The Fatboy

A Balance Idea

Hey Guys! Another Fatboy post, I know...
However, as I am passionate about this game, I excitedly wish to share my idea with you!
I've been messing around with the Fatboy's stats a little, and have found some interest in a few options.

I'll be focusing on three different sections of the unit:
- Utility
- Survivability
- Agility

As well as one or two other, minor stats.

I did modify a large number of stats but most are minimal.
I am suggesting these changes as more so of a 'Band-Aid' whilst other, better, and more proper ones can be made by the Balance Team.

That being said...
Too much? Too little?
Wrong direction of balance?
Lemme know!

-Disclaimer-

These are just some problems I wanted to bring attention to.
I am offering my own solutions to these problems, however, I am not a balance team member, nor do I have a large data pool to back up my suggestions;
Hence, the balances will likely need some adjustment.
There may also be some better ideas to fix these issues, out there;
So, I encourage you guys to suggest your own ideas as well.

Increasing Utility

Build Power

At the moment, the Build Power (BP) as a Mobile Factory is very lackluster.
Imitating the Atlantis, the BP is increased to match it.
This change encourages the Fatboy to be used as a Mobile Factory, as this ability does not see much use to begin with.

BuildRate:
180 -> 240; (+60)

This further solidifies its Title as a Mobile Factory.
A larger increase in BP, rather, anything more than 240 BP, will cause the Fatboy to spend an unrealistic amount of mass.
This also would have an unwanted side effect that starts to mess with the build animation.

Vision

Speaking of Atlantis...
In tandem with how that unit works within Navy, we could also mimic its role but for the Fatboy.
We grant an increase to Vision.

Vision: 32 -> 65; (+33)
WaterVision: 32 -> 65; (+33)

Doubling the vision from 32 to 65 makes it sit well below its max fireline, but it offers a possibility of synergy with land units near it.

For Reference, A Fatboy's new vision next to a SoothSayer.
3x3 Air grid for scale.

And another image in reference to a Percy:

Increasing Survivability

Moving on to Survivability:

Base Unit Adjustments

As mentioned before in my Fatboy post, the base unit's stats and the Shield Stats were basically swapped.
However, after some testing and some minor feedback from some players, these changes were made:

Base Unit HP:
12,500 -> 15,000; (+2,500)

Base HP Regen:
20 HP/S -> 30 HP/S; (+10)

A slight direct increase in Base HP and Regen as a baseline for more Survivability.

Shield Adjustments:

This new Shield would greatly be strengthened;
Specifically in regen and regen-related stats.

Shield Recharge Time (In Seconds):
120 -> 60; (-60)

Shield Regen:
100 HP/S -> 200 HP/S; (+100)

Shield Regen Start Time (In Seconds):
1 -> 0 ; (-1)

Shield Recharge Time:

A 50% reduction to reduce the downtime that the unit is vulnerable to when the shield is offline.

Shield Regen:

Doubled to increase the shield resilience.
Reduces downtime if the shield takes heavy damage but not enough to disable the shield.

Shield Regen Start Time:

This last one may be a little controversial.
Arguably the smallest change, but the one with the biggest impact on the Shield Behavior.

In conjunction with the Shield Regen change;
Shield Regen Start Time decreased from 1 second to 0.

This stat references how much time needs to elapse after taking damage before a Shield starts to regenerate.
In the current case, 1 second needs to elapse after taking damage for the regen to start.
Reducing that from 1 to 0 means no time needs to elapse hence the shield will start regenerating immediately.

This change was made as the Shield is the main defensive strength of the Fatboy.
This gives the shield more durability against low numbers of units that get into range but would be easily overwhelmed with any standard ruthless engagement.

It also makes the Fatboy the only unit with a regening shield.
An 'Experimental Feature', you could say.
Quite unique, no?

Agility Adjustments

Back-Up Distance:
15 -> 20; (+5)

MaxAcceleration:
1.75 -> 1.85; (+0.10)

MaxBrake:
1.75 -> 1.85; (+0.10)

MaxSpeed:
1.75 -> 1.85; (+0.10)

MaxSpeedReverse:
1.75 -> 1.85; (+0.10)

Back-Up Distance:

Makes it easier to back the unit up when kiting is its main strength.

Speed:

Since speed seemed to be a large discussion on the Discord post, a tiny bit of extra speed so it can keep its range.

Weapon Adjustment

MuzzleVelocity:
25 -> 30; (+5)

Muzzle Velocity:

This gives a slight increase in the consistency of the rounds that the Fatboy fires.
It does not increase the raw damage output, but it does help make sure the shells can hit their target.
At the moment, a GC, Ythotha, and sometimes even a Megalith can sidestep a little and can avoid about 15-20% of the shells fired from the Fatboy.
This change aims to reduce that to around 10-15%.

Economical Adjustments

To balance out these changes:

Energy Maintenance Cost:
-600 -> -750; (-150)

Build Cost Mass:
28,000 -> 30,000; (+2,000)

Build Cost Energy:
350,000 -> 400,000; (+50,000)

Build Cost Time:
47,500 -> 50,000; (+2,500)

Maintenance:

Stronger shield? Larger drain.

Resource Cost:

Slight increase in Mass, Energy, and Build Time to balance for a better unit, overall.
Also, makes it very, very slightly more difficult to attain critical mass.

TL:DR;

I, also, do want to show my standing on the Anti-Artillery TMD - That is still something I would like to see.

And the adjustments to the Torpedo and AA stats that Equilibrium has is a very nice touch as well.
I reference those here:

These could also see a use in FAF.

Again, this is more of a Band-Aid so I ask that you keep that in mind.
To be honest, no... these changes will not really 'fix' its problems, but they do help a little.
If not, they at least shift the unit's focus to be more versatile, regardless.
A minor benefit, overall.

Thanks for your time.
I eagerly await your feedback.

~ Stryker

yes

You would need to increase the speed of a megalith by a simular ammount or else it would move at same speed.

I'm not a fan of the vision increase - currently you have to try and maintain intel around the fatboy to watch out for e.g. a spider sneaking up on it, and it gives Cybran an option to surprise the fatboy. Given the fatboy hard counters the megalith (even moreso with the proposed speed increase), and the monkeylord is much weaker later in the game, I dont it'd be beneficial.

I also really dont like the Anti-Artillery TMD idea. It adds unnecessary complexity making the game even harder for people coming from Forged Alliance to get used to, and isn't intuitive. If a unit is unbalanced there's no need to introduce an entirely new concept and defence mechanism.

Re the build power boost if 'build while moving' isn't going to get introduced I'd be inclined to double the build power, as it takes a while for the fatboy to actually stop moving to be able to start building in the first place.

I'd also prefer a boost to its shield health rather than its base health to give a greater boost to it's utility and attritional use.

In short I agree with the idea of making it better as a mobile factory, dislike the vision and TMD idea, and don't have strong views on the other adjustments

Me when my 110k hp direct fire tank can no longer simply right click to kill the 25k hp indirect fire tank that takes 5 minutes to kill it. Amazing how dudes don’t apply this logic to t3 phase.

Funny thing is that it still can since a mega has a speed of 2, making this even more asinine. If you literally swapped the speeds of mega and fatboy you would essentially get a complete translation of the dynamic going on between snipers and percies.

Vision is interesting, but not keen on the speed buff, Fatboy should not be faster than Crab IMO.

It does need something though, UEF "experimentals" are in a very sad state in the current meta.

• Massive increase to crab and Fatboy factory Build power.
• Fatboy Small Repair Field same area as shield to encourage supporting armies?
• Shield regen or base health buff for Fatboy to increase survivability vs Artillery.

Repair field makes it even sexier of an aoe bait tool than it already is and building things with your fatboy will be a meme even if it could literally build a percy in 1 second

Wait, why shouldn't it be able to poop out a few UEF T3 units a minute?

Its an "Experimental Factory". Its useless at combat and nobody seems to be interested in fixing that, so why not give it the BP it needs to do something for a while before it inevitably gets killed by t2 air or t2 arty, or any other random experimental that finds it.

10 Hives near a factory already achieves the same construction ability with significantly less cost and less risk.

Because it’s too expensive for that to be a viable usage of it.

As Fatboy and Mega's building functionality are so underused, massively increasing the build power is a good idea. It might actually lead to that feature being used. It would be very interesting to see where that leads.

Hard no on any speed changes for the fatty. If you have the longest range of all units, you have to be ok with the slowest speed as well.

I don't think the HP of the fatty is a big issue either. First of all, if something like a monkey or some T3 land units kill your fatty, its not an issue of tank. Its an issue of bad micro. Against air or arty bases you can support your fatty with shields and aa (either mobile or stationary). This requires some set up, but a slow push of a fatty with some engies supporting by spamming T2 shields and sams along the way can be pretty devastating.

@xayo said in The Fatboy:

Hard no on any speed changes for the fatty. If you have the longest range of all units, you have to be ok with the slowest speed as well.

Where is ur sniper hard nerf thread

Also buff obsidian to morbillion speed

Also just a daily reminder in general that all the direct fire t4s have entirely variable ranges for their major dps guns yet the same speed barring mega.

Right now UEF suffers the stupidity of the general cognitive dissonance of a t3 stage where you get explained “LOL just use indirect fire bro, snipes aren’t even that bad” and a t4 stage of “nooooo way can a fatboy be the speed of a mega, it might take 10k hp off my mega and I would be forced by divine laws of nature to suicide it in because there is just no other way to deal with a fatty except direct fire t4s.”

UEF players only ones smart enough to realize you can make air thanks to janus gameplay or what?

You want the good version of fatty without actually changing speed or anything damage related? You give it mega-tier HP of like 50 or 60k. Maybe even 70k. There is a triage of HP, speed, and range/damage and currently a mega has 2 of those. A GC/chicken/ml likewise have 2 of those for their costs. A fatty got 1 and maybe if that range was bigger than t2 arty it would be justified, but the differences between mega and fatty range in terms of other relevant gameplay ranges amounts to pretty much 0.

Auroras also have just one of those and are considered overall the best T1 tanks.

No they aren’t. They’re ”the best” in exactly the situation where their disadvantages are minimized ie open 5x5. And even then, I don’t think they’re strictly superior as a faction in those situations anymore due to Aeon gun range nerf.

The whole reason Aeon got the best lab that is essentially 75% a tank with more speed is precisely to address these weaknesses in their main tank on anything beyond those types of maps.

Ah forgot, you can’t buff mega BP to any relevant level cuz then it just goes back to insta reclaiming t4 wrecks after battles since it doesn’t build units and THEN pop them up but the unit on the ground itself.

Though that makes me wonder if it’s possible to store land units similar like air units in these units. That way you could give mega and fatty some aoe reclaim mechanism which utilizes the mass to create some assortment of units and then you just immediately deploy the army at your leisure. Some mechanic like that is the only way I see an “experimental factory” identity working tbh.

@chenbro101

You would need to increase the speed of a megalith by a simular ammount or else it would move at same speed.

@derpfaf

not keen on the speed buff, Fatboy should not be faster than Crab IMO.

Megalith's speed is set at 2. Which is 14% faster than the Fatboy.
With the proposed speed change, that difference is reduced to about 8%.

@maudlin27

I'm not a fan of the vision increase... a spider sneaking up on it.

I see your point, but that's somewhat relevant to its survivability.
Which is already low as is.

the fatboy hard counters the megalith

That really depends on the circumstances, but the Megalith still has more room to engage aggressively if it decides to - mostly due to the HP difference. The Megalith has nearly 3.5x the HP with with a significantly more direct damage output.

I also really dont like the Anti-Artillery TMD idea... no need to introduce an entirely new concept and defence mechanism.

The game is already drastically different than that of FA.
And it will be even more different with the new interactions and overhauls coming in the next balance patch.
And that's not even considering the T3 MAA units that were added.
At this point, what's one more change to the list of hundreds... thousands?

@derpfaf

Wait, why shouldn't it be able to poop out a few UEF T3 units a minute?

@maudlin27

Re the build power boost if 'build while moving' isn't going to get introduced I'd be inclined to double the build power, as it takes a while for the fatboy to actually stop moving to be able to start building in the first place.

I messed with a significantly more BP, up to 480, double the BP of the Atlantis... but that just makes the Fatboy end up using an unreal amount of mass/s when building a unit.
Even with this amount of BP, the roll off time and animation severely limit the number of units that can be built and deployed.
That being said, at times, the animation gets interrupted, and... it's just a huge mess overall.

If the animation could be adjusted then a higher BP could be attained, but its mass usage just gets worse and worse.
That seems like the most detrimental point that deters from more BP.

@maudlin27

I'd also prefer a boost to its shield health rather than its base health to give a greater boost to it's utility and attritional use.

Could remove some HP from the base unit and give it to the Shield, as well.
With the shield changes I suggested, a larger shield capacity could be a great dynamic.

Base HP: 15,000 -> 10,000
Shield HP: 20,000 -> 25,000

Maybe this could be a decent stat change.
I was trying to make the Shield quite Unique to the Fatboy - this just further enforces that.
I like it.

@derpfaf

Fatboy Small Repair Field same area as shield to encourage supporting armies?

A regen field... interesting. Would increase the utility of the Fatboy greatly.
I like it.

@FtXCommando

you could give mega and fatty some aoe reclaim

AOE reclaim sounds broken at first.

deploy the army at your leisure

Land carrier?

~ Stryker

I also want to point out that a lot of people kept recommending to me that the Fatboy come with some form of Drone assistance to escort it.

I can see the drones being useful... especially if they're the T3 drones that the SACU has - as long as they're balanced, obviously.

I guess it's a decent idea to have some form of Mobile Engineer assistance without the need of a physical engineer or SACU to tag along with the Fatboy.

What do you guys think?

~ Stryker

I think its a good idea to increase buildpower and slightly buff shield regen
However, buffing vision / baseHP / agility is too strong, i think
Its already good and annoying kiter, there is no reason to buff its abilities even further

@ftxcommando said in The Fatboy:

Because it’s too expensive for that to be a viable usage of it.

Half the reason SACUs are fun to use offensively is that you don't have to manage an engineer fleet as well as an army, or dick about with transports, yet you get to build most of the useful buildings directly on the front line whenever you want.

In fact, this use of Rambo SACUs was so viable, as you put it, that it had to be nerfed recently. They're not meant to be amazing engineers as well as amazing fighters, yet people use their building abilities a lot more than they do the fatty's, even after the well-deserved nerf.

Making use of the fatty's build power is too clunky in comparison, since you have to jump through the hoop of making engies first before you get access to the useful buildings list and before you can issue the build orders. I think this friction and tedium is the main reason the ability isn't used more. Rambos prove it's useful and fun to build before or after a fight, but with the fatty it's too fiddly to bother.

I'm in favor of giving the fatty the ability to build on the move and having the units automatically follow, or stay inside until deployed, or giving it a larger build list (like a SACU), or even a simple build power buff (it can't reclaim like the mega so no problem there, but this doesn't address the clunk). Any of these options would hopefully make it more fun to use, and more capable of responding to sudden threats, as long as the player invests attention and micro. It's the equivalent of buffing it's "spells" as opposed to it's base stats, and deserves at least some consideration since it's intended role (i think) is more geared towards a support unit than any other experimental.

The thing with rambo sacus is that they're extremely viable relative to other sacus. There's no choice because rambo can just do everything. In terms of the whole game, rambo sacus aren't really oppressive or really all that viable. They get rinsed against direct fire t4s (another good friend uef hole in the roster) and you just need to work on not letting 50k mass of them conglomerate in one spot.

Even with that, the value in rambos come from the fact they are basically a fatboy in survivability for way less cost, way faster, way easier to maneuver around enemy defenses/armies, and on top of that can plop down emergency sams/shields/arties/pd depending on the crisis they need to respond to. A fatboy is irrelevant for any of that because you need the t3 engies around it already because a fatboy exists in perpetual crisis situation because it's aggressively mediocre as long as nothing about percies gets adjusted.