Nerf / Eliminate RAS option for SACUs

[Azraeel]

yes because i totally gonna build mass fabs when losing


anyway like i said 10mins to pay off theres why building ras boys are retarded. Rambos wayy better

[Spy_Emanciator]

eco options are mass fabs and power plants which are expensive to shield and take up space or ras spam which is able to brace shields and makes for interesting forward production. knowing faf fam they aren't going anywhere. which option is best? technically the 1st one is smoother and faster but the real choice is some of both. Maybe try seraphim style and build 3-4 engineer coms to go off and do your t3 ras combos under shields, then swap over to ras coms if your another race.

Forward deployment can pay off, but you can easily start losing them, and don't forget the ultimate doh where RAS coms start going up like popcorn.... mmmm popcorn.

[RedX]

If your mass fabs can be strated/tml'ed w/e then you have bigger problems than thinking about Ras lads.
Also why the f*** enemy have arty but you are stuck with fucking mass fabs and ras lads?

Why can you not both have T3 arty and trying to kill each others' eco? This post makes no sense.

[Endranii]

Why can you not both have T3 arty and trying to kill each others' eco? This post makes no sense.

Holy shit,your reading comprehension and ability to read in context seems really good.

[Derek]

You got any idea how long it takes a ras boy to pay off its initial investment?

For the record, mass wise, it's exactly 10 minutes.

Compare this to a T3 fab + PGen combo which pays for itself 2 and a half minutes faster.

Deribus (or anyone who understands the math): I want to make sure I'm on the same page. What math are you using to arrive at the 10 minute mass payoff for the RAS SACU? Here are my basic calculations:

For the build cost I have that a RAS SACU costs 6500 mass (not including the Q.Gateway, which complicates matters). It makes 10 mass/second. I divided 6500 by 10 for 650 mass. Then I divided 650 by 60(seconds) to get 10.83 minutes for payoff. Is this correct?

As a side, it can never be exactly 10 minutes or exactly any value for that matter as the one time cost of a Q.Gateway means that each subsequent RAS SACU is cheaper than the last. The first one will be the most expensive while by the time you've made your 20th the cost of the Q.Gateway is negligible.

Thanks,

EarthRover-

[Deribus]

Deribus (or anyone who understands the math): I want to make sure I'm on the same page. What math are you using to arrive at the 10 minute mass payoff for the RAS SACU? Here are my basic calculations:

For the build cost I have that a RAS SACU costs 6500 mass (not including the Q.Gateway, which complicates matters). It makes 10 mass/second. I divided 6500 by 10 for 650 mass. Then I divided 650 by 60(seconds) to get 10.83 minutes for payoff. Is this correct?

As a side, it can never be exactly 10 minutes or exactly any value for that matter as the one time cost of a Q.Gateway means that each subsequent RAS SACU is cheaper than the last. The first one will be the most expensive while by the time you've made your 20th the cost of the Q.Gateway is negligible.

The RAS upgrade is additive the the SACU's default resource generation, so each RAS SACU actually generates 11 mass, not 10.

That said, I neglected to consider that each faction's RAS preset costs a slight amount different. It's only the UEF one that is exactly 10 minutes, the Aeon and Cybran ones take 14 and 9 seconds less, respectively.

[Cuikui]

As some have already done, looking only at direct mass costs, an SCU costs 6500 mass to produce 11 mass/second, which gives a payback time of 590sec (9min51s).
A MassFab costs 4000 mass to produce 16 mass/second, which gives a payback time of 250sec (4min10s).

Except that MassFabs also need a constant supply of power -1500 power/second, which is provided by power generators that also have a mass cost. A T3 power generator produces 2500 energy/second for a mass of 3240, the energy cost is about 1.3 mass/(energy/s). A MassFab therefore has an additional cost of 1.3*1500 = 1950 mass from generators that are exclusively dedicated to supplying its energy. This brings the payback time to 372 sec (6min12s). On the other hand, SCU produce 1020 energy/sec, which reduces the number of power generators to be built, this can be considered as a cost reduction of 1.3*1020 = 1326 mass. This reduces the payback time to 470sec (7min50sec).

Taking the energy into account, a SACU needs only 26% more time than a T3 MassFab to be profitable. If we add the mobility, the tankiness, the builtin turrent, the reduced space consumption and the engineering suite, you explain why it is better to spam SACU than MassFab.

[biass]

It's fun to sit here and do pointless calculations on a game that honestly, half of you have never played.
However, the point:

The obvious: This is the go to, late-game eco play these days. Compared to standing armies fighting over the map for mass point control, the risk/reward ratio leads the sensible commander down the T3 arties / game-ender path. There is much less reason to field an army if you can just turtle up and make these bastards.

Is that OP claims that RAS sacu removes the t3/early 4 stage of the game, which is not true. The stage ends and transitions to game ender stage after a point regardless of the eco option used. Remove sacus and the game will go to fabs and etc, because it's just not good value to end hundreds of thousands of units worth of mass to claim a few mex points.

You can decide what you find fun out of SACUS and FABs, I know what I would pick.

[Elusive]

The obvious: This is the go to, late-game eco play these days. Compared to standing armies fighting over the map for mass point control, the risk/reward ratio leads the sensible commander down the T3 arties / game-ender path. There is much less reason to field an army if you can just turtle up and make these bastards.

Is that OP claims that RAS sacu removes the t3/early 4 stage of the game, which is not true. The stage ends and transitions to game ender stage after a point regardless of the eco option used. Remove sacus and the game will go to fabs and etc, because it's just not good value to end hundreds of thousands of units worth of mass to claim a few mex points.

You can decide what you find fun out of SACUS and FABs, I know what I would pick.

Exactly, after a certain point the game reaches a stage where attacking via traditional means simply stops being an option. It doesn't matter if you have RAS spam, fab spam, or anything else, eventually there will be a point where it is faster and easier to build units to defend from attack than it will be to build units to use for attack.
This creates a situation where the only possible ways to advance are either a massive suicide squad of high speed, high alpha damage units (mainly strats) to take out key targets, or just to sit back and build game enders in the hopes of eventually overwhelming the enemies shields before their game ender overwhelms your own shields.

I cant be sure I must admit, but I do think the game was made like this because of the simple fact that if the game did encourage players to build 500 Percival to fight off the enemies 500 bricks as the proper means of ending a game, the lag would make it unplayable. So it was better to just encourage players to transion to more cpu friendly methods.

But regardless, lets just go on the assumption that sitting back and turtleing is unwanted, how would be best to change it that so it is not the primary option to advance at that stage of the game.
There would have to be a way to reliably advance ground and naval units to attack enemy bases, which means a few things. First of all, some form of mobile anti nuke, otherwise any attempt to attack is doomed to nuclear oblivion.
Second of all, reclaim. Whoever is attacking at an inherent disadvantage as they would always have less mass available, assuming all other things equal. Reducing the reclaim value accross the board is not an option, but specifically reducing it for t3 and t4 units could reduce this problem. But at the same time it cant be reduced too zero otherwise we end up with effectively totally broken Rambo SACU spam again...
Third, more options for precision/sneaky attacks past enemy defences. Transports simply dont work, they are too fragile, ASF too effective, and even with stealth omni-radar would be too common at that point. That leaves porting in, which only 2 and a half factions can do (I count Cybran as half because teleporting with an ACU late game is extremely risky, and even if pulled off, its almost impossible to do it twice, at least compared too Seraphim and Aeon who can just throw as many SACUs as they can build at the enemy). So if every faction had access to non-acu teleport attack options, possibly even multiple, then it may encourage people to not turtle as much and instead shift to building telesnipe units.

In the end, im honestly not sure if it really is a big problem. I dont like how if any game goes on for long enough they always end up the same, but that is just an intrinsic trait of the game that cant be changed without some pretty big changes to many different things.

[techmind_]

The obvious: This is the go to, late-game eco play these days. Compared to standing armies fighting over the map for mass point control, the risk/reward ratio leads the sensible commander down the T3 arties / game-ender path. There is much less reason to field an army if you can just turtle up and make these bastards.

Is that OP claims that RAS sacu removes the t3/early 4 stage of the game, which is not true. The stage ends and transitions to game ender stage after a point regardless of the eco option used. Remove sacus and the game will go to fabs and etc, because it's just not good value to end hundreds of thousands of units worth of mass to claim a few mex points.

You can decide what you find fun out of SACUS and FABs, I know what I would pick.

Exactly, after a certain point the game reaches a stage where attacking via traditional means simply stops being an option. It doesn't matter if you have RAS spam, fab spam, or anything else, eventually there will be a point where it is faster and easier to build units to defend from attack than it will be to build units to use for attack.
This creates a situation where the only possible ways to advance are either a massive suicide squad of high speed, high alpha damage units (mainly strats) to take out key targets, or just to sit back and build game enders in the hopes of eventually overwhelming the enemies shields before their game ender overwhelms your own shields.

I cant be sure I must admit, but I do think the game was made like this because of the simple fact that if the game did encourage players to build 500 Percival to fight off the enemies 500 bricks as the proper means of ending a game, the lag would make it unplayable. So it was better to just encourage players to trans ion to more cpu friendly methods.

But regardless, lets just go on the assumption that sitting back and turtleing is unwanted, how would be best to change it that so it is not the primary option to advance at that stage of the game.
There would have to be a way to reliably advance ground and naval units to attack enemy bases, which means a few things. First of all, some form of mobile anti nuke, otherwise any attempt to attack is doomed to nuclear oblivion.
Second of all, reclaim. Whoever is attacking at an inherent disadvantage as they would always have less mass available, assuming all other things equal. Reducing the reclaim value accords the board is not an option, but specifically reducing it for t3 and t4 units could elevate this problem. But at the same time it cants be zero otherwise we end up with effectively totally broken Rambo SACU spam again...
Third, more options for precision/sneaky attacks past enemy defences. Transports simply dont work, they are too fragile, ASF too effective, and even with stealth omni radar would be too common at that point. That leaves teleworking in, which only 2 and a half factions can do (I count Cybran as half because telescoping with an ACU late game is extremely risky, and even if pulled off, its almost impossible to do it twice, at least compared too Seraphic and Aeon who can just throw as many SACUs as they can build at the enemy). So if every faction had access to non-acu teleport attack options, possibly even multiple, then it may encourage people to not turtle as much and instead shift to building telescope units.

In the end, im honestly not sure if it really is a big problem. I dont like how if any game goes on for long enough they always end up the same, but that is just an intrinsic trait of the game that cant be changes without some pretty big changes to many different things.

The idea is pretty great, same mass amount invested in t2/t3 shields and pd2 counters any land experimental (for fatboys its arty2 not pd2). And looses experimental's mass. And gives enemy mass back in the form of reclaim.

Chess-board pattern ofbuilding of 9 t2 pds + 2 t2 shields gives 9*150 = 1200 dps and 22k shield hp for 11*450 = 5k mass.
So for monkeylord's price of 20k you can have 4800 dps (same as monkey) with way longer range and 22*4 = 110k shield hp (2x monkey). And the monkey is the most damage efficient land-unit with decent hp (4500 dps for 20k mass).
T3 mobile arty/snipers will get one shot by single t2 arty.

Actually reclaim not even a problem: static defences are too good if choke points are present.
Either t2/t3 shields & tmd need nerf so losing static defence would be possible to massed mmls(which cost way more than pd2 + tmd for same dps).
Or t2+ units need more alpha strike or sustained dps or HP so they could quickly overwhelm defences.

Pretty much shields are the problem they are just too efficient hp/mass wise. Giving them much longer recharge time or very low passive defence would solve the problem of defences being "too good". Actually t3 shields are not that mass-hp efficient the real problem is t2.

Original Ta did not have shields at all so mobile army vs mobile army is a preferred method of defence. And if someone build big berta, same mass spent on army would 100% win the game.