Unit balance vs vanilla FA

[DarkSky12]

Hello, I'm a new player to FAF(have played ZERO games), although I have been watching replays for a while now, and wanted to ask some questions based on changes made to general gameplay.
My only intentions with these questions are to help me appreciate the design decisions of FAF and come to respect and understand the community.
Please forgive my ignorance.

1. Are t2 gunships any good because some prices/builds times were increased and they have less health than a t2 bomber. (I don't recall seeing any t2 gunships in the replays I've watched)

2. Why do t2 air transports have such low health

3. Why does sera fighter/bomber have such low air crash damage of 25 compared to UEF/CYB of 200?

4. Are Sera good? in vanilla fa apparently they were pretty bad and no one used them but now when I watch replays of FAF battles they seem more popular than Aeon, did they get buffs or something?

5. are experimentals supposed to be more on supcom 1 levels of strength? With lots of units receiving health nerfs and such and experimentals for the most part staying the same or directly getting buffed (CZAR for example) I think that has to be the reason.

6. Is mostly everything I said above just side effects of hqs being a thing?

7. Apparently t3 rushes are overpowered? is this the case? Also there's no way to deal with t3 air besides your own t3 air?

And finally to close things off, what is one thing you would like to see changed when talking about balance in this game? OP/UP units, buildings, upgrades, etc.

[tatsu]

All of this is to the best of my knowledge and I am by no means an expert so take it with a grain of salt.

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/353014/212779

that's my big summary.

but let's point-by-point it :

1.) t2 gunships are good. I dunno exactly what you're implying. "are they any good?" implies worthlessness. they're good value for the mass. They do a good job for their niche: exposed targets in areas that have neither opponent air superiority nor ground to air defenses, in these situations they are always better bang for buck then the bomber options. "I don't recall seeing any t2 gunships in the replays I've watched" > well personally I recall the latest Gyle cast at the very least where they were all over the place : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tOjn0-8X40

2.) t2 fire-bettle snipe and ghetto gunship. those used to be absurd. if you'd ever played your tenth game in a row to be sniped by that, you know what I mean...

3.) again super-duper mega-exploited, ctrl-K ing them did better then letting them fire. snipes were suuuuuuper easy. it's a projectile that ignores all shields, how perfect is that? (note that we did add shield bounce for a small RNG percentage of falling debris now) "why the sera one specifically, though???" > well the fact that the sera bombers are so versatile and the best dps per mass in the game as I recall? lead to them being built en masse even in late stages of the game in the face of higher tech, they were great for snipes as-is so you have a lot of them built but what you basically used to have is a exploit button to increase their dps/chance to succeed in sniping.

4.) sera are 1000x better than vanilla, check the faction graphs choice progression over the years : download/file.php?id=16316, download/file.php?id=16299 . They used to be an inadequate solution in too many departments to make them viable. balance changes and mechanics changes fixed that over time. they now have a playstyle that's a cross between the other races, kinda rambo/guerrilla-tactics when it comes to their com and support commander, not so good in navy, absolutely flatline late game air but with that big kicker the t4 bomber and absolutely absurd on t1 with a t1 that carries into late game both on air and sea thanks to their two prized units the t1 hover-arty and t1 bomber. They used to have an absolutely beast t2 bot but that got nerfed down to more manageable levels.

5.) Czar just barely recieved the shield but that's in exchange for tons of regen rate. before that it was nerf after nerf, because yeah it was super easy to beam all 200+ of the opponent's ASF out of the sky (with invariably insta-full vet). the ground beam doing half damage (or is it less now?) to air units really helped with that. Overall yeah, T4 in FAF feel less like the T5 that they feel like in vanilla FA. You'll find ways to take them down with t3 that aren't excessively expensive. T2 vs T4 is a bit more of a hard sell but can still be done in some extreme cases, especially if we're talking about static defenses. You can basically forget about T1 vs T4 (of course sera t1 bomber vs fatboy works).

6.) no HQs are a thing to reduce lag organically. because of not having thousands or assisting engineers bumping into each other every single tick and the game having to simulate all of that rubbish instead of actual fighting units. as I said above most of these changes actually directly tie into severely OP strategies with units and their mechanics (unitended or no) or straight-up exploits.

7.) well now that T3 deals with T4 better I guess they're the odd one out now? I dunno I didn't really hear that this much in the community. a couple balance patches ago we made a whole lot of changes to put T2 more centerfold and do the opposite to T3 rushes, which yes, used to be a really really big thing : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuAlTWXCs0I I really haven't heard people complain about T3 since. it's more people who miss the T2-skip days saying the opposite, but they're wrong, you can ignore them.

what's op to me?

the Scathis. honestly it's new firing technique and mechanism is something I fundamentally agree with.

not so with the DPS and splash amount of the shells. that is absurd. The balancer's biass towards cybran reeeeeeeeeeeeally comes out with that unit as it is.

it's not as if cybran isn't already spoiled rotten. it CLEARLY is the rich kid in the kindergarten play-pit. it has a vast number more toys. That's fine, that's kinda cybran's identity, I get that, but don't give it a toy that makes the "game-ender" appellation cease to exist for two other factions (Yolona OSS never counted it's too expensive for what it does and too counterable already) and give that to cybran too.

balancing is not making sure that one race can do ALL the things the other races can do AND for cheaper AND better. (take note nomads)

if the Scathis stops being a literal game ender and becomes the thing that would make you shit your pants once again I think that would be more than enough.

shitting-your-pants level sounds like enough of a threat to me, why do you need to go above that to the GG level? what need, what feeling does that answer? I'm kinda scared to find out.

[DarkSky12]

Wow! I truly didn't expect to get a reply at all, much less a reply that answered all my questions AND provided links to further help me understand everything! Thank you so much tatsu! Hopefully we can meet each other on the battlefield one day!!

[tatsu]

I'm very happy to help!
I don't see you online on FAF right now, oh well but yeah, I'd be glad. I like to think I'm a decent trainer for newer players (if you go above 800 rating, which is really really easy, then you should ditch me for some higher level trainer because then i'll just be holding back your talent, I am admittedly pretty bad at this game).

[DarkSky12]

Heck yeah it would be awesome if you would be my trainer! It would also be cool to have you around if I have any other questions that need answering. Is there a friending system in the faf client?

[tatsu]

yes. and it has a little plus over other friending systems, it's one-directional and anonymous.

so there is no confirmation or anything you just add people as friends (or as foes, at which point you just don't see them) but yeah you're done. you don't need for the other to confirm and the other won't be notified.

...if he also wants to be notified when you're online or hosting a game he can also friend you at his leisure.

this has a lot of advantages.

BTW this may not be self evident : this is completely separate for the forum and the FAF lobby itself. the two are two completely separate accounts.