Allow "Refit" of Commander upgrades to increase tactical variety

[sarge945]

Full disclosure: I'm not a particularly great player. I mostly play with friends in private games, I'm not really into ranked play much, but I do like to watch casts and streams of higher level players, so I at least know a reasonable amount about how higher-level games play out.

I have noticed in the vast majority of matches that ACU upgrades tend to be quite static, that is, most players tend to go down the same path always - engineering suite 2/3, RAS, maybe microwave laser/teleporter for a desperate Cybran assassination, but generally there's not a lot of variety.

I feel that the main reason for this is because certain upgrades like the engineering suite are almost always useful, while gun upgrades and such generally are only useful when directly in combat. Switching upgrades is extremely costly (you're essentially throwing away the old upgrade, and waiting ~1-2 minutes for the new one), so it's usually not worth trying to use anything other than the most ubiquitous upgrades all the time.

I feel that ACUs (and SACUs) could have a lot more depth if there was a "refit" mechanic, which basically worked like this: Once an upgrade has been purchased, it can be purchased again for 20% of the energy cost, no mass, and 20% of the build time. I'm not sure if the health bonus from purchasing upgrades should always apply, even if they are no longer fitted, that may or may not be balanced.

So, for instance, a skilled player that has purchased the engineering suite and a more powerful weapon upgrade on the same arm on their ACU could switch to the weapon upgrade before going into combat, then when combat is over, they could switch back to their engineering suite for the small cost and time investment of a refit. Right now, that isn't really viable to do.

I feel this would add some utility to some of the lesser-used ACU upgrades, and could add more skill and depth to the game. It would also allow more skilled players to gain some advantages when using their ACU on the front lines.

[FtXCommando]

Gun upgrade is the most op thing in the game and decent players will abuse it to invest as little as humanely possible into land so they can start the eco snowball faster. If anything, the tech upgrades need a buff to be more viable against gun since you generally need continuous mass investment to get use from tech.

[sarge945]

I virtually never see gun upgrades on any commanders in any game, I'm surprised you consider it so powerful for how underused it is. Maybe I'm not watching the right games or aren't looking high-level enough.

Either way, I still feel like refits would increase the depth here, we'd see a lot more switching overall as a result, which I consider a good thing because it allows more tradeoffs between utility and resource investment compared to now.

[FtXCommando]

My last 3 games all with like 2200 average rating:
https://replay.faforever.com/21484599

all 4 on right side got gun and some got rambo upgrade on top of it
left side walked default acus into each other because no time to get gun
Then 1 of the remaining 2 got gun and 1 got tech

That's 7/8 going gun

https://replay.faforever.com/21484225

2 people got gun, 1 got t2, rest were default acus that either died in a fight at mid or went back to base

https://replay.faforever.com/21484058

2 dudes went gun, 1 went t2, rest were default acus fighting mid

I don't put much value in the swapping because it's really just a thing that benefits the factions with multiple combat paths that carry varied utility because you can swap on the fly to something like UEF bubble shield from UEF personal shield or TML acu. I'd rather people make the right decision for where they expect the game to be 3-5 minutes from now than just having mistakes in investment forgiven.

[Nex]

@sarge945 said in Allow "Refit" of Commander upgrades to increase tactical variety:

Maybe I'm not watching the right games or aren't looking high-level enough.

The more players/ACUs there are in a game the less valuable a gun upgrade becomes, since it is easier to concentrate defenses than it is to coordinate an attack.
The more important the early tech levels the more powerful the gun upgrade becomes.
In small 1v1 for example gun upgrade is a must and even in 4v4 games having gun gives you enough combat power to get some ground that you can use to improve your eco, while t2 is more defense oriented by building pd and is much slower in securing more ground, while also costing you resources as you use it.
But in games with even more players, especially if the fights condense into multiple ACUs fighting in the same spot due to the map's layout, fighting with your ACU becomes more dangerous and thus the gun upgrade looses on power.

[FtXCommando]

General thing about T2 vs gun is that you can get all the value of t2 by waiting 30-40 seconds and having a frontline factory produce a few t2 engineers. You can never get the value of gun from a t2 factory. This is especially true for UEF with sparkies.

[IndexLibrorum]

Give com T2 a 15% mass/energy discount on whatever it builds.

[Zeldafanboy]

Honestly, except in specific scenarios, getting T2 instead of gun on the commander feels like a noob trap. There’s really nothing T2 can offer that outweighs ranged overcharge + the vet that comes from it. T2 needs a buff of some kind. Making it cheaper probably isn’t wise though.

[snoog]

Maybe offer a Field T2 Upgrade, similar to that of a sparky. A cheaper T2 that only allows the building of PD/AA/Walls. Just a thought.

[Nex]

I also think you could split T2 into "real" T2 that can do anything and some combat T2, that can't build t2 economy, but has more hp and bp than the regular t2 upgrade or might also be cheaper.
This way you can buff the frontline t2 upgrade, without also buffing base sitting T2 upgrade to skip teching up factories.

[Caliber]

gun is by far the most used com upgrade, every single game i see gun uprades, you should play ranked more.

although i like the idea of reducing the cost of upgrades if you have a a non compatable upgrade already, like changing from gun to t2 on cybran the t2 should cost the same minus 50% the cost of the gun upgrade so its not a complete waste of resources.

[ComradeStryker]

@indexlibrorum said in Allow "Refit" of Commander upgrades to increase tactical variety:

Give com T2 a 15% mass/energy discount on whatever it builds.

That'd be nice.

[maudlin27]

@zeldafanboy It provides versatility - you can easily get radar, TMD, anti-air, TML depending on the situation. Especially useful at lower ranks where you may not have the apm to get a transport that then transports a T2 engineer to the frontline to build some of those things for your ACU (and such an engineer is also far more likely to die)

That said I also find gun better generally, and my main reason for going for T2 in games will usually be that I want an upgrade at that point in time but didnt manage to scale up my power quickly enough to support a gun.

Rather than discounting things the ACU builds if it was to be buffed I'd favour a simpler cost reduction e.g. to 700 mass for the T2 upgrade, since a discount wouldn't be intuitive and newer players would miss it

[Arran]

What if, when replacing an upgrade, you didn't immediately lose the old upgrade, only losing it when the new upgrade is complete. This would make switching and having to cancel the upgrade less punishing.