Is Cybran weak in general?

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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Jace » 04 May 2012, 18:33

Plasma_Wolf wrote:Where is your source for this?


That comes from my historical knowledge about the game. There were times without Jesters, Ravagers, Percivals, Firebeetles and Restorers you know. The Source is long deletet for sure.
The Jesters were a reaction from the Devs to Cybrans weakness on maps with much geological hindrances.
Cybran neither had hover nor good transport abilities for watermaps. So they got the Jester to make up for that. I remember that quite good from a cast when the Jester was published 8-).

Aeon always had bad transports, but most of their units had hover so it was ok for them.
UEF didn't have hover, but they always had the strongest GhettoGunships. And later quite strong T2Transports. For their weakness on Watermaps they got Continentals, BCs,...
Sera... pf. don't want to talk about them, they steal something from everyone, so its quite hard to see their concept. They are just a slime that came out when the Devs threw the previous factions into a pott and turned a mixer on.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Crayfish » 04 May 2012, 18:39

Pavese wrote:The "highest level of play" moved on to starcraft 2 long ago. I guess imba Cup is as good as it gets atm and i dont see cybran struggling there.

That is not true. There are only 2 players (TAG_Rock and Isen) out of 16 in the imba cup who are 'maining' Cybran, and Rock is switching out to Sera for some matches. There are a few examples of people playing Cybran playing for one off matchups, but they are exceptions. Two out of Sixteen..
Jace wrote:Its obviously one of the strengths, the original Devs had in mind for them. How else do you explain Jesters and the SoulRipper? The Jester was obviously meant to compensate for the bad transport capabilities in the early stages of the game.
But the recent patches for bombers lead them ad adsurdum.

Even their T3Gunship is one of the best in the game. The fact that the UEF version is on a even standing is just an artifact out of the old times when UEF didnt have the percival an were in need of a weapon to counter other factions landEXPs.

Yes I agree that gunships are part of thier design philosophy, but they are too specialised a unit to have a greater effect on the races overall stregnth. If they did, they would be incredibly broken, like Restorers were. Gunships have to have major balancing drawbacks or they become a broken spam unit.
EMP and Transports are things that have a much wider strategic significance, helping with many of the deficiencies we discussed here.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Plasma_Wolf » 04 May 2012, 19:13

1. I know more about the game without those units than you do. That game was called SupCom vanilla.

The units you refer to were all introduced with the FA expansion. Even if you are correct about the reason of the devs (I've been looking on the GPG forums since before the expansion was released and I did not see that in it), the effect of the jester is by far not making up for a weak Cybran air transport. The best the jester has done is give the Cybran an alternative for the Ghetto Gunship (without the perk of dropping your LABS at the last minute).

Aeon Transports are also the second best and they are definitely not bad.
This is what T1 transports hold in terms of T2 tanks: Aeon 3, Cybran 2, Seraphim 4, UEF 2
This is what T2 transports hold in terms of T2 tanks: Aeon 6, Cybran 4, Seraphim 8, UEF 6

Cybran is still weak and the Jester is completely incapable of making up for that. As soon as one jester is seen, anti-air is constructed (though it is still useful because of the movement restrictions of AA, but the GG has the same effect and LABs can be dropped. By the T2 stage the jester is worth less than a T1 scout because of the introduction of Flak guns.

Also: my bet is that the UEF got the T3 transport because of the percival, not the weakness on water maps (the shield boat, cooper and BattleCruiser made more than up for that). If that is not the actual case, the effect is the same. The T3 transport creates a more mobile T3 army.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Jace » 04 May 2012, 19:27

My,my are we whiny today again.
Were there any other big expansions for the game?

Sure we all know that the Jester is weak now, and why? Because of some Patches, there was a time when it was the approved Cybran version of UEFGhettos.
And what you need Transports for? For maps where your units can't walk. Which are mostly watermaps! The Continental wasnt a exclusive percival transport for sure.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Plasma_Wolf » 04 May 2012, 19:53

Were there any other big expansions for the game?

No. Your point being?

Sure we all know that the Jester is weak now

Is it?

And what you need Transports for?

Isis is one of the obvious answers. No water there. You don't have to bring up that you can just put AA behind the hills because that is often forgotten and the same thing can be applied with water maps (either with air units or AA guns). Also: If I'm going to use a continental, it's definietely going to be filled with nothing but 6 percivals. I'll deal with the mobile shields and AA in another way.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Crayfish » 04 May 2012, 20:08

Anaryl wrote:Irrelevant - how many people playing a faction has no bearing on it's strengths or weaknesses.

Yes it does. Every competitive game scene I have experienced from RTS, to fighting games, to FPS, top level players will always use whatever is the strongest race - character - gun is. There are times when new strats are found and tiers shift (as you mentioned about Zerg when we had this exact argument 5 mins ago in chat) but we have enough experience now with F.A as it stands to make those judgements. So until more people start playing and winning tournaments with Cybran, my point stands in this case.
Anaryl wrote:It's amazing how little you actually said here. If gunships were too strong people would spam them? Tautology much?
The only point you made is absurd - transports have more strategic significance than gunships? This is not even remotely close to being true. The only real importance of transports vis a vis the other factions is whether T1 [transports] all can carry 6 T1 engys - they can.

There is a very good reason I made this statement about gunships specifically. Gunships have the ability of a land unit to continually attack ground units & structures (unlike bombers that require a 'run') but they have the mobility of an air unit. This makes them in effect a class breaking unit, since why would you bother with ground units over gunships 'if' they didn't have major vulnerabilities. When restorers were strong, they could fight against air, had air mobility and kill ground units. There was almost no reason to build anything else. Other types of unit don't overlap class divides in this way, hence why they need to have more balancing tradeoffs than other types of units.

Yes ofc transports have more strategic significance than Gunships because transports can be used in so many more roles than them. Economic expansion, raiding, snipes, circumventing defenses and radar, evacuation etc etc.. Gunships can only fulfill a few of those roles. gunships fulfill as many roles as the units u can load onto them. You can even make a gunship 'out of a transport'!
Also, it amazes me how little you say and how many big words you look up in the thesaurus to say it (no one is falling for that btw).
Anaryl wrote:I suspect you really want drops to be a significant part of gameplay but there's no point warping gameplay/balance in order to facilitate this. Cybran units are incredibly unsuited to drops - they have weak artillery so arty drops are going to be weak, the mantis is ill-suited to frontal assaults, it's strength lies in it's speed - it's far more suited to raiding and battles of manoeuvre. The same could be said of it's T2 bots.

Due to the Deceiver working when its loaded onto their transports (as opposed to shields not working), drops are clearly supposed to be a major part of their game play, but the numbers as they stand gimp their effectiveness a bit too much (just like pretty much every unit in the game that has had to be tweaked to fulfill its role properly).
Anaryl wrote:You know a lot of the players posting here are on the business end of the ladder - for all your talk about empiricism, you seem to be proceeding about this in a very unscientific fashion. You are blatantly cherry-picking your data.
In summation - some Cybran units need fixing. But I could deconstruct this further - some units need fixing
Oh yeah here's a replay - I just picked up and used Cybran, apart from one game last night vs a poor newbling, for the first time in years. All those things that you said suck won me the game.

I defer to my stat above of 2 (TWO) out of SIXTEEN, until that is until the empirical evidence of overall usage / win-loss stats and general trends change.. Not your single replay from last night.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Crayfish » 04 May 2012, 21:08

I am not going to bother to reply to all your contary replies. I stand by everything I've already posted.
Except to say 'circumventing' means 'to go around', like flying around defences and radar instead of frontally assualting them. Sorry for using a big word u didnt understand there.
&
Im saying 'no race' should have powerful gunships for the reasons I stated about thier very nature, which 'is' saying something.

And no im not insulting you for your 'fancy book learning', Im insulting you for using big words as a mask, there is a BIG difference. It makes you look insecure, not intelligent.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Crayfish » 04 May 2012, 22:22

No don't worry, after now three paragraphs of you talking about yourself, I am fully aware of how effortlessly your wordy hot air spews forth, but please can you stop posting now so that the rest of us can get back to talking about Cybran.

P.S. I don't have time to watch your Settons replays, keep them in the naval balance thread pls.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby Jace » 04 May 2012, 23:20

Although he is right about the imba-cup. Such small numbers don't really proove anything. On top of that the chosen faction is mostly out of personal preferences.
On the contrary i could say: Look! These two people have chosen Cybran and play them successful. So its obviously a proof that they are not weak.

I also think there is a big difference in a gunship being overpowered and just outright impossible to use. Right now Jesters are just impossible to use, because Bombers were buffed like hell, completely overlooking other units.
You just have them back to the point of possible to use. I think that would already solve a lot of Cybran issues on complicatet maps, because they have something to irritate the enemy and get advantage out of it.

On the other hand i don't understand why some people come up with ideas that really upset the balance. I mean..... Hoplites which use just 1 spot in transports? Come on you have to see for yourself how crazy that idea is. That goes way over faction differences in terms of T1 and T2 Units.

And also: I don't see the problem of using multiple transports, you still just need one stealthGen because one can cover a few transports. So its not like you can't do bigger drops at all. You just have to build more transports like everyone else has to. Its not like you have to put a stealthGen into every transport.
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Re: Is Cybran weak in general?

Postby noobymcnoobcake » 05 May 2012, 00:14

The original devs came up with that idea and it was in the game intil after 3603 but the FAF devs "fixed" it for unknown reasons. They fixed something that was not broken and went against the cybran faction philosophy.
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