If you want your own changes..

[FunkOff]

Test mod. Halves mobile unit build times and factory build rates.

[pip]

Since I have holidays, I tested a lot of things in a sim mod (a big thank you to Brute51 to help me put this up properly) to improve the game, especially the useless things, or units in need of adjustments, and often discussed. Ze_Pilot already improved the game a lot with the latest patches, and I tried to follow the same spirit for the areas that can still be improved. Hopefully, these can be tested in real games to check for unwanted side effects.

General Gameplay Mechanics :
My goal is to make the game more intuitive with its own features, especially adjacency.
I worked on 2 kinds of adjacency :
1)mass extractors near factories, so that it's also interesting to do so, for t1, t2 and t3 mexes, not just mandatory to build mass storages near mexes at t2 and t3.
t1 mex = 10%, t2 mex = 17.5%, t3 mex = 25%, t2 mass fab = 2%, t3 mass fabs = 15 % discount for any factories they are linked to.
This is also an attempt at making mass fabs a bit more interesting.

2) Power gen adjacency near artilleries, so that you do get a significantly faster rate of fire.
Actually, I merely reintroduced them for t2 and t3 power gens (because they were removed) and buffed them a little bit.
This makes Static artilleries (t2, t3, t4) much more efficient (indirect buff) when they have full adjacency. Reload times become significantly shorter, especially with more advanced pgens.
T1 pgen buff (for t2 artillery only) : 4% instead of 2.5% (4 pgens = 16% faster rate of fire, before was 10%)
T2 pgen buff : 6.25% (from 5%) > 4 t2 pgens = 25% faster rate of fire
T3 pgen buff : 10% (from 7.5%) > 4 t3 pgens = 40% faster rate of fire
Example: T2 artillery surrounded by 4 t1 pgens: 20 seconds reload time reduced to 16.8 seconds (before, the bonus was 2 seconds reduction).
UEF T3 Heavy artillery surrounded by 4 t3 power gens : 10 seconds reload reduced to 6 seconds reload.

T3 and T4 structures
- T3 static artilleries : mass cost reduced by 25%, and indirect buff through adjacency bonus to rate of fire
- T4 artilleries and Experimental Nuke Launcher :mass cost reduced by 25%
Mavor = 224775 (from 299700), and indirect buff through adjacency bonus to rate of fire
Salvation =202500 (from 270000), and indirect buff through adjacency bonus to rate of fire
Yolona OSs = 187650 (from 250200)


Naval units
- T3 strategic subs: energy cost = 80 000 (from 800 000) in order to make these units actually buildable, especially the Cybran one which is a great unit even without a nuke inside.
- Tempest mass cost adjusted to 14 000 (half what the original cost was).

Air experimentals:
- veterancy adjustment= 50/100/150/200/250 (from 40/80/120/160/200)
- 20% masscost reduction :
Soul Ripper mass cost = 32000 (from 40 000)
Czar mass cost = 36 000 (from 45 000)
Ahwassa = 38 400 (from 48 000)


Land Units
T3 land units: 25% shorter buildtimes for all t3 land units to make their production require less engineers, and soften the gap in buildtimes between t3 units and land Experimentals.
Fatboy:
- Transfer 10 000 HP from shield to unit
- veterancy adjustment : 50/100/150/200/250 (from 25/50/75/100/125)

SCU rework:
The goal is to make them more affordable to begin with (33% less cost) but also more vulnerable (50% previous HP), and slightly less good at building without the appropriate upgrade (All SCU base buildpower = 45 (from 60)). Then you can buff them through their various and powerful upgrades (some are adjusted to prevent abuses, like too cheap RAS and too fast overcharge, or buffed, like personal stealth and Radar Jammer). With these values, fully upgraded SCU have around the same cost of previous SCU. I ran some tests, and they seem to work much better now, and are very versatile and tricky units.

- Aeon SCU:
Health = 15 000 HP (from 30 000)
Mass = 2900 (from 8700)
energy = 41 000 (from 123 000)
buildtime = 12 000 (from 36 000)
buildpower = 45 (from 60)

Ressource Allocation System:
Mass = 3500 (from 2500)
energy = 60 000 (from 30 000)
Buildtime = 9000 (from 6000)

- Cybran SCU:
Health = 19 000 HP (from 38 000)
Mass = 3000 (from 9000)
energy = 40 000 (from 120 000)
buildtime = 12 000 (from 36 000)
buildpower = 45 (from 60)

Personal Stealth:
Mass = 800 (from 3000)
energy = 24 000 (from 112500)
buildtime = 1600 (from 9000)

Ressource Allocation System:
Mass = 3500 (from 2500)
energy = 60 000 (from 30 000)
Buildtime = 9000 (from 6000)

- UEF SCU:
Health = 16 000 (from 32 000)
Mass = 3200 (from 9600)
Energy = 38000 (from 114 000)
buildtime = 12 000 (from 36 000)
buildpower = 45 (from 60)

Radar Jammer:
Mass = 800 (from 1000)
energy = 24 000 (from 31 250)
buildtime = 1600 (from 7500)

Ressource Allocation System:
Mass = 3500 (from 2500)
energy = 60 000 (from 30 000)
Buildtime = 9000 (from 6000)

- Seraphim SCU:
Health = 15500 Hp (from 31 000)
Mass = 3100 (from 9300)
Energy = 39 000 (from 117 000)
Buildtime = 12 000 (from 36 000)
buildpower = 45 (from 60)

Produces 4 mass (from 5)
Produces 300 energy (from 500)

Base weapon damage = 200 (from 100)
Overcharge rate of fire = 0.2 (from 0.3)

[Kryo]

without testing I would say your changes are quite well, except the Czar and Ahwassa costing less mass. Those two are quite good already.^^

[Plasma_Wolf]

I'm really interested in the SCUs. I'm going to give this a try this week.

[pip]

Thanks Kryo and Plasma_Wolf. I hope you'll have the chance to try it out.

For the air experimentals, maybe the Czar and Awhassa are good enough with just the new veterancy. I would prefer personnally slightly higher veterancy and lower mass cost. It's a design choice. Why did I do this? Because I don't think they are so much better than the current Soul Ripper, which at 28 000 mass cost and 40 xp for 1 level veterancy, is just way too good, laughing at flaks and SAMs. So I tried to find a good balance for the Soul Ripper and adjust the other 2 along those lines. Maybe only the changes to the Soul Ripper are truly necessary.

As for the SCU, it's incredible how much possibilities their affordability bring to the game. They are really rich units, with sometimes incredible powers through upgrades (big AOE EMP for Cybran is really strong for instance, or stealth that can work wonders for sneak attacks once you give it a decent price). One or two of these guys don't cost an arm anymore, and can really help your army, or surprise the opponents with an appropriate upgrade.

[Icy]

This looks really good, I'll definitely try to run a few games with it soon.

[pip]

This looks really good, I'll definitely try to run a few games with it soon.

Thanks a lot! I would really appreciate feedback, and especially replays involving t3-t4, to check out how adjacency for mexes at t3 along with shorter buildtimes for t3 land, new SCU and better t3 artilleries all play out.

[Plasma_Wolf]

I've taken a quick look at the current cost of the base SCU and it seems like I can build them like any other T3 unit now. It's definitely an improvement over the previous cost but I'm not sure how good it is that they can be built as quickly as a T3 unit.

They're fine in terms of cost.

On the SCU itself: I think the energy upkeep of cloak and mass must be lowered. The figures don't seem right: 500 energy/s for stealth? And 6000 for cloak? Add to this the price to just get cloak: 9000 mass (the ACU is 6000) and 1.2 million energy (ACU: 0.75 Million)

[Icy]

Just spent a little while playing around with it in sandbox(I'll try to get some real games this weekend). I'll wait until real people play it to give solid feedback, but from what I've seen so far SCUs really do build too fast (everything else seems fine). Id suggest putting the build time back to 36000 and then tripling the gate build rate. They get a little too powerful when they are that easy to spam for such a low investment in buildpower. (you probably have enough engys to spam them by the time you build a gate anyway)

Could especially see this being a problem with Cybran, as the combination of stealth and emp gun can make t3 land completely obsolete if you have enough SCUs. (I was actually able to permanently stunlock attacking 12 bricks with 4 scus).

Also worth noting that this mod shaves 6400 mass off of the strongest shield in the game, so it might be a good idea to increase the cost of the bubble upgrade on the UEF SCU.

[pip]

Thank you for the feeback. I didn't rework everything, and you helped me noticed important things.

It was indeed the point to make SCU advanced t3 units. A basic SCU, costing 3000 mass, will lose against a 1280 mass Brick or Percival. It's only when you add upgrades that they make a difference. But the upgrades add buildtime, and the stronger the upgrade is, the bigger the buildtime.

That being said, you made me notice that Quantum Gateways build with twice the buildpower of a t3 factory (120). That's why they build so fast. I didn't intend them to be built that fast. That's why I set a new buildtime to 3 minutes (= 21600 buildtime) for an unassisted Quantum Gateway. That way, SCU take significantly longer to build than t3 units, so it won't be too easy to spam them.

As for the enhancement you reported, let's try these more reasonable values :

Stealth energy maintenance for Cybran SCU = 275 (from 500)
Cloaking generator for Cybran SCU
energy cost = 900k (from 1200 k)
mass = 6500 mass (from 9000)
Buildtime = 12000 (from 18000)
energy maintenance cost = 3675 (from 6000)

ShieldGeneratorField for UEF SCU:
BuildCostEnergy = 500000 (from 210000)
BuildCostMass = 4500 (from 3000)
BuildTime = 10000 (from 9000)
MaintenanceConsumptionPerSecondEnergy = 1200 (from 500)

Other small adjustments are in the new version (1.1):
- SCU now have 40 starting buildpower (in order to limit a bit further their reclaiming power to be more efficient than their gun for attacking, except if they got engineer upgrade)
- Adjacency buffs now also work for the Quantum Gateways linked to mexes and mass fabs.

There will still be balance issues for SCU, because they were not much used, and their weapon upgrades have never really been tested before, but myabe it's time do it!