Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.

@wikingest said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

@cheeseberry said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

It's not op because you can shield every mex and your air grid on setons for the same cost it takes to build a novax, but you can do so multiple minutes later, making it effectively much cheaper.

On Setons, Novax takes to move from air spot to first mid mex about 1 minutes 15 secundes. And air spot to air spot 2min 15sec.

t2 UEF engie, without move time, needs about 1 min 40 sec to build shield.

Novax gets through t2 UEF shield in 45-60 sec, depending if it was "loaded".

To protect all mexes on (half) of Setons, with two shields, you need about 77 t2 UEF shields. With more than six t3 power generators to power those. Let's say seven pgens.

You don’t need 2 t2 shields to deny a novax. It’s wasting its time if it’s killing a t2 shielded mex. You can rebuild the mex it kills in like 20 seconds while it goes to waste time at a new mex. You have 36k extra mass (or I guess 30k if you account for the shields to shield mexes)

This just sounds like you over-respond and the enemy tricks you into making a novax efficient. I’d go so far as to say making a 2nd novax if this is how u responded is actually a mistake from the enemy and only closes an advantage they got you to gift them.

You also don’t need t2 shields protecting power or any concentration of infrastructure, a t3 shield or two and you’re basically totally safe (unless ur air but then you hardly need more than 5).

It has been explained plenty of time, that the one with Novax is behind on mass.

Decrease the damage by a considerable amount and allow it to fire non-stop without reloading.
Just a constant beam.
And let it hit air units...? Why? Because it's above them. And, it would make it a more viable Air unit for the UEF since, it still lacks a good Air T4.

Also, there seems to be a bug with it in which it cancels its volley when you manually target it.
I can't replicate it but it does happen to me often.

Shields blink off, I tell sat to target it, and it stops firing... Weird.

~ Stryker

@ftxcommando please stop being so confrontation to direct comments. Respect my statement and piss off

Just remove it if you cant cope and accept suggestions
Btw literally no one plays 80km on LOUD fyi

Btw literally no one plays 80km on LOUD fyi

@Azraeel FTX's point about LOUD and FAF having different sized maps is an important one, even if the size difference is not that of 20x20 vs 80x80, but 20x20 vs 40v40.

Allowing SMDs to be able to shoot down sats (like LOUD with a second weapon) would keep it relevant as a means of keeping players from expanding since it would cost so much to cover such a large area with anti nuke, as well as LOUD players tending to rush mobile SMDs which would not be able to shoot down sats. But in FAF a whole 20x20 would be covered with antinukes by the time a player reasonably has time to make a sat. The result is that adding the LOUD sat nerf to FAF would have a very different result. This even goes beyond map size differences, apparently LOUD balances Novax in an entirely different way (no weapon, many sats) which results in the balance of the two not being remotely comparable.

So with the reasoning not to not copy LOUD evident (its a whole different game.), the discussion goes back to whether this would be good for FAF. If Novax spam was an issue i would agree that it needs to be nerfed in some way, but even if that was the case this would not be by allowing SMD's to shoot them. A better nerf (imo), would be to reduce the shooting time or damage. Allowing SMD's to shoot sats would make them totally useless and would make it unnecessary to react them, whereas a stat nerf would still require shielding of exposed units but give the opponent more time to react to the threat.

Furthermore, from the perspective of any new players it would be quite confusing to see a nuke defense shoot a sat but for some reason not consume an anti nuke. This seems like, even if it was good for balance, an idea that the game team would not approve of due it not being intuitive. But Jip or anyone is welcome to correct me if i am wrong about that.

just remove it

Why? It adds an interesting element to the game and is far more interesting than no brain arty spam. Currently the only time many are used at once is when Farms is bored and decided to troll. Otherwise you only ever make 1 or 2 to force shields and kill exposed units.

I'm ok with removing the uef expensive air scout to gain the ability for the Atlantis to fly and use it's torps on ground when flying.

@spikeynoob said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

Why? It adds an interesting element to the game and is far more interesting than no brain arty spam. Currently the only time many are used at once is when Farms is bored and decided to troll. Otherwise you only ever make 1 or 2 to force shields and kill exposed units.

Eh, I wouldn’t really call novax that interesting of a unit. I can agree with an adjustment of the unit because it isn’t really that interactive or fun to play against and I don’t like that it’s always compared to t3 arty when that isn’t a part of the roster UEF needs help in. That’s kinda why I’d rather have a design that makes it more focused on the location of the sat center. It could even be a decent unit to help basebreak arty bases that a fatty forced up by building it slightly out of range of the arty base to get a pretty high dps beam that shoots nearly continuously to kill the shielded arty. Have it shoot at current dps at around the range of a t3 arty and lower it/increase it from there. Assuming that’s even possible in the game lua.

novax forces some shields and will lose you some mexes, but t3 arty forces some shields and hard assistance. ultimately drains a bit more mass than 2 novaxes would. novax is only really painful if u have t2 mass fabs around ur t3 mexes

@ftxcommando said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

You don’t need 2 t2 shields to deny a novax. It’s wasting its time if it’s killing a t2 shielded mex. You can rebuild the mex it kills in like 20 seconds while it goes to waste time at a new mex. You have 36k extra mass (or I guess 30k if you account for the shields to shield mexes)

This just sounds like you over-respond and the enemy tricks you into making a novax efficient.

Yeah this is it exactly. As long as you react appropriately to a novax, it's really not a big deal.

Just to hammer the point home that a novax really isn't all that strong, even on one of its best maps, setons, here are two more comparisons:

1. A nuke, including launcher, pgens, engies and the actual missile, costs around 40k mass. It also forces out an absolute minimum of 45k of mass in smds (7.5k for each smd building and 7.5k for each smd-missile) and then you still haven't defended the island, or a lot of the navy production, meaning the nuke will probably kill 30k+ in mass anyway, even after you have "defended" against it.
   People just don't realize how oppressive nukes on open maps like setons actually are because everybody makes smds every game anyway at some point, even w/o a nuke even being scouted! (Hence them getting a slight nerf soon).

2. Instead of making a novax you could spend 34k on 6 t3 mass fabs and 3 t3 pgens which are power neutral (with some slight adjacency) and produce 16*6 = 96 mass per second.
   The comparison isn't perfect (mass fabs don't scout and don't tax the apm of your opponents, but they also pay of sooner and can be made piecemeal), but as a rough estimate that means that if your novax doesn't kill 100 mass per second, you could have just made mass fabs instead and gotten more out of it.
   For comparison, a novax shooting and killing t2 uef shields in 45 seconds each kills 600/45 = 14 mass per second.

If you can't defend the entire map with novax, is uef even the defence faction anymore?

@CheeseBerry So correct me if I am wrong, it is little hard to understand.
You have totally changed your mind, and you no longer want to protect all mexes with shields?

You want to use only 6k of mass for protection, lets suppose one t3 pgen and 4 t2 shields? Not even enough to protect airgrid, or maybe only a small one. So you could have a 30k mass advantage in the beginning?

In this case Novax can attack unprotected t3 mexes, and kill the mex and reclaim in about 1min 20sec. Reclaim needs to be targeted. This gives value "earned" 4.6k. Let's add to this 1.5k proposed by Ftx, corresponding to time when mex is not producing. Total of 6.1k. Divided by 80 secunds, means 76 mass "earned" by sec. 30k mass advantage divided by 76 means 395sec= little more than 6 and half minutes. For first time, we can add 1-1.5 min travel time, maybe 2 minutes of build time... it can be built faster if all players participate. (Note that it takes much less build power to build Novax than to build same mass in shields and power)

So you will have advantage in first 10 min from 30k to 0. Un average of 15k. during 10min or 30k during 5min. Lets say 30k, 3 battleships during 5 min? And if in those first 5 min you dont win the game, then Novax team will get the same advantage, 30k, added every following 7 minutes. If nothing changes, until the end of the game. Is my calculations correct? Is this the way to counter Novax?

1. I kind of agree, that nuke is op. But this is not reason for something else to be op.

2. Actually t2 mass fabricators around mexes are even more productive, but many players still dont build those, as they are so explosive and hard to protect.

@wikingest said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

@CheeseBerry So correct me if I am wrong, it is little hard to understand.
You have totally changed your mind, and you no longer want to protect all mexes with shields?

No, I'm saying that the opportunity cost to make a novax is quite high, usually too high to justify making one, even on setons.

Lets get at this from a different angle.

What does it mean for something to be OP?
You could define it in quite a few ways, but for our purposes here, I'd define it as:
"Something is OP if it is the obviously best option (in the sense of increasing your chance to win the game) in a large percentage of gamestates and among a variety of alternatives".

This definition doesn't capture some important nuances, like inter-faction balance, but it's good enough to evaluate sats.

According to the above, sniper bots for example are slightly op right now, because there are lots of possible ways to play aeon/sera t3 land, but sniper bots are often just straight up the best one.

Similarly we can ask the question: "If I have ~35k mass available, a safe position to build something and a couple minutes of breathing time, what should I do with that?"

If the answer to that would always be "make a novax" then the novax would be op.

Mine, and FTX's, argument is that you should almost always spend that 35k mass on something else, because while having a novax is obviously good and strong, there are better ways (in the sense of trying to win the game) to spend it.

If we use your example of your opponents making literally no shields around their t3 mexes, and you killing all the reclaim manually, it takes 395 sec = 6:35 min for the novax to pay for itself.

Even my, admittedly suboptimal, mass fab example from above takes 34k / 96 = 355 sec = 5:55 min to pay for itself.

So yeah, the novax is not op. It's just really annoying.

Sad to see so many antiVaxers, people believe anything they see on social media nowadays

how fast is a group of asylums compared to a novax, I bet 10 asylums per slot on sentons beats novax with proper juggling