Another Novax conversation
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I don't get your expense argument - a T2 shield costs 500-700 mass; you could build 10 of them and it's still a fraction of the novax cost.
It's not just an expense argument. As the Novax moves, if means you need to move around engineers to counter it. Engineers are slower. Note more importantly to your point; a single Novax will ;
- over power and kill a Cybran T2-d1 in 1 shot, (4) Shots if Sera T2 - unassisted
- over power and kill a Cybran T3 in (4) shots, or (6) if Sera T3 - unassisted
- most mex's get surrounded by fabs, so it doesnt need to kill the mex, the fabs do that FOR the SAT
- Novax's do extra damage to shields, so as soon as the shield drops- ITS DEAD
So if you succeeded in shielding your base for 1 sat, you have to get more shields / engineer assist even after shielding. And so you make strongholds where shielding is better. But that only works up to (3) sats. At (4+) sats (around 1000 dps), you're fucked.
In the meantime, you basically get ripped apart on the edges. SATs are practically like the stereotypical American-Sitcom In-Laws. There's no defense, no escape, and they chip, and chip and chirp away at you unstoppably....
Which underlines the point of this thread- balance aside- its a very un-fun unit in its current state.
But, for instance if Sat players had to micro them around SMDs; that would be an elegant counter; already in game.
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Just a bit of an out there thought.
Cut price of Novax by half and remove laser. Replace it with something similar to Aoen emp burst, that way the Novax can be disruptive, but cant destroy anything. It will wind up being used to help with assaults or to slow building. Also make it blockable by shields, to allow air grids to be shielded and keep production at full.
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@Printer this is why reducing damage to shields would be an effective balance. It removes the burden of needing insane shield assistance. T2 shields are cheap and fast to build where you need them. This all but removes the incentive to spam them to brute force your way through base shields. You'll use it else where or you have to pair it with Arty to then target structures when the shields go down.
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@Printer bro 4 stats and you are dead? are you sure? there is cast from Tactical Takeover where dude built 22 stats and they weren't really that usefull
but i do agree if you built like 1-4 of them you would make other team built a bunch of expensive shields tho
https://youtu.be/NIeLbqaWreI?si=ZykKi8NIuZAmN9fM -
@TwitchyMofo said in Another Novax conversation:
@Printer this is why reducing damage to shields would be an effective balance.
btw, I think I was maybe wrong. I was talking about the shield structure- not the shield bubble. And I think its just shield structures are so weak- is why it appears the sats kill them so fast. So I might have been wrong about the 'bonus' damage.
@YraCore said in Another Novax conversation:
@Printer bro 4 stats and you are dead? are you sure?...
4 Sats is close to 1000 dps, it takes a bunch of engineers to overcome that. So you can maybe stop a huge flock of Sats in one place (plot twist, 22 is unstoppable), but they can just move to another spot.
Sats don't have that opportunity cost unlike every other unit. This why I think they're not polished. The devs in vanilla used SMDs to shoot them down (I vaguely still remember being a kid, and having a Novax center and no Novax satellite- and building a few more before I saw what was happening...)-
Anyway, IMO maybe microing around SDM's wouldn't hurt. Hoping there's something cooking on this issue.
Edited after finishing replay
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SMDs have never shot down novaxes. Likewise adding this cost to novax with nothing else immediately puts it into unviable territory. It would make zero sense to be making it over a nuke in nearly all use cases.
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A sat only needs 3-4 T3 engis and 40-60m/s of assistance depending on faction T2/T3 shield to be completely countered. On paper, 2 T3 shields with shield micro can also counter 3 sats. 4 sats is 972 DPS and 144k mass, while an Aeon T3 arty with pgens is 1000 DPS, 9000 avg. energy overflow, and 86160 mass. So unless you've already lost the game due to something else previously, T3 arty/T4 arty is way better than spamming a number of sats, therefore there really shouldn't be any argument about making more than 1 sat in the current balance.
Design-wise imo an "artillery" satellite just doesn't fit in any cost region:
- At around 36k cost the shields needed to cover its attack area are overkill on HP, so they cost a bit too much. It can also come out a bit too early and bully players that are behind.
- At 72k+ cost it would just compete with T3 arty which is necessarily stronger due to inaccuracy.
The design also doesn't fit in any nerfs, the proposed nerfs to the design have basically been to remove it by making it die for cheap to SMD (which makes its weak power compete with powerful nukes, or you have to mega buff sat DPS which makes it an annoying T4 PD) or just removing its shield or structure/unit damage.
It also doesn't make sense in the current arty balance for Novax to exist anyway. UEF T3 arty is not intentionally worse than the rest and frankly it doesn't help Mavor against a well set up shield assist situation.
From my perspective, since the arty role is irredeemable, the best course of action is to give Novax a support role that doesn't deal DPS but helps other things (arty, gunships, Fatboys) to survive or deal their own DPS.
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You cant just compare dps with t3 arty because they are completely different units, one is like a hammer and the other like a sharp knife both deadly in there own way.
The novax is better in every way apart from outright dps, yet cost half as much.
Both units are equal in effectivness although they perform different functions they should still have the same costs or nerfed in one way or another.
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Yeah that’s completely true. I always see people debate if a mavor would be better than 3 novaxes the same way you see the debate on a mavor vs getting 3 t3 arty online. They’re practically equal in efficiency.
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@FtXCommando My point was not to compare Novax to artillery because they have different functions.
and so you again compare novax to artillery?
Arty is used to target one single high value structure
Novax is used to target numurous vulnerable units like engineers, power and mexes aswell as scouting and general harassment.
They are completely different.
Just because its dps is lower doesnt mean it cant do high damage to unprotected units.
killing engineers alone means no production no shields no nothing.
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You state
“Both units are equal in effectivness although they perform different functions they should still have the same costs or nerfed in one way or another.”Why should they have the same cost? They have equal effectiveness.
Therefore, it should easily translate that since N = A for effectiveness and there is commonly a debate on 3A = M, you should also be able to have some debate on 3N = M, unless of course a novax is not equal to a t3 arty in effectiveness.
My point about it is that this is another nerf idea intended to remove novax from the game rather than actually do anything with the unit.
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@FtXCommando why must we do anything with the novax?
Theres nothing wrong with the unit or its function.
The argument is that it performs too well in its function and therefore requires a nerf.
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@FtXCommando said in Another Novax conversation:
SMDs have never shot down novaxes. Likewise adding this cost to novax with nothing else immediately puts it into unviable territory. It would make zero sense to be making it over a nuke in nearly all use cases.
No I'm sure they did once, and someone else recently reported the same. But this was before any patching. Like the super old days when a UEF player didn't have the Fletcher betrayal on the Overlord mission. Or I had a different game then you did years ago.
@Nomander said in Another Novax conversation:
A sat only needs 3-4 T3 engis and 40-60m/s of assistance depending on faction T2/T3 shield to be completely countered. ....
At first, what you said on paper is what I saw as well;
- T2 Cybran-TD1 (Weakest) with (3) T3 engineers assisting still breaks in a single Sat- with laser to spare.
- T2 Cybran-TD2 (first upgrade) with (3) T3 engineers it takes (4) shots
- T2 Sera (best) with (3) t3 engies, 1 sat is effectively countered.
t3 more so ofcourse
Bring in a 2nd Sat, and I was surprised by how fast things died
- T2 Cybran-TD2 - with (3) engies = 1 shots
- T2 Sera - with (3) engies = 3 shots to break
*t3 Cybran-TD4(Weakest), with (3) engies = 2 shots to break the bubble. - t3 Sera (strongest) with (3) engies = 5 shots to break
(3) Sats and things die faster- even with a 2nd shield:
- (2) T3 Cybran, with (3) engies each takes (2-4) shot.
- (2) T3 Sera, with (3) engies each, takes (4-8) shots and kills the shields too if so qued.
The results show SATS quickly overcoming a few engies; and it depends if the sats are grouped up and focusing down 1 shield or spreading their damage which is why I saw (4-8) on the t3 Sera.
It's not a perfect test (could use more engineers) but I think the APM considered should be equal on both sides to do a good test. The sat takes a few clicks ONLY- stop/starting shields, re-targetting and building just-in-the-nick-of-time, shouldn't be compared to the relaxing, slow click of UEF sat "micro".
The damage type is entirely different. An artillery shell is likely to wipe out a shield but then not hit it again and has to wait a few key seconds before a 2nd one is inbound. You might be aiming for the SMD and the artillery shell broke the bubbles, but the next shot misses the SMD; and the a new bubble saves things on the 3rd. A sat would not have this problem; and a SAT also:
- gets Vet quickly compared to artillery,
- re-targets very fast
- would be useful vs killing things like mexs, and choking your enemy, while t3 arty is not
Comparing the UEF Sat to Artillery is unfair; they're totally different.
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One thing I think gets lost in all this, and I don't even know if it can be considered and addressed but nonetheless I'll mention it.
There is the scientific approach which couples in with common sense but then there's the practical reality of what actually occurs which amounts to very little scientific thought and practically no common sense.
Probably true that it is incredibly inefficient to spam novax but my goodness every time you see one novax coming it seems like there are 3+ not long after. People don't seem to care about the numbers they just know the effect it has on the match. It's often not even the Eco type player that is building them so there's always that positions weaponry that you'll have to deal with as well which is usually your t3 arty spam and or game ender.
It may be a huge reason why there are so many 1300 to 1600 rated players who just don't rank up after thousands of games (myself included) We get into these habits that seem effective to us and give us the false illusion that we're actually good. We blatantly ignore such inefficiencies as Novax spam and no doubt we are ignoring a lot of other things... (Probably not even ignoring them because we don't even know they exist to be able to ignore)
I wonder what the novax usage is in 1.8k+ matches compared to the more typical standard custom match which is a 1.2k+ situation.
If any of this is true then it's kind of a conundrum because we have a weapon that fits fine within the pro-level realm but is out of place anywhere else because of its power and the user's inability to understand or care when they should be deploying it.
What would novax spam people build if they didn't have the novax?
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we need multiple sats per ground station. As many as we want. There is a mod that does this, make it part of the main game.
There. Done. Problem solved.
Oh and SMD can shoot i down. One sat, one anit nuke. Easy peasy.
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The power of the Sat is not the damage, instead, their strength is their ability to disrupt the opposing team and cause initial mass drain. Such drain can quickly shift the balance of an equal fight, perhaps, just enough that the opponent on the sat side can grab crucial reclaim mass in, for example, a navy battle, quickly tilting the tide in their favor, generating a snowball effect.
Simplify the problem:
Say every player has an average of 12 mex
Of these 12 mex, they can be covered with ~8 t3 shield gens
Average cost of shield gens between factions = 3390 mass8 shield gens x 4 players on opposing team = 24 shield gens required
24 x 3390 = 108,480 mass drain on the opposing team.
Granted, there may be maps where half the shield gens may suffice, thus 54,240 mass drain...
(108,480 + 54,240)/2 = average mass drain of 81,360.
This does not even consider sunk costs to power those shields and more.
So set the price of a sat to be equal to their mass drain on the enemy team, since they are about disruption. A good sat user will find creative ways to overcome this shield counter.
~72k - 81k should be a fine new price.
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@Mr_Blastman
To use your own numbers for mexes, but doing a more efficient replacement of T3 shield with T2 shield with an average cost of 600 mass
8 shield gens x 4 players on opposing team = 24 shield gens required
24 x 600 = 14,400
That leaves c.21k for a gateway with 3 RAS SACUs which both give more than enough power to cover the shields, and generate extra resources to more than compensate for the very slow rate at which the novax could kill the t2 mexes (or 2 RAS SACUs assuming you have an air player that wants some t3 shielding to cover their air grid).It's annoying to counter, because you have to build all those shields quickly enough, rebuild any shields and mexes if they decide to target them, increase the shielding if they get a second novax, and have issues if you have fatboys or low health high cost unshielded units you want to attack with. 72-81k cost would make it completely unusuable and you'd be better off getting t3 arti or more units or eco.
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@maudlin27 said in Another Novax conversation:
@Mr_Blastman
To use your own numbers for mexes, but doing a more efficient replacement of T3 shield with T2 shield with an average cost of 600 mass
8 shield gens x 4 players on opposing team = 24 shield gens required
24 x 600 = 14,400
That leaves c.21k for a gateway with 3 RAS SACUs which both give more than enough power to cover the shields, and generate extra resources to more than compensate for the very slow rate at which the novax could kill the t2 mexes (or 2 RAS SACUs assuming you have an air player that wants some t3 shielding to cover their air grid).It's annoying to counter, because you have to build all those shields quickly enough, rebuild any shields and mexes if they decide to target them, increase the shielding if they get a second novax, and have issues if you have fatboys or low health high cost unshielded units you want to attack with. 72-81k cost would make it completely unusuable and you'd be better off getting t3 arti or more units or eco.
T2 shields by themselves are generally wholly uneffective at stopping sats.
They need to be bumped, substantially in price, to reflect their disruptive ability to the other team.
They also have effective uses beyond simply killing a mex or pgen.
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If your best use case of 36k mass in your games is making a tool to eat thru the 7k hp of a t3 mex and the 9k hp mass of a t2 shield over the span of 75 seconds then you probably should have started an actual game ender and finished it in 5-6 minutes.
72k mass novax would quite literally never get made.
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@FtXCommando said in Another Novax conversation:
If your best use case of 36k mass in your games is making a tool to eat thru the 7k hp of a t3 mex and the 9k hp mass of a t2 shield over the span of 75 seconds then you probably should have started an actual game ender and finished it in 5-6 minutes.
72k mass novax would quite literally never get made.
I think some of us are fine with that.
