Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob
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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
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@Sainse
And that is one of the two very specific cases that I described in my original post where I see the upside of Snoop. But I rarely see unguarded radars just sit around, without any tanks, PDs or bombers nearby, which means that this is an advantage that the UEF player will rarely be able to put to good use. -
@AleksanderDerIch i am of course referring to the situation where a lab or tank fails off to kill an engineer
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Land is like 75%+ of the units made in the game, no faction can “excel at land” without being meta defining. Likewise your analysis of one faction being good at air, one good at navy, and one good at land, even if we were to assume your takes are right, would make this game completely boring. It would be defined by the faction and map you rolled at 0:00 and at that point you might as well as quit the game. Also, what the hell does that make Seraphim good at? Space?
Every faction has comparative advantages at different points, UEF has a strong t2 air stage except against Aeon who no faction can compete against assuming equal prioritization on t2 air. So now your gameplay is ‘t focused on leveraging a total air win but rather low cost yet mass efficient engagements that force an overinvestment into air you never intended to fight. Instead you put your win condition elsewhere.
