Second Iteration of Partial SACU Rebalance

Nomander

I noticed a while back that resource production buffs aren't applied to RAS SACU.

Nomander

turn off energy and mass throttle in the options. Idk if mass throttle even works for the current ecomanager version.
eco ui tools provides an alternative overlay
ecomanagercbt has less agressive energy throttling and removes mass throttling
don't energy stall

Nomander

@seraphim-noob may be interested in that for his WIP rust client

Nomander

Notably, there isn't a single AddSearchPath log line referencing the Mods directory anywhere in the game log — only the base gamedata (c:\programdata\faforever\gamedata*) and Steam install directory (f:\steamlibrary...) get mounted.

It seems like the game's file system isn't mounting your mod folder.
Check "C:\ProgramData\FAForever\fa_path.lua" to see that custom_vault_path is correctly set.
ProgramData\FAForever\bin\init.lua uses that value to determine what folder to mount for your maps/mods. The only way that could be broken is if you set a different init file in the client's launch args (unlikely that you did that).

Nomander

Second Iteration of Partial SACU Rebalance

The second iteration of SACU changes is now live on FAF Beta Balance.

Please make sure to host FAF Beta Balance, since the changes are not on FAF Develop.

The complete changes can be found on the changelog website.

Previous discussions about the first iteration can be found in the "experimental changes" posts on the forum and on Discord.

Iteration Changes

This iteration tries to prevent SACU rushes while making them a little more efficient lategame, and addresses Seraphim overcharge and UEF bubble shield. We encourage everyone to play with these changes and provide feedback.

All the changes specific to this iteration can be found in this commit history.

Early SACUs

Early SACUs were very powerful because you could only fight them with T3 units, and any failure would result in the SACU regenerating all damage, reclaiming wrecks instantly, and securing the area with structures. To prevent this:

Significantly increased energy cost of survivability upgrades.
Slightly increased energy cost of combatant SACUs
Removed ACU priority from SACUs
Reduce buildpower of SACUs by 25%, except for engineer presets and UEF. UEF keeps their buildpower because their engineer preset's drone can be shot down by AA, they have a weak pushing T4, and it promotes using their unique Ravagers.

Lategame SACUs

We do want SACUs to be good lategame, especially to stabilize lategame mass donations or air losses, which are factors that make players hesitant to attack and overall idle the game.

Mass cost reduction for high-tier survivability upgrades (Cybran cloak, Aeon 2nd shield, UEF shield, UEF bubble, Sera shield)

Other

Increase cost of Seraphim's overcharge upgrade to reduce its snowball potential. It's pretty much an upgrade over the ACU, and can replace the ACU's energy consumption, so the first OC SACU requires increased costs.
UEF bubble shield receives a small buff to shield recharge time.

Future Changes

Future changes will be tracked in this pull request. When they are made, they will be deployed to FAF Beta Balance with a similar announcement here.

Nomander

supcom campaign branch is enabled when playing campaign on the steam version and it being enabled gets saved to the game prefs for some reason.

Nomander

He mentioned that it's anything he contributed "after this post", and to "treat it as unsupported and remove it where practical." I don't think he meant anything bad, just asking for people to take care of the maintenance/cleanup.

Nomander

@Sheppy said:

I feel like too often there is clearly "one best option" in the selection and that takes away choice. I don't know how to best fix that, only thing I can say is that in most other games I think a lot more about my selection.

Some roguelikes bias rolls towards what your "build" is. I think combining that with general purpose upgrades (eco) would make picks more interesting.
You could even track what units the player has built recently to determine the build.

Nomander

Also printer is 1.5k 4.7k games and plays terribly according to his own replay (that he even thinks matters for the nerfs done) so I shouldn't waste more time here and I wouldn't recommend for anyone else to do so either.

Nomander

@Printer
Reads like AI stylized your post.

not an argument
Post replay where transports matter. AoE vs units outside engi clumps, like shields or mex storages, is irrelevant because its unrealistically apm heavy.
yes that's the point. Second sentence doesn't make sense.
Wrong because it's 3750e/s avg
Wrong number. Also not an argument.
You need to build power anyway to use the unit, this forces you to do it before it is finished instead of after.

E nerf makes arty a more viable counter without affecting total mass cost.
AoE/retargeting nerfs fix the most annoying/toxic things which were killing fab capped mex, stalled shield arrays, and engi clumps.
All of this was explained in the changelog snippet and you should address those ideas instead of just listing the (wrong) numbers then baselessly saying they're wrong.

Balance Team

Posts

Second Iteration of Partial SACU Rebalance

Iteration Changes

Early SACUs

Lategame SACUs

Other

Future Changes

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