@Jip said in Another Novax conversation:

@Dorset said in Another Novax conversation:

I agree with you something dramatic needs to be changed not just cost changes.

I've discussed this idea last year over voice, and I'll post it here. It has three parts. The goal is to actually utilize the satellite layer. This layer exists in the game, but there's not much going on there. Ideally these satellites become part of armies, like any other mobile unit. To support the Fatboy - from above!

Not a ground station, but a factory

At the moment you need an additional ground station for each satellite. This is a little bit cumbersome. Both from a programmers perspective (the satellite is not shared when your defeated - it is rebuilt at the station). As I think it thematically lacks a bit.

Proposal: turn it into a factory. Allow it to pump satellites, like a regular factory.

Multiple type of satellites

Instead of just having one satellite, there will be three:

A scout satellite. Relatively cheap and provides various types of intel. Enables the UEF to have Omni intel on-site to counter stealth and cloak, for example. A missile-based satellite. This would be the 'default' satellite, at the same costs of the current satellite. It fires a salvo of missiles. And those missiles can of course be intercepted by TMD. The missiles do not track, just like regular missiles. They will have some AOE though. And of course, you don't want to use this against Cybran missile deflectors 🙂 . By being missile-based, the satellite is easier to counter: It makes the satellite worse against mobile armies. Just like mobile missile launchers. It makes the satellite unusable against naval armies, as they are usually packed with mobile TMD. You don't need to built shields everywhere, likely just 2 TMDs at each location. A laser-based satellite. This would be similar to the current satellite, except that it's designed to bust shields. The beam is continuous. For its costs, it will deal relatively low damage to non-shielded units (think 1/4th). And it will deal about half the amount of damage against shields as the current Novax does. But then of course continuous.

All satellites will have an energy upkeep. The rational of @Nomander that upkeep is unusual for mobile units is correct. But given that these are the only units on the satellite layer, they can be their own niche. They are essentially flying buildings anyway. All weapons of the satellites also have upkeep to fire, just like for example stationary artillery and the Ravager do.

When a player runs out of power the satellites simply stop firing because of the weapon upkeep. When a player loses the last Novax center all satellites become uncontrollable and unelectable. They start losing health (and visually: orbit). When their health drops to 0, they crash to the ground.

Allow SMDs to intercept satellites (manually)

This idea is not new. It's used in LOUD. I like it thematically. It provides the player with an option to immediately counter a satellite if the player thinks it's necessary. For example, countering the laser-based satellite would be a no brainer if you are also being shelled by artillery.

Now, I don't talk about costs here because that's all too soon to discuss. It's the idea - the theme and the experience of it, is what this proposal is about. And of course the positioning of the units in the roster, what are their purpose and how do they remain balanced mechanically?

Yes please

@Caliber the community favourite player Terarii stopped playing because of this!

I really don't see the problem this is solving at a high level of play.
T3 engineers consume 18-20m/s for T4s/nukes/arty, and 24-25m/s (30m/s Scathis) for game enders. So a huge spending of 800m/s requires around 32 engineers in one place to build something meaningful. I don't think 32 engineers is so difficult to manage that we need engineering stations, especially for a one-time thing like an artillery/nuke/game ender rush.

That covers large projects, so now we can look at smaller projects:

Economic structures: Mexes build super fast, so no pathfinding issues there. T3 Pgen/Fab grids are a great option if you have to spend lots of mass (as opposed to T2 fabs), and they average out to 20m/s per engi, which is plenty enough for the time when you will be building them: when you are just building up your eco past T3 mex. And late game when you have a huge eco yet still want to expand it the fab grids you can split into just two or three groups. It'll be safer and is easy to do. Also since eco takes up so much space, you'll need an unbalanced amount of buildrange to make the engi stations good here. PD/Defenses: These things are already very strong and fast to build, removing pathfinding will just make that easy to do on a large scale, which is not a good thing since it buffs a boring and already decent strategy. This also nerfs artillery a massive amount because you can pretty much always near-instantly build a shield anywhere in your base as long as an engineer is nearby. I think artillery is already quite weak and easily countered by proper shielding, so this nerf is unnecessary. Factory assistance: This is one thing where engis can be problematic, because units require a ton of buildpower and engis slowly get into a formation around the factory. It's resolved by the "interrupt pathfinding" hotkey, and you can write a UI mod to run that hotkey when giving an assist order (GAF did this)/the engi comes into range. I personally spam the hotkey all the time when assisting/building so I am biased against engi pathfinding issues ("32 engineers is not hard to manage").

I'll also agree with what FTX said on Discord which is that it makes the game into an all-or-nothing situation because there is no way to run the buildpower away to save it (a nuke would be devastating), but it is also much harder to attack buildpower.

As for engine limitations, yes it isn't possible to filter nukes/SMD, and I don't think you can make it so you can only reclaim allied units.

Pathing stuff like this is really tied into the engine so there's not much we can do. I think you can't even make ACUs path over units because it would automatically apply that 1x1 footprint to all 1x1 units (all t1-t3). So a lot of it is wishful thinking unless you dive deep into reverse engineering.

I think this would be a good thing as I dont believe players consider the known poor pathing in this game to be a positive aspect.

The bad pathing has cemented itself in the game's balance and micro so for some it is a positive aspect just to diversify supcom from other games, even though it has its frustrating moments.

AEONS are GARBAGE!

If you limit the number of SACUs a player is allowed to summon from the gates (like in, the command doesn't allow you to risk these "student" commanders too much), you can make them stronger than other units for similar cost.

@crustaceanMODE
Recall should be fixed after the recent patch 3815.

@Nuggets said in Siren and Command missile defense:

In an actual game it seems like the cybran cruiser tml or defelection doesnt exist. It MAYBE useful against 1 early tml or billy but thats it. What is even the point of redirecting missiles in a navy fight? You gonna redirect cruiser missiles at cruisers (while not even catching all), which just get destroyed?

There's more to the game than pure functionality - it is also aesthetically quite pleasing to see in my point of view. It just adds a bit of faction diversity.

If I recall correct it was just a production test to see how the defense would hold up in practice. It's up to the balance team to keep it or not. Just a pull request revert away and then it's back to the old zappers 🙂 .

@arran i dont have much time currently and not really intrested in deep research of other units unless i'll see some really bad stats like vulthoo buildtime, i am not a balance team member after all

(coding veto system rn)

Isn't the sub almost three times faster as well? Move speed is super important in navy battle. I've never seen bricks crush navy at all btw.

@Firv, with other late-game upgrades, you get maybe a few minutes of value before the armies become too big to face, whereas billy you can potentially keep using to good effect almost indefinitely right now, sitting cozy under shields behind percy walls, lobbing rockets across the map. The risk hardly increases as the game progresses, like it does for other com upgrades, since there's not much incentive to get anywhere close to threats in order to use it. In addition, because armies tend to get bigger and less wieldy, the care you have to put into your aim actually goes down as time goes on. Plus, you can pair it with t3 which is a defensive upgrade. The change I suggested wouldn't mean you absolutely must bring the com into knife distance either.

Also, it doesn't impact tele billy at all, because in that scenario you're shooting at helpless and static targets. If you're hunting armies, teleporting is actually worse than airlifting because you can't adjust your destination as the move orders shift around plus your fire rate is shit.

@FreadyFish You are a legend!
I'll try it out VS Ai first then see if I can get people on discord to try it out in my games.
EDIT: Thank you for adding helpful comments as it really helps me understand the code.

Also, add an energy cost to the Satellite that increases as the Satellite gets further from its command centre.

Reason: Teleportation range has been nerfed with a variable energy cost and charge time depending on range. This was because unlimited and unrestricted range was too strong. The Novax Satellite having unlimited range is a similar problem.

Credit for the idea: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/7080/satellite-overperforming/44

That is absolutely the case of skill issue despite rating.

Source: me, a 1.9k-2k player who has permanent skill issues every time I try to play

Nobody in FAF has a problem with a lazy way of reclaim, that’s why it already exists and costs minimal apm. What people had a problem with is making the lazy way of reclaim much stronger which in turn removes one of the tradeoffs of apm in the game. For loads and loads of players it is actively better to spend 0 apm and just zoom out and look at the map for 10 seconds to figure out the next 50 seconds than it is to spam clicking for 10 seconds on units, reclaim, or anything else.

I have just created a mod that rebalances the tml.zgdhnbsdhjnsrt.jpg

problems with the tml as I see them;

6k damage for very little cost
no risk vs reward factor, if tml doesnt work you risk/lose nothing and can reclaim the tml
tml can be fired way too quickly and kill an opponents whole base in about 10 seconds
spreading tmd around takes time

Key changes;

-Missile energy cost's have been increased significantly to create a risk factor of energy stalling when making tmls."
-Missile mass costs have been slightly increased.
-Missile damage has been reduced to 2k so that it doesnt kill the reclaim but still enough to snipe t2 mexes
-Capacity has been reduced to 1 other than cybran as their launcher has 4 launch tubes so makes sense
-TML build rate has been increased so that assisting is less powerful.
-TML explosion damage has been increased to match missile damage at 2k, so dont stand near it if it gets destroyed, again creating a risk factor for tml use."

In ta it's balanced by arm having the fark, fast assist and repair knot, so having a necro sacu for cybran while uef gets a pretty slick engineer sacu probably would work out.