Aeon Gun ACU

Theres like 5 balance issues that need addressing and 4 of them are aeon, come on balance team

And the one problem that isnt aeon, is torpedo bombers, which aeon is way less affected by due to hover flak

@FtXCommando
As you mentioned, Aeon has arguably the best T2 land stage, and these units synergize so well with the ACU.
Spending 1,000 mass on double gun is almost always a no-brainer for an Aeon Commander.

To counter it; Spending 800 mass on your own gun upgrade is out of the question as you're out-ranged, anyway.
So, instead, you need to spend 800 mass on a T2 upgrade and then almost 600 for a T2 PD.
Since when was the counter to something more expensive than its own worth in mass?
It should at least be mass equivalent, no?

A shielded Aeon ACU with (double) gun is more than enough to lock down an entire section of a map,
if not single-handedly able to push back anything in its way - even up to the T3 stage.

In my opinion, the range upgrade is far too cheap, for how beneficial it is.
No other faction can be as aggressive, heck... half as aggressive... as early as an Aeon Commander can.

Pairing these upgrades with Chrono, Shield, or even just mobile shields ensures that this ACU can retain its aggressiveness (even when retreating... which doesn't make any sense).

I understand that range is an Aeon perk, but with the points you bring up... should it be really have that much range?

No.

~Stryker

So, umm. Maybe just make it double upgrade? First upgrade gets you 30 range and the other one costing another 1k or w/e mass gets you 35 range? It won't fix the percy and brick problem but it should give some breathing room to other factions by making the abusive 35 range come in online a little bit later.

I feel like such small change would be a decent band aid until people can come up with better idea.

I’d rather Cybran have such an upgrade than Aeon, even with it making telemazor more cancer.

@ftxcommando said in Aeon Gun ACU:

I’d rather Cybran have such an upgrade than Aeon, even with it making telemazor more cancer.

I doubt this change would do much.
A few T2 PDs should be more than enough to deter, if not counter, regardless of the few extra units in range.

Though, I'm not sure it's the best idea to have a Stealthed, sniper com, either...
Unless it's the laser upgrade itself that gives it's gun upgrade more range??
Having a range increase on the gun upgrade would be... unbalanced... considering all other Cybran upgrades.

If anything, it's the UEF that should have the range over all other ACUs - and I'm not trying to be biased here.
The point of UEF is to have Alpha damage and Range with their units, no?
For example, the Percy, and the Summit.

Why shouldn't the UEF ACU be any different? It already deals 200 damage per shot.
It probably wouldn't be that difficult to dodge either, considering it would only have half of the firerate as all other ACUs do.

Sniper UEF ACU woudn't be anywhere near as powerfull as an Aeon Sniper ACU.
Well... minus the nano, but it's a crappy version of the nano, anyway.
It wouldn't take much to overwhelm.

But, I digress. At the moment, the best solution against a Sniper Com is just T2 PD.
Even then, its not anywhere near as effective, but with some luck - they may just push off instead of pushing in.

~ Stryker

@comradestryker If the complaint is that getting T2 upgrade and T2 PD costs too much to counter an Aeon guncom, then I'd have thought the solution is to make the T2 route slightly cheaper, not Aeon guncom more expensive. After all the T2 upgrade route has the exact same issue against every other faction's guncom (the main difference is there is no 'counter guncom by getting the exact same thing' when against Aeon guncom).

What about making T2 PD slightly cheaper and combining with a buff to MML? I.e. the idea being you improve the counter to guncom, and the counter to that counter, to hopefully create slightly more dynamic gameplay, rather than just nerfing Aeon gun (which is already more expensive than the other upgrades)

Making t2 pd cheaper buffs impulse defense which is already too strong in FAF and buffing t2 ACU does 0 to address the reality that Aeon ACU uniquely hard counters any land unit that does not have a sniper tag.

Cybran is the ACU that least benefits from having larger range as it has no real late t2 upgrade that buffs them nor any way to supplement the fact they are currently the weakest t2 stage. Arguing UEF should have a range upgrade is about as incoherent and cancerous as explaining why Aeon needs it. These are the best 2 t2 stages of the game, neither faction needs something that makes a strong segment of their game into an oppressive one.

All the faction lore logic is BS anyway. Cybran hoplite has more range and alpha than mongoose. They're the sneaky raid faction so their ACU would get the ability to do sneaky-free damage yet also be easy to catch out of position due to having no shields at all to act as an hp dump.

@ftxcommando said in Aeon Gun ACU:

I’d rather Cybran have such an upgrade than Aeon, even with it making telemazor more cancer.

Well I'm personally all for it considering Cybran been getting the short end of stick for quite a while and is still lacking in offensive T2 acu options. But my problem lies in how will the community react to outright removing the range from aeon ACU. Which might be a little bit too drastic of a change.

That's why for now I would rather see the aeon gun split into 3 parts of DPS + Normal range + Sniper upgrade. With the sniper upgrade branching out from the range upgrade.

I like the idea of the sniper range buff being split off into a 3rd upgrade. As it is, getting the two upgrades is super cheap compared to the counter as someone else already did the math. Though let me add 1 t2 PD is often not enough, so realistically you need to spend 3x or even more in mass than the upgrades to counter it effectively. I routinely push through 3 t2 PD with the Aeon com.

@xiaomao said in Aeon Gun ACU:

But my problem lies in how will the community react

don't really see a problem with their guncom besides having a beyond broken chrono, shield is nice to be offensive and works great if you want to be volatile on the ground, kiting isn't too bad and it comes with a huge tax in a form of apm, mid and late game also comes down to gc being ignored for no reason whatsoever for 1 year by now.
can't see aeon guncom broken late game as well and i'd call it pretty garbage considering that:
1)uef has BaD bIlly NuKe that will surely not whipe a 10k investment randomly
2)sera has a small 50k hp buff and pretty good double gun to play vs land and some exps
3)cyb is just garbage but still gets access to cloak+lazer that can be brutal
aeon has +4 range, cool. (no chrono involved or banned from lobbies)

anything smaller than 3v3 can probably be facing the unstoppable aeon gun com but it's more of a powerspike that you should be at least trying to counter, it's also a combination of aeon having probably the most cost-efficient land in the meta that is also contributing to indirect guncom buff since it gives you access to cheap mobile shields

Apm tax doesn’t even make sense because Aeon has both a late t1/early t2 hp upgrade and their choice of 2 flavors of late t2 survivability upgrades.

Sera double gun requires 5 t2 pgens of energy. Billy requires 2 t3 pgens. Cloak requires 1 t3 pgen.

You’re right that all of those also handle t3 spam. Funny how the Aeon variant is built on 20 t1 pgens, though.

How do you account for the trash T1 stage until guncom?

@unknow said in Aeon Gun ACU:

How do you account for the trash T1 stage until guncom?

The weakness of aurora being too slow to control more open maps is addressed by both the buff to their labs and blazes.

If the argument is that Aeon needs super gun ACU because aurora feels the pain of enemy gun ACUs the most, that’s just an incentive for Aeon to move the game forward once the t1 stage has run its course for them.

Sera doesn’t need a 35 range gun to keep gun ACUs away from their ilshies at t2 stage even though the logic is just the same.

Trash t1 lol

Colossus lol

Instead of moving range gun to cybran, we should just delete it from the game, thanks

I believe someone else mentioned it already, but, why not reduce the range upgrade's... well... range?
Then make a separate upgrade that continues off that branch to grab the extra range.

Yes, that would mean the Speed and current Range upgrades would have to be adjusted
to accommodate a 3rd upgrade, but, that seems like the best option recommended, so far.

If I may, here are my thoughts on how it could work best.

Speed Upgrade:
Mass: 500 -> 450

Range Upgrade:
Range: 35 -> 30
Mass: 500 -> 450

Extended Range Upgrade (new):
Range: 30 -> 35
Mass: 300

This means the total mass required for all upgrades increases from 1,000 to 1,200.
Only 200 extra mass is required.
Not to mention the extra build time, and energy required to gather an extra upgrade.

I see this as the best answer to both worlds as it reduces the effectiveness of the range
without needing to remove or alter it drastically.
And it's still cheap enough to obtain without a massive drawback.

To make it more even, all three upgrades could be set to 400 mass,
this way it still comes out to 1,200 mass total.

These are just my two cents on this.
Granted, these values should be adjusted - as what works on paper, doesn't necessarily work in-game.

That being said, there are more ways to keep something working without having to rework it
completely or drastically change as others may have mentioned.

~ Stryker

The problem is that the advantage of this range upgrade is way bigger than just poultry 200 mass, even 400 mass is still dirt cheap cheap considering your acu now outranges basically anything that can threaten it. Even in early t3 stage.

Why do people propose making a third gun upgrade before actually giving a reason for Aeon to have a 35 gun in the first place