balance advancement

[Turinturambar]

didnt gala scathis shells have an AoE of like 30?

[Apofenas]

That is an insane amount of shielding in your last screenshot. With shield toggling and/or shield assist literally everyone could hold off a mavor indefinitely. Even with full pgen assist. Especially considering that guy has a para

This amount of shielding is pretty unrealistic, especially considering you built the para where the air grid usually is. You don't have that much space to spam shields usually. The only places where I could imagine this number of shields happening is on gap or 2gap since you have flat terrain and an insane amount of space. I find it highly unlikely that your situation will occur very often outside gap, and definitely not on setons.

Btw a salvation won't break that either - and in addition to that will be even worse for killing spread out pgens and such.

This is the amount of shielding i'd put to a unit which wins me a game if it survives or blows me a base if it dies regardless of map. I only put it on that position to show the spread if Scathis had to fire across the 20x20 map.

As for Salvation... it is hard question. What appears first, the Paragon or Salvation?

also a whole base isnt a low priority target and denying the enemy team most of their bases can win you the game too long as they dont have a para.

When you and your enemy both have game enders, the base IS low priority target. In this particular situation you want to kill enemy game ender asap before it kills you. And in this situation Scathis will likely lose such fight to every other game ender. Sure it may kill some invaluable stuff, but important things like nukes, nuke defs, arty are going to be heavily shielded so Scathis wouldn't break at all. With tests I had you need like 5 t3 shields to protect key structures (can see that nuke and anti nuke were protected by 5 shields each and remained untouched).

Probably if you see Scathis comming you could build some more shields and delay your base being wrecked before your game ender kills Scathis.

But killing factories mexes, pgens and other stuff, this is just same discussion like using t3 arty to kill t3 mexes. T3 mex is very valuable thing, but it is still low-priority target for 75k t3 arty so i'll just quote FtX here:

If I’m facing a dude that makes a 75k arty to kill a 4600 mex, I’d just ctrl+k once I lose the mex because obviously I seriously messed up and need to reevaluate my life choices if it took me until min 27 to start beating a dude this bad at the game.

...except now you use 220k mass to kill multiple t3 mexes at once lol

if you want to kill a gameender you should opt for a mavor (since gameenders mainly appear in teamgames it can be assumed that each side has the required tech in at least half of their games).

I don't exactly understand your approach to the game balance. Do you make this change because:
a) we need great variety of game enders;
b) cybrans need a game ender;
So you assume you always have every tech in your access and can pick which one you build? Well you can take other tech without this change and build game enders too.

Sometimes you are limited to cybran tech. And I think this change should be done because right now cybrans don't have game ender at all. The ability to take other tech should be completely ignored and you have to make this change assuming that you'd have to build Scathis against any other game ender.

I guess we will find out how that works out in real games.

Got to mention one more thing. If this https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/2699 is the newest version of your Scathis change. You forgot to change MinRadius value. T3 arties and Mavor use 150, Salvation uses 175, you kept old Scathis' 50, so it can just deal 40k damage in close range with decent accuracy...

[Turinturambar]

i know that I didnt change minrange and not changing it is intended. also as stated before the scathis isnt intended to be used in a gameender vs gameender fight (like vs mavor/para).

[Wesmania]

Give Scathis a powerful shield, and it'll become a mass exp army wrecker of doom at this point Being forced to advance with it in order to lay waste to the enemy base might be fun, if a bit impractical on huge maps.

[____]

This is the amount of shielding i'd put to a unit

Good luck finding a place at the back of the map for your para and then enough space to fit over 20 shields around it. What you would do doesn’t matter, because it is simply not possible to do on most maps and most situations.

And you don’t even consider the fact that you have to spam PDs and Antis around it as well. Both of those take up a lot of space.

which wins me a game if it survives or blows me a base if it dies regardless of map.

If you build it in the middle of your base you are doing it wrong. Also, the blast radius isn't all that large. It’s actually much smaller than a nuke.
And a para won’t win you the game regardless of the map. Actually, the very map you tested it on – Setons – is a prime example for that. When you make a para, your sides might have been lost already. If your opponents are smart, they will spam nuke subs or try to tele it. Stating that a para just wins you the game regardless of the map is simply wrong.

I only put it on that position to show the spread if Scathis had to fire across the 20x20 map.

Yes, you wanted to show us the spread of the scathis - and how it was unable to break the shields compared to the mavor. Your goal was to show that the scathis is bad in a situation like you showed us. That was the exact point of yours.
My point is that the circumstances of your “test” were extremely unrealistic and that any game ender would be bad in a situation like you showed us, because neither would be able to break the shields if you are playing against a competent player.

As for Salvation... it is hard question. What appears first, the Paragon or Salvation?

What exactly does that change? The salvation is still a no-go since the mavor, yolo and now the scathis exist - all of those 3 are better options than the salvation. And in case you only have aeon players... well if you are not miles ahead by that point and your opponents didn’t just afk while you built your para, you are still dead.

[Farmsletje]

I don't think you realise how ze mavor is supposed to work, so let me try to explain a bit.

A mavors only usefull feature is sniping important structures like enemy game enders or nukes/smds. However, it is impossible to cripple said opponents because at this stage of the game there's already so much eco on the map that its very easy to spread out your power so nukes are pretty ineffective. Also you can instantly rebuild sniped mexes so you won't be at a huge massloss either. This means that without the neccesary map control mavors are bad to build since they cannot win the game on their own.

a para or a yolo are worse at killing high priority targets because they take longer, but the fact that they can win the game on their own is a huge advantage. The new scathis is supposed to be able to win the game on his own too.

[Apofenas]

Spoiler: show

Good luck finding a place at the back of the map for your para and then enough space to fit over 20 shields around it. What you would do doesn’t matter, because it is simply not possible to do on most maps and most situations.

And you don’t even consider the fact that you have to spam PDs and Antis around it as well. Both of those take up a lot of space.

If you build it in the middle of your base you are doing it wrong. Also, the blast radius isn't all that large. It’s actually much smaller than a nuke.
And a para won’t win you the game regardless of the map. Actually, the very map you tested it on – Setons – is a prime example for that. When you make a para, your sides might have been lost already. If your opponents are smart, they will spam nuke subs or try to tele it. Stating that a para just wins you the game regardless of the map is simply wrong.

Yes, you wanted to show us the spread of the scathis - and how it was unable to break the shields compared to the mavor. Your goal was to show that the scathis is bad in a situation like you showed us. That was the exact point of yours.
My point is that the circumstances of your “test” were extremely unrealistic and that any game ender would be bad in a situation like you showed us, because neither would be able to break the shields if you are playing against a competent player.

Alright than. I was just using that test as example to show my point on how Scathis's spread affects its functions to break shielded bases and heavily protected game enders. If you dislike how the test was done, than you can probably provide me a screenshot of real game with game enders fights that suits most so I reproduce base positions and other stuff that you say is critical for this specific map. Than we'll launch test again and look how effective Scathis is? It is very easy to do now since veterancy bar shows the amount of mass killed.

The whole point of using Seton as example was to show how ineffective such Scathis becomes on big distances after balance team member rejected 40x40 and bigger maps as an example. This Scathis is beast on small distances given that it can land 20shots x 2kdmg precicely into the moving target at <200 range. That indeed could devastate bases better than anything if let's say it was built at mid or rock, but than it rapidly loses its efficiency if it has to fire across the whole map so the attack area bigger than 1/3 of ladder maps... wait, are we introducing 10x10 game ender again?

As I already mentioned, IMO for this concept would be better if Scathis did ~2 times less damage with ~2 times better accuracy. It would allow Scathis to land shots more consistently on smaller area, but still keep its role of base killer. Worse on smaller ranges (less damage and smaller area), better on big ranges (lands more projectiles to a smaller area and overwhelms shields better)

Spoiler: show

before
after

[____]

Alright than. I was just using that test as example to show my point on how Scathis's spread affects its functions to break shielded bases and heavily protected game enders.

That’s great and all, but also missing the point.

i know that I didnt change minrange and not changing it is intended. also as stated before the scathis isnt intended to be used in a gameender vs gameender fight (like vs mavor/para).

If you dislike how the test was done, than you can probably provide me a screenshot of real game with game enders fights that suits most so I reproduce base positions and other stuff that you say is critical for this specific map.

You simply take a spot in the back of the map, add like 12 shields, a stealth gen and a lot of t1 pd and antis. I also won’t watch 20 2-hour setons replays just to see if there is a mavor vs para fight (for example). That is just an unreasonable demand.

Than we'll launch test again and look how effective Scathis is? It is very easy to do now since veterancy bar shows the amount of mass killed.

Yes, relaunching the test would be nice, but also unnecessary since it is not even meant for breaking bases with 103920 shields.

The whole point of using Seton as example was to show how ineffective such Scathis becomes on big distances after balance team member rejected 40x40 and bigger maps as an example. This Scathis is beast on small distances given that it can land 20shots x 2kdmg precicely into the moving target at <200 range.

You can’t blame the balance team for rejecting that idea, because literally nobody plays 40km maps outside of some meme games or phantom. And yes, it is a beast on small distances and it raped that mega – but then again it is 220k mass and a mega is 35k mass.

That indeed could devastate bases better than anything if let's say it was built at mid or rock, but than it rapidly loses its efficiency if it has to fire across the whole map so the attack area bigger than 1/3 of ladder maps... wait, are we introducing 10x10 game ender again?

Building a game ender in mid is extremely risky and I don’t see that happening very often.

Rock is considerably further away from the other bases than your mid base – but yes all in all that is a good place to build one. That is in case your rock player didn’t lose – which gets more likely since the air player will probably stop their air production to build it.

You also ignore the fact that it can move at a reasonable pace around the map now. If the spread is too large in one position, you can simply move it somewhere else. That is kind of the point of it being able to move now, is it??

Can’t really comment on 10km maps though I still find that to be an edge case scenario.

[Hildegard]

You also ignore the fact that it can move at a reasonable pace around the map now. If the spread is too large in one position, you can simply move it somewhere else. That is kind of the point of it being able to move now, is it??

Hey all, just stopping by to approve of the re-make attempt. This highlighted point makes for an interesting design philosophy for this unit. In my opinion, it combines the moving ability of Scathis to the optimal use-scenario function brilliantly, however some number tuning in both ends might be necessary. As a 220k unit it should be on par with Mavor and Salvation of course, but this way it would have a differentiating quality that has more depth than mere number differences.

If you are locked out of the possibility to use it from anywhere else but (let us conveniently use Seton's for example), the back of the base, it is weakened for base destroying purposes; reduced to a control tool that simply hinders your opponent from finishing new projects (with this AOE trying to build your first salvation might be surprisingly difficult if you've no shields pre-built in the area. It is the same with Salvation, for those of you who haven't engaged in Paragon duels; it is extremely difficult to get t3 shields online when an area is being bombarded by even a single salvation, since t3 shields scale so poorly with BP.) However, as a perimeter defense structure it could operate extremely well even from this disadvantaged location. Overall I think it does not differ from Mavor in this use-case: both are useless from a single base against multiple enemy bases. Mavor can kill single key-structures, but that is pointless since it fires slower (and misses too often) to kill anything faster than it gets rebuilt. Likewise, Scathis in this same use scenario would be equally inept at ending the game by itself, instead working merely as an annoyance and minor setback for the enemies.

With Mavor you need to have some kind of infrastructure beforehand to supplement it's sniping abilities, such as multiple nukes prepared in one or more silos - otherwise from a single (or sometimes even 2 bases) it is more or less completely incapable of ending games. With Scathis you'd require similar supplementation to scale it's power to the level of ending the game; in this case area (which the Scathis itself can perhaps assist in creating by using its accuracy to clear areas close-by, and then relocate itself): the closer you can get to enemy base, the better it becomes. Perhaps reasonable ability to kill bases (due to increased accuracy) from rock>enemy area. And extremely strong ability to kill bases if you land it in enemy beach/front/rock, which is a huge risk. Here its ability to move comes into play in an engaging way, and might even allow for some clutch turn-arounds by converting a seemingly "useless" game-ender into a real game-ender if you manage to find the space to move it close enough.

Only Paragon works from a single base as a definite game ender anyhow, so if Scathis, even in this price range, is incapable of doing so it doesn't mean the design is flawed.

[Apofenas]

You also ignore the fact that it can move at a reasonable pace around the map now. If the spread is too large in one position, you can simply move it somewhere else. That is kind of the point of it being able to move now, is it??

If you have 2d most expensive unit in the game, you'd probably set up heavily defended area for it with sht tonn of shield gens, SMDs and SAMs far from front lines as your enemy very likely has game ender of his own shooting back or prepares some sort of snipe. So you say that moving such unit from defended area closer to your opponent is a good idea? Let's say trying to move Scathis from rock to mid in order to properly attack air position... oh wait you already answered that 2 sentences before:

Building a game ender in mid is extremely risky and I don’t see that happening very often.

Same as with very old Scathis, you couldn't see its icon on map because it isn't structure that was pain in the ass on big maps. Yet it was so important unit that you could just ground fire the centre of protected area with most shields and almost certainly hit Scathis.

Similiar Scathis had similiar price, similiar utility and even similiar accuracy problems. Now the question, was it used as a unit which has to come in range of t3 arty? May be somebody who played this game back than could enlighten us.

If you have to move Scathis to range of t3 arty in order to use of it, why bother with this version at all? Since maps bigger than 20x20 aren't considered, why try making Scathis kinda-usefull for 40x40? Instead could make Scathis an analogue of T3 arty. Something like one keyser(?) tried initially before it was redone to EQ analogue by IceDreamer(?). https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/26 ... 6ee0f8f4bd

I would be curious how decision making was done: which variants were discussed by balance team and what points were brought in before this concept was published here. But don't mind me, I already know some inside info.