Equilibrium

[sasin]

Hey guys, appreciate all the work! Is this changelist still accurate, or is out of date now?

http://equilibrium.x10host.com/changelog/

[Exotic_Retard]

ok so the changes TO are up to date to the latest eq beta version (and the featured version as well currently).

the changes FROM are outdated however. so all the new numbers are accurate and in the current eq but the old ones are based on patch 3650

if some brave man would volunteer to update them that would make us very happy xD

[sasin]

Thanks! The "To" part is more important anyways . I am really impressed with the mobile factory changes and making the Czar AA matter, those have been ideas I've been looking for for a while. So, I wanted to delve into the weeds a little and see more of the changes. Unlike some, I'll refrain from commenting on the balance too much without playing. But, I did want to give a little feedback.

One thing that I think often gets lost in balancing is elegance, feel, and intuitive, fun play. Mind you, it's a little intangible/subjective, but I still think it's really important. There are a lot of units and such in FAF that don't (or didn't) feel quite right to me, like hoverbombing and othuums (my old thread on othuums which ithilis commented on, I'd ask you read my first two posts in exchange for me reading your patch notes: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=9483&hilit=othuum, the point I'd want to emphasize is having the othuum make sense, although I still think my suggestion was really good).

I feel like a good test of elegant game design is, if I am teaching a new friend, how to play, how much can he intuitively grasp? If a Monkeylord struts onto the field with its giant beam weapon, my friend realizes that thing does a lot of dps = good design. My friend builds a bunch of othuums expecting them to be able to at least go toe-to-toe with his opponents bots, and realizes they are less tough and have way less range than said bots and get absolutely slaughtered = bad design. It's a giant tank, why is its range so much worse than that relatively little mech (the percival). Honestly, we could just switch the model and title for the percival and the othuum, but keep their stats exactly the same, the game would be better.

Also, if there is something I need to explain to my friend, if his response is a confused look, "repeat that," "why does it work like that?" "wtf", or whatever, it's probably bad design. If its "makes sense", it's probably good design. Anyways, you get the idea.

I think you have a lot of good changes, including some really elegant ones (I love the new labs, mmls, constant factory drain, and the support t2 land staying behind your tanks!). But there are also a few inelegant, heavy handed ones that I wanted to point out.

1.) T3 units get less of an HP boost from vet than lower tech units so that lower tech has more of a chance against higher tech.

I feel like you're doing a clunky way to get your desired outcome. I get what you're trying to do here, but it's another random, weird idiosyncracy, and not an elegant solution, in my opinion. I feel like tweaking things like front-loadedness helps balance higher tech against lower tech way more nicely (like the percivals), and if needed you could also just do more across the board nerfs to t3/t4 if you really want to shift the balance between lower tech and higher tech.

2.) The rest of the vetting system in general

I wanted to separate this from that one specific example, but out of curiosity, why do we need different regen values for support and main tank units (flat vs. exponential or whatever)? And why do we need experimentals to vet way faster? Couldn't it be kind of cool if they vetted in the same way, and you could get a ton of value for keeping it alive for a long time? It might be nice to not have people just slam them across the map on suicide runs and instead try to protect them, use them strategically, and vet them up over several minutes. Also, if they all vet the same way, it's wayyyy more elegant. Did you consider using a percentage of health instead of a flat number? It'd be so beautiful if you could do something like:

1%/3%/6%/10%/15% for every unit in the game.

I understand there may be some reason I'm missing why you don't do that, but man, if it could be worked around, wouldn't that be nice?

3.) sACU wrecks reclaim slower

It's just too random. They emit a big explosion, I'd rather see them not leave wrecks at all, if necessary. You're already nerfing them elsewhere, let that solve this problem for you!

4.) Cybran naval factory has the most HP because no shield

I don't care about this one as much, but I'd still think it's a little idiosyncratic and heavy-handed. If Cybran naval factories are the easiest to snipe, so be it! It could make for some interesting faction diversity! As long as overall, their navy is viable, why not? Maybe their ships are very good but they're vulnerable to getting their factory sniped, so as cybran you have to be on the lookout for that. Exciting! Fun! Intuitive! Cybran always has the lowest HP factories!

I'll stop there and gauge your thoughts before deep diving into any other things. Overall it looks really fun, and I'd love to get my suicide flares going! Let me know what you think.

[Exotic_Retard]

hello, thanks for your great review, if only we could get more like this!

i think youve got your principles nail down pretty well, i agree with all of them so thats cool.

first of all your points of concern all had quite a bit of debate about them so its not always easy, but if theres a way to improve something we will be sure to try it out!

1. 2.
the vet system has matured over quite a long time and unfortunately we have come to the conclusion that vet isnt really good for this game. where we see it used the most often is also the place where we see the most complaints, and few cases of positive behavior, if any. things like reducing the insta heal amount or replacing it with heal over time or upping regen into relevancy end up being the exact same problem in disguise.
indeed most of the official balance vet system is totally irrelevant - a striker needs to kill 3 of itself to get even 1 vet, and in eq the vet rate is on average 2x faster.

in the end having gone through several quite different systems for vet, the one we have now is mostly cosmetic. we can fine tune it with a more holistic system indeed i think it could end up being neater that way. But it will mostly be on the brink of irrelevance since we found thats the place that gives the fewest complaints.

if you want to help out with this feel free xD

3. ah yes another hot topic
this is kinda a historical change - the official balance added sacu wrecks in an attempt to balance them because they were risk free ways of attacking the enemy.

personally, i feell very strongly that sacus should NOT leave wrecks.
-its a great opportunity to make them into something thats not just a t3.5 unit, but a true SUPPORT acu
-the argument of risk free attack also applies to any long range unit: t2/3 arty, tml, nuke, and anything else that can shoot from safety with no mass donation. for some reason no one complains about them.
-if you reclaim your own wrecks it does the opposite of the intention, the risk is even negative in a way, and sacus can reclaim each other. so its actually more likely to reclaim your own sacu than your enemy
-oh and the best part - theres a disrepancy in the wreck values a sacu leaves due to presets and how upgrades upgraded manually dont affect that. its fixed in eq ofc, but removing wrecks would lead to cleaner code and a fixed bug in relation to official balance.

this is where this change comes in, its (imho a bad stopgap) for fixing the issue that you can just instantly reclaim your own dead sacus and preserve most of the cost of your attacking army if you are spamming them.

as soon as you convince ithilis, this thing can be gone xD

4.
this is our way of putting some funky faction diversity in. the thing with different factory hp values is that it only matters when you are about to experience an annoying and negative edge case - when someone wants to snipe your fac. if youre winning its completely not relevant how much hp your facs have, and likewise when its being killed by a lot of tanks its also not too relevant since theres a quite hard cutoff point between mass donation and flattening everything. so its mostly a prevention of frustration of being sniped. the other factions have shields but the cybrans get this funky thing instead.

likewise the official balance does the exact opposite and balances out a strong faction with good strategies by making them more frustrating to play, and not actually making them weaker for a careful player xD


i hope this answers your points that you brought up and we will take a quick look over them again, since nothing is set in stone here.

[ZeRen]

likewise the official balance does the exact opposite and balances out a strong faction with good strategies by making them more frustrating to play, and not actually making them weaker for a careful player xD

I think that cyb com with lowest HP, not second gun(mazer too expensive), not any defensive upgrade makes it frustrating enough

[Ithilis_Quo]

Thanks for feedback, so lets go for answear...

About Outhum:
- While it should feel like normal game, we some more and changes are sadly no go, percival and brick are too important/used units and everyone who play this game for some time know what except from them, and then will be very hard confused when it will be different. I agree with you that its stupid when bot is slow with long range and lot of hp when tank is oposite. It make no sance at all. But for some stupid reason gpg make it as this and we cant change units desing in mods as this too much.
About outhum 2
- when you loock closer to EQ Outhum, it have 6000hp long range cannon with same range as Brick (37%) and nearly same dps. So it make much more sance compared with harbs that is less ranky unit (becasue is not tank )

1.) T3 units get less of an HP boost from vet than lower tech units so that lower tech has more of a chance against higher tech.

This is becase of how much T3 units have hp, and how important it is. When striker kill 150%x5 of own mass = 375mass he got 400 more hp. But when percival destroy 1,5x5 own mass = 7500m he got 4500more hp, but whie striker is much less important and have much less he get more bonus, and then t3 got less while it should be much bigger impact. Thb i agree with you, but experience show that people was complain when veterancy was in state that mather more as cosmetic. Sadly, but true..

, why do we need different regen values for support and main tank units (flat vs. exponential or whatever)?

It was done in time when i was optimist and believe that we can have veterancy system that will mather, and where player will have option to have veteran army that will care about them more as non vet army. And while raider units profit more from faster regeneration ower longer bonus, its better for them to vet faster while most likely will die until will reach more vet star. And then tank units are more likely to do less dmg but live longer so its better for them acumulate bonus. That was reason why is as that, but while veterncy are not that important of game it have very small impact. and you are probably first one who notice that there is diference betwen raiding and tanks units.

Did you consider using a percentage of health instead of a flat number? It'd be so beautiful if you could do something like:

Of course we was. But it was bad system, in paper it can sound nice, but then there come reality thats cruel. When we will have 15% of hp by whitch time? by second? That will mean that 5vet t1 aurora will regen 30hp/sec while T1 striker will regen 60hp/sec. not even mention that 30hp/sec regen is crazy hight when other t1 units have about +- 22dps. But lets loock on T4 units. GC will regenerate 12750hp/sec what is something that nothing can stop. But this more as bad system describe bad number.
- why is that system bad is becasue units are not balanced only by hp, there is also range, speed, dps and other stuff. and when veterancy will probit that much from only one of that state, then its extremly unfair for units that have less hp but more something else, what mean it will be hardly unbalanced later. There rely isnt any reason why should aurora profit from veterancy 2x less as striker. System that is already there is also bad, and should be better, but that also (sadly) face point one where are cant make some changes to not face veteranc player expectation.

3.) sACU wrecks reclaim slower

- There are huge problems, main of problem is that while sacu is attack unit and enginer together, it can create situation where are too good. Simply when you have army 10 sacus against X tanks. when first sacu die, then 9 of other sacu reclaim wreack and player lose only 19% of mass but also get mass from enemy tanks that sacus destroy. So in ideal micro on that field will stay only 1 wreack of last sacu. and players with sacu will grab all reclaim from that battle even before as battle end. Of course in reality it not work as this, but it can happend and many time in not that extreme it also happend. Thats also reason why harbringer even when have reclaim have it on such weak values. And while there is reclim speed 2x slower (for different reason) to neglect abuse sacus build power into military reclaim it have this penality. I realy dont like exceptions but we dont found other more elegant solution. Sacus must have weack, while whiteout its too much bonus for enemy that cant reclaim them when defend.

[sasin]

hello, thanks for your great review, if only we could get more like this!

i think youve got your principles nail down pretty well, i agree with all of them so thats cool.

first of all your points of concern all had quite a bit of debate about them so its not always easy, but if theres a way to improve something we will be sure to try it out!

1. 2.
the vet system has matured over quite a long time and unfortunately we have come to the conclusion that vet isnt really good for this game. where we see it used the most often is also the place where we see the most complaints, and few cases of positive behavior, if any. things like reducing the insta heal amount or replacing it with heal over time or upping regen into relevancy end up being the exact same problem in disguise.
indeed most of the official balance vet system is totally irrelevant - a striker needs to kill 3 of itself to get even 1 vet, and in eq the vet rate is on average 2x faster.

in the end having gone through several quite different systems for vet, the one we have now is mostly cosmetic. we can fine tune it with a more holistic system indeed i think it could end up being neater that way. But it will mostly be on the brink of irrelevance since we found thats the place that gives the fewest complaints.

if you want to help out with this feel free xD

3. ah yes another hot topic
this is kinda a historical change - the official balance added sacu wrecks in an attempt to balance them because they were risk free ways of attacking the enemy.

personally, i feell very strongly that sacus should NOT leave wrecks.
-its a great opportunity to make them into something thats not just a t3.5 unit, but a true SUPPORT acu
-the argument of risk free attack also applies to any long range unit: t2/3 arty, tml, nuke, and anything else that can shoot from safety with no mass donation. for some reason no one complains about them.
-if you reclaim your own wrecks it does the opposite of the intention, the risk is even negative in a way, and sacus can reclaim each other. so its actually more likely to reclaim your own sacu than your enemy
-oh and the best part - theres a disrepancy in the wreck values a sacu leaves due to presets and how upgrades upgraded manually dont affect that. its fixed in eq ofc, but removing wrecks would lead to cleaner code and a fixed bug in relation to official balance.

this is where this change comes in, its (imho a bad stopgap) for fixing the issue that you can just instantly reclaim your own dead sacus and preserve most of the cost of your attacking army if you are spamming them.

as soon as you convince ithilis, this thing can be gone xD

4.
this is our way of putting some funky faction diversity in. the thing with different factory hp values is that it only matters when you are about to experience an annoying and negative edge case - when someone wants to snipe your fac. if youre winning its completely not relevant how much hp your facs have, and likewise when its being killed by a lot of tanks its also not too relevant since theres a quite hard cutoff point between mass donation and flattening everything. so its mostly a prevention of frustration of being sniped. the other factions have shields but the cybrans get this funky thing instead.

likewise the official balance does the exact opposite and balances out a strong faction with good strategies by making them more frustrating to play, and not actually making them weaker for a careful player xD


i hope this answers your points that you brought up and we will take a quick look over them again, since nothing is set in stone here.

Thanks for the kind words! I'll respond in more detail to the individual points in a response to Ithillis' post, but just wanted to directly respond here to show that I read and appreciated your message!

[sasin]

Thanks for feedback, so lets go for answear...

About Outhum:
- While it should feel like normal game, we some more and changes are sadly no go, percival and brick are too important/used units and everyone who play this game for some time know what except from them, and then will be very hard confused when it will be different. I agree with you that its stupid when bot is slow with long range and lot of hp when tank is oposite. It make no sance at all. But for some stupid reason gpg make it as this and we cant change units desing in mods as this too much.
About outhum 2
- when you loock closer to EQ Outhum, it have 6000hp long range cannon with same range as Brick (37%) and nearly same dps. So it make much more sance compared with harbs that is less ranky unit (becasue is not tank )

Yeah, I'm glad you see my point about how the tanks and bots are the opposite of what they should be, and also, I agree that at this point it is what it is and it would be "too confusing" for people to flip them .

I do still think that my original othuum idea was very good. Basically, between range 20-35, percies and bricks would crush othuums. Othuums would be in good shape from range 35-37, where the percies and bricks can't shoot back, or if they could somehow get close enough to use their machine guns (like 20 range). But, they'd be more unwieldy and have trouble turning and so on. I just think it would make for a much more dynamic, interesting unit that fits better with its look/style/theme! That said, I haven't played with your versions of these units yet, so it's a little irrelevant. I'll check out how it works in EQ when I play it soon!

1.) T3 units get less of an HP boost from vet than lower tech units so that lower tech has more of a chance against higher tech.

This is becase of how much T3 units have hp, and how important it is. When striker kill 150%x5 of own mass = 375mass he got 400 more hp. But when percival destroy 1,5x5 own mass = 7500m he got 4500more hp, but whie striker is much less important and have much less he get more bonus, and then t3 got less while it should be much bigger impact. Thb i agree with you, but experience show that people was complain when veterancy was in state that mather more as cosmetic. Sadly, but true..

Hmm, so I think thinking about the "raw amount" as the amount of bonus gained doesn't really make sense, the relevant metric really is closer to the % gained, although that's not perfect. I feel you're making the same mistake below as well. Sure, percies get way more HP, but they are also facing units with way more dps etc. All of the numbers involved are larger. The point is, the percy is X% better... it lives X% longer than it would have otherwise. More on that below.

Anyways, if people want veterancy to be mostly cosmetic, anyways, then that could make it easier to normalize the values across all of the different unit types. If we just want small, subtle effects, then it is easier to apply a one-size fits all. I would personally rather see if have some impact, as I think it's a cool idea, and it sounds like you and I agree on that, ithillis. But, cosmetic does make it easier to balance.

, why do we need different regen values for support and main tank units (flat vs. exponential or whatever)?

It was done in time when i was optimist and believe that we can have veterancy system that will mather, and where player will have option to have veteran army that will care about them more as non vet army. And while raider units profit more from faster regeneration ower longer bonus, its better for them to vet faster while most likely will die until will reach more vet star. And then tank units are more likely to do less dmg but live longer so its better for them acumulate bonus. That was reason why is as that, but while veterncy are not that important of game it have very small impact. and you are probably first one who notice that there is diference betwen raiding and tanks units.

Gotcha. Yeah, I see where you are coming from there, although I think I still would prefer a simpler system. Yeah, raiders generally die faster, but I'd still stick them on the tank system and make it harder to take advantage of vet with them. It would just make it all the cooler when you manage to pull it off, and it keeps the system simpler.

Did you consider using a percentage of health instead of a flat number? It'd be so beautiful if you could do something like:

Of course we was. But it was bad system, in paper it can sound nice, but then there come reality thats cruel. When we will have 15% of hp by whitch time? by second? That will mean that 5vet t1 aurora will regen 30hp/sec while T1 striker will regen 60hp/sec. not even mention that 30hp/sec regen is crazy hight when other t1 units have about +- 22dps. But lets loock on T4 units. GC will regenerate 12750hp/sec what is something that nothing can stop. But this more as bad system describe bad number.
- why is that system bad is becasue units are not balanced only by hp, there is also range, speed, dps and other stuff. and when veterancy will probit that much from only one of that state, then its extremly unfair for units that have less hp but more something else, what mean it will be hardly unbalanced later. There rely isnt any reason why should aurora profit from veterancy 2x less as striker. System that is already there is also bad, and should be better, but that also (sadly) face point one where are cant make some changes to not face veteranc player expectation.

First, real quick, I was throwing out that percentage just as an example, not as a final number. More importantly, I was thinking that would be the max health increase, not the regen . It would be a bit much for the regen.

Also, I want to expand that % vs. raw number point from above and try to explain the problem in more detail. I think you're making a major mistake here when you say that an aurora would profit from veterancy 2x less than a striker. Even though the aurora has half of the HP, it's balanced around that. In this specific instance, its increased range allows it to not take as many shots, so it's "harder" to hurt than a striker, so it's hp are worth more. The specifics don't really matter, though, in general, units are balanced around whatever amount of HP they have. Increasing that HP by 10%, for example, through veterancy, more or less increases that units effectiveness by 10%. So, if you have an aurora vs. a striker, and they both gain 10% health, the fight is more or less still on the same footing, even though the aurora has gained fewer HP (not exactly, because a 1v1 fight would take a bit longer, making it harder to kite, but that has to do with the specific interaction between the two units, not the main point here).

On the contrary, the system with flat HP amounts and not percentages gives a disproportionate benefit to lower hp units. For an aurora, 10 more hp means a lot more than 10 hp does for a striker.

This is the main reason why a % system makes far more sense. Hopefully I made that point clearly enough.

3.) sACU wrecks reclaim slower

- There are huge problems, main of problem is that while sacu is attack unit and enginer together, it can create situation where are too good. Simply when you have army 10 sacus against X tanks. when first sacu die, then 9 of other sacu reclaim wreack and player lose only 19% of mass but also get mass from enemy tanks that sacus destroy. So in ideal micro on that field will stay only 1 wreack of last sacu. and players with sacu will grab all reclaim from that battle even before as battle end. Of course in reality it not work as this, but it can happend and many time in not that extreme it also happend. Thats also reason why harbringer even when have reclaim have it on such weak values. And while there is reclim speed 2x slower (for different reason) to neglect abuse sacus build power into military reclaim it have this penality. I realy dont like exceptions but we dont found other more elegant solution. Sacus must have weack, while whiteout its too much bonus for enemy that cant reclaim them when defend.

I see what you're saying about SCUs being able to fight and engineer is really strong. That is what should make them a cool unit! But I think there are other ways to balance it other than the wreck thing. For example, assume they didn't leave a wreck at all. If the SCU's damage were absolute trash, like 30 dps, they would not be worth using to attack, even if they never left wrecks, right? But, where they are now, 300 or so, they are arguably too strong. There must be some value between 30 and 300, where they are balanced, even if they didn't leave wrecks. We should find that value! It doesn't have to be dps, that's just an example. If we nerf their fighting effectiveness a bit, then they are balanced even with the engineering/wreck leaving etc. The problem is when they are arguably the best fighters in the game (at least before the relatively recent nerfs in the main game, I haven't looked into it in detail since), AND they have all those other benefits. That made them OP. But having them be worse fighters I think is a way better solution than weird wreck rules. Also, it makes more sense thematically... its' kind of weird that this super ACU can show up that gets a shield upgrade and is suddenly tankier than a monkeylord.

If I had exactly my way, I'd nerf their gun upgrade, shield upgrades, etc. a bit until they are balanced even with their inherent "advantages" (no wrecks, engineering suite). Jack of all trades, master of none.

1. 2.
the vet system has matured over quite a long time and unfortunately we have come to the conclusion that vet isnt really good for this game. where we see it used the most often is also the place where we see the most complaints, and few cases of positive behavior, if any. things like reducing the insta heal amount or replacing it with heal over time or upping regen into relevancy end up being the exact same problem in disguise.
indeed most of the official balance vet system is totally irrelevant - a striker needs to kill 3 of itself to get even 1 vet, and in eq the vet rate is on average 2x faster.

in the end having gone through several quite different systems for vet, the one we have now is mostly cosmetic. we can fine tune it with a more holistic system indeed i think it could end up being neater that way. But it will mostly be on the brink of irrelevance since we found thats the place that gives the fewest complaints.

if you want to help out with this feel free xD

Well, if you see my point on the percent thing and you're down to let me help with this, that'd be cool! It's really hard to say, because with the new way of calculating vet, I don't know how quickly everyone reaches vet levels. Exotic_retard, you mentioned that things tend to vet 2.5x faster, but I'm imagining that lower tier units are vetting more and experimetals are vetting less? After all, a GC needs to inflict a TON of damage to vet, right? What about percivals? I have some ideas for how I could calculate/estimate it, but we could also just do it with testing. I'd say we could start with:

Max health:
+10%/ +10% / +10% / +10% / +10%
each level, which I think is the same as the base game. But, with your changes to how levels are calculated, where mass is used proportionally instead of just for last hits, we may want to tweak those. Writing it as a formula yields...

.1 * unit_hp

each level

Regen:
Like health, I'd have it go up by the same each level. However, this needs to be more complicated, because you could have regen getting out of hand.

1 + .05 * (unit_hp)^(1/2)

This formula yields (under the old faf unit numbers), 1 hp of regen per level for an aurora, 6 per level for a percival, and 16 per level for a GC (under regular faf numbers). This is a bit higher regen than base faf for the percival and the GC, but I think for t3 units you didn't notice very much vet in base FAF, and for the GC, I think it'll be way harder for him to vet, and also, they no longer get the big sudden HP boost, so more regen helps compensate for that. This way the new system is subtlely different. When combined with your changes for acquiring vet, it'll lead to a more difficult time vetting t4 units, and no sudden HP boost, but if you manage to vet them AND keep them alive and give them enough time to heal up, you are rewarded with a bit more regen.

AND, instead of a milion different formulas, you have only 2. What do you think?

this is our way of putting some funky faction diversity in. the thing with different factory hp values is that it only matters when you are about to experience an annoying and negative edge case - when someone wants to snipe your fac. if youre winning its completely not relevant how much hp your facs have, and likewise when its being killed by a lot of tanks its also not too relevant since theres a quite hard cutoff point between mass donation and flattening everything. so its mostly a prevention of frustration of being sniped. the other factions have shields but the cybrans get this funky thing instead.

likewise the official balance does the exact opposite and balances out a strong faction with good strategies by making them more frustrating to play, and not actually making them weaker for a careful player xD

I get what you're saying here about the HP values being only factional diversity in this weird edge case. Although, I'd push back on that a bit, because there are times when an attacker gets a lot of units in a defender's base that are doing damage, but are clearly going to die (especially in a team game). In these circumstances, a game/battle can turn on how much damage they are able to do. If they can take out a HQ much more easily, that's a difference. So it's not just that edge case.

Anyways, I see the argument that it's annoying to have a faction that is just stronger, but has factories that are vulnerable to sniping. In that case, though, I'd just stay away from dramatically different HP for different factions' factories in general.

On the other hand, even though there's a good point there, I think you could make a case that a factory that's vulnerable to sniping is still weaker even for a careful player and has legit strategy. It's another thing they need to protect and dedicate resources to. For example, say Cybran's navy is pretty damn good but their factory is vulnerable. Now that player really can't afford to let their opponent get a big air advantage. Or, maybe they need to keep some frigates or cruisers back home to be safe. That a risk/reward calculation. Also, it means if they are being driven back in the navy, it's much scarier for them, because if they get driven back just a bit they could lose that HQ. I think there's plenty of skillful play around a navy factory that's vulnerable to sniping.

Either way, I'd say if UEF has the highest HP factories, then sera and aeon, then cybran (or whatever the order is), for all factories EXCEPT navy where cybran jumps to the highest... it's a little confusing/inelegant. It all follows this nice order except for cybran navy which jumps to the other end. I get where it's kind of a cute detail, and like maybe cybran just takes those naval factories really seriously, but I think I'd be frustrated if I was a new player. It's just a little too much detail and too heavy-handed for the goal it wants to accomplish in my opinion. If cybran factories are vulnerable to sniping with no shield options, so be it! I personally like that. If you don't want that to be included in the gameplay, then I'd consider increasing all the navy HQ HPs so that navy HQ sniping isn't a thing for anyone, including cybran. Just don't do one weird exception to your rule about faction HQ HPs.


Overall

I want to reiterate that I really like a ton of the changes, and I really appreciate that when I talk to you guys, you agree about the goals we are striving for re: elegance, logic, fun, etc. It seems like some people before miss those ideas entirely, and it can be really frustrating.

[Ithilis_Quo]

Quick answer, before more longer later:

About veterancy and aurora, you are right and not right at same time. While of course 10% more hp is same bonus as for 10% of striker that have double hp. But when are in fight then it actualy is losing hp and this bonus is relevant in next fight, what units probably will not be alive. But this is not that important. Main reason why this % system fail (and we was testing it pretty long time) was that it was on some units too pointles and on other too strong. Or course that untis are balance acrose on hp and dps and etc... but when you have units that have critical low hp, then it realy doesnt mather that you increse hp by 10%. for example sniper bot 450, with 4 veterancy is 720hp = + 270, while outhum with cost 200more mass with 4 vet have 9600hp = 3600ho more. and that 3600hp is far more important as 270 for sniper bot because it dies to fast.

Units with low hp are extremly volunable against burst dmg, and most of projectile do damage X instantly and low amount of hp mean nothing when its less as that dmg.

On regeneration its even more obvious, while regeneration on GC was too good and on T1tanks too pointles. regeneration as 0,4hp/s on striker is nothing and 85hp/s on gc is too good. And its only 0,001% of hp/sec it create too big diferentes. i will very like have it when it will work, but sadly its fundamentaly wrong.


Ok this look like that longer answer so ignore first sentance

About sacus

There is fundamental question what sacu should be then. If it should be suport unit, of jack in trade or what it should be. My opinion is that it should be units that should specialize and choice role what want. but not get both at once. But sadly as this it cant be that much, while its not only about me, there are mainly comunity that have some habits and etc. And while it not leave wreck then its potencialy much stronger unit that need other nerfs that can easy chage them to pointless state when are not using in specific systuation where this come to play. Ill spend realy loooong time into balance sacus, i will be wery like you you will try them in some sandbox against each others and then with units. When is something bad we will change it, but i dont feel like there should be some huge owerdig even when i dont like exceptions as you do.

Sincirely ithils

[Exotic_Retard]

alright, its that time for an equilibrium patch!

Equilibrium v45

Its already updated on faf so you can play it today!

heres a list of the important changes:

-Fixed a bug with the tempest building units incorrectly
-Fixed a typo in the shield collision code
-Fixed a couple of auto-refuel related bugs
-ACU Torpedo upgrade range is now increased when you also get the gun upgrade (just like the laser upgrade)
-Fixed a bug with the selen cloaking
-Mercies and Beetles were buffed a little to make them more useful against armies
-T2 static artillery has been nerfed a little so its easier to counter an already set up firebase
-Jamming is now refreshed after being scouted rather than being disabled for the rest of the game


aside from this there have been other minor fixes and changes, you can view the full list here: http://equilibrium.x10host.com/changelog/

enjoy, and as always we look forward to your feedback and suggestions!