Reclaim
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Azraeel, if you're trying to be "aggressive" by attacking the enem'ys main base and essentially raiding it, then the question is not about reclaim, reclaim is an afterthought. Attacking enemy's main base is not exactly "aggressive" gameplay. Aggressive gameplay is spending resources to gain map control. Attack an enemy's main is attempting to "end the game", which inevitably if you fail will yield certain benefits to the defend for a comeback. Its not really worth it, because you're targetting buildings that can be rebuilt instead of the COM which is what you should be targetting to end the game.
Let's unpack this.
It's not "aggressive" to attack the enemy at his strongest point? That's just not accurate. The word "aggressive" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't include a raid or assault on the enemy main base.
You wrote that attacking an enemy's base is not about reclaim. You wrote that reclaim is not a factor to consider when deciding to attack the enemy base. But you also write that an attack on the enemy's main base should ONLY be done as an attempt to end the game, and that an attack on an enemy's base, when it fails, "will yield certain benefits to the defend for a comeback." What are those benefits, other than reclaim? The only benefit that is guaranteed after a failed attack is reclaim.
It's just not true that a failed attack always means the attacker will have fewer units and therefore be vulnerable to a counter-attack. Hypothetically: I could attack your base with 20 tanks, kill 30 of your tanks and two factories, my tanks die, the attack ends. I now have an advantage in the total number of troops even though my attack failed (you lost 30 tanks + 2 factories, I only lost 20 tanks). In that situation, the only benefit to the defender is reclaim. But what a benefit it is. You can rebuild the 2 factories, scoop fifty (FIFTY!) dead tanks, the game is still going. Take away the reclaim and that attack would have been a major success for me.
Why should we only target commanders to end the game, and not target economy? That's not even true on dual gap. Why would anyone make a nuke if it was pointless to blow up buildings? ACUs can easily dodge nukes.
Your perspective is limited by more than just the fact that you only ever play 1 map.
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Arma aggressive gameplay is rapid expansion and seeking for map control and raiding enemy expansions.
If you are attacking enemy main base that is not generally going to be a raid, that is more an attempt to end the game by crippling the opponent entirely, or killing his com. Reclaim is an afterthought, the big loss if you fail in such an endeavour is the huge amount of mass you invested into the attack.
Reclaim only matters in such endevaours insofar as if you attack like an idiot, you'll be feeding him wrecks, but this doesn't matter whether its t3 or t1, feed is feed. Its just more obvious with t3 and t4, as its a big chunk instead of loads of little chunks. If i fail a strat snipe with 20 strats there's about the same mass left as a monkey.
If you remove reclaim or significantly nerf it, there is less incentive to fight for map control at the t3 stage, as the investment required is just too high as per my previous posts.
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Actually you'd need to kill 1 capped t2 mex. Which is easier for a percy to kill than a mantis to kill a t1 mex.
t3 mex hp is too high.
And with this you just showed how much you don't understand.
Percy is 1.3k mass and leaves 1.05k mass in reclaim. Meaning you need to deal at least 2.35k damage in mass if you lose it.
T2 mex is 900 mass and leaves 720 mass in reclaim not accounting for overkill and aoe, which in case of single percival shouldn't happen. Meaning that at the moment of killing mex you deal only 180 mass damage to your opponent.
Obviously even though it looks bad it's not as bad due to mass damage accumulating with time, but at 6 mass per second it is still gonna take a lot of time to make the percy raid worth while.
So sorry but killing single t2 mex is by no fucking means a good raid, even more if you lose percy in return...And please, don't give me shit how you are gonna kill the reclaim when we both fully know that you aren't capable of doing it, not to say coming up with the idea of killing off the reclaim in enemy territory.
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If you are attacking enemy main base that is not generally going to be a raid, that is more an attempt to end the game by crippling the opponent entirely, or killing his com. Reclaim is an afterthought, the big loss if you fail in such an endeavour is the huge amount of mass you invested into the attack.
No. The reason people only attack an enemy base with intent to end the game is precisely BECAUSE they don't want to leave reclaim behind.
If I spend 400 mass to make a little army, and I attack your base, and I kill 600 mass worth of your stuff, that attack could be considered a failure. Not counting reclaim, there was a net 200 mass in my favor. But it would leave about 500-700 mass of reclaim, which means it's a net -400 to me. In general, net negative = bad attack and net positive = good attack.
(The only exception to this is if one team has a lot more income than the other team; in that circumstance, the low-income team can't rely on trades that are 10% more efficient to make up the eco difference. If Team 2 has 150 mass/second and Team 1 has 100 mass/second, then if team 1 is over and over again killing 10 enemy tanks for every 9 that they lose, that's just biding time until Team 1 loses. Whereas if both teams had 100 income, those trades could snowball into an unstoppable advantage for Team 1.)
And the ONLY reason it backfired was because of reclaim.
Take away the reclaim, and that would have been a successful attack (net positive mass for me).
If attacks like that brought success to the attacker, we would see more of them. People would not only attack an enemy base with the intention of destroying it entirely. People would be willing to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack.
Right now, if someone is trying to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack, they are primarily using low-cost units (light arty drop) or they are trying to do massive damage (corsairs to snipe all t2 pgens, the value of corsair reclaim will be less than the cost of a terrible power stall)
And the reason for this, it cannot be disputed, is the reclaim mechanic. If you take away reclaim, many attacks that would now be considered failures would be properly classified as success. And many attacks that now are considered to be successful would, without reclaim, properly be considered failures.
Here's the simple math:
Because of the 81% reclaim, the attacker is going to donate 50-80% of the mass of their attacking units (some reclaim will be destroyed during the fight), and the defender is going to recoup 50-80% of the mass that they lose (rebuilding on wrecks and again some reclaim can be destroyed in the fight).
If I attack you with 1k mass, and there was no reclaim, I would only need to do 1001 mass of damage for the attack to be worthwhile. With reclaim, if you're going to get 50% of the mass of my attacking units, now I need to do 1501 damage in order to make an attack by 1k mass of units worthwhile. Except out of the 1501 mass damage i did, it only costs you 750 to repair it. So really, I need to destroy 3001 mass worth of stuff in your base to make the attack worthwhile.
On my side of the ledger, I'm -1000 mass for the cost of the units
On your side of the ledger, you're -3001 mass for the damage done, but +1500 for the value of your own losses, and +500 for the value of my losses. Which means you're -1001 mass overall. If I'm -1000 in order to cause you to be -1001, that's a success for me.But it's a VERY small success (just 1 mass worth). When you take into account the risks involved (my attack is not guaranteed to be a success, maybe it doesn't do as much damage as I hoped), risking 1000 mass of units for the chance to move the game 1 mass in my favor is actually a terrible investment.
So really, I shouldn't attack with 1k mass worth of units unless I have a very good chance to destroy 4k+ mass of your stuff.
If you take reclaim away, I can justify attacking with 1k mass of units in order to destroy 1001 mass worth of stuff in your base, or with a risk-reward analysis I would want a decent chance of destroying at least 1500 mass. So you can see that 81% reclaim makes a HUGE difference in what kind of attacks/raids on a base are good or bad.
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@JusticeForMantis By that logic killing 2 t1 engi with a mantis is not sufficient cause of the reclaim.
Come on now. Also I said a capped mex, if you can read.
By all means make this change to reclaim, and you will see what I said holding true in 6 months time.
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By that logic killing 2 t1 engi with a mantis is not sufficient cause of the reclaim.
Sending 1 mantis to killing 2 t1 engineers inside an enemy base would accomplish very little, unless the opponent is overflowing mass.
Catching engineers around the map, where they are not easily replaced, is different.
It is disrespectful to twist someone else's words.
make this change to reclaim, and you will see what I said holding true in 6 months time.
You think it takes 6 months for the community to react to a major balance change?
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For those who care, I did a thing, and made a mod. Basically I reduced the mass given from a dead wreck for T2 by 20% of it current total. T3 Mass & HP of wrecks reduced by 40% of the current total and Experimentals been reduced by 60% of the current total. Numbers are reworkable easily enough and I could even modify generic BP wreckage bp if that is so desired. And if interest try and make it so civilian wreckages stays the same, as it as now.
Let me know if any issues occur.
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Dead wreck as in units, structures, or both?
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Currently both but I can modify it be anything. Currently only seperated by T2, T3, and Experimental. But if or group of units has a category to make it unique in its BP, I can include it or make it seperately.
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So since no interesting pushback against reclaim reduction I think I’ll do one.
Part of the problem is that early game has a lot of variance for aggression. You can go for expand engies, reclaim engies, kill early expansion to delay it, kill power building engies, kill power itself
Late game reclaim is gone pretty much, only a map like selkie or ditch is gonna have reclaim left during late game and that still would require it to be a 1v1 or 2v2. The only exception is reclaim from massive engagements. But problem is if you lost a massive engagement, you aren’t getting that mass back and you won’t be able to stop someone from scooping it as it’s the area with the largest force concentration now.
This leaves: expansions? Hard to dislodge something that has been held for 15 minutes without overwhelming power, even more ro actually hold it. So you will need to build up a ton of percies/t4/whatever.
Engies? They themselves tend to be in the most secure area (the high level ones) same as late game power. So the only real way to touch it is some drops or t3 air play.
Losing some t1 engies wont do much, since a lot of the time they’re already done with their job at that stage of the game. Like you won’t really be suiciding units into bp supported land facs or air facs since they tend to be super secure. Navy facs you just do it with frigs anyway.
The reclaim nerf would assist in doing things like making it viable to use a percy to go kill 2 t2 mexes instead of 3 or whatever to pay off. But it’s not going to change that much in general because by t3 stage a lot of the powerbase for players is hugely concentrated. You just don’t see loose t2 mexes decide game state and I don’t really see the reclaim nerf doing anything other than making those sort of raids just a tiny bit more viable. Which is more likely to be countered by more core base t3 mex safe play rather than large scale t2 mex upgrading.
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@FtXCommando said in Reclaim:
So since no interesting pushback against reclaim reduction I think I’ll do one.
Part of the problem is that early game has a lot of variance for aggression. You can go for expand engies, reclaim engies, kill early expansion to delay it, kill power building engies, kill power itself
Late game reclaim is gone pretty much, only a map like selkie or ditch is gonna have reclaim left during late game and that still would require it to be a 1v1 or 2v2. The only exception is reclaim from massive engagements. But problem is if you lost a massive engagement, you aren’t getting that mass back and you won’t be able to stop someone from scooping it as it’s the area with the largest force concentration now.
This leaves: expansions? Hard to dislodge something that has been held for 15 minutes without overwhelming power, even more ro actually hold it. So you will need to build up a ton of percies/t4/whatever.
Engies? They themselves tend to be in the most secure area (the high level ones) same as late game power. So the only real way to touch it is some drops or t3 air play.
Losing some t1 engies wont do much, since a lot of the time they’re already done with their job at that stage of the game. Like you won’t really be suiciding units into bp supported land facs or air facs since they tend to be super secure. Navy facs you just do it with frigs anyway.
The reclaim nerf would assist in doing things like making it viable to use a percy to go kill 2 t2 mexes instead of 3 or whatever to pay off. But it’s not going to change that much in general because by t3 stage a lot of the powerbase for players is hugely concentrated. You just don’t see loose t2 mexes decide game state and I don’t really see the reclaim nerf doing anything other than making those sort of raids just a tiny bit more viable. Which is more likely to be countered by more core base t3 mex safe play rather than large scale t2 mex upgrading.
Which I think the secondary issue to beat this one my dead horse crusade, but issue of T3 (Land) is deployment of T3 in mass in an effective way it achieves something beside glaring at enemy. Travel Time et all.
Through a reclaim nerf (honestly partly why I'd advocate a much harsher reclaim T3 Nerf) will make it so spending T3 on enemy defenses to breach a firebase is far more reasonable I think solution to T3 needs to make it less painful to lose, and make its deployment more accessible/reasonable /shrug
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Reclaim reduction like the one proposed is obviously aimed at 1vs1 play where it's impact is gonna be easily visible and change the meta a bit during t3 stage. However as Ftx pointed out team games won't feel this change too much since they generally have very few non core mexes so there is nothing important to raid really. The only possibilities left are drops, air agression and slow pushes. The later will be buffed and nerfed at the same time. If you would have a lot more units then your enemy and managed to get a good fight and take that area from him you will now get less mass from reclaim but at the same time you won't be punished as hard if you overstep just a little bit and leave reclaim. Over all I don't think it's possible to promote more agression in team games (on turtly maps) without drastic balance changes and neither is it worth it, if those people would want such gameplay they wouldn't play those maps in the first place.
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Don’t really think this is just a turtle teamgame problem.
You have immense intel in late game -> raids just walking by won’t be happening.
You have established map halfs -> there is a general line of defense/reinforcements coming in to halt minor raids
You have heavily concentrated value targets in 1 or 2 locations -> not really that much value in sending that loan percy around.
It will like, make a 2-3 titan raid party more worthwhile I guess just for cancering loose mexes but the meta will just evolve to safe eco scaling instead. And even then, a lot harder to get use out of those raid tanks unless it’s cyb with stealth following loya. Some t2 gunships get made and deal with it.
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Yeah, it's a map layout problem that denies most forms of aggression that are not all in.
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No, it isn’t. Sentons didn’t turn into “lemme put random bs here to go raid mexes” after water reclaim nerf made things in water like 40% value. It makes frig cancer earlier on more justifiable, but t2 and t3 pushes are still all in affairs that typically decide the overall game state in that area. You see this with all big navy maps. Land will operate the same regardless aside from SOME potential with early raid bots.
Don’t get me wrong, it HAS an effect on increasing aggression. It is nothing like what you’re advertising it as, though. If you want the thing you’re advertising, you need to rethink the entire dimension of how late gameplay converges.
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??? As I said already, it's a map layout issue, if a map is designed in a way that it doesn't promote aggression then there won't be much agression no matter the changes you do (unless they would be very drastic).
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Yeah ok beast I guess if every map is hollow and comet catcher than ur aggression will work out
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... you ignore everything in between.
There are more maps then insanely raid heavy 1vs1 on one end and Dual Gap and Seton's on the other.
With reclaim changes you buff aggression on most 1vs1 maps and some team game maps (mostly 2vs2 or 3v3) while having minimal impact (I think only positive) on most team game maps. -
No you don’t. There will be marginal gain in t3 raids on a map like phenom let alone more closed 2v2s. You’re applying the logic of initial t1 raids to initial t3 raids when they operate in entirely different game states. It’s not a simple thing of just looking at reclaim. The ability for quick air response, the ability to have wide reaching intel, the lack of care for most expansion engies, the consolidation in expansions, all of this impacts aggression.
Why can’t I just send 1 solo battleship to go and kill the 3 beach mexes on beach in sentons? Probably because it’ll get immediately seen by sonar and torped or crushed by reinforcements.
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@FtXCommando Setons was always about all out pushes, because once you win the navy (commonly you win rock and lose beach), you can't physically reach enemy air base or other navy, so you then have to prep game enders to finish them. Commonly you will see either Nuke subs spam, T4 spam, or a paragon after enemy team has lost half their mex. At this point in the game incomes are sufficient that its not even worth building mex on enemy beach.
Reduction in reclaim made winning a naval side before your opponent less game ending.
team maps should by design if you want aggressive gameplay have a substantial amount of mex which are not "core" mex that are fought over in the early - l ate stages of the game. Reducing reclaim negatively effects these maps.
