The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade)

@lunyshko cyb nano was nerfed, and the +20h/s regen on stealth was removed, so cybran acu seems pretty balanced to me now

@waffelznoob doesnt change the point.

"Good luck and a safe landing commanders!"

the acu is very much killable now

In my opinion the 1000-1600 rating is where the most aggression occurs and where aggression is the most successful. These players have enough game knowledge and eco skills to preform an impressive rush but do not have the necessary scouting skills to spot and counter a rush.

<1000: Learning to get reclaim and acu micro
1000-1200: learning and perfecting one specific rush
1000-1600: Learning to make air factories early and improving scouting; using target priority mod
1300-1600: learning how to click trees and manual reclaim
1600+: pausing shields, radars, sonar, etc to avoid power stall; targeting scout planes
2000+: Niche micro tactics: strat bomber micro; paragon micro; awassha micro; etc.

Bro I don't do half of that stuff

Nice to see my good friend the paragon micro in the same sentence as strat and ahwassa micro

You would be surprised how many 1900s can't spend everything the paragon produces.

@accidental_aeon said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):

You would be surprised how many 1900s can't spend everything the paragon produces.

I'd be surprised if it were possible to spend 10,000 mass a second in a normal, average match.

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@comradestryker Yes i actually need 10,000 mass a second in every game for my 3333 mantis maker factories.

10k a tick, 10 ticks a second

10k a second. Just because Gyle says mass income per tick every time doesn't make it less wrong

You sure? If para is 10k a second that means it's only 1k a tick and most players can already manage that easy, they probably have that in evo before starting a para.

Wow this thread is a dumpster fire. There’s no such thing as mass per tick it’s per second. A tick is how often the game engine updates the game state and processes new inputs and has nothing to do with the economy. Economy is mass and energy per second. Paragon is 10k mass per second. Engineers consume mass per second based on their build power, the total build time in seconds for what they’re building, and the cost of what they’re building. Their mass consumption is per second. It has nothing to do with the game tick. Hopefully I said all that correctly but it’s at least close enough. If you’re competent it’s easy to spend a paragon’s mass - just watch Yudi or most other 2k+ Setoners and you’ll see them stall it at least sometimes. Most sub 1.8k don’t set things up well enough to spend a paragon’s worth of mass.

Why are we even talking about this in a thread about the billy nuke anyway.

@exselsior said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):

There’s no such thing as mass per tick it’s per second. A tick is how often the game engine updates the game state and processes new inputs and has nothing to do with the economy. Economy is mass and energy per second.

You are describing your own simplified mental model of the game, not the game itself.

Ticks are not just for taking input from players. The game state is updated every tick. (And there's a 5-tick delay between giving a command and when the command is executed.)

Moving units move forward every tick.

Collisions are checked every tick.

Weapons can be fired every tick (if there is a target and they're not still on cooldown).

Weapons cooldown every tick until they're done cooling down.

Mass is delivered every tick, not just once per second.

Mass is spent every tick, not just once per second.

Mass is actually tracked by the game in units of 0.1 mass each. Let's call these units "atoms" because they are indivisible. So if a mantis costs 56 mass, it costs 560 "atoms" (indivisible mass units) that are each worth 0.1 mass.

A T1 mex that gives, over time, 2 mass/second, is actually delivering 2 atoms per tick.

Does all of this matter? It depends. If you're just trying to play the game, it's probably smarter to use a mental model that only updates once per second. If you're trying to make blueprints for a new unit or tweak the balance, then this tick-by-tick stuff actually matters.

Yes, you're right and that's why the first thing I said about game ticks is that it updates the game state, which covers what you said.

Calling it a simplified mental model is a stretch when it's how the economy is explicitly described and shown at every level in game. Thinking about the economy in terms of what the game engine is doing behind the scenes while in game is not helpful. As it is clearly people already don't understand that all of the values in game are shown per second so adding in all of this about game ticks just adds to the confusion. Sure it's technically simplified, but so everything else.

How long does it take for a t1 Mex pay for it's self?

What is listed in the helpful hints on the loading screen?

@veteranashe said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):

How long does it take for a t1 Mex pay for it's self?

What is listed in the helpful hints on the loading screen?

https://github.com/FAForever/fa/blob/deploy/fafdevelop/loc/US/strings_db.lua#L7767C28-L7767C28

It's 18 seconds though iirc since that doesn't actually say. 36 mass cost and returns 2 mass per second. I'm going to be very sad if I'm misremembering that.

Not sure why billy nuke is underpowered when you can kill an entire t3 army with it and force a very large amount of mass of tmd note 20 tmd cost more than the billy nuke upgrade in terms of mass cost.

@TheWreck

Mobile shields can soak up almost the entirety of the damage dealt by a Billy.
A Billy deals around 12,000 damage.

Just one Seraphim Mobile Shield has 10,000 HP.
The UEF and Aeon shields are a bit weaker, hanging around 3,000 & 3,500 HP.

1 T3 mobile shield practically nullifies the damage,
3 or 4 T2 mobile shields also nullify the damage.

This left Cybran as the only faction without a mobile shield, but to make up for it,
they used to be able to redirect a Billy.
But that ability has since been removed.


Another note, the upgrade has a 30-second global cooldown, so, even if you load it before then, you can't fire it again until the cooldown expires.


~ Stryker

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Only thing that scares you under sera shields as UEF are snipers, and billy kills the snipers.