Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.

@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

I've never had a Novax center be the turning point of a game. Usually a Novax center causes immediate retaliation that most aren't exactly ready for. I think it's fine as is.

@CheeseBerry Thank you for your answer. Even more because it is not just pointless spamming of toxity. After reflexion, I respectfully disagree. I aknowledge of course that I might be wrong.

If you say that nuke is op, than Novax is by far more effective in "earning" mass.

Massfarms are very explosive and hard to protect. And this is not the case of Novax. Even the more effective t2 fabs around mexes are often not built. And one cant always cover the map in massfarms. So the comparaison is not perfect.

Would i build Novax rather than something else? If I am winning navy, of course not. If game is open, with lots of mouvement, and opportunitys, no. If the situation is quite blocked, I think usually (1) Novax would be better than nuke, beginning of t3 or t4 arty, some more ras boys etc. Scouting is so important, mass and apm "earned" very good, price cheap, easy to defend, etc. I think in specific situations and maps like that it is by far better than alternatives. So, yes, i think it is op.

From what I have seen, opinions like mine is quite common, at least at my level. 1 or 2 Novax are built quite often on Setons. Most discussions about Novax ingame turn around how op it is. And players even excuse for useing Novax.

We have talked about numbers, and now we have talked about opinions, not much more to add. Cheers

@wikingest Your focus just seems to be on how good it is on a single map, Setons - there are other maps played and it’s performance is significantly worse on maps that aren’t large with spread out mexes.

Even if it was considered very powerful on one map (I dont think that has been established yet in this thread), I dont think balance should be based on a single map anyway. For example the alternative extreme would be if I said how novax needs a big buff because it’s near-useless on Astro Craters.

@maudlin27 Unit that is not an obligation to build, should be balanced on its best map. If it is too weak in other conditions, than it does not matter, people do not need to build it. But if it is op in one map, then the game is "broken".

For example. Lets say that Mavor is useless in one-v-one game on open 5 by 5 km map. Lets make it ten times cheaper, so it would become useful. Now imagine what would happen on game in general, on other maps, when players notice that mavor is ten times cheaper and all other prices (also gameenders) are the same. What would happen to FAF.

Sentons is fine for novax because the the only thing sentons brings that is “unique” for novax to take into account is the utility helping with late game navy fights. Basically any decent big teamgame map is going to have mexes similar to sentons or even more spread out. Novax just isn’t anything more than a nuisance in these games when properly handled.

I feel giving the smd a toggle to shoot down a novax is reasonable. The missiles only cost like 3.6k vs the satellites 10k to replace. If its something you can turn on then you can't use them to overwhelm the smd either and since its not economic to build smds all over the map for most of the game it protects the core base and still lets the extent mass be threatened. The sat can do its job to harass outer mexes, defend against pushes and even be an early scout.

Addendum: If needed you could even buff the sat to compensate, drop its reload from 20 secs to 16 to make it more useful as a defensive unit or to kill far units and buildings. this would raise its dps to ~300ish.

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

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

That goes both ways buddy

The real question though: Is "nerfing the No-Vax" a pro or anti vax stance? xd