Smol ACU Adjustment

my take is units should attack things on their own instead of having to be told manually to do so for each shot, yes

last I checked this was a strategy game

Saying a “strategy” is involved presupposes a choice is being made. That choice is between manual and auto-oc. Saying a unit should attack automatically (therefore arguing manual might as well as be removed) actively removes the largest strategic element of OC. Can you try to maintain a coherent point instead of immediately walking away from gameplay reality to do schizo philosophy debates?

This point is just entirely built on keeping auto-OC. It does a grand total of 0 to justify auto-OC not being nerfed significantly. As currently, there is basically zero decision-making in using auto-OC or not. It’s simply too good and powerful even at the highest level of the game.

Ultimately, OC is fun. Fun mechanics in a game should be where skill depth tries to be located in order to further motivate people to continue playing and actively improve while doing so. Auto-OC being as efficient as it is essentially nullifies a huge aspect of proper attention management in this game mattering because you get near equivalent value from OC by hitting a button. The mechanic of auto-OC should be a crutch for new players and already be seen as a skill issue in the 1000-1500 bracket with 1500+ actively moving away from it. Same as overbuilding pgens is for macro at this game.

I agree with the manual only overcharge as it should be a skill bonus for paying attention to your acu

however i think an unupgraded com is weak af already so i wouldnt like the gun nerf so much

Anyone remember the Snipe option on most units and how it was ultimately removed because positioning became insanely important? Nerfing Auto-OC might introduce the same problem (admittedly to a lesser degree the higher your skill), the player caught unaware by a push will be dealing much lower damage until they turn their attention to the fight. If the opponent gets 2 extra OCs in, doesn't that have the potential of turning into "oh you looked away from your com for a few seconds, now you're dead" ? More so if you intend to skew the damage dealt by the ACU even further towards OC and away from the pew pew gun. I'm assuming the attacker already has an advantage, choosing when to engage, ensuring they do so with unit superiority, potentially even creating a diversion elsewhere, and having the opportunity to optimize the concave, set factory rally points in advance, as well as ordering faraway units to converge on the upcoming fight.

Another question I had is if pro players do micro to avoid unit clumping in an army + acu battle, and if that feels rewarding or frustrating. Such micro might become more important given the changes you propose, but with the clunkiness of pathfinding and UI lag, it it fun to do?

@phong said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Anyone remember the Snipe option on most units and how it was ultimately removed because positioning became insanely important? Nerfing Auto-OC might introduce the same problem (admittedly to a lesser degree the higher your skill), the player caught unaware by a push will be dealing much lower damage until they turn their attention to the fight. If the opponent gets 2 extra OCs in, doesn't that have the potential of turning into "oh you looked away from your com for a few seconds, now you're dead" ? More so if you intend to skew the damage dealt by the ACU even further towards OC and away from the pew pew gun. I'm assuming the attacker already has an advantage, choosing when to engage, ensuring they do so with unit superiority, potentially even creating a diversion elsewhere, and having the opportunity to optimize the concave, set factory rally points in advance, as well as ordering faraway units to converge on the upcoming fight.

Then pull your ACU back and play safer if you can’t either macro well and maintain attention or take the macro hit that comes with using an ACU as an army.

The fact auto-OC lets u have the cake and eat it is a problem and I would love a meta that involves more passive ACU usage.

This is the whole reason it would become a further skill depth mechanic as it forces better players to actually have to deal with multiple concerns instead of having an 85% efficiency response they can occasionally zoom into to make 100% when they’re certain there are no problems elsewhere.

@phong said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Another question I had is if pro players do micro to avoid unit clumping in an army + acu battle, and if that feels rewarding or frustrating. Such micro might become more important given the changes you propose, but with the clunkiness of pathfinding and UI lag, it it fun to do?

I do it often when going for ACU kills. I also intentionally pull back as many units as I can to avoid the damage from com bombs. For battles I typically avoid the issue by using mobile shields to absorb OC.

@ftxcommando that's how people dealt with shift-g and snipe mode in theory right? Just play less risky with acu.

Auto-overcharge is a nice quality of life feature that manages to both allow simplification of the game for newer players, and also add more complexity/depth since it adds extra decision making re whether to use auto or manual overcharge.

It's clearly weaker outside specific scenarios where you want to overcharge while moving (e.g. to chase down an enemy ACU or avoid being chased down), since against T1 units it can waste the OC against a half-health T1 unit (instead of getting a clump of them via a manual overcharge), and later in the game you cant overcharge as much with it as with manual overcharge.

It was a nice crutch during my earlier sub-1k days, but I quickly moved to using manual OC most of the time, with auto-overcharge now used very rarely (outside the specific scenarios noted above) where I need the apm for something important, I can afford to waste energy on poor overcharge shots, and my ACU isnt in imminent danger.

It sounds like the complaint is more about the power of overcharge against T2 units, but that's an issue with overcharge itself as a mechanic, and if anything auto-overcharge makes the problem slightly less severe since if a player relies on it they're more likely to waste an overcharge on a T1 tank when T2 units are nearby.

Meanwhile nerfing gun damage encourages passive ACU gameplay (why take the risk of losing the game for such a small benefit vs the current scenario where taking risks with your ACU gets rewarded), makes it far better to go for T2 upgrade over gun, and makes overcharge even more powerful than it currently is (since it will account for a far greater proportion of the ACUs damage output).

@phong said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

@ftxcommando that's how people dealt with shift-g and snipe mode in theory right? Just play less risky with acu.

No because snipe mode doesn’t lower the net utility of your ACU. You are still mandated to put your ACU in danger because if you don’t and enemy does, you lose. Snipe mode operated as an insane way to bleed ACU hp without lowering any of the incentives of keeping the ACU at the front.

Encourages passive ACU gameplay: good. The whole problem of teamgames rn is that you sit an ACU at mid map control and it’s unbeatable until 10k mass in t2 exists to overrun it. Anybody that doesn’t do this is immediately recognized as bad. It’s to the extent that air players send their ACU to idle at the front because it’s an extra OC body that forces more investment. It’s hilarious that this move has almost 0 tradeoff.

Strategic depth with auto-oc? You just turn it on bro. When game is simplified so you can zoom in on ACU you look at it again. I don’t know of much of any dude that’s decent and literally doesn’t press the button. It’s just such a waste of your time to look at your ACU every 3.5 seconds.

I do not have a problem with OC as a mechanic nor the way it interacts with units now. Nerfing the actually fun tool that makes you engage with your toy in the game is just terrible game design.

Honestly I can’t even conceive how you think auto-oc existing makes oc less severe of a mechanic. That entirely contradicts your initial point of it being a baby pacifier for new players and instead you have swung to it being a noob trap that should actively be removed for being a false choice. Pick a lane for your rationale.

I want to reiterate I never claimed the problem didn't exist or didn't need addressing. I was just hoping there was a way to do so without creating too steep a learning curve for those willing to grow into an aggressive ladder player from an astro turtler. But there are more nuanced ways of specifically nerfing auto-OC as I have shown, or of nerfing the acu vs spam in various ways. Why does it have to be such a drastic change with no mass (as i suggested) or time (as suggested by Zelda) tradeoff available? I don't feel like the problem is properly addressed, by the way, and you've made no attempt to show that it is even addressed at all without a nerf to manual OC as well or some general downgrade of the ACU in relation to units. In teamgames where even a 1000 has little enough to focus on that they can go mid and OC, your proposal amounts no change at all. I also thought 1v1 was the ultimate balance target, although I understand priorities have shifted with the introduction of tmm.

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

@phong said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

@ftxcommando that's how people dealt with shift-g and snipe mode in theory right? Just play less risky with acu.

No because snipe mode doesn’t lower the net utility of your ACU. You are still mandated to put your ACU in danger because if you don’t and enemy does, you lose. Snipe mode operated as an insane way to bleed ACU hp without lowering any of the incentives of keeping the ACU at the front.

But the damage done by the ACU wasn't ever the main reason to have it in front, it was its tanking ability, I thought. The imperative remains, while the risk is increased. Maybe my analogy with shift-g snipe mode wasn't perfect and I even said there's a difference of degree depending on skill but still, the point was, even when presented with incredible risk, players at the highest skill levels found that ACU back was not an option. Maybe there's a fundamental limit to how much we can stretch balance to cover both 1v1 and 4v4 before we consider making changes elsewhere like promoting more open maps with more spread out mexes, or in other words, wide enough fronts

Maybe I misunderstood the problem you identified and am confusing it with something else, but it just seems to me like confident enough play would look no different with your solution, only you'd be clicking more and the skill ceiling would be higher, while I was hoping for a solution that made spam more viable in general and would require a more strategy-level response. Zelda's idea of having to put more time into the guncom is interesting. Why are you so enamored with the idea of taxing attention and won't consider alternatives? As you said, OC is fun, but what you're suggesting amounts to saying only pros should get to have that particular brand of fun

I very much doubt anything needs to be touched with manual OC because people drastically underestimate the cost that comes from keeping attention focused on your ACU. Like 3 guys in this game even use camera hotkeys to quickly cycle between something like your ACU and your base to get back to macro. These guys should be rewarded for that extra effort. Those of us being insane lazy with turning on auto-oc or even just zooming in and out whenever they hear ACU is under attack should face a penalty for it. I do not have a problem with the strength of an ACU when it comes with an attention deficit, I do when it’s basically free. I fully disagree that play won’t change, attention is a critical resource and it already showcases itself with nearly everybody in practical terms managing 2 bases worse than 2 people managing 1 base each even though theoretically that makes zero sense.

I'm with Ftx in that ACUs in team games kill a lot of early action and in that auto-OC is worth keeping.

But I don't think auto-OC is too powerful, at the early T2 stage when there isn't a huge amount of power. If you think it is, send a few T1 units ahead of the T2 to use up that stored E.

Ultimately I don't see a solution to the strong-ACUs-in-teamgames problem other than paper-thin armour on ACUs. Or maybe making snipes more balanced (yes, that Mercy vs T2 bombers for snipes balance issue).

Higher skill in managing attention can be put to use gaining an advantage in myriad ways. Requiring more of it's investment into acu management means fewer players get to use it. Yet it's one of the more attractive and most distinguishing features of supcom. That's my problem with the attention cost. You could increase risk, cost, delay for a strong ACU in other ways but only a sacrifice in attention will satisfy you? That's why I feel like I've misunderstood your problem in the first place, it just feels like we're talking past each other. I thought spam was too weak vs ACU and that was the justification for all this

@ftxcommando

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

I very much doubt anything needs to be touched with manual OC because people drastically underestimate the cost that comes from keeping attention focused on your ACU. Like 3 guys in this game even use camera hotkeys to quickly cycle between something like your ACU and your base to get back to macro. These guys should be rewarded for that extra effort. Those of us being insane lazy with turning on auto-oc or even just zooming in and out whenever they hear ACU is under attack should face a penalty for it. I do not have a problem with the strength of an ACU when it comes with an attention deficit, I do when it’s basically free. I fully disagree that play won’t change, attention is a critical resource and it already showcases itself with nearly everybody in practical terms managing 2 bases worse than 2 people managing 1 base each even though theoretically that makes zero sense.

You say you have a problem when it's basically free. What are your misgivings with associating mass or time costs with a stronger acu?