Naval Balance Survey
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@Valki It has been a long time since they were added though I don't remember exactly how long. Years at least. I don't think it's actually decided that no new units will be added so much as that will take a massive amount of work and debate to add and test new units against FAF balance and I highly doubt anything like that would even be considered until after higher priority things like the SACU rework are done. At least, that's what I assume is the biggest thing in the pipeline from what I've heard.
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Technically, the RAS SACU presets could be considered "new" units. I don't know if those predate or postdate the HQ/t3 maa.
I don't think it's so much a formal policy against adding units, as it is that there are big barriers to adding units
1 - they would need a properly-animated 3D model
2 - they need to not ruin game balance. if they don't improve the balance, why add them? So that takes a lot of testing. The way people use units can evolve over time and as people discover how to use units better, they need to be rebalanced again.
3 - you might need to add 1 for each faction just to maintain balance, so quadruple that workload. And that means you need 3D modelers who can make designs that are consistent with all 4 faction styles.
4 - it could affect or break a lot of mods and AI projects. If you add new features to the game for the new units, that can break things. So you may end up creating a lot of work for a lot of people.
5 - Players coming from outside of FAF then have more to learn in order to play the game.The disruption to the game is generally a negative thing. You need a very compelling situation to justify adding a unit. I think people in general don't want to work on making new units for the game if the units probably won't be used. Even an unpopular map will get some play but if you make a new unit, there's like a 99.5% chance it will never be used in a serious game. At best it gets added to a modpack. So people don't even try.
If there was an active modding community that made 10 new professional-looking units every month that were carefully considered to fit within the game balance, we probably would see more change-up in the unit lineups with units being added/removed, models replaced with better-looking models, etc. But where would we get the kind of energy necessary for that? It might take 100 people cooperating to crank out 10 units a month. Imagine if there was an active modpack scene where the new units in the modpack were actually well-balanced for FAF games. If that existed, over time there would probably be a lot more crossover between the modpacks and the official FAF unit list.
Also, the mindset for a competitive RTS gamer generally should be learning how to work with the units you got. You can try to figure out ways to use units more creatively, but you don't get to change the game to bend it to your desires. You have to work with the game's mechanics/balance to try to improve yourself. You don't change the game, you blame yourself, watching some replays, practice, and try again. So most high-rated players aren't even interested in spending their time to expand the game, or at least they won't develop that interest until they've played 4000+ ranked games. So the people making the units would largely be guys with about 600 ladder rating. Which means they probably don't have great instincts in terms of making units that fit within the game's overall balance.
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@arma473 Thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed answer. Very valid points, it would only work if people actively came forward to do the work right?
Only would like to comment on 5 and disruption, it is a trade-off between the negativity you mentioned and a "meta upset" that people need to prevent the game becoming stale. In that regard I think "Corvettes" are generally appealing in most settings, so might come out ahead in this area.
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T3 maa is still a controversial addition and one I would still personally argue didn’t need to happen.
The one and only reasonable argument for a new navy unit is basically giving Seraphim some sort of torpedo-boat like unit so that it actually has an answer to t2 subs besides torp bombers. But even that I’d rather just uh not and instead have it as an intentional Seraphim weakness. Not like they need a buff as it is anyway.
The last unit addition was T3 MAA which was around 2014 or 2015.
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@harzer99 Cruisers may have much lower AA DPS relative to mass than T2 MAA, but their range and accuracy is far higher, so it more or less balances out.
Plus, on top of that, cruisers aren't a dedicated AA unit.
All of them have TMD.
UEF has decent long-range missiles, and a fairly weak direct fire weapon.
Cybran has long-range proton cannons nearly as powerful as those on their destroyers.
Aeon... Well, that's actually a dedicated AA unit, and an insanely powerful one.
Seraphim has really powerful long-range missiles.So ignoring the AA and TMD, UEF and Seraphim cruisers add an additional ability to the fleet, and Cybran cruisers are great in ship-to-ship battles.
So I think it'd be perfectly fine to make cruisers no longer an AA monster and instead have the AA as more of a long-range utility. -
@bellatrix Cybran cruisers are expensive and trash vs torps compared to other cruisers. Sure uef and sera have their missiles but uef cruisers are pretty wrecked by torps. Micro’d sera cruisers are a bit better because of flak but still vulnerable. If you don’t have air control and you’re not a faction with hover flak torps are extremely good.
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Why aren't the flak and AA systems found on the naval vessels similar to those found in the land units ?
It seems rather fundamental to grasping the use of, and balancing of - the entire class. There's no validity in supporting AA weaponry that's better - either in damage or range - than what you might find either in a mobile unit or a static emplacement. They should be almost identical in capability.
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By the way, i'll drop that here : Aeon cruisers should be less expansive, because they fill no additional role than TMD/AA. Or just have more HP, or a stronger cannon ... Anything that make you want to built them ...
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@auricocorico They have the highest dps and the best atm. So they get onepassed by torpedos the least mass efficiently B)
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@harzer99 UEF cruisers are the best atm because you can build shield boats for them.
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Their only strengh is that you need 6 torps instead of 5 to kill them. Big deal ... Meanwhile all other cruisers have powerfull guns/missiles and Sera has flak AA .. doesn't seem like a fair trade.
The higher dps is a scam, they still need two cycles to shoot down 1 torpedo, and the second wave of missile deals massive overkill, so their "highest dps" is only relevant against T3, not against torpedo bombers. Actually the best cruiser regarding AA is the Seraphim one, because the flak will melt the group of planes attacking it, so you'll end up losing more torps against it.
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Aeon has hover flak that accomplishes the same thing that you are saying phim cruiser is great for while also having the greatest cruiser for killing single air targets. It also has arguably the best destroyer in combination with a t2 sub.
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@auricocorico said in Naval Balance Survey:
By the way, i'll drop that here : Aeon cruisers should be less expansive, because they fill no additional role than TMD/AA. Or just have more HP, or a stronger cannon ... Anything that make you want to built them ...
Aww man... thanks for letting me know.
Time to build much less Aeon cruisers on water maps >.< -
Survey is now closed, here are the results.
I'm not terribly experienced with Google Forms so Imgur is the best way I've found to share the results. If you know a better way let me know.
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Naval Balance Survey Summary
There were 228 responses (with at least 216 responses to each question).
Here is a single image version of the survey results: https://i.imgur.com/yasLezG.png
The overall FAF naval balance was rated at an average of 3.69 out of 5.00 (with a 1 being pretty much unplayable and a 5 being perfect).
The majority of responses indicated that subs should be buffed, frigates should be nerfed/made less powerful, and that torpedo bombers are too strong.
The majority of responses indicated that battleships should not be reworked to have less HP and more DPS, and that surface weapons should continue to be able to groundfire subs.
Here are some stats from the survey (factions were rated based on naval strength, with 5 being the strongest rating and 1 being the weakest):
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Here's the raw .csv data if someone wants to extract it and pull out only the 1800+ responses, for example.
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Looks like a majority wants T1 frigates nerfed and T1 subs buffed. So how about it? I recommended awhile ago just switching their costs so sub is cheaper and frigate costs more.
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The majority also thinks aeon is the 3rd worst navy faction. How about it? Time to give them a buff
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Alright got bored and sorted the data by rating bracket. All I can say is that not even 1800+ is a decent enough rating group for reviewing navy balance:
NOTES:
I use > to represent .1 difference in preference for navy, meaning that >> means that a group prefers a navy .2 more than the next subsequent faction.<300:
UEF >>>>> Cybran >>> Seraphim > Aeon300-800:
Cybran = Aeon > UEF > Seraphim800-1300:
UEF > Cybran > Aeon >>>> Seraphim1300-1800:
Cybran >>> UEF > Aeon >>> Seraphim1800+:
UEF >> Cybran >>> Aeon > SeraphimBreakdown:
Rating (UEF, Cyb, Aeon, Seraphim, Overall)
<300 (3.7, 3.2, 2.8, 2.9, 3.2)
300-800 (3.6, 3.67, 3.67, 3.53, 3.67)
800-1300 (3.82, 3.74, 3.7, 3.3, 3.4)
1300-1800 (3.76, 4, 3.6, 3.3, 3.76)
1800+ (4.1, 3.9, 3.6, 3.45, 3.9)My only rationale for this data is that this survey was done by a bunch of dudes that have like near zero experience with navy.
Seraphim has indisputably the 2nd best frigate and either the 1st or 2nd best destroyer alongside the 1st or 2nd best cruiser while also being able to abuse zthuee and their t2 hover. Considering them the worst navy faction is literally impossible to justify.
By the way, I wouldn't read that much into the "small nerf for frigates" part of the survey. I voted that frigates need a "small nerf" but my idea of a "small nerf" is basically like nerfing sera and cyb frig very slightly so that UEF can have the 2nd best frigate to compensate for peepee heavily specialized t2 stage. Maybe make cyb frig 20 mass more expensive and either reduce phim AA or increase UEF AA.
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So putting some more thought into it and looking at the data tables, I think a massive part of the problem here is the entirely inconsistent way of measuring by people.
The first issue is "what exactly is the benchmark for navy balance" because Cybran has a much stronger showcase on traditional navy 1v1 maps due to their frigate. However, their showing on maps like sentons is significantly worse. Likewise, UEF has a much harder time in 1v1 navy but it really plays to its strength in late game navy.
I personally therefore used Seraphim as my benchmark navy and gave them a 3 since they tend to be a comfortable pick for any sort of navy engagement and then gave UEF and Cybran higher ratings because they dominate in their niche. I gave Aeon a lower rating because while they are strong on very specific maps ie sentons, they are absolutely throttled in tons of scenarios due to the sheer lack of frigate AA, including other large teamgame 20x20 maps like selkie or beetle dance. If I instead decided to weigh sentons more heavily than I originally did, Aeon would bump into a 4 easily as a faction. However, I did not but maybe other people did.
However, I see data that seems like people only really cared about senton balance or ladder balance or some other balance. I also see people really just operate on some totally random benchmark. Some people only gave a 4 or 5. Some people only gave 1 or 2. I personally have no idea how you can rate things like this and not have an "average rating" benchmark, but I'm sure if I went and talked to some of the dudes that gave nothing but 4s and 5s we would agree on a lot in naval balance, it's just expressed in a different way.
For me, no faction is a 1 because everyone has a strength to play to and no faction is a 5 because there is no faction that is universally best in any (or most) navy circumstances.
What this means is that the scale range of the data is almost 100% useless. What matters is the difference in values subsets have because that at least somewhat controls for the 2nd issue (could still have a person have the exact same opinion as me but give Aeon a 1 and UEF and Cybran a 5). The 1st issue is just impossible to account for here.
