The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed
-
I've recently had a few map gens where Billy nuke after Billy Nuke has destroyed t3 armies, bases and wills to live.
https://replay.faforever.com/23361723 Here's one game as an example.To me I see 5 issues with the Billy
1 - its really cheap, for the cost of a couple percies you can have a tactical nuke.
2 - it has 4 HP thus if you want to push a t3 army in and your not Cybran you'll have to build 4 TMD again and again.
3 - it does 12k damage so one-shots all T3 units.
4 - The minimum launch time is 30 seconds.
5 - Tele Billy is insane.Some possible solutions to the problem?
1 - Instead of 3k mass cost for the Billy missile, I'd recommend increasing it to a minimum of 6k and preferably 8k. This is because a well placed Billy in a core base can easily destroy 15k+ mass and Billy shot into a t3 army can reliably get 8k+ mass destroyed, if the armies big enough.
2 - Reduce the Billy Nukes HP down to 1 so that people don't have to spam up as much TMD when advancing with t3 armies. (Also increase Aeon TMD range, because at the moment all tactical missiles fly so high that they go right over Aeon TMDs vertical height, if shot outside of t2 pd range from the TMD).
3 - I'm okay with the damage but would recommend giving T2 mobile shields the ability to not get over-matched by a Billy Nuke. As a note overlapping shields stop a Billy, but singular mobile shields will not.
4 - Increase the minimum launch time to 1 minute and increase to build time to load a Billy for an unassisted T3 ACU to 1 minute so you can launch a Billy at a t3 army to deplete its shields then do it again 30 seconds later before the shields have a chance to recharge.
5 - I'm shocked that I haven't seen tele Billy get used more, yes its expensive in energy, however forcing your opponents to shield everything and TMD proof everything is worth the cost, not to mention teleing inside of shields. As a note if the Billy Nuke hits the inside of the shield it doesn't detonate and simply disappears. I suggest moving the teleport upgrade back to the back. -
yeah you’d be better off suggesting to just delete the upgrade with these suggestions
-
Whats wrong with increasing its mass cost and lowering its HP?
-
It is countered by 500 mass in tmd, lowering its hp means im paying for a 350k e upgrade (not even counting the cost of GETTING the upgrade which is ANOTHER 350k e) that dies to a 250 mass structure built 10 minutes before the upgrade is even viable. It is already difficult enough to make billy cost effective because you very coincidentally seem to forget that to keep billy going you are paying the opportunity cost of devoting 4 t3 pgens to your ACU rather than, I dunno, 8 t3 air factories.
The game you cited is a game where half your team died, bottom air player decided it would be fun to go billy to win the game, and did damage with billy. He could have instead had 8 more air factories making air and done equivalent damage with air. He could have done literally anything. By the time the first billy was going off his team was 25% ahead in mass income. By the time the chicken push with the army was happening, their team had double your team's mass income. Game was lost, billy was completely irrelevant. Your chicken push could have killed the entire top and your team would still be behind. This is not a good game of billy being impactful at all.
-
Don't understand how you think telebilly is strong whatsoever. Especially with the latest tele nerf it takes like 1.5 min before you can fire the 2nd missile which is enough time for everyone to build some tmd. Killed 15k mass in a core base? It still cost you 20k mass + the insane e requirements to make the telebilly. At the end of the day making tele billy defense is also around 10x as cheap as telelazer def
-
I disagree, you simply cannot push t3 armies against a billy and TMD doesn't counter this as every inch of ground you take you have to spam up 4 more TMD (because if the Billy is fired infront of the TMD, it will detonate before the TMD can reload). If you are pushing with EXPs and don't have air, all your mobile AA will get wiped away from the Billy.
The energy cost of the Billy is 4 t3 pgens (13k mass) factor in the Billy upgrade cost as well as its missile it rounds out to 20k mass, the first billy is almost always a surprise thus with a couple of Janus you can wipe away the TMD in the way, and destroy a whole core base, after that it simply costs 3k mass per billy, thats 3k mass to wipe every subsequent t3 army on the field, 3k mass to Billy another core base when the fatboy / sat clears the TMD. Even if your only able to use 3 billies effectively, you simply have to destroy 9k mass on average with the billy to break even. (8 percies worth of mass).
I think this game is a perfect example of the Billies power, Snoogs mass spent to mass killed ratio with his com is something like 1:3, and if we factor in that he was air and had spare t3 pgens his ratio would be more like 1:6.
-
If this game where billy did functionally nothing to contribute to the game state being lost is a perfect example of its power, I think that just speaks for itself. There's a reason your analysis is saying "if we factor in that he was air and had spare t3 pgens" he has spare t3 pgens because his team has two players with no opponent and he can do fun stuff rather than actually playing efficiently.
-
@willowisppsi said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:
5 - Tele Billy is insane.
Tele billy is only insane if you have zero shields on your grid. 1 T3 shield stops a billy completly
-
I feel like there's better games to showcase billy being strong. I know there's MLT games we've played with 3-4 billies on a single team. THAT is OP. I only went billy because like FTX said, the game already felt won to me. And it cost me falling behind in air. Had I simply kept expanding air instead I would have just spammed up strats or gunships instead. Or even an arty. And then there'd be no complaint because it's "normal" gameplay.
-
@willowisppsi said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:
1 - Instead of 3k mass cost for the Billy missile, I'd recommend increasing it to a minimum of 6k and preferably 8k. This is because a well placed Billy in a core base can easily destroy 15k+ mass and Billy shot into a t3 army can reliably get 8k+ mass destroyed, if the armies big enough.
Let me explore some more balance suggestions following this logic:
- Two tmls can easily destroy a t3 mex with storages attached (5k mass), therefore 1 tml missile should cost 2500 mass.
- Nuke can easily destroy a 50-70k mass base, therefore 1 nuke missile should cost 50k mass
-
@sainserow or even a single lobo dropped in between 3 t2 mexes will kill them all (if nothing else interferes), so t1 arty should cost 2k mass at least
building a billy or telebilly and having it work requires your opponent to basically be completely unprepared to deal with any number of TMLs greater than 1 and also behind on eco, while you sink massive amounts of resources into the upgrade
-
@captainklutz Other units are too far off, but tml/sml is literally the same type of weapon so it falls under the same logic
-
I agree that billy is too strong, one shoting 30-40 or more bricks/percy ect is insane.
-
Sounds like a skill issue, kill enemy before they get billy. No issues
-
@caliber said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:
I agree that billy is too strong, one shoting 30-40 or more bricks/percy ect is insane.
bricks should never get billied, as cybran has the perfect counter. Sure you lose maybe your first group, but after that you should have a loyalist or 5 in your army and be pretty much imune against billy
-
I havent seen a Billy in over 20 games. I'm sure it's fine as it is.
-
My biggest complaint about the billy is it's insane range. It is too safe compared to other end-game upgrades, and less fun than it could be as a consequence. I propose making the projectile around 20% slower, thus a bit less useful against armies unless the player takes on a bit of risk by closing in. I wish effective use of it encouraged transport play more.
The counters to it should remain unit spread or mixing build power into the army rather than mobile shields in my opinion, because they require more attention.
-
@phong said in The Billy Nuke needs to be nerfed:
My biggest complaint about the billy is it's insane range. It is too safe compared to other end-game upgrades, and less fun than it could be as a consequence. I propose making the projectile around 20% slower, thus a bit less useful against armies unless the player takes on a bit of risk by closing in. I wish effective use of it encouraged transport play more.
The counters to it should remain unit spread or mixing build power into the army rather than mobile shields in my opinion, because they require more attention.
You say its less safe, but all other coms are waaaaay more tanky then UEF com when it has billy, if it has teleport and billy its even weaker coz it has no defensive upgrades at that point. So in that aspect it is decently balanced
-
@Firv, with other late-game upgrades, you get maybe a few minutes of value before the armies become too big to face, whereas billy you can potentially keep using to good effect almost indefinitely right now, sitting cozy under shields behind percy walls, lobbing rockets across the map. The risk hardly increases as the game progresses, like it does for other com upgrades, since there's not much incentive to get anywhere close to threats in order to use it. In addition, because armies tend to get bigger and less wieldy, the care you have to put into your aim actually goes down as time goes on. Plus, you can pair it with t3 which is a defensive upgrade. The change I suggested wouldn't mean you absolutely must bring the com into knife distance either.
Also, it doesn't impact tele billy at all, because in that scenario you're shooting at helpless and static targets. If you're hunting armies, teleporting is actually worse than airlifting because you can't adjust your destination as the move orders shift around plus your fire rate is shit.
