Balance Team registration.

[Ze_PilOt]

This is thread is ONLY for registering to the balance team.
Any other post will be deleted.

[Mr-Smith]

I wana be in the team :D

[Anaryl]

Registering (reserved for team details)

- Anaryl (T/L)
- Duck_42
- FunkOff
- Pietro
- VorCom

Anyone else being in a balance team can PM me for details. (rating global must be 1500+ though o.n.o)

Proposed changes

- Adjustsments to the Strategic Missile Sub.
- Adjustments to how Fuel works for aircraft.
- Increasing variation amoungst the nuclear weapons, make them a bit more useful.
- Various tweaks, including changes to selection priority as well as dynamic changes.
- Possible T4 economy adjustsments - including experimenting with buffs to t3 fabrication and RAS.
- Possible adjustments to Yathsou.
- Increase RoF on T2 arty.

More to come.

[Zock]

Applying our balanceteam. Mandatory description of each team member:


CrazedChariot: Been arround this game pretty much forever, one of the best players, much experience with balancing from the various past balance teams.
Pip: Not a great player, but a great observer and got a good understanding of the game. Also much experience from past balance teams, aswell as balancing the Nomads.
Galacticfear: One of the best setons players. Will add to our team with his knowledge and experience about various things we want to change.
Brainfart: Another good and well known player
Zock: And me..



Before I write our changelist, let me write some general things about the balance of the game: from the first version 3603 (last GPG Patch) to our current one 3623, we made a huge progress, and considering how hard it is even for well etablished companies with many ressources to balance a game well, we, as a community, did a great job with this. :)
The game is balanced to a point that many RTS have nerved reached. There are still a few smaller or slightly bigger imbalances, with different opinions on what these are. The list of the things that should/can be changed in our opinion is at the bottom. But aside from more or less obvious imbalances, there are two main things that we think can be improved a lot:



Warning: Wall of Text, tl;dr version: T3 Air improvement, improved balance between t2 and t3 land, various minor changes



I. First is T3 air.

There is some problem with t3 air, that I'll try to explain, but it's a complex issue, so i'm sorry if i can't bring it down to one single thing. :)

• T3 Air ist not very diverse. It is mainly the construction and hoarding of ASF, and once you won aircontrol, the use of t3 bombers to snipe targets. Who gets aircontrol is often determined by only one or very few fights, and then don't change for the rest of the game. Part of this lies in the nature of ASF to counter every other airunit except itself. Part of it might be because ASF fights are usually a "the winner takes all" situation. If you fight 100 bricks vs 100 percys, the winner won't leave the fight with 80+% of his units. But this happens in ASF fights, and it might be the reason for the boring hoarding of ASF without fighting for long parts of the game. Part of it might be because T3 Air is so fast, that positioning and movement is barely relevant strategically and more a matter or pure reflexes.
• T3 Gunships aside from Restorers are pretty much useless, cutting 1 out of the 3 "main air units" off.
• Once your team lost aircontrol, you are forced into a state of defence, because t3 air can shut down any land push, or decide any more or less even sea battles, and obviously shuts down any agression airwise. This easily turns a game into a "turtle mode", not only because a team that lost aircontrol has almost no options to be offensive but also because it encourages to avoid to fight for aircontrol if no team has lost/won it yet, just because of the risk to lose it.
  

Different things can be tried and tested to solve these problems and make t3 air more fun on top. For instance a speed decrease, a change to make ASF fights more even in terms of the "winner takes all" thing, or even the addition of t3 mobile SAM units(provided Ze_Pilot agrees that they could be the only additional units for stock factions on FAF, as was done in the community balance patch). It can also happen that none of these things will really work in the end, but we think it is worth trying. :)

It is just important to note that we don't want to just nerf t3 air, but change it to be more fun and diverse.



II. Now the second change: The relation between t2 and t3 land units.

The goal is to make it more like t2 to t1. You probably know that t2 is better then t1. :) But it is not extremly better. You can still kill t2 units with t1, if you have enough. T2 units give you an advantage, but they don't simply crush lower tech. For t3 this is different, a t3 unit is A LOT better than a t2 unit in cost/strength ratio.

This has the negative aspect that the t2 stage is, if it is there at all and not skipped, very short. People most of the time just go straight to t3 because it's just more efficient. This is sad, because the t2 stage got very interesting units, and would allow for some intense and interesting fights. And on top of that, you could still get the t3 fights, and the player who takes the risk to go to t3 would still have a real advantage, but not completely overwhelming. One stage of the game is currently underdevelopped compared to the others. Now, that sounds a bit worse then it is, t2 units are made after all, in 1v1 more than in teamgames, but in both cases, they are usually only "transition" units used to keep t1 units at bay before reaching t3.

It is quite simple to solve in theory, and just close the gap between t2 and t3 to be not so extreme anymore. It is more complicated in the end, but we are positive it's doable and will have a positive impact on the gameplay.



These are the two big changes, and in our opinion, the two last big problems of the game. (There is another one for me personally, but we won't talk about that in this patch period, and probably never will). If we manage to fix these (and like I wrote, even if you guys vote for these changes, its not 100% clear we can manage it, if the changes wouldn't improve the game much, we'd dump them and go without them) that would be great :)



III. And the list of small issues we would address:
(note: the exact changes are subject to change, the idea behind them not)

• Improve the abiltiy for all factions to deal with Aeon t1 on landmaps, and for UEF/Cybran for Aurora/Fobo on small watermaps:
  -Small nerf to Aeon t1 (Auroras most likely), decreasing their dominance a bit, without removing it nor touching their current handling
  -A jester change to a) make it help with above goals and b) get rid of its “cheese” component of either getting kills, and getting extremely strong with veterancy, of not getting kills, and giving you a disproportional disadvantage
  -if still needed small buffs to UEF vs Aeon in early/mid-game (possible: Bomber, Lobo, Mongoose, other)
  -small speed nerf to aurora/fobo on water only, to reduce their dominance on small water maps a bit.
  
• Finetune the navy balance:
  -nerf sera destroyer and/or t3 sub slightly
  -buff tempest torpedo damage to make the unit itself more interesting, and the diving option especially
  -if still needed, some additional small buffs to aeon t2 or t3 navy (the shield stack nerf did hurt aeon navy a lot, and the small buffs/bugfixes of the last patches were maybe not enough to help them out)
  
• Continue the improvement of underused things of the last patches
  -change to static flak (either a simple buff to make it on par with mobile flak, or a change including more faction diversity)
  -Fine tune snipers, because they are still a bit underused (must not be a buff, rather making them easier to use/manage)
  -continue improvement on strategic subs
  -fine tune SCU balance (veterancy, eventually other things)
  -small buff to sera advanced restoration field
  
• Reduce speed of splitted cybran tac projectiles so that tac defenses like uef ones have more time to react to the splitted missiles and maybe touch other tmd parameter so that things work as expected
  
• No balance change, but an undoubtfull great new feature, curtesy of the Nomads coders (Brute51 and Pip):
  implementation of SCU Presets, to build pre-upgraded SCUs, reducing the huge micromanagement work SCUs have required so far.

[laPPen]

I very mutch liked the way how the last balance team worked. They would have my vote if they register.
Since i dont see any threads about ppl forming a team i wanna offrer my help if there is a team that needs members.
The overall balance of the game seems to be pretty good at the moment however these are the points i would adress if i am in a team:
Break sera sea dominance a little in t3 stage propably by a minor nerf to the t3 sub aa capability.

Rework of uef t1 bomber so it hits it target now and then.

Give cybran a gameender, they are the only race that have nothing. Their t3 arty has the smallest range so i would suggest to make it more expensive but give it the bigge range to make up for the lack of yolona/mavor rapid fire arty.

Zep if u think this post doesnt fit in here pls move it to general discussion so we have threat about forming the balance team.
Thanks

[Blackheart]

Here it is. The transparent and realistic balance-team. This is going to be a massive text wall, for the ones that are too lazy to read alot of text (like myself), just read the "General intention of this balance team". First of all you will be informed about all our team members, then about our general intentions and concepts (Democracy-based system), the advantages of our team (Why you should vote us ) and at last you can see the list of issues we have collected and want to change or investigate. Enough introduction, here is the description of the members:

RA_Petricpwnz: Thriving new player, that is considered a top player. Boosting 2209 rating he can compete with the very best in 1v1, but he also has a big treasure of experience in teamgames (2v2 up to 6v6), aswell as in setons (Where he plays any spot on high level). His game knowledge is not limited to one aspect, he played every kind of game you can play on FAF. His most played faction is Seraphim.

TEA_Aulex: Aulex is a player that is still developing alot, he has passed the beginner and medium stage and is still progressing. Being at 1742 rating, he has not forgotten how it is to be at a low level of play. He is in touch with the not top notch gameplay and can judge if changes would make the game even more difficult for newer players. He is mostly playing 1v1, but also teamgames. His favourite faction is Aeon.

pip: Pip has vast experience when it comes to balancing. He was there for many balance patches, especially in the last balance patch he was the team leader of the balance team back then. He has great knowledge in terms of game variables and the technical aspect of FA. His rating of 1276 may be shallow, but his overview and tech-understanding is greatly exceeding normal standards. He has no favourite nation.

RA_ZLO: RA_ZLO is one of the "old" top players, currently rocking 2210 rating. His game understanding is one of the greatest of every player in FAF. He could predict the effect of changes in earlier balance patches very accurate, and used units that were considered bad to great effect, proving multiple times that he understands things most people (including me) dont. Another great asset is his good nose when it comes to finding bugs and problems, as he discovered bugs and problems daily in the last patch. ZLO is a full-blooded 1v1 player, though he sometimes likes to play an odd teamgame or two. His favourite nation is Cybran.


galacticfear: Galacticfear is an out and out Seton-player. He saw the game in many balance patches, and has excellent ability in judgin changes gameplay-wise for his gametype, setons 4v4. He is considered to be a seton-top player, playing every spot at great skill. His rating represents this, having 2118. Galas favourite nation is not clear, usually he prefers seraphim because of their strong navy.

BC_Blackheart: And at last we got me. I will work as the official leader of this team - if you read on you see that this is nothing more than a formality. I am at 2389 rating, playing 1v1 aswell as teamgames (2v2 to 6v6) or seton. I am considered to be one of the best air players on any map (Like Wonder, Twin Rivers, etc.). I have worked in the last balance team and have some experience by doing that. My favourite nation is UEF.

Goals:

General intention of this balance team (read this if you arent interested in the specific changes, but in the general direction the game will be going):


We want to fix only the current balance issues and bugs. Our intention is to keep the current gameflow and just improving the aspects that are currently problematic in terms of balance. That means we !will not! make changes for the sake of change, we will only do the necessary changes to increase the balance of the factions. We want every faction to be equally usable, aswell as making every unit worth its price. The patch will focus on finetuning and polishing - No massive changes (like last patch with engymod and a gigantic amount of balance changes) will be done by this team. The last patch has shown to me as participant of the balance team in that period, that an overload of changes will lead to new issues which cant be foreseen. Another point is that even though i (BC_Blackheart) am the leader, this doesnt mean that i will lead the balance changes. Every change will be voted on by the balance team, and every member gets one vote of the exact same worth. So this issue list (which is mainly created by pip & me, also some ideas from ShadowKnight were taken) will be decided by every member of this team equally. A change needs 4 out of our 6 votes to pass it. Every vote we do will be made public. This is in my opinion necessary, so only changes that most of my team agrees on will make it into the patch. I dont want to push my vision of the game, nor do i want to push anyones. In some topics of the balance process everyone can participate and give us opinions and feedback, since there is sometimes more than one single approach to a certain problem. I greatly encourage everyone to help us, the patch effects everyones game, so help making it perfect!

What is the biggest asset of this team?

Nothing illogical will rain upon you - a change will only pass if 4 out of 6 agree to it. The team is formed out of varying types of players, including hardcore 1v1ers, full seton'ers, people that play everything. We got every faction represented by team members so you can be sure that your opinion is respected! Also two people of a former balance team (pip & me) can use the experience they acquired to not make the same mistakes that were done last patch (unclear organisation, too many changes, etc.). We are not fixed in one single direction, we will try to fix things throughout the factions.


Specific issues we have found and will work on (Split into land, navy, air and general) :

Land:
- Retuning of the Aurora (The Aurora got great handling buffs in the last patch, which turned out to be too strong. We search a way to decrease its current great dominance in 1v1. Our tech specialist pip has ideas how to make this happen without destroying the handling, for example with making it more inaccurate while dodging shots)

- Finetuning snipers since they are still underused (This could maybe work through making micro easier.)

EXPERIMENTAL THOUGHTS (This ones require thorough testing and will only be done if all other changes are agreed on, we dont want to inflate this patch or waste time doing this instead of actual balance.) :

Make t3 units in general slightly worse so t2 can keep up a bit more.


Navy:

- Seton (the home of big navy fights) aswell as games on Point of Reach or Roanoke have shown that the seraphim navy is currently too strong. We will search for ways to nerf it slightly to get the other factions navies en par.
(This will most likely happen through nerfing the t2 destroyer or sub in terms of damage or health, maybe sub AA - we have many possibilities here, again suggest us something!)

Air:
- Rework of the UEF t1 bomber which is commonly known to be useless, different approaches are possible here (Post your ideas! Longer napalm burn time, more damage, ... )

- Slight finetuning of the T3 gunships Broadsword and Wailer which are vastly underused units (Nothing crazy here, slight speed buff, mass price decrease, again: your experiences will help!)

- Small rework of the ASF to Restorer balance, since the Restorer can in certain situations be spammed to easily and gain easy air superiority (This will lead to some buildtime increase, maybe slight health nerf of the Restorer)

General:

- Slightly reducing the advantage of Aeon & Seraphim on water maps - probably through making the t1 units slower while hovering on water (Magniteudes of 10% speed nerf or similar would be expected)

- TML investigation (This will have some aspects, including: Likely a Cybran TML split missile speed nerf (its not logical that the missile gets faster after it gets shot down and counters TMD mass efficient), fixing the bug that the commander TML isnt
being hit by UEF & aeon TMD)

- Make preset SCUs available (Build a SCU already upgraded with gun for example, makes the micro easier)

- Fix SCU veterancy (currently 200 for 5 star, probably too much)

- If possible, rework the target bones for the CZAR, since it is illogical that ASF would attack the empty hole in the middle instead of the actual air unit
- Fix antinuke missiles, so they cannot fail through hitting your own air units that landed nearby (Disabling of friendly fire)

As you see, this looks like a massive wall of text but boils down to a reasonable amount of changes, which can be investigated completely, so nothing untested will make it into the patch.

Im sorry if im already annoying you with this, but we will need your support! Give us feedback to changes, discuss with us (we WANT! our opinions to be discussed) and post replays (or send them to us in a PM or similar) where you tested things!

Vote for us! Change with us!

[Ze_PilOt]

One imposed change for all teams :
Try implement this and check the balance repercussion.
Try to solve issues with any.
viewtopic.php?f=45&p=56419#p56381