Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?
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The concern I have is that several quite different units have the same icon and mostly the same appearance. Is it possible to use a different icon for each upgrade path?
Heck, you could remove the base SACU and all upgrade options and just make the various "upgrade paths" completely different units (without upgrades). It would likely be simpler to use and I think wouldn't lose much (does anybody ever convert a rambo boy into an engineer boy on the front line, or similar)?
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Base SCU should be comparable to the base ACU, bad at everything until it gets some upgrades. They should just have more powerful upgrades since they are a late game unit. I do think it is slightly problematic that they all have the same icon when they will be able to do very different things. Adding a bunch of good SCU upgrades is almost the same as adding a bunch of units into the game, but you get to sidestep the massive debate about whether it is okay to add units to FAF. You also don't have to make new models, icons, and whatever, but that comes at the cost of readability.
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This is only a first baby step when it comes to the SCU. Basically a band-aid for now. Long term there was a full rework of SCUs planned with new upgrades, rebalances of current ones and most importantly every preset becoming it's own unit, so you could no longer upgrade the SCUs. This is the only way we found we could realistically balance them since otherwise changing just a single upgrade would have affect different presets.
Sadly the rework that has been worked on in some capacity since 2018 or 19 has basically been in limbo since around 2 years. I am not 100% certain yet but I think we will try to tackle it in the 3rd quarter of the year.
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I have to say I don't like the idea of not being able to change sacu upgrades once they are built, the upgrades should be changeable at any point, just like with acu, even if it makes balancing them harder, otherwise you are deleting that unit to replace it with something that didn't exist in original game, everyone always knew sacu as being equivalent to acus in how you upgrade them, but with that change you are basically turning quantum gateway into "t3.5 land factory"
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You don't like it but what's the opposing proposal? Just keeping them what they are? Nobody even swaps upgrades as it is, they just add sacrifice or teleport to SACUs sometimes.
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If you want to make the base SACU's more cost-efficient without making the upgraded SACU's more cost-efficient, you could just decrease the cost of the base SACU's and increase the costs of the upgrades accordingly (to balance out the change in cost of the base SACU).
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@comradestryker said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
That being said, one concern I have is that this change will affect veterancy.
Granted, this is a small change, but a change nonetheless.
The factions that have personal shields as upgrades on these units will still get their health back;
However, when that SACU gains a point in veterancy, they will be missing out on a portion of their new max HP,
because the base HP is lower.That's why shield upgrades give more hp than nano to begin with. Yes this will inbalance it a tiny bit but it's to such a low extent it's almost irrelevant. Also the combat upgrades need to be rebalanced to begin with since aeon and cybran are pretty bad so worrying about something like this is kind of irrelevant.
@chenbro101 said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
think one of the reasons base gun coms and combatant coms are not used more is because the transition to SCU's is a bit expensive and time consuming. At least that is why I find myself almost never doing it. T3 support factories cost half as much as the gateway and there is no option to build the gateway until other t3 tech is done.
What is a base gun com? If you talk about just the scu with 1 gun upgrade then don't worry about it, it's just a terrible version of the rambo one. Also the gateway cost is not the main contributor to the lack of rambo boys. The main one is the time it takes before they start to make an impact compared to their total strenght and mass u put in.
@cyborg16 said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
The concern I have is that several quite different units have the same icon and mostly the same appearance. Is it possible to use a different icon for each upgrade path?
Heck, you could remove the base SACU and all upgrade options and just make the various "upgrade paths" completely different units (without upgrades). It would likely be simpler to use and I think wouldn't lose much (does anybody ever convert a rambo boy into an engineer boy on the front line, or similar)?Idk if that's possible but it sounds nice yea.
Not sure about removing the upgrade utility. There are certainly situations were you use it, like upgrading the sam upgrade on cybran rasboys, or engineer upgrades on any ras boy, or the tele upgrade on sera to go tml tele sacu, or sacrifice on aeon, etc. It will make it easier to understand and balance, but it will remove some interesting combinations since you don't want 10+ presets for all kinds of different combo, especially if you combine it with unique icons.@thomashiatt said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
Base SCU should be comparable to the base ACU, bad at everything until it gets some upgrades. They should just have more powerful upgrades since they are a late game unit.
That is the long term plan yes.
@penguin_ said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
If you want to make the base SACU's more cost-efficient without making the upgraded SACU's more cost-efficient, you could just decrease the cost of the base SACU's and increase the costs of the upgrades accordingly (to balance out the change in cost of the base SACU).
Yes but it will never be a well designed unit because it does everything in 1 unit.
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@thewheelie said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
What is a base gun com? If you talk about just the scu with 1 gun upgrade then don't worry about it, it's just a terrible version of the rambo one. Also the gateway cost is not the main contributor to the lack of rambo boys. The main one is the time it takes before they start to make an impact compared to their total strenght and mass u put in.
Yes, I mean scu with gun upgrade.
They have their uses. 2800 mass per com means they are slightly more expensive than 2 percies with slightly lower dps but much more hp. 1 gateway and 7 of these cost the same as a GC and can just about trade with one.That is not possible if you put nano on a cybran scu. You end up with fewer scu's, each one lasting for only a second or two longer with this upgrade. As you stated, Rambo coms are very expensive. It's only viable later on.
I realise this is a rather niche use of them, just putting their uses out there. It wont be the end of the world if they change in this new direction you are pushing, but I will have to have a little cry and a lie-down.
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@thewheelie Thanks for taking the time to explain.
While you mention it was a trap to begin with to build SACUs, I'd note that particularly at lower ranks the Seraphim SACU was a decent unit in its own right, since it provided you with flexibility even if it didn't excel at any one area. It gave a mini-RAS effect, had enough build power to get SAMs to protect from air with enough health to get near the frontline where engineers would just die, if the enemy didn't kite them would have enough combat efficiency to break through a slightly smaller force, could get upgrades (particularly the TML) to surprise the enemy, and could get reclaim near the frontline. They'd be worse for any one of those roles than anything specialised in any one of those areas, but could be a 'safe' option in some scenarios. Now they'll clearly be a bad option to build, so the pool of semi-viable units gets reduced from these changes.
In terms of how to have the base SACU decent without making the other upgrades overpowered, an alternative way of achieving the same goal but without making a number of already rarely seen units become even worse could be to reduce the SACU mass cost and then increase the cost of upgrades to compensate.
For example, taking the Seraphim SACU, it's health is being reduced from 15.5k to 11.5k, and its dps from 400 to 100, so it's had a massive reduction to its combat power with no change in its cost, and it wasn't overpowered originally. Trying to balance by decreasing its cost and adjusting other upgrades while not perfect (since sometimes they'd get multiple upgrades) could still give something that makes the base SACU less terrible, especially as for many upgrades you'd want ot be getting multiple upgrades together for it to even be worthwhile. As an illustration of an alternative for the Searphim SACU (similar logic would apply to the others as well):
- Reduce mass cost from 2050 to 1050, build power from 40 to 30, energy yield to 100 and mass yield to 1 [References to mass cost changes would have a similar change to energy cost].
- Adjust enhancements that would be problematic with this cost (taking into account the planned boosts to some of these), i.e.:
- DamageStabilization - Current changes are set to increase health by 7500 to 18000 and give 250 regen for 2500 mass - as a standalone upgrade I dont see this as being that powerful, you'd want to combine it with a damage boost for it to have a noticeable impact, so only needs a moderate cost increase of say 500 to 3000
- Engineer - Currently set to cost 380 for BP increase from (nerfed 40) to 98 - increase the cost to 1280 (with the above reduction in eco benefits it'd end up in a similar position)
- Sensors - Increase the cost slightly by 300 to 1100 mass - most of the time you'd be wanting this on a unit with other upgrades given the range boost
- TML - Increase the cost by 800 mass - you'd usually only be getting this upgrade on its own before and using the unit as a mobile TML to surprise the enemy, but for such a scenario you're more likely to be having the SACU near a frontline position where its previous combat potential would have been of use
- Overcharge - due to the massive existing cost of this you're only going to want to get it with other upgrades that improve the range and/or durability, so I'd give it a very small 100 mass cost increase
- Shield - Currently being made 1200 mass for 24000 shield - an upgrade that you'd only really want to be combining with combat upgrades, so I'd increase the cost by 400 mass
i.e. currently the planned changes would heavily nerf the base SACU; the missile preset; and the combat preset. With the above changes, all of these would have the nerfs significantly reduced or potentially be comparable with their current power-level. There would be a very slight boost for the nano combat preset (-200 mass but offset to some extent with a loss of resources and BP), and a slight nerf for the rambo preset (no change in mass cost, but a slight loss of resources and BP) - obviously the costs for the upgrades could be adjusted further to achieve a different outcome.
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I think the tension is due to factional differences in use of sacu. uef wants to be a super engineer, cybran wants to be a sneaky boi, seraphim wants to be an experimental (or exp killer) and aeon... not sure what aeon is gunning for tbh.
They should be balanced accordingly. UEF for example might be good as late game shield for percies, (with aoe shield upgrade) but fundamentally the uef does not need more frontline pressure. Percy does that fine and with fatboy their late game land is rounded out extremely well. (not to say its strong or weak, but that it has bombardment and front line abilities and no glaring weaknesses) Therefore, ras and build power makes sense as the primary design, even if other options are available in a pinch
cybran similarly do not need more late game combat pressure, between monkey and brick and crab. BUT they could use more utility. stealth and cloak plus engineering allows them to grab hard to get mass, set up hidden tml bases, etc. underwater utility would also make sense so they can be used with t3 torp defense.
Sera late game land does have some issues, specifically the chicken cannot be spammed because if they die next to eachother they start killing each other (they also have extremely dodgable damage). Sera sacu should be a spammable combat unit that they can switch to AFTER the first few chickens have come and gone. they should have high build time so it takes time to mass them, but they should be able to go head to head against experimentals. (the cost efficiency of this depends on if they can reclaim or are producing resources themselves. if they are then they should need to do some of that to be cost worth it)
Aeon dont need more direct combat at late game, and are probably most appropriate as ras bois to help aeon get and defend salvation, paragon, and experimental spams that they love so much.I think the worry for me is that reworked sacus might crowd out their t3 land counterparts or fight them for use, or do things that are factionally apropriate, but dont make sense in totality. for example i remember sera sacu might get aoe regen field. This is awesome and would encourage more unit diversity for the faction, which is awesome, but sera t3 doesnt actually need more utility, thats the point of the t3 mobile shield, they need a solution to their poor t4 phase.
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I think the problem is more that there are very few real holes in rosters for SACUs to fill. You say sera t4 stage sucks but I extremely disagree. The most difficult thing they have to counter is a mega but that belongs to a faction that has no built in survivability for their land pushes, hence why it’s so versatile in utility.
Hard to find a fit for SACUs when the biggest thing they got is like, tele game ender cheese or UEF bubble boys so UEF doesn’t lose immediately to half the t4s in game.
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@tagada said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
so you could no longer upgrade the SCUs.
I must say, I'm not a fan of this either.
Based on my understanding, this would also remove custom presets altogether.I tend to repurpose engineer presets and RAS presets with combat upgrades when I need to.
No longer having that option would limit these units severely.On top of that, custom presets; I like to mix and match upgrades wherever I can.
For example, a UEF preset offers both Sensors and Jamming.
I usually tend to pair this preset with a gun upgrade on the other hand that has no upgrade set.
I also use Combatant Presets and add an Engineering Drone or a Jamming upgrade as well.There are no presets for the combination of upgrades I choose to use.
More presets are welcome, but if you don't cover all of them, then you risk limiting their use, and I doubt you would want to add dozens,
if not hundreds, of presets in order to cover all possible combinations.Being able to modify as well as make your own presets to whatever you need is a big part of these units.
I'm not sure limiting that option is the correct way to "balance" SACUs.They share a similar strength to the ACU as any command unit is a powerful unit.
If anything, they should have this ability as they are command units.
They are special and should be different from standard units.
That being said, I'm not sure more will be needed after this change goes live.
Maybe a little bit of tweaking here and there as we will have to wait until we see it in-game, but this change already sounds really effective, to me.
~ Stryker
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The Engineering upgrade on UEF is quite cheap compared to the others but the main problem is that their is no value in making the engineering upgrade on a cost to acquired BP ratio. It is simple too expensive to pay 800 mass + Energy for 40 BP compared to the relative value of building another SACU or the other options one has to gain BP. The suggested lower BP for base and higher BP for upgraded SACU seems sound. It would need a more comprehensive valuation of base SACUs to determine precisely where one should start and how much BP relative to cost and upgrade should add, but we can speculate in this post I suppose.
Regarding the GC vs 8 RAS SACUs scenario. The proposed changed will solve that but in a bad way. It does not address a multitude of other scenarios of what can and does happen in a game. I think that a GC with the speed advantage to outrun SACUs and superior range is not at the mercy of RAS SACUs at all but the outcome of engagements can be better balanced by increasing death explosion damage and having a higher damage radius on death for RAS SACUs since they carry an eco generative upgrade. So in my opinion they should have a higher damage radius and damage.
Clustering up RAS SACUs in this scenario would penalize defensive use of SACUs for eco and sim city while also lessening the Risk of moving any other SACUs in on an attack. It is always annoying to have 10 Rambos and one blows up damaging the rest of the push (no matter how scattered you try to keep them) when you usually are already massively outnumbered.Not going to go back to earlier discussions about why RAS SACUs are OP but yeah as suggested in here too they should cost more.
I suggest to improve the balance by doing the following:
SACUs:
Deathweapon: Damage Radius: 10-->3
Deathweapon: Damage: 1000
Build power 56-->45RAS Upgrade / RAS SACUs:
Deathweapon: Damage Radius: 10
Deathweapon: Damage: 1000-->5000All other Engineer Upgrade:
Build power increase 40-->75UEF Engineer upgrade:
Mass: 450
Energy: 9000These are subtle changes that achieves the goal of weakening a RAS SACU Farm and enhances all other SACUs at the same time to promote more offensive use of them. I think trying to rework the whole thing is an inefficient use of time. Simpler solutions can solve the prevailing imbalances just as well without deviating too much from what people are used to.
As mentioned the health nerf of SACUs in general will not only weaken RAS SACUs in the scenario vs a GC but will affect the effectiveness of SACUs vs T3 land units, bombers, etc. What should be avoided is turning SACUs in Fatboys, puffed up big looking paper Tigers that crumble to a multitude of relatively weak and much cheaper units. -
SACU balance should consider the cost of the quantum gate: sometimes having a couple of SACUs is useful (e.g. as combat engineers, kinda a T4 sparky but without the insane speed), but this is not cost effective when you have to pay for the Q gate too.
Possible alternative: "T4" land factory HQ upgrade which only does two things: (1) add SACUs to the build menu and (2) increases build power.
Alternative: allow the quantum gate to build all T1-T3 land units (possibly only by assisting a land factory).
In both cases you can build 1-2 SACUs without wasting 3k mass on a factory you don't want, but only if you commit to the T3 land stage.
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@evildrew said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
RAS Upgrade / RAS SACUs:
Deathweapon: Damage Radius: 10
Deathweapon: Damage: 1000-->5000That's a pretty neat idea.
Reducing RAS Preset effectiveness is the main targeting point for these upcoming changes.
May as well do it directly to the RAS Preset instead of modifying all base SACUs.
Though, the other changes to their stats seem to help out in altering the SACUs in their combat or engineer effectiveness, rather than just an overall "Do-Everything" unit.
May want to incorporate some of those changes, too.
They seem to point the SACUs in a better spot.
~ Stryker
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@comradestryker said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
@evildrew said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
RAS Upgrade / RAS SACUs:
Deathweapon: Damage Radius: 10
Deathweapon: Damage: 1000-->5000That's a pretty neat idea.
Reducing RAS Preset effectiveness is the main targeting point for these upcoming changes.
May as well do it directly to the RAS Preset instead of modifying all base SACUs.
Though, the other changes to their stats seem to help out in altering the SACUs in their combat or engineer effectiveness, rather than just an overall "Do-Everything" unit.
May want to incorporate some of those changes, too.
They seem to point the SACUs in a better spot.
~ Stryker
The idea was to reduce the damage and damageradius on death of all SACU then make the RAS upgrade increase both, that is doing it directly to the RAS preset.
I have tried arguing why RAS upgrade is too cheap but Mr Balance did not agree with my methodology which I say is correct while his is wrong. Probably he neither agrees with my wholistic attributes point system i posted some days ago. So unlikely they will change RAS cost.....
@evildrew said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:
@Tagada
Your math is technically correct but your methodology is wrong. You take Mexes with storage and Pgens connected to Mass Fabs as a given. This is simply the wrong way to look at it. I have never seen storages on an underwater Mex, it's not possible. Should we ignore these Mexes? Adjacency bonus is a feature that enhances a building's value like the SACU with its HP. mobility and other features enhances the RAS upgrade.
Also as you scale up your Mass Fab and Pgen farm, you need to keep adding Engineering power from either a factory or making Kennels/Hives. RAS SACUs have the equivalent of say 600 mass of T3 Engineering power to keep the math simple (nerfing the bp aspect to 400 wont do much in the sum of things as shown below). There is a difference in the upfront cost to supply that buildpower, i.e. Quantum gatewy vs T3 Factory. There are other factors that are relevant such as pathfinding as you scale the Mass Fab Pgen grid. You can't keep reinvesting your full income into one building at a time and therefore compounding at the same rate with engineers alone after a certain point. Also you would at one point have to put expensive shields up repeatedly to protect say every 2nd cluster of 4 building to protect them from arty.
So what it really comes down to is the methodology, you start from the point of people only build T3 Pgens and T3 Mass Fabs in grids of 4. That is like if I asked you 'where does milk come from' and you say 'from the bottle', and I ask 'well where does that bottle come from' and you then say 'oh yes, from the supermarket'. You have to look at buildings as stand alones when balancing the game overall not just in terms of efficiency at completion but also in terms of the path to reinvest and compound long term, transitioning, weighing risk and reward aspects, etc.
Lets list some relevant facts:
Mass Fabs
Advantages:Adjacency bonus with Pgen
Adjacency bonus with Factory
Adjacency bonus with Mass Storage
Disadvantages:
Low HP
Takes up a lot of space
AOE of explosion is huge (14) and damage is huge too (5,500)
Needs power to produce mass
HP of adjacent buildings (listed above) is lost (Your 2 Pgen 2 Mass Fabs basically has 6,000 HP instead of 24,000 when connected)
Can only keep up in efficiency with RAS upgrade on SACU when using its adjacency advantage.
On a stand alone basis less efficient than RAS SACUs.RAS SACU
Advantages:No power stall affecting Mass production
Submersible
Able to defend themselves (several T1 PD equivalent worth of resources)
More HP
Mobile
Scale more consistenly
Build power (almost 2 T3 Engies worth)
Disadvantages:
I honestly don't see any - 1,000 damage on death - the other SACU around it are laughing
So if you rate all advantages and disadvantages positive and negative values (subjective I know) you would see that RAS SACU are by far superior, especially in an arty war. I am sure the Gap crowd would agree with that from their own experience.
So lets try to rate 2 Mass Fabs + 2 Pgen vs 3 RAS SACU to determine balance in a wider scope. I will put some values in and yes they are my opinion based on almost a decade of playing the game.
*The efficiency of the RAS upgrade is 101.5% as efficiency as 2 T3 Mass Fabs and Pgens in producing mass and 98% as efficient at producing E, so lets say near equal with a small immaterial advantage to the RAS upgrade.
Mass Fab Pgen grid vs RAS SACU comparisson:
-Space (-2)
-AOE Explosion (-3)
-Power Stalling (-2)
-Indirect HP Loss when adjacent (-5)
-Superior return on investment (+5)
-Diseconomies of scale due to pathfinding (-2)
-Self defence (-2)
-Not submersible (-3)
-Immobility (-3)
-No build power (-1)I get -18 but maybe someone else gets -12 or -25, I dont think the number itself matters.
Basically it all comes down to how many points you want to give to a 30% superior rate of return on the Mass Fab Pgen grid with adjacency but you would have to value that extremely highly just to overcome all the other disadvantages of a RAS SACU. Notice that the RAS upgrade is an income stream without adjacency bonus enhancing it.
I looked at it purely from a stand alone perspective on Github which would give you similar results to this methodology and I think intuitively anyone who frequently plays the late game eco war will tell you that it feels like RAS SACU are way better overall, why else would they build them. -
I don't want to start a balance riot but why does the Cybran Ras Com has 3000 HP more than the UEF Ras Com and 4000 HP more than the Aeon Ras Com? Is this because the Cybran have generally weaker quantum gateway?
Anecdotally, it is frustrating trying to kill underwater Ras coms building HARMS.
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That will most likely be adjusted in the future
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@accidental_aeon said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
Anecdotally, it is frustrating trying to kill underwater Ras coms building HARMS.
I had a similar concern. As I stated, the Cybran faction will get all of its Health back with its upgrades.
The Vet HP will benefit this faction as the other 3 won't get all of their HP back per vet as they will have a lower Base HP pool.
~ Stryker
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That is such an extremely small change compared to the major imbalance between different rambo sacu's that currently already exists that it isn't really worth talking about considering the future planned changes.
