Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread

@sylph_ How do t2 mobile shields help vs arti fire? The aoe is so high and shield size of the mobile shield so small relative to the fatboy that I’dve thought the fatboy shield takes the damage, and when it’s depleted most shots would either hit the fatboy directly or hit a mobile shield close enough to also damage the fatboy

@maudlin27 Shield bubbles protect units inside them from AOE attacks hitting the shield, even if the units being protected are in range of the AOE.

AOE attacks can hit more than 1 shield bubble at a time, but think of 'outside' and 'inside' shield bubbles as 2 separate areas.
An AOE attack that hits a shield explodes outside the shield bubble. It can hurt units (or bubbles) outside the bubble, but inside is protected.
Fatboys definitely get protection from artillery fire from parashields. They don't even have to be fully under the bubble - as long as no part of the AOE explosion touches the part of the fatboy that is outside the bubble, the fatboy is fine.
(The larger the AOE of the artillery, the harder it is to hide behind a parashield, but most T2 artillery AOE is nowhere near large enough to make it difficult if the parashield is between the 2. The hardest (the cybran gunther) is conveniently the worst T2 artillery in general due to terrible accuracy and damage!)

Another important factor is this: shots that hit a shield bleed a bit of extra damage into overlapping shield bubbles, even if the overlapping bubbles were not in a place that should be damaged by the attack. For mobile shields, this 'bleed over' bonus damage is much higher.
The bleedover for static shields is - 15%.
The bleedover for mobile shields is 30%.
The bleedover for the fatboy is 0%

This means that shots hitting the fatboy shield do zero 'connected shield' damage to shields inside or overlapping its bubble - they have to actually HIT the parashield bubble to hurt it!

Overall, this effect makes the fatboy shield especially good at 'combining' shields with other units, since the usual penalties, built into the game to prevent many, many shields from being impenetrable, is reduced for fatboys.

(You can see an example of a fatboy being attacked by artillery (from the NE), with a parashield absorbing the hit, here: )

Given that T2 artillery (the most common anti-fatboy tool?) take 20 seconds to reload, and a fatboy can build a parashield every 3.7 seconds, you can see how much build-while-moving can help a fatboy survive artillery. You do have to make sure that the rally point of the fatbctory (!) is in front of the fatboy, but this isn't too hard if you know where you want to be going!

Given that a fatboy has a range not too shy of a T2 artillery, it's hard to really think of good 'test cases' to give examples, but here's one:

If both sides have radar, and a fatboy approaches a bunch of 12 artillery (3 from each faction), reasonably spaced out for efficient defense, the old fatboy would kill ~4 before dying.
The new fatboy (building parashields) kills all 12 and survives.
Of course, in a real game, those artillery would have power generators increasing their firing rate, so don't expect these numbers to translate to a real game.... It's just an example of how much better the new fatboy deals with incoming fire if it's spamming parashields.
(I've not played nearly enough games where I get a chance to make a fatboy, though!)

I should also re-iterate, I don't feel any certainty about whether or not the fatboy is fine right now, I just think a lot more experience is needed with this mobile factory change.
For example, while taking those screenshots, above, and testing a tiny bit, I noted how much turning the fatboy's rear to the enemy just before a parashield pops out can help.
Fatboy's can be driven backwards - this will also probably help a TON when building parashields, and it's something I haven't tried! Hell, building t3 combat units would probably make a massive difference there, too!

Until players have a 'feel' for what kind of resistance merits going in 'ass-first' with the fatboy, and similar understandings of the changes, I feel it's hard to know how good the current unit is.

The only thing I will say with confidence is that the mobile factory functionality was a significant buff to the unit.

I think given that there's no specific changes for the Fatboy included in this patch or planned for the future we can probably take it easy on hashing out what may or may not happen.

@clyf Fair enough. I saw a comment in a different topic suggesting that changes were coming soon.

(Maybe I'm a bit paranoid given how suddenly the massive +15% vision range change was pushed out!)

There's a comment in this thread that says it's on the to do. But that means it isn't done yet, e.g. they're gathering more data.

The fatboy is a complex topic as you can see here:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/4865/the-problems-with-the-uef-part-8-the-fatboy?_=1696441679442
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/4807/talking-about-the-fatty

Only arguing that the build-while-moving gives access to more parashields isn't enough cuz my personal take:
It's a counter against sniperbots, why should you invest way more than 15k mass for like 8k mass in sniperbots killing your army?
Or the problem with airsnipes being way too valuable (see the linked posts for detailed answers).

I'm not saying the change doesn't favor the fatty, but it's nowhere near enough to say it's in a fine position right now. Also I have no idea what the other balance team members think about it so it could be a discussion lasting hours if everyone has something different in mind.
Another thing are the shield-SACUs. Since the SACUs are going to change quite a bit in the future, it can be that they will be an important factor to consider as well. So yeah, overall not easy to tell right now.

In a spitballing non-committal off-the-record way what's on the docket for shield SACUs?

@sladow-noob Is there any (rough) indication of when the SACUs might be changed?
They've been rumoured to be due to be changed soon since I recall first started FAF around 3+ years ago, so I've held off trying to implement any special logic for my AIs for SACUs due to the risk of it being wasted time. I'd recently assumed the changes weren't going to actually happen given how long it's now been since SACU changes were mentioned so was starting to think about whether to look into it again, but it sounds like it could be a change that happens 'soon' again - e.g. in the next 6 months?

@maudlin27 It's actually something which was talked about already a bit, however I cannot / don't want to say too much about it since it's not a topic I can add a lot, so it's completely up to them figuring out the details and direction. Depending on the size of the changes it might take a while since it's not easy to balance, but in short it's not forgotten; Maybe it'll be smaller changes but more frequent or one big patch, no detailed plans there

sacu rebalance is older than some faf players

Even broader--what's the issue that's been identified with them? Why do they need to be rebalanced? Surely that should be pretty static and okay to reveal.

@sladow-noob

Another thing are the shield-SACUs. Since the SACUs are going to change quite a bit in the future, it can be that they will be an important factor to consider as well. So yeah, overall not easy to tell right now.

I'm happy you guys are looking into the Fatty!
Can't wait to see what you guys have in store for it.

Though, if I may say, adjusting a different unit should not really be the way to fix the one with the issue.
Does it help? Of course it will, yes - synergy is stronger and effectiveness together may increase, but the problem isn't really the unit composition, is it? Rather the unit itself. In this case, the Fatty.

Adjusting the Sacu does close to nothing for the Fatty, other than at times when they are together - which in this case, would start enforcing tandem gameplay causing a player to only build a Fatboy after they build support commanders.

Oh, and perhaps you missed my previous message..
Just had a quick question in regards to the Bubble Shield.

~ Stryker

@comradestryker I did indeed miss your earlier question; Cannot really answer it though cuz I didn't have time the last meeting (or even two meetings?) and therefore dunno their thought process there. But it'll get changed, yes.

And to the SACU:
They are not getting a change, because the fatty needs to be changed. They're getting changed cuz they are insanely bad in so many situations and most of them are simply not efficient than e.g. t3 units / exps. Main reason you see bois being built anyway is if the players don't take the round serious. Just see it as a change we must not ignore but not the main focus when talking about the fatty itself.
If that somewhat makes sense

rails line of pre-workout How about if there's an observer in the game, when you build an SACU they have the option of taking it over and joining your team?

@sladow-noob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Another thing are the shield-SACUs. Since the SACUs are going to change quite a bit in the future

Is there a place I can go to read about these proposals?
[edit - nevermind, I saw your reply to another similar question!

I can see a SACU change potentially making a difference to a fatboy, too.
When I build a fatboy, I always tried to have a SACU or 2 spamming T2 shield structures (and the odd TMD) around the fatboy as it moves in. (T2 shields are so cheap for what you get). I'm still in this habit, even with the new moving factory mechanic, and there's a good chance that means I'm building too many shields nowadays.
But I can totally see how SACU changes would make a difference.
(I also remember UEF shield SACUs being one of the other units, like the fatboy, that have 'special values for overlapping shield 'bleedover', but I forget what it is exactly - edit, it's 20%, better than normal shields; and the UEF ACU's bubble shield is 0% like the fatboy!!!). ]

well you can see that you are favoring UEF with teleport and billy nuke, at list give cybran loyalist back the ability to counter it.

im wondering, do you have any plans to change T3 Mobile Heavy Artillery for alll factions?

harms are bad now, to much mass cost, less range, no stealth, less hp, build time
( alll this has to change)

it would be good to buff by 5 build power for hives or increase build range

Seeing how Cybran are the only land without shields so Billy is bit more effective against them, reenabling redirect would be a nice deterrent.

I think we decided to add the redirect ability again for loyas (and potentially cybran cruisers) if the bug is fixed where redirected missiles are ignored by tmd and shields

It’s not favoring factions it’s making useless upgrades useful. UEF is just babymode difficulty while Aeon requires more of a thought behind how to make their teleport not shit.