Balance Team group

Nomander

Have you considered using /lua/ui/game/shapes/lineshape.lua? I'm seeing that you're copying over the worldmeshes used in the height indicator which seems a bit inefficient seeing how many are needed.

Nomander

no
There have been attempts at drawing it using lua code but they had poor performance and are not terrain sensitive.

Nomander

Develop and FAF Beta have been updated with the following changes for testing, and we have also provided some questions to guide your thoughts in gameplay:

Please provide replays with your feedback if possible.

Czar Buff
Cost slightly reduced and AA missile firing angle limits removed.

Does its cost better match its anti-ground performance without being overwhelming in air-to-air utility/performance?

GC Claw Nerf
DPS and range heavily reduced but units can now be shot while they are in the claws.

Is GC still too powerful against T3 units by itself?
Is it too powerful accompanied by DPS from the surrounding army?
Do shots targeted at units in the claws miss too often when the GC is moving?

Beetle rebalance
Cloaking removed and speed reduced in exchange for HP and regen.

Can both sides interact with the beetle in a fair and enjoyable way, especially in T2 stage?
Is it too weak, too powerful, or too difficult to use?
How powerful is it when dropped?

Sniper rebalance
Range significantly reduced (below T2 PD range) in exchange for movement speed and a large cost reduction.
Ability to prioritize ACUs is removed.
Seraphim snipe mode speed increased and damage model adjusted for shorter reload alongside the main changes above.

Can non-sniper armies interact with snipers in a fair and enjoyable way?
Are the lower cost cost snipers counterable if they are rushed?
Do the snipers provide their user a fair reward for their resource and APM cost?
Are mixed armies more viable than pure sniper balls?
Are Percy/Brick counters for Sera/Aeon more accessible to lower rated players?

SACU Rebalance
Quantum gateway cost, buildtime, and adjacency buffed.
Base SACU cost reduced.
Energy and buildtime costs significatly reduced for most presets.
Costs further reduced for the engineer presets.
Energy upkeeps reduced.
SACU RAS upgrade increases death nuke damage.
UEF Bubble shield prerequisite of the personal shield is removed, and the shield is rebalanced with mobile shields in mind.
Added RAS for Seraphim SACU and removed increased base production + cost.
Overcharge upgrade cost massively reduced.
Shield moved to tele/OC arm (tele nerf and Rambo preset rework).
Rambo preset changed to Nano + Shield + Sensors/Gun Range (non-energy-based lategame single-target damage rambo).

Do SACUs come out and counter T3 or ACUs too early?
Is UEF bubble shield viable with its new stats considering the utility of the SACU underneath?
Is overcharge cost too low, especially after the first SACU dies and you can reuse the energy infrastructure?
Are any SACU presets snowballing too strongly into the lategame, overpowering even their T4 counter?
Are UEF Rambos a viable high-cost direct-fire option for UEF, who have no direct-fire T4?
Is the buildpower of combat SACU too high?
Are there any overwhelming/unreasonable faction differences with SACU gameplay?
Do engineer presets find use cases as a dense buildpower option?

The full patch notes can be found online or in the game lobby's patch notes button.

Nomander

https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/7153

Nomander

@magge I'm writing some changes to add back the delay before killing acus when someone disconnects.

Nomander

Since disconnects cause acus to explode instantly and a disconnecting player disconnects from everyone else, their sim instantly explodes everyone and thinks the game is over so it tells the client to tell the server that their replay is a valid game. Really bad bug we haven't gotten around to fixing.

Nomander

If there are more than 20 desync messages sent from any players: https://github.com/FAForever/server/blob/1b98cdae23350c92fab5203b4e6ac9bf52198e6a/server/games/game.py#L477
So I guess the unpredictability comes from the player count heavily affecting the result. An Astro game will send 6 desync messages every 5 seconds while a Dualgap game sends 12.

Nomander

Yes there's a button to select the external factory unit of the carrier. You could UI mod stop/soft stop to cancel the factory's queue but then you would be come unable to cancel all orders for your carrier.

Nomander

Another aspect of it being a T4 is that it is the lowest energy ratio air T4, so a land player making it can do so very easily on top of the low buildtime and not requiring tech. It's also cheaper than a Megalith so you could arguably even build it instead of land units if your air player coordinates their micro and strategy with yours; that is to say, it is extremely accessible as an air T4.
For your DPS/HP stat comparison you missed a few critical factors: it doesn't lose DPS as it loses HP and it has AoE DPS. If you use f(n/cost, h, d) = h * d * (n^2+n)/2 to calculate the "power" per mass of the units (yes I tested this works before with GC vs percy testing), Wailers only need to take 1.55x damage from AoE or Ripper needs to deal 1.55x damage with AoE for Ripper and 29k mass of Wailers to have equal final damage outputs. Considering that high-AoE, high unit count T2 mobile flak is the main counter to gunships, Ripper has a great role in countering that counter.
- Veterancy is not as easy to compare as DPS/HP, but it's also a large factor in the continued survival of the unit. Wailers can repair for free, but Ripper is far better at getting veterancy due to being a single unit and T4s having much lower vet requirements than units. That veterancy boosts hp by 10% and also heals by 10% every vet. T4s also get much more regen per vet than lower tiers. Long term, you're guaranteed to lose Wailers but rippers are few in number so they're much easier to micro and keep alive, farming that vet heal/regen value and if you're tanking with healthy future rippers then the old one is just free 100% Ripper DPS.

Nomander

@IndexLibrorum said:

The recommended direct counter is groundfiring the stacked subs with ships that have splash damage, such as destroyers.

Only exodus has enough splash out of all the destros to groundfire subs (1.4 instead of 1), and even so it's barely enough so I wouldn't recommend it. Battleships with 2 splash radius are the usual groundfire unit, although by that game stage it's a bit irrelevant.

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