Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob
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@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Yeah you aren't going to get much pushback here. There have been many ways discussed to potentially buff or rework Fatboy, but nothing has come out as a clear solution yet. It's a unit flawed in concept and that makes it hard to rebalance.
Fatboys got a few small buffs in the past years and balance wise theyre completely fine. The main downside is that u cant rush a t4 to try to bruteforce your way through ur opponent
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@waffelzNoob said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Does any faf source state
fafUEF is the slow and tanky faction?Yes, see also the faf wiki:
UEF; the "Turtle" faction, a name coined because this faction plays best with a slow, steady, grinding style. Good for beginners together with Seraphim thanks to very solid, largely uncomplicated units, a strong ACU at all stages of the game, and units which do exceptionally well with little to no micro.
It's mentioned on the fandom wiki too:
Its weapon choice usually makes UEF units to be of limited efficiency against moving targets, as projectiles aren't too good at tracking targets, but their sheer power can do serious damage to structures and slow-moving units. Also, UEF units tend to be more heavily armored.
Interestingly, it's not really part of the lore in the official manual of Supreme Commander (page 16 of the content, 11 in the pdf):
I can't find the manual of Forged Alliance. But it is represented in-game: most structures have more health then their counterparts in other factions.
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UEF does look like it should be tankier visually speaking but unfortunately faction diversity must be thrown away unless it's about aeon being the best in every regard
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@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
No. Supreme Commander doesn't have strong faction identities beyond the visual design. UEF tends to have more tanky units, but that's not even true a lot of the time, as you demonstrated. Trying to say "____ is the faction that exceeds at ____" won't work well in this game.
First of all, UEF units do have greater HP pool on average. It can be noticed from buildings to land units to air units to naval units. So it would make sense to make a sort of pattern or an innate strenght of the nation, but maybe I am wrong.
Second of all, it is literally said in the Supreme Commander Wiki:
Links:
https://supcom.fandom.com/wiki/UEF_strategy@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
It is not
Then what is it if it's not a land oriented nation? UEF units would suggest that to be the case. They are the only nation to have a T3 transport Continental that also has a shield bubble and their T2 gunships Stingers have a carrying capability of one T1 or T2 unit. Additionaly, they also have a T3 point defence Ravager. How is this not suggestive of a nation that puts emphasis on land-based warfare?
Also, if that is not the case, then why would someone pick UEF over other nations? What does UEF excell at? What are their weaknesses? What do they have to sacrifice and what do they gain for it? In navy, I think that Cybran is preferred, because they have excellent torpedo weaponry: they are the only nation with T3 torpedo launcher HARMS, which also sits underwater, making it much less vulnerable to sea-based attacks. They have fantastic T2 destroyers Salem, with fantastic torpedoes that can also go on land, they have stealth units, like T2 submarine killer Barracuda, their T3 nuclear submarine Plan B has torpedoes and they also mave T2 stealth boat Mermaid. In air, Aeon is, I believe, generally preferred, especially at later stages of the game, where they can dominate enemy through their units like their T3 gunship Restorer with great damage to air units unlike other nations, they're the only nation with a T3 torpedo bomber Solace and with the experimental aircraft carrier CZAR, they can both establish dominance and terrorize land and naval units. So what is UEF good at?@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Is it? Notorious among whom? It's an incredibly niche ability
Having both stealth and cloak, while having the ability to spot enemy units both with radar and direct line of vision, means that a Seraphim commander can spread a bunch of Selens across the map without enemy being able to do anything about that once the Selen stops moving and shooting. T1 technology that can only be countered by T3 technology - omnisensors. How is that not overpowered?
@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
bsolutely not. UEF is probably the single best faction at the moment to rush T3 land with, simply because of Titans. They're fast and will shred through lower tier units, while the incredibly quickly regenerating shield (they get it back in 15s!) means that most damage they do take while running across the map gets healed back for free.
I haven't seen much of that happen, but then again, I am a noob, maybe I am wrong.
@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Because UEF has mobile shields while Cybran doesn't. Mobile stealth is much much worse than mobile shields, so Bricks have a bit of an HP advantage to make up some of the difference. Also Percival has a strong alpha strike, which means a decent chunk of your Bricks will get deleted in the first second of combat.
How is stealth much worse than shield? Having a shield means that units will still receive damage, first to the shields, then to the units themselves. If enemy doesn't have an omnisensor or a permanent optical vision of the stealthed units, they will never take damage to begin with.
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@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Playing vs AI is OK, but it will get you into bad habits when it comes to playing vs people.
Dip your toe in the water and play vs players and see how you get on with UEF and any other faction you fancy trying.
Maybe I expressed myself unclearly, but I didn't mean to say that I play against bots for the sake of it. I meant to say that I did test runs against bots to try some different things out.
@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Fatboy has the longest range of all mobile land experimentals. That can count for a lot. Kiting is the way to go when they would be killed if they stood still or advanced.
They are mobile factories, which is a nice to have feature. 4 or 5 of them with an army adds up to critical mass in most situations.They do have great range, but it is equal to that or shorter than the range of stationary T2 artillery. Additionally, they are very slow and big. I don't know whether the word "kiting" is fair to use here. It's more like "slowly dragging your fat body perpendicularly to the enemy while firing at him".
@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Titans are great for wiping out T1 spam and pretty good vs T2. Percies are great vs T3 and T4.
In 1v1 battles about 8 Percies with a mixed T1 and T2 army are normally sufficient to push for the victory and win the game. Critical mass.Maybe, but I haven't seen that happen a lot. Again, noob opinion.
@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
And then there's the Tac Nuke on the commander. As well as the massively under-used bubble SACU's.
I didn't critisize these two things. They're fantastic when used correctly, so I have no real complains against these.
Other than that I agree with your statements.
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@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
They have some advantages to the others. While you dismiss their extra DPS, it means they can kill enemy land scouts and radar much faster. Personally I prefer them to selens because they have better radar range (which is why I build land scouts) and are much cheaper. Spirit's by far my favourite scout though.
What I critisized is how much UEF land scouts must sacrifice to gain what they do. Cybran Mole and Aeon Spirit seem to be much more usable in the cases, where their strenghts come into play. Having land and water mixed terrain makes Spirits especially appealing. Having cloak on a scout means it can be useful to block mass points or provide spotting where the enemy didn't bother or didn't notice to put a radar. Snoop, while better in direct combat, still takes time to kill other scouts, which can just run away from it because they're just faster.
@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Compared to the other factions' tanks the pillar has more health per mass cost so you can still argue it fits with the UEF doctrine (i.e. a UEF T2 tank army will have more health than a mass equivalent tank army from another faction).
I guess? But then it's going to be more of a sacrificial nation, like Aeon with their Mercies or Cybran with their Firebeetles.
@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
If UEF's slight faction identity is units that are generally 'tankier', Aeons is its focus on shields (shield instead of nano for its ACU, shielded T2+T3 tanks, T2+T3 shield generators that focus on health over size), so it's reasonable to me that the 'shield' faction has a stronger shield.
From my perspective, I got an impression that, whereas UEF focuses more on shield domes, because their shields are generally speaking pretty big compared to others, Aeon seems to be more focused on personal shields. Take their units and compare them: UEF T3 transport Continental has a shield that not only protects the Continental itself, but also the units that it carries. UEF experimental Fatboy has a shield dome that not only protects the Fatboy itself, but also the units that it produces and the aircraft that land on it for refueling and repair. They have T2 shield boat Bulwark with a massive shield radius. It's kind of as if the UEF nation says "don't worry, soldier! Federation has your back, you're safe here! We won't let our fellows die!". Aeon, on the other hand, have a lot more personal shields: T2 tank Obsidian, T3 bot Harbinger Mk. IV, experimental CZAR and their shield domes are smaller in radius. Wouldn't it maybe make sense to put Aeon emphasis on personal shields and make them stronger but shield domes weaker, and let UEF have stronger shield domes but weaker personal shields? I think this would be an interesting dynamic, although I will admit, I am going very deep into speculation and lore interpretation here, so it is only my opinion.
@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
It's relevant for longer in the game than a monkeylord which is usually good as an early experimental and/or to try and surprise the enemy. If you can protect it from air and TML snipes then it ends up being quite a good value over time unit, and can force the enemy to either retreat to T2 arti, or push in (so provided you have enough percies supporting your fatboy that can be good for you). It's not that strong, but it still has a use.
I guess this is correct.
@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Seraphim costs the most but yeah generally Seraphim has the best shield, and then the other factions have different focus (UEF on size, Aeon on strength, Cybran has the worst shields but at least have a very cheap t2 shield which also has use)
So, Aeon focuses on strenght but is still not the strongest while also sacrificing radius and not being able to upgrade their shields from T2 to T3? Again, kind of weird. Why does Seraphim have it all? It does cost more to operate, yes, but still.
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@waffelzNoob said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
You're nitpicking about 4 mass for a gun that can kill radars and has contributed in engineer/lab/radar kills frequently enough to justify that 4 mass. It can also chase away spirits and moles from scouting you. The selen has piss poor radar range, that is its weakness.
I am not nitpicky about 4 mass, I am taking the whole set of advantages and disadvantages and it seems to me just not to be fair to UEF nation. Spirits can be very useful because they can go both on land and on water, Moles can scout in aerias where enemy doesn't have radar coverage indefinitely and block mass points, Selens are good in combat (for T1 scout of course) and have both stealth and cloak, which is in my opinion very strong for T1 technology. Snoop, while winning in a direct fight against Moles and Spirits, will not be able to finish them off, because no sane player for Cybran or Aeon will let their T1 scouts fight an UEF scout head on, they will just run away, because they're faster.
@waffelzNoob said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Titan is a good unit you are likely just using it wrong. It's dominant against everything that isn't a harbinger, othuum, percival, brick, an acu, or t4. The shield regen is more impactful than you think.
Maybe, but I don't see Titans being used by other players either. From T3 stage, it's usually just a Percival spam from then on. No one bothers to make Titans when Percivals exist.
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Hope I could clarify and elaborate on all comments and points of interest!
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@TheWeakie said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Fatboys got a few small buffs in the past years
I agree with everything except calling 2x regen & faster recharge a small buff. Regen on Fatty is very useful
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Having both stealth and cloak, while having the ability to spot enemy units both with radar and direct line of vision, means that a Seraphim commander can spread a bunch of Selens across the map without enemy being able to do anything about that once the Selen stops moving and shooting. T1 technology that can only be countered by T3 technology - omnisensors. How is that not overpowered??
They can be countered at T1 stage with any unit. Alt move engineer, ground fire with any unit (tank, artillery, t1 bomber).
On the flip side Seraphim doesn’t have proper cheap t1 scout, as selen is closer to being a lab with a 20 mass cost (except it doesn’t shoot from transport like all other labs). Overall list of Selen disadvantages is very close to its advantages, it’s nowhere close to being op
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@AleksanderDerIch 4 mass for a gun that can finish off engineers, scouts, and radars sounds like a good deal to me, because 4 mass is entirely inconsequential. sometimes seraphim has the short end of the stick because their scouts can't see anything allowing raids to get by more easily. I would rank the scouts aeon > uef > cybran, with selen being able to rank anywhere from best to worst depending on the map
Looking at the wrong games for titans probably
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@Sainse said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
They can be countered at T1 stage with any unit. Alt move engineer, ground fire with any unit (tank, artillery, t1 bomber).
That is only the case if the enemy of the Seraphim player knows before hand where exactly the Selen scouts were left stealthed and cloaked. If the map is somewhat big but still mostly land, Seraphim commander can leave them in unexpected spots where enemy engineers won't patrol and won't attack-move. T1 bombers and T1 artillery don't know where to fire automatically, because there is no valid spotted target to shoot at and the player doesn't know where to groundfire if he did not see the Selen scouts come to the position beforehand.
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@AleksanderDerIch Selens are usually used to deny T1 mexes until enemy notices (which he will, since he cannot build on that mex). Otherwise it's a weak T1 radar (cloak selen cannot fire), which is cool but that's it
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@AleksanderDerIch said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Second of all, it is literally said in the Supreme Commander Wiki:
Yeah, which is fan-made and not an official source. Plus it covers the original game, not the modded FAF client which has done a ton of rebalancing, including some of the complaints you had.
Then what is it if it's not a land oriented nation? UEF units would suggest that to be the case. They are the only nation to have a T3 transport Continental that also has a shield bubble and their T2 gunships Stingers have a carrying capability of one T1 or T2 unit. Additionaly, they also have a T3 point defence Ravager. How is this not suggestive of a nation that puts emphasis on land-based warfare?
They're also the only faction with dedicated shield boats, torpedo boats, a battlecruiser, and a submersible aircraft carrier. Would that make them naval focused as well?
@AleksanderDerIch said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Also, if that is not the case, then why would someone pick UEF over other nations? What does UEF excell at?
Oof that's gonna be contentious. I would say their strengths are T2 and early T3 land, early T3 navy, and T2 air. Weaknesses are T2 navy and their overall T4 selection.
Then again I think all the factions are almost identical and always play random.
Having both stealth and cloak, while having the ability to spot enemy units both with radar and direct line of vision, means that a Seraphim commander can spread a bunch of Selens across the map without enemy being able to do anything about that once the Selen stops moving and shooting. T1 technology that can only be countered by T3 technology - omnisensors. How is that not overpowered?
They provide very little intel when cloaked, aren't much of a threat, take a while to cloak, and can't move. If a Selen cloaks you still know exactly where it is. If you really need to you can ground fire it or send an attack move engineer to reclaim it. ACUs also have omni so if it gets into ACU range it's just dead.
@AleksanderDerIch said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
How is stealth much worse than shield? Having a shield means that units will still receive damage, first to the shields, then to the units themselves. If enemy doesn't have an omnisensor or a permanent optical vision of the stealthed units, they will never take damage to begin with.
Because your entire stealthed army becomes irrelevant with a single air scout. Shield generators provide value no matter what.
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@Sainse
What if you put a Selen somewhere aside, somewhere where the enemy probably won't send their engineers?
Also, I checked the stats: Spirit has 48 radar range, Snoop and Mole have 44 radar range and Selen has 40. Yes, Selen has the weakest radar, but is 4 range difference that big of a deal? -
@AleksanderDerIch then selen is nothing more than an invisible T1 radar. It has less vision and radar when it’s cloaked
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@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Yeah, which is fan-made and not an official source. Plus it covers the original game, not the modded FAF client which has done a ton of rebalancing, including some of the complaints you had.
Is this also fan made or official? And if it's official, then why does it have "turtling" faction in its description? Is it intentionally misleading?
Link: https://wiki.faforever.com/en/Play/Learning-SupCom/Faction-Information@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
They're also the only faction with dedicated shield boats, torpedo boats, a battlecruiser, and a submersible aircraft carrier. Would that make them naval focused as well?
How did you completely ignore my argument about Cybran having superior navy? If Cybran does have superior navy, then no, UEF would not be naval focused because there is a nation that is better at naval, rendering UEF less naval focused in comparison. On the contrary, other nations don't have the same variety and quality of land units like UEF do: UEF has only land-based T3 mobile missile platform Spearhead, the already mentioned T3 transport Continental and T2 gunship Stinger with carrying capacity for example. Other nations can't match the UEF ability in land expansion, in theory at least. As for the shield boats, torpedo boats, battlecruisers and submersible aircraft carriers, that's all good, but for example Aeon and Seraphim can supplement the lack of shield boats by just having the hovering mobile shield generators hover next to the ships. Torpedo boats are fantastic at their strict task of being a torpedo monster while being hard to deal damage to in return by torpedoes. But a Cybran, Aeon or Seraphim doesn't even have to worry about building a specialized unit to establish underwater presence. They just build destroyers, like they usually would, which have both effective artillery and effective torpedoes. UEF T2 destroyer Valiant has poor torpedoes like every other UEF naval unit except for the torpedoboats Coopers and experimental aircraft carrier Atlantis. Battlecruisers are good, but they are a niche unit of naval dominance against T1 and T2 naval units. Other nations fill this role by just simply building battleships or more destroyers/submarines, depending on the composition of the enemy fleet.
@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
They provide very little intel when cloaked, aren't much of a threat, take a while to cloak, and can't move. If a Selen cloaks you still know exactly where it is. If you really need to you can ground fire it or send an attack move engineer to reclaim it. ACUs also have omni so if it gets into ACU range it's just dead.
What if you don't know beforehand where the enemy player left his cloaked and stealthed Selens?
@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:
Because your entire stealthed army becomes irrelevant with a single air scout. Shield generators provide value no matter what.
If your army contains mobile anti air units, the spotting by the scout will be time limited. But after the scout is destroyed, enemy will lose the vision again, making the stealthed units untouchable. Or is the opponent of Cybran supposed to make an infinite column of air scouts and waste resources just to be able to affort constant visual on the stealthed units?
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@Sainse
Which is not bad? Having a one-way information flow sounds like a pretty significant advantage, no? -
@waffelzNoob
Snoop cannot finish off engineers effectivly. The weakest T1 engineer has HP pool of 120 (Aeon) and Snoop has 2DPS. In order for 1 snoop to destroy 1 engineer, we divide target HP by the DPS:120/2=60 sec.
A snoop has to fire at a single engineer for 60 consecutive seconds, a whole minute, before the engineer dies.
One T1 engineer of any nation needs 50 seconds to build 1 T1 point defense, which instantly kills the Snoop.
That means that the player with the engineer has 10 seconds of reaction time to protect his engineer at least in this way. That is the best case scenario. Now we add into concideration that the engineer can just drive up to the Snoop and reclaim it, or simply drive away, or enemy T1 tanks or bots will arive and destroy Snoop, or T1 bomber arrives and destroys Snoop.
So no, Snoops cannot kill enemy engineers effectivly. Having 1 T1 bot with around 20DPS is much better for these kinds of tasks.
I have also never seen enemy radars just sitting in plain field without any defense, so I think that this is also rare.
And like I said, Snoop just doesn't have the speed to catch up to the enemy scouts to finish them off. Snoop has speed of 4.5, whereas Mole has 4.8 and Spirit has 4.6. Additionaly, radar range of Mole and Spirit is 44 and 48 respectivly. Firing range of Snoop is 26. Enemy sees the Snoop long before it can open fire and can just turn around and run away. Also, Spirit has firing range of 33, meaning, that with proper micromanagment, Spirit should in theory never lose to a Snoop, always kiting and dealing damage to the Snoop without fear of retaliation.
Edit №1: grammar.
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@AleksanderDerIch radar costs more than an engineer. snoop kills radar 2x better than spirit and 1000x better than mole
