I can think of only 2 situations that I would build t1 subs in:

When there are quite a few frigates out on the map and building a sub instead of frigates won't lose me the navy fight nor will I miss an opportunity to raid and thus the sub can be annoying and over time pay for itself. When there are a lot of naval mexes eg. Tag_Craftious
1 situation is rare and very map dependent so we shouldn't give it too much weight, the other shows us that t1 subs compared to frigates behave a little bit like higher tech units. You only get them when there are a lot of frigates ("lower tech units") on the field already and thus making a sub instead of a frigate won't have big enough negative effect, the problem here is that the window for t1 subs is very short, usually at a time when there are 10+ frigates and I could consider making a sub the t2 air stage is only a minute or two away and when torp bombers get out on the field there is no point in building t1 subs at all.
Note: I am not linking any replay in particular, but that's how I play on basically every 20x20 naval map and these are the reasons why.
Conclusion: The time window during which making t1 subs is good is too short, I think that one way to extend it would be to make them significantly cheaper (obviously would need to adjust other stats as well but overall it should still be a buff in stats [eg. cost reduction of 40%, Raw power reduction of say 20%]) this way you could get them out faster and also torp bombers while stile being an effective counter wouldn't be as brutal (one pass would kill like eg. 200 mass instead of 360).

Can you post some actual proof of what you are talking about? A replay or a video. Basically impossible to indentify what really happened from what you describe.

@FtXCommando said in Reclaim:

You don't bring engies with you on tiny raids. They are slow. Raids are fast. You bring engies with you on risky, more thought out attacks into expansions so you can scoop up either battlefield mass or build up a base to sit on. Didn't ignore this element at all, in fact I assume it's a given in competent play. I didn't consider it because it's irrelevant to the topic. The rest of your first paragraphs are just saying what I said before, well, for the most part.

Bringing up aspects of opportunity cost and delay are muddying the discussion to pointlessness and begs a specific replay. No one can tell you what any of that would be without seeing specific game conditions. I generally don't think the loss in mass income is that significant, often you can just use the dead t2 mex reclaim to go boost safer t3 mexes instead. Like are you saying 1 percy killing 1 t2 mex is worthwhile or what? You can make an argument for 2 I guess, that's still a massive ask.

Exponential economy doesn't really matter. If it required exponential ground to cover, then t3 raids should be totally viable all the time. It doesn't. Exponential economy in fact seems to cover less ground than the initial ground you need to maintain relevancy in the t1/t2 stage. No one cares about losing your t1 mexes at front when you have 8 t3 mexes at home.

Firebases are basically what I covered. You have concentrated bp around the relevant areas of your current economy and will have streams of units going to the fronts that should be able to stop or cut off raids. If they can't, you always have air. If air takes too long, emergency pd can come up and finish up the raiding units or force them to stop for your units to finish them off.

Defense is strong because reclaim is high and you are guaranteed good returns from enemy units. Lower returns and defense gets the range of snowball reduced. Assuming attack failure. I still don't think a reclaim nerf means you will see more risky attacks that do fail, just as you do not see more risky navy fights because reclaim is 40% in water. Instead you might see some more abuse of titan/loya early on.

Percy is just a unit to pick because it's what gains the most extreme benefit from the reclaim reduction. Raiding parties of loya/titan can be used too. I don't really care. By the way, I do think loya/titan raiding groups are viable as they are now. This reclaim reduction will make them MORE viable but the reduction in mass left isn't extreme enough to expect some meta shift. Unless of course a bunch of high rated dudes start doing it because of the reclaim nerf and now everyone has to go do it.

Badlands is a bad teamgame map beyond 2v2, it's the definition of 1 note. It's the anti-astro as a 4v4 map. Open palms also sucks above 2v2 because the entire bo is built around cheesing a crush by min 2 since you're basically as close to the enemy as you are on winter duel. The other maps you mentioned as super popular also are meh for 4v4, but they're certainly better than these two.

It's great that you're my rating. Maybe join a high rated teamgame then. Don't really understand all these paragraphs about aggro stuff. The value of raids as an aggressive player typically revolve around the structures left behind by the defending player (pd, mexes, factories, whatever). This change really influences nothing on the all in push that you seem to be basing your post on here. The entire point is making minor jabs with t3 land viable.

Exponential economy means the value of a single mex is less, meaning that the cost of rebuilding a raided mex may be greater than the delay time in your game ender.

Engi has roughly same speed as a Percy, so you can bring them along? Also sending engi to follow a raid is normal. As it can reclaim retreating units that die as well. An engi only need reclaim 50 mass to break even.

Defense isn't strong because of reclaim, defense is strong because of the cost efficiency of shielded PD, which is why in many survival maps people don't even bother with reclaim or reclaim itself is disabled and vamp is disabled.

Also a macro player here with 0 micro skills.

Pointing out how reclaim is inherently advantageous to the attacker
It is the attacker who decided where the battle is and therefore where the reclaim fields are, and it is the attacker who will benefit if the attacker isn't making bad choices.

So do people like the bomber changes? In my games so far I've seen sooo many bombers spammed, it's kind of nuts.

The spool up time would help with op shield assist too. Today lost a game where a mavor got built under t3 seraphrim shileds with some rediculous amount of hives assisting shields. We had 2 dukes, 6 satellites, and assorted battleship and cruiser fire all hitting together but the hives were too much. Every shield we broke, it instantly was able to brace another shield with sooo stupidly much build power. No other faction can pull that off unless your running around with 8+ engineer scu's or something.

Change something.

Those units you mentioned dont really slow down the sim speed, you would get almost no benefit from it.

To cut off what is absolutely sure to cause a little argument right now.. you kinda did mention Ftx, @Psions.

And to reiterate my colleague from a different thread, please keep the discussion to balance and hows and whys, not assertions or irrelevant ad hominem etc.

I'm actually in agreement that a misclick can or will instantly decide the game. I just don't think it warrants removing shift-g all by itself because it is relatively easy to prevent unless you aren't paying attention or don't make some egregious mistake.

edit: And I don't want to sound elitist by this post. I'm not trying to say "Oh everyone's just bad it's easy to counter just git gud". I just think that there are decent ways to counter it that means most people shouldn't die to all in shift-g's much after playing against it once or twice.

Funny thing "faction diversity" in most cases can be finded in post about nerfing cybran some way.

The DPS of a seraphim ghetto would still be roughly 20% lower, for about the same cost, as other factions (slightly less mass cost, but more build time required to get 8 selens out because of roll-off time, and sera transports take longer to load). If you landed the transport before it died, and had 8 selens running around enemy territory, all hiding themselves and giving free radar, that might offset the downsides of your early seraphim ghetto not having as much DPS. Even a low-dps ghetto could still effectively kill off engineers, it just wouldn't be as good for situations where you want to fire continuously.

If we messed with the balance to make a seraphim ghetto more feasible (such as increasing cost + dps of selens) I think that would be fine. I like seraphim and i like selens so maybe I'm biased here. I wouldn't mind if they were 10% better at killing engineers even if i had to pay a little bit more for them.

Edited by removing the tank changes... I actually have no problem with the current tank balance, mantis has the upper edge over the Striker but that plays into the cybran rush tactics and rewards a early t2 push for uef since they have a much better t2... No reason tanks all need to be perfectly equal...

She’s off the rails mate

Just remove seraphmi, cybran and aeon from the game. All hail the uef mirror matchup. Perfect balance.

Mech marines are based. Its like a mini peewee.

Yeah, good enough for now, in the future someone can redo it so the animation speeds up if you assist it.

Interesting idea.

A lot of maps have been made already without taking this into account, so it might break balance on some maps. But my guess is that it's not too much of an issue.

Ah too bad. Thanks for the reply anyway.

Cybran were supposed to be about stealth, mobility, viciousness, and adaptability/multipurpose. It's why so many Cybran units have torpedoes or the t1/t3 anti-air can shoot the ground. Their original name was "Recyclers," where recycling is just another word for reclaiming. Zero sentimentality, just totally practical, often inspired by bugs whereas UEF is obviously inspired by modern US military.

Aeon were supposed to be severe, extreme single-minded zealots, fitting in with their "religious fanatic" background. Hence why their units often do exactly 1 thing really really well but are missing basic stuff, like frigates and destroyers not having anti-air. Oblivion turrets fire slowly but are devastating. Aeon doesn't worry about overkill.

These lofty ideas don't always show up in a pure way in the game. For example, the Monkeylord has lots of abilities (stealth, speed, torpedoes, anti-air) so it is a good example of an adaptable, bug-like unit. But also it's the cheapest big laser platform out of any faction. So you could consider it to be a "single-minded" single-purpose weapon consistent with the aeon theme.

Similarly, the Megalith has lots of HP compared to the Fatboy. And Bricks are extremely tanky. If we wanted to elevate faction themes over gameplay balance we could "fix" those things but then the game probably becomes unfun. I do think the game designers did a great job of giving personality to each faction.

The Czar really doesn't make sense as an aircraft carrier. If you could have a Czar that is 10k mass cheaper without the carrier abilities (build, store, and repair t1-t3 aircraft) you would almost ALWAYS take the stripped-down version. That's why the Czar should have the factory abilities removed. It's fine if it is a flying air staging but it shouldn't be able to make air units.