The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance
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@Tagada to be fair sc2 lategame is totally fucked snoozefest just like supcom is, but for different reasons. In sc2 you simply run out of lategame tech really quickly and also hit the supply cap quickly so you can't eco either. After about 10-15mins no more tech or eco is acquired and like 90% of interesting decisions in the game are gone. Supcom does this way better since you are making macro decisions throughout the game all the way until you hit a game ender (which more or less ends the game, which is also good). Supcom/sc2 are pretty much polar opposites in this respect, sc2 lategame is only micro and no macro, whereas supcom lategame is all macro and no micro.
I think it would be much nicer if we had a nice mix of macro and unit control all the way to the game ender stage in both games
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Tagada explained it much better then I did
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Really disagree with the mode of argument that “oh people don’t know things so we lose nothing by making the game more complicated anyway” and I don’t even agree with it being more complicated to adjust reclaim values.
If anything adjusting it could result in the game becoming more intuitive as it enables removing exceptions like “oh unit fell in water? cut reclaim value by 50%.” I would also be against having every single subcategory in this game having their own reclaim percentile as that is absurd information to keep track of even for the .1% of FAF.
If a reclaim adjustment happens it should just be:
Structures - Old 81
T1 -
T2 -
T3 - Either like 51% or the old-reclaim-in-water value around 40%
T4 - Hard to say because gut instinct is to keep it the same as T3 for a healthier game but that also runs counter to the idea of a general linear decrease of reclaim to keep things consistent.Have the other two techs somewhere in the middle with an intuitive linear decrease.
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It’s also worth nothing that these changes are likely to actually reduce aggression in teamgames even further as often major t2 pushes rely on the fact you can recycle the 81% of your unit carcasses as well as the defenses of the enemy back into your eco to make the attack worth it. Now you will be gaining even less, especially since the reclaim will also be taking damage from battle and getting reduced further.
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@Ftxcommando the reclaim variable stuff is all called in the various Unit Blueprints. So it would just the changing the variables from 0.9 or whatever its set at to whatever you’d want it it to be.
But this contradicting myself, but I want to agree with Ftx (despite literally saying otherwise). One aspects of FAF I don’t think people quite get, is we still see players coming from GPGNet Era and/or Steam.
These little changes add up and can be offputting espacially if not known or a player isn’t informed that changes from FA occured on Macro not just unit rebalancing scale
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The difference between GPG Era/Steam and FAF now is already massive and something you should expect. After all the game is being constantly worked on and tuned.
@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
Really disagree with the mode of argument that “oh people don’t know things so we lose nothing by making the game more complicated anyway” and I don’t even agree with it being more complicated to adjust reclaim values.
I am not sure if you misunderstood what I meant or w/e. I am for adjusting reclaim values of different tech units in an intuitive way. I also don't agree with the argument that changing the value from 81% to 80, 65, 55 (example) will be confusing for people. If you wanted to keep it simple you wouldn't have it at 81% in the first place instead of 80%. The point being that as long as you don't change it drastically and you keep the different values in line and progressing in logical fashion people will understand it naturally. Ofc, some will complain about it but it's to be expected with most of balance changes. It doesn't necessarily make the game more complicated either, sure it changes it but nobody actually thinks exactly about how much reclaim his army will leave. You don't consider the total reclaim number, you consider the amount of units. So for example. at this moment leaving 10 t1 tanks worth of reclaim is ok but not great, 30 is bad etc. Same for t2 tanks, t3 tanks. The % change only adjust the subjective number of units you consider to be ok/bad/good to loose. So now it's ok to loose 3 Rhinos instead of 2. And the difference between tech tiers is already there. I am fine with loosing 3 t1 tanks, but 3 t2? Hell now. So having a 81% of reclaim for all normal units doesn't give you anything. Adjusting it to 80, 65, 50 won't mess with people's ability to assess the worth of reclaim that their tanks will leave (given they get used to new subjective values) more then a change of all reclaim to flat let's say 60%.
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My point was directed at you suggesting having different values for all of t1 navy t3 navy t2 air and t1 land which is incredibly esoteric.
And the idea you don’t think about the reclaim of your attack is kind of bogus. That’s literally how you determine the utility of the attack. Do you never notice a buildup response to your attack and then either go elsewhere or just stop continuing to produce units because the returns are just not worth it anymore?
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Also having t3 mex/arty/pgen leave 81% of reclaim means that defender actually don't loose that much mass unless wreck was destroyed.
So it does not even make sense to "raid" unless you can kill everything and can 'steal' mass with engies. -
That's really where I'm coming from... Your pretty much only hurting yourself late game if you attack imo.
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Why not a flat 50% reclaim at all stages? Its an improvement in terms of ease of understanding and promotes more aggressive gameplay.
I dont see how currently reclaim in lategame is more important than reclaim early. I think quite the opposite: on 5x5 losing the first reclaim field means losing the game most of the time. In lategame there are so many winconditions that big reclaim fields dont matter as much anymore, as generally there is enough mass to win the game in alternative ways.
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@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
My point was directed at you suggesting having different values for all of t1 navy t3 navy t2 air and t1 land which is incredibly esoteric.
And the idea you don’t think about the reclaim of your attack is kind of bogus. That’s literally how you determine the utility of the attack. Do you never notice a buildup response to your attack and then either go elsewhere or just stop continuing to produce units because the returns are just not worth it anymore?
I said that you don't think in terms of mass but rather the amount of units. I don't think that my army will leave X amount of mass, I know that at this stage leaving wrecks of around 10 tanks would be bad, and this the change of the % between the techs won't matter that much since you already had different thresholds.
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Well I just disagree I guess. I determine when to stop building units when it's no longer worth the mass investment to break a position because the short term cost + risk of failure doesn't match the long term returns. You invest in the most mass efficient units to do said attacks. Whether I have 10000 t1 arty or 10 percies is beside the point and instead a commentary on whether I made the proper infrastructure for the attack I want to do.
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Anybody who thinks about the amount of reclaim in a mechanical/mathematical way will adapt to changes in formulas for making reclaim. Most people either don't think about it too much, or they approach reclaim intuitively. Most players don't even add up the mass cost of their armies when they're deciding whether to attack, let alone thinking about the reclaim that will be left. It's a good argument for adding the "selection cost UI" and "better reclaim view" mods to the base game. If you want players to think about something, show it to them.
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After reading this thread my opinion on ras boys has changed. Taking away their energy income would be enough to nerf them to where they are still used, but then t3 pgen spam is needed, which makes game enders and such actually end the game when someone's power goes up.
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nerfing them will actually make the t3 stage more active perhaps since you're not forced to spam them and in case you are willing to build mass fabs,get ready to rage at your air player!
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@Resistance On the maps where RAS sacu were a problem, you could just build t3 fabs at back of your base with sufficient sam coverage and gaps/shielding that bombers are not effective. The only difference is that eventually you will run out of space for fabs, but then if you're going over 500 income you're wasting your time anyway.
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@JusticeForMantis Just like nukes are hardly assistable so you don't spam them. Make it so it's not spammable.
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I like Blodir's ideas on making the game less static in the mid-late game, especially making t3 units a bit faster.
I think RAS sacus are a bit overpowered, but if they provided say, half the resources they currently do they would be total garbage and would be sufficiently nerfed into oblivion. I don't mind them as a game mechanic, because they are pretty similar to fabs for income generation, and the build power is nice to help replace a few (hundred) t1 engies we would otherwise see . Maybe 7 mass and 750 power, and a build power nerf would make them quite balanced. Maybe we could go with a nice even 10 mass income, 1000 power generation, and increase the cost by about 50% (10k mass?). As it is they are a bit less efficient than fabs for eco (if you don't have a use for the bp), so that would be a huge nerf, and they would be swiftly replaced by t3 fab farms.
I also think reclaim is a bit OP. Part of the reason it is difficult to actually punish the "inefficient" ras sacu stockpiling is because there is the inherent defender's advantage, which is compounded by reclaim donations from any attack that doesn't completely win over the territory. Maybe 50% mass value for reclaim would be good, I dunno. I have always felt like reclaim makes the game more defensive and static than it should, plus it makes it a lot more work to learn an optimal build order on a new map because the amount of reclaim and distance away it is changes everything about your build. If anyone wants to make any comparisons to starcraft 2, this is one of the biggest IMO. You can do basically the same builds on every map of starcraft.
Also, I don't think it makes any difference whatsoever whether the reclaim proportions differ for different tiers of units, but I don't see why it shouldn't be the same either. In basically every single battle, the exact amount of reclaim is quite difficult to predict, because it is impacted by artillery shots landing on wrecks, overkill, etc.
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@Kweef_Chief_Noob If you're sacu are sitting in your base, reclaim doesn't matter, because if you manage to be in a position to kill several SACU in the enemy main base you've already won the game.
Increasing mass cost of SACU would also nerf them into oblivion.
A straight 10 mass 1000 power is better. As it is, RAS Sacu are horribly inefficient compared to fabs.
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Are you trolling, or just incredibly stupid? Ras sacus are actually basically just as efficient as fabs when you factor in their bp and dps; everyone knows this. Both can pay for themselves in just over six minutes. From many months ago on the old forum:
Cuikui wrote:
As some have already done, looking only at direct mass costs, an SCU costs 6500 mass to produce 11 mass/second, which gives a payback time of 590sec (9min51s).
A MassFab costs 4000 mass to produce 16 mass/second, which gives a payback time of 250sec (4min10s).Except that MassFabs also need a constant supply of power -1500 power/second, which is provided by power generators that also have a mass cost. A T3 power generator produces 2500 energy/second for a mass of 3240, the energy cost is about 1.3 mass/(energy/s). A MassFab therefore has an additional cost of 1.31500 = 1950 mass from generators that are exclusively dedicated to supplying its energy. This brings the payback time to 372 sec (6min12s). On the other hand, SCU produce 1020 energy/sec, which reduces the number of power generators to be built, this can be considered as a cost reduction of 1.31020 = 1326 mass. This reduces the payback time to 470sec (7min50sec).
Taking the energy into account, a SACU needs only 26% more time than a T3 MassFab to be profitable. If we add the mobility, the tankiness, the builtin turrent, the reduced space consumption and the engineering suite, you explain why it is better to spam SACU than MassFab.
As Strogo said, these calculations somewhat understate how useful fabs are because they do not factor in any adjacency bonuses.
But the buildpower of ras coms is certainly quite important as well, so it's important to quantify that. They provide 56 bp, which is equal to almost 2 t3 engineers, or slightly more than a hive upgraded to the second tier. So that is worth about 600 mass alone, meaning they will pay for themselves almost a minute faster, if you value the bp. Even if you are not using the bp constantly, it is still worth a significant fraction of that number.
Their gun does 300 dps, which is almost as much as two t1 pd. Especially given that sacus are mobile making that dps more useful than pd, we could value that at about 500 mass (the cost of two t1 pd), meaning they pay off another 45 seconds faster (if you value that capability). Obviously ras coms are very rarely used as combat units, but IF they save you from building extra tele def, then you would need to incorporate that value, even if you don't think it's worth quite that much.
Having at least a few sacus just to drop on big reclaim piles is also pretty useful because of their hp.
So if you factor those things in, they are actually pretty close to as cost effective as t3 mass fabs, less any adjacency bonuses, which can be pretty significant. But, I would say the adjacency bonuses are somewhat offset by the sacu mobility, hp, and compactness, so you can protect them all under one assisted shield (which, conveniently, the sacus can assist themselves).
Overall, I think ras coms are superior to fabs, but fabs are a little better if you don't have much use for sacu bp, and aren't too worried about them dying and having to invest a lot to protect them. And still, it depends on the game situation, so it's hard to say one is just better than the other. It can be a good idea to build some fabs for more efficient eco first, then transition to ras coms when their other characteristics become more valuable. Maybe you have plenty of bp and need more eco before you can even take advantage of the sacu bp.
Edit: the combat ability of sacus is very situation dependent, even for the tele def example I gave. If you have 30 stacked in one spot of your base (dealing 9k dps), perhaps the marginal (additional) benefit of more tele def is basically zero, because you kill an acu teleporting fast enough anyway. But if they are teleporting shielded sera sacus to you, and hitting your shields with arty at the same time, maybe the extra dps becomes important to keep your shields from taking too much damage and collapsing.
