CounterIntel

You really should read the responses before posting

in the faf mission where we protect burke, there is a crystal that create fake air signature
Maybe we can use it.

But adding jamming/stealth to all faction would make them more look alike instead of all having their own way to play

How about an anti sensor field. Any buildings and units with radar get view range and/or radar reduced by x% when in this field.
Or a scramble field that returns scouted units to just being blips on radar.
By the way, if you wanted to buff jamming, adding this functionality to it could be the way to do it.

Aeon ACU has a sight range upgrade that gives significant omni coverage. That is a faction-specific intel-related advantage. And it's probably underused. Maybe give Aeon T2 radars some useful (but not OP) amount of omni range. I'm talking about just barely enough range to be worth making on the front line against Cybran stealth. With that, Aeon would be the "anti-stealth" faction.

Give Seraphim ACU a second upgrade to gun range & speed, where shots add a radar jamming effect where they land. As long as the unit/building being shot is alive, it will have visibility that basically counteracts the jamming completely. When the ACU kills things, the jamming would have some meaningful effect.

And for the regen aura upgrades: when the ACU is shooting, it should create a temporary jamming field around the ACU. It only turns on when the ACU is shooting because otherwise that might make it too obvious where the ACU is. Presumably if the ACU is popping off shots, it's location doesn't need to be kept a secret.

Give the UEF T3 Mobile Arty the "shellcam" that the Lobo has.

Sounds like something that would be better suited to a mod and/or as some sort of featured gamemode (e.g. if the 4th matchmaker queue was used each week or month to showcase a particular mod/more unusual game option) than a change to the core FAF game, since it feels like a fundamental departure from the original FA and would make things significantly more complicated for newer players (and non-top-level players) who already will struggle just to scout/get intel.

Literally jamming and stealth already exist, how is it a fundamental departure from anything. It’s extending a half baked feature to all the factions so that it becomes a new way for them to interact. Factory HQs are a fundamental departure.

I'll throw a curve ball and say that we have gotten lazy, obtaining information is too easy via scouts, hardly ever you can do anything more tactical at t1 and by the time t2 or t3 rolls out it becomes (in most chases) utterly pointless.

The problem is mostly t1 air scout being too good of a scouting unit and jack of all trades when it comes to it, and it will probably stay that way.

Even if we add all proposed changes by some miracle, i would argue that it is all meaningless since one little scout can reveal the whole map with no setback to the player.

Analyze, Adapt, Overcome...

remove ability to scout stuff while scout's wreck is falling and then it will already become much harder to scout

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@zlo I wanna be more radical and move t1 scout to t2 and balance the air around that.

But again... that is more radical change.

Analyze, Adapt, Overcome...

How to make facing Cybran on 5x5 an autolose in 1 easy step

The point here is to make active scouting something that warrants use. The type of intel that is abused for lazy decisions is setting up a radar, sending a random scout, finding what blips are, and zooming out 30 seconds after the scout passed by to gauge the situation.

While such a thing should certainly be possible, it should come with the tradeoff of inaccuracy and you should be either setting up scout paths when you have the capacity to idle for a bit and watch the intel actively or you need to sacrifice unit micro/base macro to get that active intel.

The point of these ideas is to create that innate inaccuracy in lazy intel, not make active intel easier or harder. As it is, Cybran is pretty much the only faction that has this in the form of a perpetual air scout tax that stealth requires you to pay if you want to keep being lazy.

Jamming and Stealth both create inaccuracy from not having vision

Mirage units or whatever would create inaccuracy from not having radar, which also induces more play with sniping radars.

@hinthunter

What group of players are you playing with? Where are the kind of teammates that make you go, “Hmm, I don’t know, scouting in this game should be harder, people do it too often!”

put the xbox units in the game pls u_u

@ftxcommando Jamming and stealth isn't a fundamental departure, but you seemed to be talking about cloned/fake units that do no damage but appear visually to exist and require energy to maintain in your OP. That's something which is a completely new concept (there is no existing mechanic like that).

If you were just talking about some changes re stealth and jamming, then I wouldn't have the same issue as those are already concepts people are familiar with from just playing vanilla FA.

Also if anything Aeon's theme is that it counters stealth and jamming via good visual, i.e. that's its 'counterintel' so it doesnt need a new concept. It has the senor upgrade on its ACU which gives massive visual range; it has the Eye of Rihanne which gives visual range of a target location. An 'in-theme' extension of intel for them would be mechanics based around visibility of a location rather than some sort of hologram concept.

@zeldafanboy i not saying make scouting harder for the sake of making scouting harder, i am saying make scouting harder for the sake of allowing more fluidity in gameplay. Making scouting more important rather then just "giving it away".

But talk is talk, hell if gonna freaze over before that happens lol

Just think about it, entertain the idea a bit.

Analyze, Adapt, Overcome...

I do not consider vision upgrades counterintel I consider that intel. Counterintel involves player interaction and making it easier to gather intel is not causing your enemy to play in a different way whatsoever nor does it result in you doing anything different. The point is that this game devolves into who made the biggest mass concentration in a set area and obfuscating intel is one of the few ways to make it possible for experienced players to actually get away with less. I’ve been in plenty of situations where navies with more frigates were dissuaded from attacking my UEF frigates and I’ve been in plenty of situations where I walked units into a stealth ACU or cloaked beetles. Aeon just being able to see stuff in an easier way isn’t interactive and it even discourages you from using units that can manipulate this field.

I don’t consider it to be anything new because the mechanics already exist in the game and just result in extending it to all the factions. I don’t even care if the extension is giving Sera and Aeon jamming and stealth, I just gave a new idea because that’s more fun and interesting. There is nothing new like the novel fac spam meta that was a result of HQ introduction (which faf also put into the game to introduce new meta so even if this is a new game aspect it is incoherent to argue that must mean it can only be a mod).

Also creating unit illusions isn't that far away from the game, as it's just what jamming does, just that it affects vision and is countered by radar not the other way around.
It's like Jamming -> See fake units when you have radar, but no vision
and illusions -> see fake units when you have vision but no radar
Just because that particular ability was not in the original game, doesn't mean it's a complete departure.

Cybran Core Gimmick (or well in theory): Attack Anywhere But Not Everywhere.

Salems, Wagners, Deceiver and Stealth Boat. Are based on that Cybrans can “hide” from enemy radar. Or deceive the enemy etc.

Aeon is Everywhere but Not Anywhere. IE they have high mobility but not alot of ways to hide it.

UEF “we use punch” there gimmick is they lack mobile flexibilirt of aeon or the ability to hide themselves but are straight forward )hence why Jamming doesn’t hide UEF Unit just make more).

Seraphim is “We A Lil Bit of Everything” basically.

/shrug copypasta is over.

I’m down or think anything is fine. I’d rather see stuff like Seraphim “Weird” Stealth (Selen, the fact rheh can submerge a non zero number of non-naval units) expanded more.*

Aeon I dunno

*Actually what I want is for Sonar Intel Game expanded further. So that subs/submerged are better hidden without dedicayed sonar or omni.

I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.

Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project

“Aeon is Everywhere but Not Anywhere. IE they have high mobility but not alot of ways to hide it.”

T-That’s not Aeon at all tho….

What if Seraphim got to utilize cloak (maybe only certain units) so that radar picks the units up but they are out of vision?

Blame GPGnet not following their own design schema. Also remember faf nerf hover speed. The point is that Aeon Armies aren’t limited by “terrain”

I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.

Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project

@nex said in CounterIntel:

Wouldn't cloak be the logical fourth faction mechanic as stealth/jamming and cloak/fake units seems like the obvious counterparts for radar to vision counter-intel.

To make it possible to “fight” against the only thing I could think of was that the units wouldn’t show radar signatures if in the fog of war. I wasn’t sure if it was actually possible to have an icon show up in visual range but no gray dot show up in the fog of war, but that would be a great solution and would make you curious if maybe you just missed the units before your scout went over them.

Also having them always show blips when in vision would make them uncounterable, so the blips would need to disappear once you have them on radar.

Yes, I think more could be done with cloak. An expensive cybran t3 cloak bot for example.

Just an idea, add a cheaper version of the Novax that acts as a spy satellite that can't shoot. It would provide intel for a high price. Could be useful late game.

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