Balance patch 3696 Feedback Thread

[Lieutenant Lich]

This is supposed to be discussing balance, not making personal attacks, FxtCommando.

I've been suggesting equalizing Titan and Loyalist in summer 2016 or so. The argument was rejected because it made the two nearly identical units. Now they are made nearly identical in beta (wth?) and I suggest making them different.

I wasn't specific enough in my suggestion: the 5.0 speed proposed was assuming Loya speed stays the same. Of course, 5.0 is somewhat extreme so that number is variable. What I was getting at is making Titan useful not because of its shield or its guns but because of its speed. No doubt that if we just equalize the ranges of Titan and Loyalist right now, keeping everything else the same, they'll become extremely similar with the only difference being a shield on Titan instead of an EMP blast on death. That and a slight difference in DPS, which is canceled out by Titan's higher HP. But we all agree that's boring, yes?

But Titan has to become useful somehow, yes? No one builds them except me when the game is nearly won and maybe a couple high ranked players that do it for shits and giggles. No one takes them seriously. No one will take them seriously even after this patch! My replay with Mach was far from perfect but you could see that it took some heavy micro to keep Titans alive vs. a couple Loyas and a brick. They are still a joke!

Making these two units identical is a horrible idea. There are, then, two solutions:
1) as proposed by me, buff Titan's speed. Maybe not to 5 but to 4.5 or 4.4 while keeping loya's the same (or, if loya's decreased to 3.8, Titan should be increased to 4.2 or 4.3).
2) As proposed by Apofenas, add the long overdue missiles to Titan to make it more useful against structures or clustered units.

Look at the two suggestions. Which one seems more easily feasible and is unlikely to have a dramatic effect on the gameplay? Which one is easier to implement? Ruminate those two questions.

Sincerely, Erich von Manstein

[biass]

I've been suggesting equalizing Titan and Loyalist in summer 2016 or so. The argument was rejected because it made the two nearly identical units.

This is almost maliciously false, you advocated for extreme buffs (like apofenas giving the titan like 250 dps or whatever the stat was) in an almost heavily biased push to buff the faction you were and are still conveniently maining at the time.

Now you want to give titan one of if not the most fastest unit in the game (making another mantis problem, which is rampant at your player skill) making the unit only counterable with something along the lines of gunships while just making the loyalist a redundant t3 bot that cannot do anything against uef t3 at all.
The missiles are extremely niche and probably won't do anything besides being annoying, i think GPG made the better choice in removing them, you still have one of the most powerful T2 MML AND a T3 one, can't just spam a single unit all game, right?

[Apofenas]

This is almost maliciously false, you advocated for extreme buffs (like apofenas giving the titan like 250 dps or whatever the stat was) in an almost heavily biased push to buff the faction you were and are still conveniently maining at the time.
:

The change on Titan i suggested uses that MML as Mongoose grenades to sting opponent from range. In the Resign_Smoker's mod it's 50 DPS with goo AOE in cost of whole 0.8 speed that removed its utility of raiding unit.

Games with Resign_Smoker's mod showed that in small numbers Loyalists would still win if they kite main gun and dodge missiles, but that made you keep your Loyalists in 20-25 range distance and look when opponent turns back to kite you and when he turns forward to go in close range. The more Titans you get, the better they became: at some point they would just insta-kill 2-3 unshielded units and go into uneven close range fight.

Pretty sure this is a much better concept for Titan than just-worse-Loyalist.

[FtXCommando]

This is almost maliciously false, you advocated for extreme buffs (like apofenas giving the titan like 250 dps or whatever the stat was) in an almost heavily biased push to buff the faction you were and are still conveniently maining at the time.
:

The change on Titan i suggested uses that MML as Mongoose grenades to sting opponent from range. In the Resign_Smoker's mod it's 50 DPS with goo AOE in cost of whole 0.8 speed that removed its utility of raiding unit.

Games with Resign_Smoker's mod showed that in small numbers Loyalists would still win if they kite main gun and dodge missiles, but that made you keep your Loyalists in 20-25 range distance and look when opponent turns back to kite you and when he turns forward to go in close range. The more Titans you get, the better they became: at some point they would just insta-kill 2-3 unshielded units and go into uneven close range fight.

Pretty sure this is a much better concept for Titan than just-worse-Loyalist.

That makes zero sense. The entire identity of the loyalist is built around getting into the enemy force so that the EMP is able to do maximum damage. All this does is create an anti-synergy that just ruins the point of the unit. Titans can’t “get better the more there are” because the same shit applies to percies. Does everything UEF just autowin after 5 minutes of having your T3 HQ? Does Cybran need to out micro both titans and percies? What is there advantage supposed to be?

I wasn't specific enough in my suggestion: the 5.0 speed proposed was assuming Loya speed stays the same. Of course, 5.0 is somewhat extreme so that number is variable.

Don’t use ridiculous numbers and you won’t get ridiculous responses. Might as well as suggest 19k hp for bricks.

Making these two units identical is a horrible idea. There are, then, two solutions:
1) as proposed by me, buff Titan's speed. Maybe not to 5 but to 4.5 or 4.4 while keeping loya's the same (or, if loya's decreased to 3.8, Titan should be increased to 4.2 or 4.3).

What you’re forgetting is that brick was significantly buffed to be capable of standing against percy provided a few of the percy shots are dodged. Titan in turn must follow the mirrored version of the heavy bot balance or Cybran just lose any feasibility in the late game. So Percy is slightly better siege bot, loya is better raid bot. Brick requires apm to keep it alive against a better unit, titan requires apm to keep it alive against a better unit. More speed means titan requires nearly no effort to keep it alive. Titan will end up costing the enemy more apm to deal with a above-lab-speed cancer unit. Already talked about the grenade launcher.

[biass]

This is almost maliciously false, you advocated for extreme buffs (like apofenas giving the titan like 250 dps or whatever the stat was) in an almost heavily biased push to buff the faction you were and are still conveniently maining at the time.
:

The change on Titan i suggested uses that MML as Mongoose grenades to sting opponent from range. In the Resign_Smoker's mod it's 50 DPS with goo AOE in cost of whole 0.8 speed that removed its utility of raiding unit.

Games with Resign_Smoker's mod showed that in small numbers Loyalists would still win if they kite main gun and dodge missiles, but that made you keep your Loyalists in 20-25 range distance and look when opponent turns back to kite you and when he turns forward to go in close range. The more Titans you get, the better they became: at some point they would just insta-kill 2-3 unshielded units and go into uneven close range fight.

Pretty sure this is a much better concept for Titan than just-worse-Loyalist.

I'm talking about a way earlier suggest, years ago even, were you under your GW alias? not too sure, anyway you(?) suggested a shot damage increase to like 75, which was miscalculated and would have made the titan have like double the loya dps or something for no trade-off. lich advocated it, it's not an attack on you in any-way

[Apofenas]

I'm talking about a way earlier suggest, years ago even, were you under your GW alias? not too sure, anyway you(?) suggested a shot damage increase to like 75, which was miscalculated and would have made the titan have like double the loya dps or something for no trade-off. lich advocated it, it's not an attack on you in any-way

I wasn't here a year ago and never liked any improvements on t3 unit with t1 range concept.

That makes zero sense. The entire identity of the loyalist is built around getting into the enemy force so that the EMP is able to do maximum damage. All this does is create an anti-synergy that just ruins the point of the unit. Titans can’t “get better the more there are” because the same shit applies to percies. Does everything UEF just autowin after 5 minutes of having your T3 HQ? Does Cybran need to out micro both titans and percies? What is there advantage supposed to be?

I told about games I had on games with raw mod that is just aimed to show the concept. This could develop both Titan and Loyalist concepts.

Such Titan could have 35-40 range missiles with more DPS on them, less DPS in main gun and less HP so this unit works more as t1 arty or Mongoose among the Percy force. More like a supporting unit which is not just aimed to kill t1 shit. Actually this concept is very close to Mongoose in EQ.

On other hand Loyalist TMD could be done the way to deflect part of those missiles (or all) back into Titans as a direct counter. So we would see more Percy+Titan vs Brick+Loyalist rather than just Percy vs Brick in specificly UEF vs Cybran battle.

[Franck83]

On other hand Loyalist TMD could be done the way to deflect part of those missiles (or all) back into Titans as a direct counter. So we would see more Percy+Titan vs Brick+Loyalist rather than just Percy vs Brick in specificly UEF vs Cybran battle.

Balance discussion may be endless because there is no real counter units (vanilla engine actual limitation). Most STR games do it (ie Pikers in Age of Empire 2 got a bonus vs cavalry).
Currently, we can only differentiate between speed, acc, health, dps or weapon feature... in actual vanilla engine. So when you mod your unit bp, this breaks balance in other side. There will never be a good solution.

This can be done and has yet been done (like in my supcom mod, you can diff damages between unit class or weapon types).

For example a vs experimental and vs tank titan modification.

[stormbeforedawn]

Why do you all act like people don't shield assist t3 shields with hives/other BP? Base regen means nothing for cracking a base in key locations. Alpha is everything in that.

First of all alpha doesn't matter when breaking such locations. Raw DPS does. This is because all T3 shields have enough hitpoints to survive T3 static arty shells. Alpha only matters if you've got something that does more damage than their shields can take(Mavor vs UEF/Cybran, double emissary, 3+ static arty, etc.)

So with that out of the way the problem with assisting shields is that it requires a great deal of income and there are better ways to protect yourself against them. If you're being shot at, just build more shields as long as you have space. Once you get 30 T2 shields(or 20 vs Emissary) or 20 T3 shields, you don't need to keep building more shields anymore. The arty won't get through after that so you can now spend the mass on something else.

Here are the numbers for protecting yourself against a T3 static arty(T3 pgen adjacent) by assisting T3 shields:
Aeon: 224 MPS 7 SCs
UEF: 264 MPS 8 SCs
Seraphim: 238 MPS 7 SCs
Cybran: 1152 MPS 8 SCs (DEVS PLS FIX!)


MPS=Mass per second
SCs=Support Commanders

So good luck to you all Cybrans out there trying to assist those shields with dem hives.
For everyone else, if you see the Cybrans assisting their shields, just keep shooting at them. They're going to be unable to do anything else.

Alpha maters a lot because your shields should never crack to one arty. 260 mass is trivial when game enders are in play. Into anything that is arty vs arty you are going to be sitting well past that income. So when someone is super dug in and other assaults are not a efficient option it turns into a big old game of snipe the nuke D. Concentrated arty fire will push through. If someone has the mass for 1 arty they have the mass for 2. They are literally a "f*** you my eco is bigger" endgame option. Buildpower assist scales, shield spam doesn't. Stacked shields will crack every time, and I would be more than happy to play some endgame simulations with arty nukes and shields only.

When you have 3-4 arty, you sync them up in firing cycles and swap targets rapidly if you cannot break one location.

I primarily play phantom, and with the typical modset there everyone gets hives because of how hilariously OP they are once you get a 1k+ economy going.

[angus000]

Actually, missile titans are a great idea for several reasons:

1- It will appeal most casual players since everyone thinks it's cool, thus also alleviating the unavoidble cry that comes after every balance patch.

2- It will please players whining about the change in tier target priority, since it can become a good tool to deal with lower tier units.

3- Some steam players might come play FAF when they find out about the super cool always-desired titan missiles.

4- It will help further differentiate the titan and loyalist apart.

5- It's evident loyalists' tmd was thought to counter titans' missiles, leading to more fancy battles between the two.

What do you think?

[moonbearonmeth]

1- It will appeal most casual players since everyone thinks it's cool, thus also alleviating the unavoidble cry that comes after every balance patch.

If we did things because they were cool, Black Ops would be rated.

2- It will please players whining about the change in tier target priority, since it can become a good tool to deal with lower tier units.

It already is a good tool for dealing with lower tier units

3- Some steam players might come play FAF when they find out about the super cool always-desired titan missiles.

'Well I wasn't too keen on all the other feature like an active community, co-op campaign and literally everything else FAF offered but sign me up for some rocket titans'

4- It will help further differentiate the titan and loyalist apart.

Except for all the things they already have that sufficiently differentiate them that is trying to be balanced as is.

5- It's evident loyalists' tmd was thought to counter titans' missiles, leading to more fancy battles between the two.

It can't though (Admittedly this is me assuming you're talking about a rocket salvo similar to a Hoplite) because TMD doesn't even intercept it. And EVEN if it did doesn't this seem like a buff to the loyalist 'Hey so we gave you this secondary gun but guess what, the thing we were comparing you to in an apples to apples comparison has a counter that not only nullifies the projectile but sends it back to you! Isn't that a great idea.'