The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (The Ambassador & Blackbird)

@maudlin27

Looking solely at T3 air do I prefer Cybran over other factions? Yes

My point exactly.... likely because of the Stealth, no?

However, your thread/theme is "problems with the UEF".

Yes. These are all UEF-related issues. But this also plagues other factions as well, though those other 2 factions have some options to help, whereas the UEF doesn't.

If all 3 factions are inferior at T3 air stage to Cybran, that's not a problem with the UEF, and if it was considered a problem that Cybran strat and asf are considered preferable to all other factions, the solution should be one relevant to all the other factions (rather than just giving a 'make your own thread on the other factions' type response).

I believe this affects the UEF more than other factions. Hence my reasoning to apply Jamming to 2 more air units. Sure, it may not help against everything air-wise, but it would help the faction in general or overall - Jaming would help it become a more viable option. For example, let's say you're about to play a Seton's... what faction would you choose? Something tells me that you won't be choosing UEF willingly.
Why is that? - Is it because they don't have a Czar? Is it because they don't have stealth?

As FtX stated in a previous post, (I'll be rephrasing here) a strong counter is that every other faction has proper air experimentals... ones that can be built by anyone - not just the air player. This draws the focus, again, away from UEF as they are the ones unable to counter.

Sure, the Novax exists, but a T2 shield counters that. As for a Soulripper, a Czar, or Ahwassa - you need way more things to counter that.

I also dont understand the rationale for the problems/units focused on in the later parts of your problems with the UEF series.

Well, to be honest with you, as stated in my first post, this was originally planned out to be a huge article reaching almost 8,000 words. So, all of this is pre-written, and I'm just doing some minor editing as we move past each section. I wrote all of this about a month and a half ago. Ask Spikey or Jip - They'll tell you how long I've been working on this. The title is just a title to fit the theme, that's all. I'm just trying to bring attention to issues I believe affect the Faction.

While I'm preempting the thread slightly, the UEF has a real difficulty with the T2 naval stage thanks to Cooper and Valiant - it has a weak destroyer, and the weakest anti-sub naval options, yet it sounds like you'll be focusing on the shield boat (a unit that is very useful in some scenarios)

Though I agree that the UEF has bad anti-torpedo and torpedoes overall, I believe they are balanced as is for the most part as they have a dedicated torpedo unit; The Cooper.
However, not to spoil too much, but I wasn't quite focusing on stats for the shield boat this time. I may talk about the stats, but I'll mainly be focusing rather on the shield itself and its shape. You'll see it tomorrow.

~ Stryker

@snagglefox

Ngl, I kind of want to take Javi's sarcasm and make it real to break the monotony of the air meta.

Cyb - Stealth, more maneuverable but weaker asf
UEF - Jamming but average asf
Aeon - Shielded but less maneuverable?
Sera - Tier 3.5 asf

It would probably not work all that great, but I'd be curious to see it.

It would take the meaning of faction diversity to a new level - which I am all for!
That's the whole reason I wrote this post -to help diversify the factions and help UEF in its air problem whilst doing so.

~ Stryker

@ComradeStryker
Your view of cybran land is flawed.
Cybran com stealth was nerfed. The additional costs makes it the equivalent of having t2 or nano on other coms (both of which remove the cybran's regen advantage, as well as, removing an advantage gained from the health buff).

The medusa is only good against large numbers of enemies otherwise it will consistently miss everything. And is the worst arty for taking out pd/structures.

The torps on any of the land are a joke and no-one should be scared of a unit that takes 5 minutes to kill a frigate (and costs more).

The only way a loyalist wins a fight with a titan is if it gets into close range. The titan has greater range-dps and hp.

And the brick suffers greatly from a lack of shields (which a percy gets) and is too slow to counter the snipers of aeon/sera.

And finally the rhino suffers from a low profile which means that half it shots get wrecked by terrain (or even worse it shoots walls which most other tanks shoot over).

The strength of snipers/shield combos and the existence of mobile shields buffing health pools has left cybran in a sad land state.

Maybe we should buff the omni sensor (increase the range or decrease the cost) because cybran air is strong but thinking that cybran land is in a good place is flawed.

It sounds to me that introducing jamming to strategic bombers is too strong, as it may be the difference between them being able to drop their projectile or not. But introducing it to the spy planes is interesting, and something I'd really like to see to add to the faction diversity. At the moment, Jamming plays a minimal role in this game even though it is an interesting mechanic.

@comradestryker said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

The Cybran ACU has one of the strongest upgrades early on - Stealth.

Correct, early on, meaning late T1 stage at most. Look at other factions' options:

• UEF gun + nano
• UEF gun + T2 + shield
• Aeon double gun
• Aeon gun range + radar
• Aeon chrono
• Aeon double gun plus shield
• Sera gun + T2 + regen
  Most of these can't be fought toe-to-toe with a Cybran com until lazer. By the time you get lazer, it's T3 land time and a Cybran com with its 12k base health gets kited to death by 3 percies/bricks or 3 snipers. Only after you get cloak you can go rambo, and that's assuming your opponent doesn't have omni, or built a GC, or groundfires an experimental or strats at you.

The Wagner has probably one advantage no other amphibious tank has - The ability to go under the water and not above it.

That's a sidegrade at most. It means that outside of spamming T2 artillery Cybran has zero tools to get back in the water after being pushed out.

T3 mobile arty used to be OP, then deployment time rebalance happened. No mobile shields = no protection from air = dead arty.

This is quite a fair point, but why build them if you don't have air to cover them?
It's all situational.

All the more reason for Cybran T3 air to be strictly better, no? Other factions can shield their T3 arties and don't need air dominance to use them.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Cybran AA (T1 & T2) can fight against land units... so it's a multi-purpose unit. It's not defenseless and it will attack land units, too.

T2 Cybran flak doesn't fight land units. You don't seem to play Cybran very much. No one seriously uses T1 AA's land DPS either, I'd very much prefer another faction's AA that doesn't take 5 years to kill a Mercy.

Let's not forget about the Viper! That MML is annoying to deal with as its missiles split when destroyed.

A while back all MMLs except the Viper were buffed, so it's not quite the terror in comparison that it used to be.

@jip said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

It sounds to me that introducing jamming to strategic bombers is too strong, as it may be the difference between them being able to drop their projectile or not. But introducing it to the spy planes is interesting, and something I'd really like to see to add to the faction diversity. At the moment, Jamming plays a minimal role in this game even though it is an interesting mechanic.

You just said jamming plays a minimal role and then proposed giving it to a unit where it has a minimal role lol

I’d literally rather have no jamming added than this purely for the self respect of UEF not getting ANOTHER mediocre jamming unit everyone forgets has jamming because any unit with a slightly useful jamming is immediately considered gamebreaking.

Also curious how you justify the strat with the best statline having stealth being no problem but UEF getting jamming suddenly breaking the game.

This topic is not about the Cybran strat, it is about these changes:

Problem:
When it comes to air, UEF seems to be less favored. Especially when comparing them to other factions > > > and their available units (Stealth, Soulripper, Ahwassa, Czar, etc.).

To help with this, I propose that the T3 Strategic Bomber, as well as the T3 Spy Plane, be granted Jamming.

Proposed Solution:
Add Jamming to both T3 Strategic Bomber and T3 Spy Plane.
Blackbird: -50 or Free? power maintenance cost.
Ambassador: -150 power maintenance cost.

Thanks for explaining that. So does that mean for the sake of coherency you also advocate for nerfing Cybran strat since stealth can mean your sams don’t shoot at them until they already dropped? Or is this just a UEF thing we gotta prevent?

If you want to talk about the cybran strat, make a new topic. Someone even made guidelines for you to follow, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them

What I think about the Cybran strat is wholly irrelevant for this topic ? The OP wants to add jamming to the spy plane and the strat, it feels to me adding it to the strat is too strong. What else do you want to know about the suggested changes from me ?

@comradestryker said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

If Stealth isn't that big of a deal, why must every other faction need to mix in spy planes into their ASF mix to try and counter it? That ability alone is costing you ASF and mass.
Granted, every air player should be doing this by default, but the fact that it needs to be done, or a dedicated front-line omni needs to be built - just shows you how strong that ability is.

It's not that strong though because it's not free and increases in cost with the number of ASF.
The one spyplane you need to have is quite cheap and you don't really need more.
So you're better off turning stealth off if you have like 10 ASF and the opponent has a spyplane
And once you get to higher numbers, 80 ASF need the same e as an uncapped omni so running stealth very quickly costs you more than the omni costs to counter it.

@jip said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

If you want to talk about the cybran strat, make a new topic. Someone even made guidelines for you to follow, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them

What I think about the Cybran strat is wholly irrelevant for this topic ? The OP wants to add jamming to the spy plane and the strat, it feels to me adding it to the strat is too strong. What else do you want to know about the suggested changes from me ?

There’s nothing to know because it’s incoherent and irrational to be satisfied with the current Cybran strat and consider UEF strat with jamming OP.

@ftxcommando I mean not all factions were meant to have the exact same values. UEF has better T2 and T3 land than Cybran, so should we just buff Cybran t3 land to be as good as UEF t3 land?

And jamming is pretty crazy on t1 navy when you don’t know if it’s 2 or 5 frigates

@jip said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

If you want to talk about the cybran strat, make a new topic. Someone even made guidelines for you to follow, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them
What I think about the Cybran strat is wholly irrelevant for this topic ? The OP wants to add jamming to the spy plane and the strat, it feels to me adding it to the strat is too strong.

I dont see why its weird to talk about cybran (or any other) strats here. Its clearly relevant to the topic, especially since you shouldnt talk about balancing units in isolation.

The OP even mentioned cybran and used it as a point of reference to come to his conclusion.

@javi said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

@ftxcommando I mean not all factions were meant to have the exact same values. UEF has better T2 and T3 land than Cybran, so should we just buff Cybran t3 land to be as good as UEF t3 land?

This is such an overused line thats so vague and can be literally said about anything.

insert any unit that sucks but why would u buff it cause this faction has a stronger xyz stage!

We would literally be stuck in 2012 balance

@thewheelie said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

I dont see why its weird to talk about cybran (or any other) strats here. Its clearly relevant to the topic, especially since you shouldnt talk about balancing units in isolation.

The topic is about t3 uef strat and scout, if u wanna talk of any other t3 air unit or group of unit u kinda need another thread.

Anyway balancing is already done in isolation so why would it change anything xD

@thewheelie said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

This is such an overused line thats so vague and can be literally said about anything.

It's often said on these forums because the fallacy it rebuts is also often brought up.

If you want to decide if a unit is too strong or too weak you obviously need to compare it to other units in its category. After all unit's strength is relative, not absolute.
If you want to have an interesting game you also need to compare whole rosters of units between different factions. So for example the strength of an UEF strat is influenced by UEF having Broad Sword, not having Air T4 etc.
That's why comparing the UEF strat to the Cybran one is valid. Even more important is looking at the whole roster of units and trying to figure out if UEF is already compensated for their strat being weaker then cybran one and what would be the effect of adding jamming to UEF strat. How would it impact the T3 Land stage, how would it impact strat rush, how would it impact the ability of UEF to snipe heavily shielded targets etc.

I guess when I suggest to buff UEF to have an aoe of 12 I can tell people that explain this would allow the strat to immediately kill 4 t2 mex on any map that t2 mexes are irrelevant and the thread is about the strat bomber.

Just such a ridiculous idea that something as inherently relativistic as game balance cannot involve relativist comparisons across various areas of the game.

@javi said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

@ftxcommando I mean not all factions were meant to have the exact same values. UEF has better T2 and T3 land than Cybran, so should we just buff Cybran t3 land to be as good as UEF t3 land?

And jamming is pretty crazy on t1 navy when you don’t know if it’s 2 or 5 frigates

I am aware that UEF frig is a great use of jamming, it’s literally the only good use of jamming in the UEF roster. Doesn’t change that UEF frig is 3rd place in the frig tier list tho.

Cybran strat would STILL be better than UEF strat. The boon of Cybran strat is the aoe it does, not the stealth. I would rather counterintelligence BECOME a greater part of balance BECAUSE it raises the margin of error in unit positioning as well as the benefit of proper intel gathering which are huge parts of what makes FAF gameplay interesting to me. This is why I would want jamming to extend to more units in UEF roster and Aeon and Sera to get their own counterintelligence aspects so intel gathering becomes a secondary battlefield itself.

I dislike how easy it is to get away with lazy scouting and I see things like stealth and jamming as ways to punish it.

@ftxcommando said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

@zeldafanboy said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

@ftxcommando

My whole point was that if UEF T3 air was as good as Cybran it would make UEF unbalanced. It already has the best T3 naval (Neptunes are anti meta because they are good against frig spam) and the best T3 land that synergistically fills in the weakness of its siege T4 land unit. The game balance is supposed to be holistic, every faction isn’t supposed to be equally powerful in every arena at every tech level…

Also just wanted to quote this cuz I almost forgot about it. Nowadays UEF is definitely not the best t3 naval. UEF t3 navy is honestly quite hard countered by Aeon t3. Both exodus/shields or Omen are brutal against neptunes and Tempest is very painful for summits to properly deal with, especially since tempest kills all shieldboat protection in one volley.

That isn’t saying UEF t3 navy is trash, really every t3 navy stage is decent and has varying situations they’re solid at and it’s up to players (and maps) to make it possible to make those situations happen. Summit for example is horrible early on (slow, takes forever to shoot, easy to dodge) but is the best bs in terms of production scale combined with the shieldboat to compensate for their inability to dodge. Only tempest spam can really compare. But this is a highly specialized segment of navy combat that requires situations like sentons rather than something like Point of Reach or even Metir for navy combat where you rarely see more than 5 battleships per side. That’s where other factions are superior. When it comes to neptune, they’re fine (so long as no sub spam) but that comes at the cost of UEF t2 stage being total trash so you’re forced to rush them or slowly lose.

I also don’t see why UEF t3 land is the best for the same reasons just reversed. UEF needs to do enough damage with titans to either win the game through them or build up a snowball that then allows local advantage in the form of percy, t4, or SACUs to win. As it currently stands snipers win any sort of stagnate t3 game and therefore Aeon/Sera have the significantly easier to use “passive buildup” t3 stage. If you don’t pressure with UEF or Cybran, you’re just dead.

These are actual, healthy areas of the game where it doesn’t come down to “this faction is autowin at this stage” but instead it comes to forcing game states through play of the game. This is much healthier than something like being forced to rush neptune since players actually have an advantage to play for at that tech stage.

It’s also why I get sick of reading dudes say one faction “deserves” to autowin something (hello cybran frig) because of “holistic” balance when that’s just terrible game design. This situation of a faction “deserving” a shittier strat for “holistic” reasons is the same.

This in turn is why I would want all T3 air to have unique counterintel aspects, because you can’t make one faction “stronger” or “weaker” when they all basically have the same units barring the unique Aeon ones. If you gave ASFs counterintel you can then make some weaker or stronger forced depending on the air force size, or if not, then you at least introduce spy plane dynamics into air fights and punish lazy players that just make two blobs fight.

For what it matters Sera unique counterintel if you had to force it is is “weirdness” or more accurately having go invisible under certain criteria (submerging Destroyers & Selens basically)