Balance patch 3696 Feedback Thread

[Morax]

I
I'll probably need to get better now as brainless shield acu + percivals or minute 10 loyalist rush isn't as good now, but oh well

In all seriousness, after playing some games with you recently, I think the focus needs to be on learning how to do things other than wait until you have full tier 3 eco to make units. I feel as if you are afraid to push our cause damage until that point.

There is nothing wrong with shield ACU and Percival groups. Their price makes its dominance valid.

[FtXCommando]

I didn't play it yet, but somehow reading the patch notes feels like you are basically castrating almost everything a bit (and I don't understand at all the change of Loyalist EMP).

You can't stun ACUs and T4 units any more with the EMP on death from the Loyalist.
This used to be especially strong against the GC since it would suck in the Loyalists with its claws and stun itself while wasting lots of damage of its Laser since the weapon will continue shooting at the same spot while being stunned.

Orrrrr we can encourage players to not be bad at the game by not sending in a costly unit without protection against an angry loyalist crowd?

There is a thing called "support" where you group shields, flack, and tier 3 units to keep them at Bay.

The whole reason loyalist had this ability is because the Cybran ACU has little chance of oc'ing an exp and surviving as opposed to the other 3 that has shielding/nano.

Please explain this balance decision other than terrible decisions made by players?

I’m really doubting the claim that the “whole reason” loyalist has the OP as hell ability to stun t4 and ACUs is because the Cybran ACU doesn’t have a mid game rambo upgrade. Cloak gives more than enough HP to easily deal with Chicken and ML which is what any other rambo ACU is capable of so I don’t see why that’s even a valid complaint. I think it’s more reasonable to assume that the loya had this ability as a way to make it a slightly more efficient titan rather than the ubermensche wonder weapon it currently is. A t4 can outmaneuveur percies. A t4 can outmaneuveur bricks. It can’t outmaneuveur the FAF equivalent of Rich Piana (RIP) with Usain Bolt’s speed.

It’s total BS that Cybran can rush T3 land and just no-brain make 1 unit that is relevant until game-ender stage.

Personally I think the changes are nice. Varied unit mixes could now have the potential of being effective and people will actually have to read the game field rather than picking 1 T3 unit to make at min 10 and continuing it until min 25. I imagine that in most games in the new patch, you’ll be able to easily win with the same brainlet moves that win games currently purely due to FAF degeneracy, but the patch does allow for an increase in the skill ceiling. Hopefully We’ll get at least 3 games that showcase it before the next patch.

[stormbeforedawn]

What is the tempest's identity supposed to be? I wanted to compare it to other units in a mass to mass relationship but am struggling to do so.

The tempest has 4 functions. Anti surface, anti sub and siege, and having the BP of 6 t3 engi.

For anti surface it's devastating into clumped spam with a few of them while kiting. Absolutely murders t2/t1 spam if you can keep it off the slow ship long enough.

Into t3 it is pretty useless, as its shot's are half the speed of a battleships. Also, for 2.6x the mass it does 1.6x the damage of BS from other fac and only has 1.25x the hp one to one, much less mass to mass.

For base assault a summit is better clearly, but even just looking at aeon's tools the torrent is incredible when mixed in with a bit of direct fire to pop massed tmd.

For sub defense it is stupid strong. It beats every sub in the game mass for mass without using it's main cannon. Depth charges win. UEF mixing shields in does defeat mass for mass with t1 or 4 subs, but that really is not surprise and is correct for balance clearly. All of this is irrelevant because of the Exodus. It has another order of magnitude of damage vs subs mass for mass and the same range as t2 subs.

The TLDR is the tempest has nothing to make you build it unless you have a paragon. And now that you take the BP tweak, even that isn't worth it, it would be better to assist factories in literally every single scenario.

There are a few ways I could see the tempest being useful. More splash range to make it even scarier into spam, shot speeds faster than a BS shot to prevent kiting so it doesn't lose 1v1 to micro, or a health bonus to make it so it can at least duke it out with other BS if they are unmicroed.

Some of those options are very toxic because more HP means it will rape subs even harder, and at some HP value it becomes a must build unit. Shot speed doesn't really fix the core problem of low HP per mass and massive overkill, but could maybe work with RoF changes. Kills the core identity of the ship. This leaves upping the splash even more. 8-9 range on the splash means it would be a horrific weapon parked on a beach, and give the aeon another tool to deal with small ship spam (frigs and hover seriously ruin aeon compared to other factions). This would cement the T4 as a direct fire base killer while still leaving the torrent its niche range and sniping ability. This leaves small tweaks to shot speed and HP available to balance the T4 stronger or weaker and gives the T4 a purpose.

I would love someone on the balance team to punt a scenario out where building the current groundfireable-even-when-submerged T4 is correct, pathing issues aside. There are a few groundfire commands that make the unit usually go where it is pointed.

[Yolo-]

Gala's idea of buffing the Tempest was to improve its diving depth:

Tempest: elevation from -5 -> -5.8 (to avoid all battleship ground fire, highest possible before it can be ground fired, other tempest and ground fire strat still can however)

Currently Tempest is not a mass efficient unit, and this small change should give it much greater flexibility and durability in the t3 navy wars it is most often found in.

With this he wanted to improve the terrible Aeon T3 navy.

Anyway, the buildtime changes to the naval T4s are terrible and must not make it into the next patch.

[stormbeforedawn]

I THINK adjusting the diving depth fucks it even harder on the mobility department. I don't think that can happen without a model rescaling, which could help pathing tremendously...

This would leave it as a tremendous t4 sub with bombardment capabilities, but still doesn't change that it has 2.5 ms, so it still cant kite and is beaten by half its mass in BS with no meaningful range advantage except over any but aeon BS, which are already fast AF.

The unit literally cannot kite because it can only reliably be moved with attack move.

[Wesmania]

Cloak gives more than enough HP to easily deal with Chicken and ML which is what any other rambo ACU is capable of so I don’t see why that’s even a valid complaint.

Cloak energy cost is at least five times the UEF shield cost, for half the health and cloaking which is meaningless against a GC of T3 scouts. It's nowhere near sufficient to take on experimentals the way other factions can and it's way too expensive to make as a hasty defense against one. Right now Cybrans have no quick defense option against an enemy experimental bumrushing their base, save for perhaps spending 20k mass for a deterrent like a spider.

[Yolo-]

I THINK adjusting the diving depth fucks it even harder on the mobility department. I don't think that can happen without a model rescaling, which could help pathing tremendously...

This would leave it as a tremendous t4 sub with bombardment capabilities, but still doesn't change that it has 2.5 ms, so it still cant kite and is beaten by half its mass in BS with no meaningful range advantage except over any but aeon BS, which are already fast AF.

The unit literally cannot kite because it can only reliably be moved with attack move.

Well first of all he balanced it like that only for setons, in his balance mod, so I have no idea how it would work out on other maps regarding the water depth.

The idea behind the elevation change was to give it a better ability to escape, when it is being targeted. With that Tempests were supposed to submerge when enemy bs attack them, retreat out of range, and then emerge in a safe distance to attack again. As far as I understand, his vision of a late game naval fight as aeon would be making some Omen and then start making more and more Tempests, retreating and then attacking with them again, until he has a critical mass of Tempests to win against the opponent. The omen battleships were supposed to be meatshields to gain time.

I am not entirely convinced by this (that's also why I made my thread about why the Omen needs a range buff), but it is worth a try for sure.

Also 22 more range is quite meaningful, imo. And yeah, there should be done something about its movement problems, it's annoying as f*** that it gets stuck in random stuff sometimes.

[Farmsletje]

Right now Cybrans have no quick defense option against an enemy experimental bumrushing their base, save for perhaps spending 20k mass for a deterrent like a spider.

i hope this is a joke

[FtXCommando]

Cloak gives more than enough HP to easily deal with Chicken and ML which is what any other rambo ACU is capable of so I don’t see why that’s even a valid complaint.

Cloak energy cost is at least five times the UEF shield cost, for half the health and cloaking which is meaningless against a GC of T3 scouts. It's nowhere near sufficient to take on experimentals the way other factions can and it's way too expensive to make as a hasty defense against one. Right now Cybrans have no quick defense option against an enemy experimental bumrushing their base, save for perhaps spending 20k mass for a deterrent like a spider.

No Rambo ACU is taking on a GC. 5-vet Seraphim double gun/double nano will have a difficult time taking on a GC. Really the only experimental that this logic of "other factions just need 1 acu upgrade to win!" exists is with an unsupported ML. It could also happen with a SEVERELY mismanaged Chicken too, but that's putting your faith in your enemy's inability rather than your own capability.

Great news, the new patches addresses these concerns. T4s have been given a huge build time increase so you have enough time to scout a T4 and not have to worry about it bumrushing your base. If you want to stop an experimental, make your own or invest in bricks. It's dumb as shit that a t3 bot was so multipurpose that it countered T1-T4 fairly effectively.

Congratulations, Cybran players can now have the same "oh f***" feeling in their gut when they see a t4 and haven't prepared at all rather than just shrugging and diverting some of the 100 loya they were already making across the map.

[Wesmania]

No Rambo ACU is taking on a GC. 5-vet Seraphim double gun/double nano will have a difficult time taking on a GC.

I never said you can send a rambo ACU alone against an experimental, but I've seen enough situations where a rambo ACU shrugged off exps after other stuff took them down to half health. Having to quickly make only half as much mercies / percies / sniper bots or whatever to be safe is a big deal.

Also, since Cybran shields take babysitting to upgrade to a reasonable level, you can't just spam them up with a T3 ACU for extra health against an exp, so here's another disadvantage for you that ties into this.