the majority of the game based on... scouting? Or does that not apply in teamgames either?

So, you don't think my change should be implemented because... wait for it... you don't think it should... Well, I think it should, so our opinions cancel out there.

Incorrect. I do not believe it should be implemented due to a lack of evidence. I also do not believe it should be implemented because thus far there is no balance team created. Ze_PilOt has stated many times how the balancing will be done. If Ze_PilOt decides that mercies need to be looked at, then he will look for evidence, in replay form, to provide proof of this. If you truly want to expedite that process, why not start collecting replays now? Surely in the collective time spent arguing in this thread, at least a handful of games could have been played to demonstrate their supposed OPness, especially considering how prevalent it supposedly is?

Give me a legitimate GAMEPLAY based reason not to implement it.

I have. Reread my post on the first page, for starters.

A REAL reason rather than a half-arsed response which simply says 'My opinion is better than yours'.

Reread my post on the first page, for starters. I supplied facts, evidence, and a logical argument backing up my opinion, and am still waiting for my points to be refuted with similar facts and evidence.

I'd also be interested in hearing why FunkOff's opinion here is being ignored, considering he was/is one of the best FA players in the world, and considering his input has resolved more balance disputes and has been proved right more times than even HE realises, I think his is the opinion we should be deferring to overall.

And I would be interested in hearing why you, ShadowKnight, have suddenly taken such a keen interest in this topic. You haven't played a single game on FAF, according to the leaderboards. How could you be aware of the issues surrounding mercies without playing a single game? And why are you so keen on supporting FunkOff?

Considering you joined only a few days ago, how could you have knowledge of how many times he has or has not been proven right? Did you go through the thousands of posts in this forum? Unlikely, especially considering a quick check of the view counters on the older threads don't seem to have moved.

Lastly, if being "one of the best FA players in the world" is the only criteria for weighting one's opinion, several questions are necessarily raised:

1) Why are Isen/Zock/eXivo/Raging_Squirrel/TAG_ROCK/etc's opinions being neglected, when they are some of the best players in the world?
2) Why is my opinion being neglected, when I maintain an 80% win ratio against FunkOff in 1v1 matches, and, if we go purely by leaderboard ratings, I would be in the "one of the best FA players in the world" category?
3) Again, why are you so in favor of FunkOff? The timing of your arrival and subsequent behavior is quite suspicious, and at the very least, leads me to believe you are anything but an unbiased third party.

[uberge3k]

So now you do believe that mercies fly over flaks? That's a breakthrough.

I never disputed this claim.

I dispute the claim that mercies are a special case, and that they shouldn't require any of the following to defend against:

- Scouting, at all
- Any air, whatsoever
- Any amount of micro, whatsoever
- Any reasonable mass investment of the proper counters

Selecting 3-5 int and clicking once is alot of micro?

Precisely the same amount necessary to defend against a mercy snipe.

this is not about interceptors, they're obviously counter for mercies, but I dont think they should be able to fly over flaks. Thats why range nerf would help. They still would get countered by int, they still would kill careless ACU's.

Wasn't ACU on the replay safe? And yet he got sniped. Once more, this is not about interceptors, range nerf would affect flaks effectiveness so they (mercies) will stop flying over them.

Wait. So, sandbox tests only count when they're from you?

Shouldn't I require a "real game, because a real game is totally different than a sandbox" right about now? :p

If you had invested in the proper counters (shields, INTS, any scouting at all, a tiny bit of micro) you would have survived, even with flak being perhaps the worst counter for mercy snipes.

[uberge3k]

Basically you are saying....

Constantly have ints patrolling your comm. If your opponent has a couple of T2 flack nearby, you will loose your ints very quickly. So lets assume that we need room for ints to patrol the comm and some space so as not to come into range of any flack. So lets move the comm back a little.

You need to have aa between the comm and the mercy attack. Ints are great, they are however easily led away by other ints so not entirely relieabel. Lets build some AA. The death range of the mercy is such that you have to stand a goodly distance behind the aa. ( lets just hope a stray arty doesnt kill it ). Lets move the comm back a little bit more

You also need to watch your comm closely and be ever ready to move it to the far side of attack. The amount of time you have to complete this movement is really quite small, lets give ourselves a little more wiggle room and move him still further back.

Completely false.

- If you're countering with scouting, you will know approximately when you should be on the lookout for the snipe. When you do, you will see it on radar, and have time to direct your ints to intercept it.
- If you don't want to have to pay attention to your ACU for that, then you can counter with less efficient static defenses. You can keep your ACU just behind the T1 aa and be able to kill mercies, even with a distraction, so long as you micro your AA.
- If you don't want to have to micro your AA or pay any attention whatsoever, you can invest in shields, which will mass-effectively counter mercies and still be useful for land assaults should the snipe never come or be successfully countered later.

And lets forget sheilds. We will just assume our opposition is so mentally retarded, they want to spend the extra 300 mass value of a shield to bring it down. And while we are discussing mass values. Something to remember, the amount of mass as a percentage of a 3-4-5-6 player team required to build 6-10 mercies.. isnt really that high. Ive seen more mass values presented here that are of zero relevance than if picking lotto numbers would have acheived.

You are working under two flawed assumptions:

1) "Mercies can mass effectively bring down shields." This is false. A mercy costs 300 mass. A mobile shield costs 120 mass. Two mercies are required to kill one mobile shield. So that's 600 mass to counter 120 mass. Explain to me how you, the mercy sniper, can bring down shields while spending less mass than the defending player? (there is, of course, a theoretical limit to the number of shields you could stack in the same place, but not enough to be a factor if we're still pretending we even vaguely care about the mass involved)
2) "Mass efficiency doesn't matter in teamgames because there's more mass."
.....


No, seriously, if mass isn't an issue for the attacking side, then it shouldn't be for the defending side ether. Pile shields around your ACU and invest in nano/t3/shields, and laugh as dozens of mercies are stopped. In any case, the mass spent defending your ACU with no-micro techniques will be less than the mercy sniper needs.

At the end of the day you are watching a pixelated image of your comm and nothing else ( for fear of missing a mercy attack ) that is of little more use than a fast engineer since it needs to be so far from the front lines so as not to of an attacking asset.

Fantastic, we have avoided a mercy attack on our comm and they cant to drops behind your base since the acu is behind it.

BINGO, thats is just brilliant.

Why does this not happen in literally any single game I've played in the past week? Or month? Or longer?

If you want to put your ACU on the front lines to play Rambo, then you need to be prepared to spend resources (be that mass or micro, or some combination thereof) to keep it safe. If you don't want to, then yes, keep it in your base and focus on another strategy - one that doesn't involve your ACU on the front lines.

If your ACU is on the front lines, you're necessarily micro'ing it. Thus, the entire argument of "I don't want to have to micro" is false from the beginning.

[ToejamS]

"- If you're countering with scouting, you will know approximately when you should be on the lookout for the snipe. When you do, you will see it on radar, and have time to direct your ints to intercept it."
Cmon man, lets be real here and stop talking utter shite.

"- If you don't want to have to pay attention to your ACU for that, then you can counter with less efficient static defenses. You can keep your ACU just behind the T1 aa and be able to kill mercies, even with a distraction, so long as you micro your AA."
Hmmm... I hope that I can pick mercies from a good enuf distance that my aa will move to intercept then.

You are working on the flawed assumption that you can always scout, which you cant if enuf aa is presented by the opposition. AND you assume that there is a big sign posted on a radar blip that screams mercy. You seem to think the radar makes a special niose, flashes the screen if a mercy is on it. It doesnt. It looks just like a couple of ints out of fuel or a couple of bombers flying around. This isnt a sandbox where there are just ints and mercies.

I never said mass isnt an issue, its always an issue. The difference is, as I have previously stated is the amount required for serveral mercies isnt enuf that a player can overrun the other team because of that difference. Did I say we were playing unlimited recs games, no, I didnt. Read what I write, not what you think I write. Thats your problem, you just refuse to read. You see stuff, but you dont read it, and you dont understand it. I will be honest, the majority of your posts are too long to read but I did read that last one. Its a joke, a complete joke except its just not funny.

I really dont care, this is my last post. You refuse to listen to reason. I always believed that mercy's were quite easy to counter until Ive seen otherwise. Mercies going straight over aa and ints being drawn away.Shame about those replays desyncing. Just remember that sandbox. One static aa stopped one mercy. You had to micro your comm to save it. And thats in a sandbox with nothing else happening, no other air. Mercies did stick out like dogs balls in that sandbox. Im sorry to say thats not how it works in the game. If it did, we wouldnt be here talking about it.

[IceDreamer]

Triple post... Wow, a blow for forum etiquette. As for who I am, I am an ancient SupCom player, right from the original BETA. I've created more than 50 mods for this game, the majority of which reduces or solved balance issues, and made more than 10 maps for it. I played ranked for a while in the opening days of SupCom, and played bigger games with team-mates for the rest of my time until I was one of the best 'Casual game' players on GPGNet. I moved on to TF2 about 2 years go, since when I have sporadically checked back at the GPG forums. A week ago, I happened across links to the FaF project, which I though had been discontinued a year ago, and discovered it is alive and thriving. I installed it, and I'd like to get back into modding, and possibly playing, if I can find time. The reason I am so into this debate is it's that the first thing I saw in FaF was a massive row between about 30 players, discussing Mercy snipes being cheap/OP/imba. I had no opinion at the time, but as a game balancer, I was immediately intrigued about this, and wondered if it was just whining, or if there was a real cause for complaint behind it. Over the last few days, I have done a lot of discussing and asking of opinions, a great deal of testing, and far too much theorising. I am NOW of the opinion that Mercies ARE imbalanced, that there IS cause for complaint.

Read your first post? OK:

It is just one game. As for "flying through interceptors and over flak", I did not see this happen in the replay, and I have seen it happen at an extremely low frequency - about as often as, say, a nuke hitting planes, or a T1 arty hitting a transport in mid flight.

As replays have subsequently proven, this was incorrect. It is far more frequent than that, and flack reliability falls to around 0% as soon as friendly interceptors are involved.

Now, given the above, I will reiterate the stance that I have always taken on the subject: a nerf to mercies wouldn't be a problem. 95% of mercy snipes would remain literally unchanged, as in the vast majority of cases, the target ACU has insufficient backup to counter a mercy snipe even if their range were reduced to 1. I would be against it simply because I believe it to be unneeded, and will not fix the underlying problem, which is the players.

So wait... The same stance as me! Except for your one objection: 'I think it unneeded'. What a fantastic, game-play orientated reason. Oh wait... No, its not. It's just not. Having said this, I believe I have another solution, one which affects the way a player views the situation, and should make the player feel they could have done more. One which fixes 'The problem' as you see it. I think I shall PM you with this idea to start with though, to save forum space.

Who brought up 1v1?

You did. Pretty much every objection you have fielded does not take into account the presence of four players on the map, and the vast number of extra strategic and tactical problems and possibilities this presents.

If you had invested in the proper counters (shields, INTS, any scouting at all, a tiny bit of micro) you would have survived, even with flak being perhaps the worst counter for mercy snipes.

1. Scouting DOES NOT always work... It is NOT the be-all and end-all excuse. Scouts get killed. Scouts miss things by a hair. Scouts get tricked by a clever opponent. Scouts can find the problem a little too late. If you bring 'Scout moar' up again, I'm going to ignore it.

2. As I stated before, and you denied without thinking things through, in a team game, building a shield means you lose the land war. I thought you would be able to work out why, but apparently not. Let us examine the strategic outcomes. You CANNOT advance to T2 as fast as the Mercy sniper, because they are dedicated to the tech up, and you are not...

If you DO advance to T2 as fast as they do for the purpose of getting shields up, that means the land war is being fought by only 2 players. Assuming the players are equal, this ends in a draw. You have shields up by the time the snipe is ready. You are safe. On the other hand, your ALLY is totally unprepared. In order to keep up with the sniper, you have been unable to provide AA (AA includes Ints in my book) support for your ally. If your ally provided his own AA, adequate to stop the snipe, then he lost the land war and you are dead. If he didn't, the snipe will kill him. You cannot shield him on time, either, as his ACU will be on the front lines fighting, and the time it takes to get Engineers or Mobile Shields to him is more than the time it takes to snipe him on a 10K map...

If you do NOT advance at their speed, a 10K map is big enough that the game is 2v1 and you will push the front line back. By all accounts, you will be winning. Then, at the 7 minute mark, some Aeon Scouts will fly past and take your Interceptors, then some Interceptors will distract you AA, then one of you will die to a Mercy snipe. Assuming four equal players... Let's just say it doesn't look good.

Precisely the same amount necessary to defend against a mercy snipe.

Errrm, no. Just no. A Mercy attack, even with distractions, requires 0 attention to what the enemy is doing, and three clicks. To defend requires constant attention, constant micro of three different AA sources around your ACU if using it offensively, and multiple clicks as the aircraft approach in order to stop the distraction from working. So no, just no.

ShadowKnight wrote:
Put 900 mass into a variety of counters for mercies, and I can 100% guarantee you they won't get through. Especially if they're shields, as it is simply not possible to mass-effectively counter shields with mercies.

I was quoting that I didn't say it... :/

Those other players? Because FunkOff has a #2 rating on GPGnet, which has been scored over several years rather than a few months, and none of the others but Zock appear on the top 10 at all. I wonder what Zock's opinion is?