Make snipers use E to shoot/reload their weaponry.

Identify a problem: Sniper bots are currently overcrowding the mid and late T3 stage. Making it so producing percies or even bricks is often nothing but asking to lose as those units are gonna get kited to death by the snipergruppe.
It even comes to the point that later on you can totally forget about making anything but shield + sniper combo as nothing is gonna come close to your deathball. Not only killing the unit diversity of opposing factions but also the faction itself where the no-brain shield+sniper just outperforms mainline T3 units which I think should be part of the land game until very late game where Rambo bois come out + experimentals.

Showcase the problem: Honestly any bigger game with open enough space can be seen to produce unhealthy amounts of the snipergruppes into the mid and late T3 stage. I believe there are many cases that have been seen over the last few months as such I will refrain from scrounging up random replays.

Solution: Due to the overreliance on shield spam I would like to propose introducing E cost to running it's main weaponry. Making it so it's way harder to maintain the snipergruppe shielded at all times unless you actually invest into T3 power.

Justify: It gives the balance team a brand new lever to deal with the obnoxious sniper spam and makes it so if player doesn't scale his power properly he is risking losing all the shields after a group of 30 snipers fire at once and also losing DPS as he enters a power stall.

I also don't think it's unheard thing to do considering we already have stuff like ravagers or t2 and t3 arty take E to shoot. It's also showed off to run just fine in SCTA mod so it is certainly possible to implement.

Harbs just get crushed by bricks, percies, experimentals, or anything else in the game, so you reluctantly have to spam snipers and shields and babysit them. Harbs already use power, and you would still have to spam mobile shields with them to have any chance, lets make every unit for the whole faction energy dependent. Aeon has the worst combat SACUs, their t3 mobile arty is garbage, the GC used to be pretty bad until Jip broke it, but it will probably get nerfed and be bad again, it just gets countered by bricks and percies too, so whats the point. Only thing good is the new Czar, but it's getting nerfed imminently as well. Every Aeon unit past the t2 stage is garbage except for sniper spam, so that's what you get. Sad times.

wow thomas, it’s just like uef late game sucks besides titans u gotta babysit fr fr

Ah, UEF has 2nd best combat SACUs so it’s totally diff, especially since GCs were always great against combat SACUs.

what if everything used energy to shoot...

Only energy weapons should cost energy to shoot. But no free transfer of energy. Any unit using energy weapons should have an onboard fuel tank. No fuel? No shooty. Bombers can loiter for a long time without using fuel but once they start dropping bombs, fuel runs out quickly.

Non-energy weapons should cost mass to shoot, which means giving up part of their armor. 20% health or less? Unit stops shooting.

Power generators don't teleport energy magically into an invisible power grid connected to everything. They produce fuel in physical packages that need to be picked up and carried to units.

Mass extractors and mass fabs don't teleport mass into a magical invisible distribution network. They drop out "mass poo" onto the ground that needs to be picked up and brought to factories or other units/vehicles that use it ("Mass Poo" is Gyle's name for this concept)

Engineers have onboard fuel tank (and every unit with HP has an onboard mass tank, mass is stored in armor)

No more regeneration. It always costs mass to put mass back onto a unit.

Need to set up supply lines to move mass/energy where you need it. So we'd have things like forward bases to refuel and resupply armies. It would be possible to inflict economic damage by targeting supply lines. So expanding quickly to lots of distant lonely mexes would be less useful.

ACUs and SACUs would be great because they have onboard mass+energy generation.

@thomashiatt
A good laugh and exaggeration for sure, but some truth is in there.

I've found Harbs inadequate vs the T3 of other factions in straight up fights. So I tried snipers. But some suicide T1 bombers coordinated with an asylum shield going offline (or just drifting away from the units they are supposed to protect) equals lots of dead snipers. So that didn't work either.
Then Jip broke the GC. Finally I'd found an answer to... well, just about everything on land. I fear the balance team will nerf it, not just in-line, but far past the line, into the ground and then take a dump on its rotting corpse, putting Aeon players who aren't 3000+ rated back to square one.

I actually like the idea of making more of the Aeon faction rely on having a constant energy supply in exchange for a little bit of extra power. Greater rewards coupled with greater risks.

Random note. Make Chicken death ball able to target structures to bring it in-line with the GC.

You aren't going to win any big land war using Harbs against Percies or Bricks. The Megalith and Fatboy hardcounter snipers and the GC. Prolonging the game doesn't really help you either, Cybran and UEF have engy stations and better game ending tools too. So I don't really understand how Aeon balance in the T3 stage and beyond is supposed to work. If there were viable combat SACUs in the game then this type of balance could make sense, but there aren't. And Aeon actually have the worst SACU currently.

@thomashiatt
I got you one of my favorite aeon vs uef games #17763381

Thomas opinion about aeon units be like ftx opinion about uef units.

Idk i haven't had any big issues playing aeon t3. It's probably my 2nd favorite faction to play in that stage right now. You are either more agile than uef and cybran if it's harbs vs percy/brick which allows you to outflank them, make concaves more easily and choose your engagements better, or are stronger than them if you face titan/loya. You have some sniperbots to be like the main lifeline of your army and have the best acu in the game which even against percies stays extremely relevant for a long time.

Yea aeon rambo's suck and are planned to get a buff.

@thomashiatt don't worry, aeon has the Paragon.