Sparky Rationalization
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@tagada said in Sparky Rationalization:
you would just end up with 1 sparky per 1 medium size army making radars + a factory after any fight spewing out T1 engies to grab the reclaim 30 sec after a fight takes place.
and why is that a bad thing?
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Because it would significantly buff the UEF T2 stage that's already very strong?
Instead of having to transport engies around the map with a transport which takes a lot of APM you would just make 1 sparky per 15-20 pillars (you only need 1 per big army of which you have 1-3) that would provide insane intel value (can build radars within seconds) and allow you to snowball out of control after any fight you win/draw because you would get the reclaim. -
@femtozetta said in Sparky Rationalization:
I agree that they should be able to build everything a T2 engi can.
What makes them unique is that they can survive being on the front better and that they even defend against small T1 raids. The reduced amount of blueprints they have just makes them crippled so they can only be used for making firebases with drops and maybe as a tanky reclaim engineer.
I would like some more versatility here.I’d give them the bot T2 engi icon that comes with Supcom. Not reg t2 engi
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Calling it a significant buff is a vast vast overstatement. Sure it's a small utility buff, but if moves like this were so strong to begin with you would already see everyone do it but just with 2 t2 engineers instead. normal engies being slower than your army is mostly irrelevant since you almost never do a straight push halfway across the map, plus your engineers should be behind your army anyway.
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sparky feels bad to use because it's kind of an engineer, kind of a tank, kind of a standalone expander while being absolutely terrible at each one of those roles. a buff to make it good at one of those things would make it viable. giving it a full t2 engineering suite will probably make it a very strong option for t2 uef but i don't know whether it would be too strong
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One of the cool things about sparkies is that you can mix them in early and utilize them as the t2 suite for your ACU while you continue to abuse gun or gun+nano. Problem is you can't do that entirely because you still cant make radar or facs with them which a t2 suite ACU always does.
Dudes talking about sparky losing its uniqueness have no idea what they're talking about, a fast but sturdy t2 engie opens up potential game states that other factions can't reach without breaking the balance of the game since to truly abuse sparkies you are going to need 1 or 2 less t2 support factories so you can actually have the mass to utilize these 2-3 sparkies to their full potential. It of course means less units but it could enable quick but efficient titan transitions while you utilize sparkies, acu, and some low level t2 spam to stagnate the game until that phase.
Even just mixing them in with your t2 spam and having unit mixes where you have t2 engies with your forces is still interesting and different than the current t2 phase of blaze + asylum or pillar + parashield + lobo or ilshie + zthuee
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I think making a sparky a sturdy t2 engineer adds to the faction diversity - I say we change this
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@thewheelie I disagree, having the engineer being slower and very low hp (t1 die to 1 t2 bomber, t2 die to 2 t2 bombers) is a significant difference. Random T1 tanks won't kill your sparky but they will kill your T2 engineer. If your T2 engie is behind your army and you retreat enemy can just kill your engies for free while a sparky will be able to retreat as fast as your army. If you allow it to both make radars and factories in my opinion T2 UEF Land will become too oppressive, as soon as you lose 1 fight they will snowball insanely hard since they will be able to convert that win into a significant unit lead very quickly and without a significant mass investment (having factories and T1 engineers everywhere) nor APM investment (dropping T1 engies with a transport).
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Damn imagine having a unit that snowballs hard, can't imagine that existing in current faf balance, luckily we're safe from that
Sparky doesn't even snowball hard, t2 engie dies to 4 t1 bombers instead of 2, wow UEF t2 stage is unbreakable it's over
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The LOUD Project debated the Sparky quite a bit because in it's original configuration, it's hard to find a practical role for it that would keep it unique AND viable without turning it into a de facto replacement for the normal T2 engineer.
In the end, we kept the build restrictions - removed the pointless weapon - and replaced it with an extra 4 build power. It's a reasonable bit more expensive than a T2 engineer, but the more robust frame, and extra build power translate well. A good tool for mopping up wreckage fields that's not too flimsy - and a useful tool in other roles without overshadowing the existing engineer.
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@sprouto said in Sparky Rationalization
In the end, we kept the build restrictions - removed the pointless weapon - and replaced it with an extra 4 build power. It's a reasonable bit more expensive than a T2 engineer, but the more robust frame, and extra build power translate well. A good tool for mopping up wreckage fields that's not too flimsy - and a useful tool in other roles without overshadowing the existing engineer.
Horrible horrible idea, that small gun is why sparky drops or scouting works with them.
Without it you only can drop in empty places or forced to spam t1 pd instead of t2 shield.
Sure one is little but 5-6 are enough for T1 tanks.
In the build restrictions I have mixed opinions, having to carry a T2 engineer on the drop gives something to the enemy to prioritize, a reward for paying attention.
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@tagada said in Sparky Rationalization:
@thewheelie I disagree, having the engineer being slower and very low hp (t1 die to 1 t2 bomber, t2 die to 2 t2 bombers) is a significant difference. Random T1 tanks won't kill your sparky but they will kill your T2 engineer. If your T2 engie is behind your army and you retreat enemy can just kill your engies for free while a sparky will be able to retreat as fast as your army. If you allow it to both make radars and factories in my opinion T2 UEF Land will become too oppressive, as soon as you lose 1 fight they will snowball insanely hard since they will be able to convert that win into a significant unit lead very quickly and without a significant mass investment (having factories and T1 engineers everywhere) nor APM investment (dropping T1 engies with a transport).
If you think such a small and minute buff as giving the sparky the ability to make radars and facs will suddenly make uef oppressive you're seriously off the rails. Also IF it is too strong you can just nerf sparkies in a different field, like mass cost.
You know what you can do too btw? If you decide to push already queue engies and/or attack move land facs to get the reclaim while the battle is still going on. Don't say that this doesn't work because i've seen it happen enough times already. You just need to give a little bit of effort to make it work.
apm this apm that. Guess what, queuing up a few transports to drop engies around the map on reclaim patches isn't all that much work. It's just that people aren't used to doing it so it feels like a lot more than it actually is since it's not really an automated process.
At the end of the day there were a billion other changes in faf that had a higher risk of causing an imbalance than this . I'd say new beetle buff is way closer than being imbalanced than this, or buffing the already very strong titan by making it more spammable.
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I wouldn't mind seeing this change just from a quality of life perspective. I agree with farms that I don't think it's really a big change for general battles because you almost always have some t1 engies near the front lines for reclaiming and building radars or pd anyway, so the sparkies would just reduce the number of them and slightly reduce pathfinding problems, which is a good thing...and we could always just increase the sparky mass cost a bit to compensate.
Where I could see this ability change making the biggest difference would be sparky drops, which now could pop up a ton of factories very quickly. Maybe this is very good because it would make the game more interesting though.
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@corvathranoob said in Sparky Rationalization:
Where I could see this ability change making the biggest difference would be sparky drops, which now could pop up a ton of factories very quickly. Maybe this is very good because it would make the game more interesting though.
This shouldn't really matter, because right now if you plan to do some sparky drop aggression instead of 6 you put 5 sparkies and a normal t2 engineer in a t2 transport. The only real difference is that you remove the annoyance of bringing a single t2 engi in your drop.
Also yea, that's assuming that making big proxies with sparkies is a bad thing to begin with.
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It just seems like a random balance decision done by GPG that no one else really ever bothered to look into tbh.
It seems to me the rationalization was to distinguish the sparky from the normal t2 engie.
Right now, you might for example queue up a t2 engineer, sparky, and then pillars from your first t2 hq. The t2 engineer will be for t2 pgen while the sparky can be used to build a forward t2 pd. Imagine if the sparky had the t2 engineer build suite—you wouldn't ever need to build a t2 engie. You would just use the sparky to start construction of the t2 pgen and let your t1 engies finish construction.
I like how there's a choice between t2 engie and sparky you have to make. I don't think it would be good to remove that.
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??????????????
A t2 engie is cheaper dude and what is the tradeoff that exists? Literally nobody makes t2 engies and sparkies for the same shit. If you make sparkies you're sending them to the front and you're using t1 engie spam to substitute for their gimped build ability. For basebuilding you make like 1 or 2 t2 engies just as all the other factions do. Adding buildings to sparkies just lowers needless tedium. If I want to get out of t2 stage asap I'm still making t2 engies which are cheaper and do the job in my safe base.
Are people disappointed that UEF is going to potentially not make the 1-2 t2 engies that are typically made for t2 transition or what? Or is there some dude super excited about the tradeoff of including 1 more or less sparky in their engie drop for a proxy base?
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Sparkies should be able to build radar but not factories or power
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There's no reason to change this. UEF gets the regular T2 engy and it gets a T2 field engy. Field means not in the base. Sparkies are really good units with big upsides over t2 engies like hp, speed and buildpower. What's the point in allowing them to build everything when you have a unit for that already? Don't close the gap between 2 units on the same roster which are almost identical.
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Because nobody uses t2 engies on the front to make factories or radar, there is no overlap in purpose here. I can't use my sparky to make a field base because it can't make 2 of the major key points in a field base and instead I need to go and select my t1 engies in between my sparkies to go and do it, it's pointless micro that adds nothing beneficial at all.
All sparkies having less blueprints does is force you to bring t2 engie to build radar or facs with a sparky drop which is just pointless micro and doesn't do anything interesting for gameplay, especially since it isn't like sparky drops are so massively OP they need to have 0 way to get these tools if the t2 engie is sniped by some t1 bombers before flak is built.
Beyond drops, the only other situation is having your base t2 engies which you barely make any of in the first place replaced by sparkies.
- If that's such a big worry then make sparky cost more
- The benefits of encouraging a more aggressive t2 stage that plays differently than other factions outweighs losing 1-2 t2 engies
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In terms of dropping sparkies or using them on the front, a t1 engy can fill in the gaps that you want filled, you don't need a t2 one. Sparkies having less blueprints available makes them a real choice. You want to remove the main drawback to them and replace it with cost maybe? That's boring and flavourless.
"Encouraging a more aggressive t2 stage." That's a ridiculous reach.
