Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank
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@thomashiatt really ? 5 auroras miss 5 shots after attack-move, only 2nd shot hits. https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/video/5599610?key=392f0c86ef1d15cd0333095e565302b7
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I expanded the motivation section in the first post, and also moved the unit stats there (slight tweak since I realised the range must not exceed T1 PD).
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@turinturambar said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:
for a replay demonstration look at #15497168. its litterally 1 click for the auroras, causing them to trade godlike.
Thanks for the replay Turin. I have two things to say:
- This assumes the Aeon player reacts and the other player does not (as demonstrated, running in to an even fight vs retreating Aurora is bad even for Mantis). If the objective is to control position, chasing is not necessary.
- As I said above, Aurora have too much DPS for their range. Try the same thing with T3 sniper bots and, say, a T3 assault bot.
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for that you can position the auroras a bit in front of the spot you want to defend, so you can kite back without losing anything relevant. also your entire argumentation assumes that a low/mid rated players main issue is bad micro/lacking attention, while it often enough is weak ecobalance+expanding, with too much micro often being a reason for these issues. also the comparison with snipers is completely off, since you cannot just say unit x has 146% more range than unit y. what matters is the amount of time the unit B takes to pass the distance to unit A , which on t1 is maybe 2 seconds (and also the time if unit A kites after a reaction time of a few seconds), while a Harb/brick/percy will take way longer untill it can shoot a sniper.
Snipers and auroras fullfill so obviously very different roles, that this comparison made here shows you the weakness in your argumentation and why simple stat comparisons are insufficient. -
Snipers and auroras fullfill so obviously very different roles, that this comparison made here shows you the weakness in your argumentation and why simple stat comparisons are insufficient.
Come on, that's obvious. They're different tiers. Yet Aurora can assist an ACU in a way that other T1 tanks can't quite so well. Okay, "sniper tank" is a bad descriptor. (I did want to also increase Aurora range, yet letting them out-range T1 PD seems a bad idea.)
Bricks & Percies are slow siege tanks. T2 tanks would be a better comparator to a sniper if not for the range.
assumes that a low/mid rated players main issue is bad micro/lacking attention
This can also be seen as an argument against my proposal since reducing DPS and adding multiple tank types may require more micro. (Besides that adding a T1 tank would make Aurora partially redundant.)
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Totally agree, that it is easy to micro a group of Auroras against enemy tank-group, when there are no othe units/buildings in the game. And even more, if enemy kills his units in most favorable way for you.
But if you move your units forward, enemy might push his units too, and if you do not react perfectly fast, he will get in range and crush (if small amount of units). And if you kite, enemy probably will pull back his units, even if second later might try to follow your units outside of range. And if you move forward... Micro continues. This is micro for both sides, but mistakes are much more expensive for Aeon. And so precision needs to be more important, and so it is harder than for other nations. Also other nations have t1 arty that can shoot in all directions while maneuvering.
Still, it is "so easy". But it starts to get less easy when you have a big open map, with many-many tank-groups, that all need "only little attention", all the time. While mouving back one group might mean that another one gets encircled or you lose a strategic position. While you need to scaut to not get cut off. While you need to pay for landscauts, and avoid them getting far in front. While you need to manage eco in large space and not only win air, but have active air control, to kill bombers before they drop bombs. etc.
The fact that low/mid rated players have other issues also, does not enter in consideration on this subject, as they have those problems with all nations. But the need to avoid enemy tanks and planes getting close all the time, in all places, they have this problem only with Aeon.
On t1 sniper level... If Aeon gets more or less equal t1 tank to other nations, I dont really see why one nation should have t1 sniper, while other nations do not.
But I have some difficulties to believe, that Aeon is less played/liked than other nations, only because it is too strong...
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If the argument is that Aeon is less played because it is weak (which is what your last sentence seems to be saying?) then you would expect Aeon to decrease in popularity as you increase in rating as faction differences matter more and more as ratings increase. However, you see the exact opposite trend for Aeon meaning that the faction pick rate has basically nothing to do with how strong the faction is at lower levels. Faction is basically never the reason you lost the game if you're under around 1500, some would extend it even higher. Maybe if you constantly play Seraphim v Cybran on Sludge you could have an argument.
Instead here are 3 reasons Cybran is more often picked than Aeon based on my reading of comments in casts and generic new player discussions:
- Cybran looks so cool
- Cybran has THE Russian waifu
- Cybran is sneaky and that's awesome
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@ftxcommando Also they have the cool lasers.
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Isn't Terran the most popular faction at low levels in SC2 even though they require the most unit micro? Which is apparently the theory for why Aeon is not popular here? It's literally just noobs liking the aesthetics of factions man.
Not to mention that Aeon and Seraphim have near identical play rates as I said in the other thread and no one here is arguing that Seraphim requires some high IQ unit babysitting to win games nor that Seraphim is weak. Ask low rated players why they don't play Seraphim and they'll tell you the faction looks funny and weird.
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I think you overrate the impact of aesthetics a bit. It can have some effect but since they are subjective it's hard to quantify the contribution they make to what factions people play.
When you say Seraphim and Aeon have "near identical play rates" are you talking about team games or ladder? Because in my experience Seraphim is way more common on ladder than Aeon.
Also nobody ever said Aeon is unpopular because it is bad. It is unpopular because it has a higher skill floor. (Harder to play=/= bad). Yet I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, nor would I make any faction more generic to chase some arbitrary 25%/25%/25%/25% play rate distribution.
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I'm talking ladder. And the dude above my post is literally insinuating that Aeon is unpopular because they are weak because the argument that Aeon is strong yet unpopular makes no sense.
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"because the argument that Aeon is strong yet unpopular makes no sense."
But weak or strong is a false dichotomy. I would say that overall each of the four factions is roughly equal strength. However, it is more complicated to use the full strength of the Aeon faction compared to say, Thaam and Zthuee spam into Illshavoh spam rallied to wherever the enemy is.
Seraphim having the same play rate as Aeon seems odd to me but idk I don't have the analytics. Also I'm about 900 ladder so maybe that skews it.
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Old data but these trends don't really change:
2000+ global:
all players global:
2000+ ladder:
all players ladder:
You see more volatility at the top because there are fewer players and so singular preferences make a larger impact but also because those singular preferences are much more likely to be guided by balance updates. An aggregate across the whole playerbase does not give a single shit about balance and instead showcases more banal realities ie base faction preferences around things like aesthetics.
It does not show that a faction is clearly weak as a mean or anything like that because you can clearly see several months where Aeon was either the most or 2nd most popular faction at the top of the ladder.
It also refutes this narrative about "skill cap" or whatever because Seraphim is really not any higher in skill cap than UEF. UEF had tons of noob trap units until around 2019 (mongoose, titan) and Seraphim had a terrible t3 stage until 2019. That's about it really.
If you're curious, 5 is random and 6 is nomads, no idea why random doesn't get picked up for ladder.
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@ftxcommando said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:
these trends don't really change:
Convenient, but the charts you showed do show changes over time
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You must have missed the part where I said top player trends change due to natural volatility from few data points as well as a higher sensitivity to balance patches. Show me where aggregate player preferences change. There are like 10-15 players at 2000+ there are 3000 unique players on ladder each month and 30,000 unique players in global each month.
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@ftxcommando Thanks for the data. The original idea that Aeon is less used seems correct, with element, that Seraphim is not much used too. Even at high rated level, Aeon still seems to be less used. Even less than Sera. This can be proof, that Aeon is weaker. Althought information is not sufficient to say with certitude, why Aeon is less used.
Personally, I never heard anyone chose nation because of aesthetics, and what I learned about players, I think even less, that they dont chose Aeon because it is too strong.
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@ftxcommando said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:
no idea why random doesn't get picked up for ladder.
There are 11 different kinds of random for the ladder, depending on whether you agree to use 2, 3, or 4 factions. And (as far I could tell, although I haven't done a deep dive) the replay vault doesn't seem to track whether the person searching ladder had more than 1 faction choice selected. So if data comes from the vault, it will only show the faction they actually had in that particular match.
You could use vault data to ATTEMPT to reverse-engineer whether people are using random choices (and more specifically, which choices they made) by assuming that people don't change their faction preference very often, and counting how often they get certain factions. Or you could just have the server start tracking it going forward (if it's not already doing that; I assume not literally all data that is tracked is available through the vault) if you're interested in that sort of thing.
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This data is very old, and the balance has changed massively since then. In 2017 everyone thought Seraphim was pretty lackluster as a faction.
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Yeah? And Seraphim was bonkers broken in 2014 before the chicken nerf (look, it was the most popular ladder faction). Aggregate data still doesn't change much.
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@arma473 said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:
@ftxcommando said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:
no idea why random doesn't get picked up for ladder.
There are 11 different kinds of random for the ladder, depending on whether you agree to use 2, 3, or 4 factions. And (as far I could tell, although I haven't done a deep dive) the replay vault doesn't seem to track whether the person searching ladder had more than 1 faction choice selected. So if data comes from the vault, it will only show the faction they actually had in that particular match.
You could use vault data to ATTEMPT to reverse-engineer whether people are using random choices (and more specifically, which choices they made) by assuming that people don't change their faction preference very often, and counting how often they get certain factions. Or you could just have the server start tracking it going forward (if it's not already doing that; I assume not literally all data that is tracked is available through the vault) if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Yes, for whatever reason I assumed that the selected randomness was only added with the team matchmaker UI and forgot that was a thing for ages.
