Points of Imbalance.
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Most direct fire Experimentals can still be countered efficiently by a t3 army. Especially by Bricks and Percies. But usually people are just too incompetent to have a good formation against the experimental and suicide them one by one. Did the balance even get changed in that regard. I only remember there was a build power nerf on experimental and Heaven complaining that the dynamics of Experimental ping pong on most team game maps. got killed by it.
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T3 nerf to bring it in line with the rest of the tech tree was an indirect buff to T4. Games between competent people shouldn't have experimental ping pong anyway. I mean, there is no ping pong between large groups of t3 either. Simply too much of a mass investment to throw away in a "ah yeah maybe it'll do damage lol" attack.
In fact the ping pong between
- player masses up t3 push and takes map control
- other player puts mass into a t4 concentration
- Other player retreats to build up a larger t3 mass to defeat t4 or retreats to get his own t4
Is more of the ping pong situation you describe.
One example would be a dude pushing with a mass of snipers/shields, meets a fatboy, has to retreat to some sort of firebase/own t4 to push and tank fatboy with/needs some major clump of t3 that can tank the fatty.
Also a lot of underselling of the balance team here lol. The GPG balance was absolutely terrible in this game. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the balance in base supcom/FA was SO bad it's actually a fundamental reason why the game failed to garner any sort of real competitive scene. It had so many inconsistencies with tons of the unit rosters being either useless or bonkers OP with no real thinking needed to choose between options. Nothing that has happened due to the T3 rebalance has really been "unexpected" in the sense of broad meta strokes. Well, maybe the huge efficiency of t3 mobile arty wasn't accounted for. T4s may or may not need a slight adjustment in their stats, I personally don't think they do and enjoy their purpose in the current meta.
Would rather nerf garbage like RAS SACUs.
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@harzer99 said in Points of Imbalance.:
Most direct fire Experimentals can still be countered efficiently by a t3 army. Especially by Bricks and Percies. But usually people are just too incompetent to have a good formation against the experimental and suicide them one by one. Did the balance even get changed in that regard. I only remember there was a build power nerf on experimental and Heaven complaining that the dynamics of Experimental ping pong on most team game maps. got killed by it.
God no, go test this. You have to really blow it to lose even a ML to bricks.
Literally spin up a game, and put a formation of bricks against a lone Monkeylord. With decent micro the Monkeylord has a really good shot at winning. You have to be careful and pick at the sides of the formation, but bricks just don't have the range or speed to punish a ML that nips at them.
Percies are a bit better. Only 2 range difference between them but between alpha - which means when they do connect they do decent damage up front before the ML deletes them and that 2 range putting more percies in firing range they do substantially better than bricks against a ML. Very small advantages add up to a very different result.
Then consider cost of production of large numbers of bricks, and unless you're on a map where you have to maintain control of a large area, the ML is just superior.
I mean just producing the cost of a Monkeylord in bricks takes forever unless you've invested a ton of mass into T3 production. Even after making those investments, the ML likely finishes faster.
Then the bricks are far more vulnerable to certain units - like T3 mobile arty or bombers. They get more health, sure but anyone with any sense will use splash against them.
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Yeah, the first thing I do when I finish my T3 Land HQ is produce a T3 engineer so I can build an experimental. Sure I only have a single T2 pgen and a handful of T2 mexes at this stage of the game, but I can afford to give up the entire map and spend 15 minutes building an experimental with my one engineer and small eco. There is no way my enemy will attack me with his existing T2 army or build a few T3 units during this time and crush me. This strategy is foolproof. I can just invest 5220 mass into an HQ then another 20k in a Monkeylord and there isn't a damn thing my opponent can do about it. T3 units have no role in this game.
Will you just ban this guy already?
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@FtXCommando said in Points of Imbalance.:
Would rather nerf garbage like RAS SACUs.
Agreed on that point.
So I agree that the balance team has mostly done a great job. I can only think of a few things I disagree with that they've ever done.
As for your other points. Ping pong?
I assume you mean a situation where you attack and lose your assault experimental so the other team uses the mass and builds one and sends it at you and they lose it?
I mean that does happen, and it makes sense for it to happen at any level, because oftentimes the damage done with the experimental is worth more than the reclaim left behind. You can do significant damage without getting a kill, and it can be worth it to leave the mass on the field in exchange for doing that damage.
If you wipe out someone's SMD as an example, it was worth it to use the Monkeylord - even if it dies and the enemy gets the reclaim.
I hope that the SACU changes will rectify the imbalance between T3 units and T4 such that nothing else is required, but I think its going to require more than is planned. Cybran in particularly looks like it won't benefit much versus T4. I checked the FAF Beta implementation and if the SACUs do grant a speed boost, its so small as to be unnoticeable.
Making SACUs giant deceivers won't do much to help Cybran T3 land avoid getting stomped by Chickens or Colossuses.
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I don't play dudes dumb enough to put their SMD out in a way that it dies to an ML.
Don't even know why you bring up ML, it's like the easiest T4 in the world to absolutely throttle mass efficiently. Hell, get an ACU w/ gun+respective hp upgrade in a t2 transport and like 6 t3 assault bots or 6 snipers and you raped it.
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@ThomasHiatt said in Points of Imbalance.:
Yeah, the first thing I do when I finish my T3 Land HQ is produce a T3 engineer so I can build an experimental. Sure I only have a single T2 pgen and a handful of T2 mexes at this stage of the game, but I can afford to give up the entire map and spend 15 minutes building an experimental with my one engineer and small eco. There is no way my enemy will attack me with his existing T2 army or build a few T3 units during this time and crush me. This strategy is foolproof. I can just invest 5220 mass into an HQ then another 20k in a Monkeylord and there isn't a damn thing my opponent can do about it. T3 units have no role in this game.
Will you just ban this guy already?
You have games where you played on Isis out there.
Did you spend money on 5+ T3 land factories so you could spend a significant portion of your mass on T3 units, or did you... ya know... push out some T2 and T3 and as soon as you could start spamming assault experimentals?
You do it too.
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Also all this reminds me: this imaginary t3 phase of unit diversity never even existed. You had the generic early game cheese with harb/loya.
Then you had the absurd crushing of infinite loya stun spam combined with absurd crush of percy + shield + fatty.
Then you had cyb respond with mega spam because it's all they could do against percy spam (since no mobile shield). Then you had Aeon spam infinite gc because it's all they can do (since percy hard counters harb so quick it isn't funny). And Seraphim spammed infinite chicken (phim t3 is just utterly pathetic).
Cyb kinda did the same thing as UEF against aeon/phim with bricks. Or they could abuse loya but it isn't as hot against harbs. Aeon just ran around siege tanks and abused their shit range.
Now we have:
Titan/Loya used for raiding in massive maps with lots of loose mexes/map control to abusePercy/Brick far more even in combat with a slight edge still going to percy due to shield/alpha advantage
Arty mix able to capitalize on and respond to both snipers and immense buildup of assault units with no support.
Snipers able to act as a response to massive percy/brick spam rather than a tickle force that insta dies if you sneeze on it.
Bricks/Percies well used will still crush T4s other than particular ones built for kiting them like chicken. Fatty exists as a way to stop snipers from destroying percies so that they can keep pushing in. ML exists for the cheese bs it always existed for. GC exists to brutal tank land pushes and is a solid hp wall to hide your more dps heavy units behind (whether harbs or snipers) so that you maintain full dps while whittling down the enemy.
I'd say it's irrefutable that t3 land both early and late has the highest skill ceiling of all tech levels on land. You could make a totally reasonable argument it's the highest in the game if you wanted to. The only thing that really compares is naval combat.
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I'm not complaining about how bricks do against percies...
I'm also not complaining about the balance between T2 and T3 units. The change wasn't all bad.
I'm specifically complaining about the T3/T4 balance.
You can't make bricks in large numbers on some maps, because if you form them up they just get annihilated by any assault experimental the other player(s) send your way. That didn't use to be the case. You needed a critical threshold, but after that threshold was reached, bricks were pretty damn good.
Now that threshold doesn't exist.
Its now a replacement for T3.
The only reason this isn't obvious to every single player is that T3 units still find utility on maps where map control is critical. On maps where you don't need units in 50 places at once, assault experimental are pretty clearly OP.
Don't you guys have statistics? How much mass is spent in high level games on Isis in T3 land versus assault experimentals? If you think I'm full of shit it should be easy to prove with data.
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15 bricks crush an ML. 30 bricks crush a mega when it has nothing to retreat to. 22 bricks crush a GC. 21 bricks crush a chicken when it has micro as garbage as mine lol.
Not even sure why you say that closed games come down to T4. If I know where the T4 is coming, I can very easily stop it through mass efficient defenses against it and just keep making my eco sim. This can be point defense, arty, rambo SACUs, air. This is what happens on every canis/hilly/whatever I play that isn't decided by a brutal air crush.
This is also why T3 is so garbage on these maps. Because it's SO bad to make infinite unit spam since you are immediately made irrelevant as everyone and their mom ecos up and leaves you on your unringed t2 mexes totally marginal to the game state. To make t3 spam worthwhile you need a consistent transition between t1 -> t2 -> t3. Or at least some t1 -> t3 or t2 -> t3 aspect. If it's some closed garbage map then you skipped t1 and t2 and will more than likely skip t3 because it isn't worth the lump sum investment. Might as well as scout and abuse defender's advantage by rushing your own t4 faster than the enemy can make theirs + bring it to you. I'm already spamming hives for my quantum gateway for RAS SCUs so why make even more unneeded infrastructure?
This is not a balance problem but rather a map problem.
Actually no, it isn't even a map problem most of the time. Mostly it's just that players are pretty incompetent and can't be trusted to work as one. So you are better off just ecoing up and finding your own sieves to abuse and get ready to capitalize on anything some dude on your team manages to randomly do.
This is why 2v2s are much better to see how serious teamgames would go. You not only have easier coordination but a vast space to interact with which almost always correlates with more variability in strategy. 3v3 and 4v4 are also ok but it requires 20x20 maps pretty much.
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Spin up a test FTXCommando, spin up a test and actually see how well a Monkeylord does against 15 bricks.
Takes 5 minutes.
You're guessing here and you're guessing wrong. I'm sure you can find a friend to help you test that. If you can't just message me when I'm online.
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I did run a test. Unmicro'd, 10/15 bricks live.
With micro purely on the ML, I managed to kill all the bricks with a 500 hp ML left. This was because 6-8 of the bricks were walking out of range and stopped shooting.
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@FtXCommando said in Points of Imbalance.:
I did run a test. Unmicro'd, 10/15 bricks live.
With micro purely on the ML, I managed to kill all the bricks with a 500 hp ML left. This was because 6-8 of the bricks were walking out of range and stopped shooting.
I think you're bad at tests Are you on now? Wanna join a test?
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I think you're bad.
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@FtXCommando said in Points of Imbalance.:
I think you're bad.
For anyone that wanders through here.
This is the real issue. If he ran a test he ran it badly. If you don't believe me, find a friend, and test this yourself.
How does a ML do against 15 bricks. See how you do. Really easy thing to test for yourself.
Talk is cheap.
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@moses_the_red said in Points of Imbalance.:
Talk is cheap.
In that case, feel free to post the link to your testing at any time.
If you're going to just shit up another thread then I will ask for you to be banned from posting.@Arran mate, I think you've misunderstood something here.
You're working on the assumption that every equivalent unit must have the exact same level of power. This is not how it works in pretty much any game balance ever made. Doing so would instantly force a meta wherein the faction with more options will always be at an advantage, and I'm really sick of this permanent cybran meta already.All these minor stat changes do nothing to the game besides suit the criteria that you and you alone have created. You're again under the idea that the balance team use this similar forumla (because you noticed a couple of coincedental patterns maybe?) but this is also likely not the case. Stuff like adding 50 damage doesnt solve a problem with balance, or remove a point of frustration. I don't at all see why we should "just do it"
Stuff like the Novax and sniper meta reveals a lack of game knowledge. I don't really have the motivation to explain why that is though, moses will probbaly derail your thread with his hero complex anyway.
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"With micro purely on the ML, I managed to kill all the bricks with a 500 hp ML left. This was because 6-8 of the bricks were walking out of range and stopped shooting."
funnily this is pretty much what happened in moses "test". somehow the bricks were never in any kind of real formation with 2-3 shoting at once and the monkey had infinite kiting space so it could just keep picking off flanks
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@biass. Thank you for responding to my post. I was wondering if it would ever be addressed. Your point about "every unit doesn't have to be equivalent" is correct and I agree with you. However, for every advantage there must be a disadvantage to restore balance. Additionally some units have been normalised or follow a specific pattern. The Shocker: T3 Strategic Bomber is one such unit that follows a very specific pattern between the other faction's bombers. This pattern is outlined in my original post. To paraphrase you biass, you mentioned there was "no point" in adding 50 damage to The Shocker. With 50 extra damage, The Shocker would be able to kill Seraphim T3 mex in 2 passes rather than 3. This is a major change to the Aeon VS Seraphim matchup in the T3 phase. biass you must know that T3 bombers don't have the longest life expectancy as ASF's are immediately send to end their lives. One extra pass on a T3 mex, is the difference between a kill or not. I do not believe I'm being unreasonable in requesting this since the extra 50 damage would be adhering to the pattern between T3 Bombers. I also think @harzer99 made a good but brief point about The Shimmer.
Although this is not mentioned in my original post, every conclusion about a unit's balance (with one exception being The Shocker's bomb damage) is speculative to some degree. For instance, I have insufficient experience with snipers to be an authoritative figure on their proper usage. But thinking you need to a 'top player' to express a valid opinion is an appeal to authority fallacy (aka logical flaw). I ask you not to discredit people's opinions simply because they are not as good at the game as yourself.
@moses. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic since biass said "moses will probbaly derail your thread with his hero complex anyway." -
" However, for every advantage there must be a disadvantage to restore balance. Additionally some unit have been normalised or follow a specific pattern."
No.
Balance isnt comparing units of one category vs another, since faction streghts lie in different strategis. you have to at least factor in land and air (al relevant land& air units+structures etc.) at all relevant tech levels at once. you have to compare the factions approaches to the game as a whole against another and compares straghts and weaknesses of a faction as a whole. going straight over unit stats for 1 specific role is just a rule of thumb to avoidrunning into obvious imbalances
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A small incomplete list of normalised units that follow a specific pattern with differences between units of same categories that/or are governed by a discernible pattern:
- T2 Mobile Missile Launchers
- T1 Interceptors
- T1 Point Defences
- T3 Mobile Heavy Artilleries
While your post @HoujouSatoko is essentially correct, it can also be summarised as follows: "Balance is difficult and must be viewed holistically."
I look forward to your counter argument defending:" However, for every advantage there must be a disadvantage to restore balance. Additionally some unit have been normalised or follow a specific pattern."
No.
