A Big Discussion on Balance. Part 1

[Skrat]

@FtXCommando As for the Paragon. Both you and Nomander arguments in that github thread are not good and involve only ideal playing conditions for paragon and fundamental misunderstandings of how game ender scenarios play/what matters in them. (I have to answer you in your style.)

[FtXCommando]

Stealthed asf doesn’t give Cyb an advantage against anybody except incompetent players. By default you should be screening your ASF with spy planes for intel, Cybran just has the ability to cause that to harm you with an even worse first engagement than the other factions.

I have never picked Cybran for air since the strat bomber adjustment, they’re equivalent to UEF for me and Aeon is just obviously the superior faction.

Game balance is not about a unit being seen in 15% of games. Absolver carries insane utility against elements like shielded acus as well as breaking firebases alongside winning sniper vs sniper engagements while also being insanely powerful in the aeon vs aeon mirror. There is no need for the unit to need an increase in utility.

Yes, titan is fine. Titan trades pretty fairly with ilshies which should be the expectation for t3 raid bots. The problem with loyas is that they totally slaughter units like ilshies and obsidians when they shouldn’t. I don’t actually have much of a problem with titan vs loya balance and think titans trade well if you micro them properly to take advantage of the shield recharge. You aren’t supposed to just sandbox and charge them into one another and conclude loyalists are OP, that’s not how titans are supposed to fight them.

Nomander’s arguments in the github thread actually involve numerics about the game not just throwing out “you need like a million engies to deal with a mavor and uh then a 2nd mavor is up before u finish ur paragon” or talking about shielding/supporting shielding of ur air grid against a mavor because killing it means you can now strat the para. This isn’t how game ender scenarios play. Neither you nor Robo seem to realize how easy it is to spend 10k mass and how quickly 10k mass a second becomes insurmountable in a game where having 15% more mass invested in anything that your opponent is doing means you win regardless of micro/positioning.

[Nuggets]

@FtXCommando said:

Stealthed asf doesn’t give Cyb an advantage against anybody except incompetent players. By default you should be screening your ASF with spy planes for intel, Cybran just has the ability to cause that to harm you with an even worse first engagement than the other factions.

Thats just wrong. It happens to everyone that you suddenly get jumped because you forgot enemy is cybran. Yes, you should be screening with scouts, but scouts can also be shot down, you dont pay attention for 2 seconds and its over.
Now I'm not saying cybran is worse or better, as I'm not sure myself, but I just disagree with that stealth doesnt give an advantage.

[Skrat]

@VindexNoob Thanks for the feedback!

If the majority believe that Absolver is a well-balanced unit that doesn’t need rebalancing, then that’s fine.

I like your suggestion to make the firing range the same for both guns for Othuum and Ythotha’s.

As for sniper bots, I’m not sure it’s worth making them cheaper. They really do require a lot of micro, and you simply can’t do without it when playing as Sera or Aeon. Perhaps they need to increase the range to 70, or at least reduce the build time. But I’d like to hear other people’s views.

[FtXCommando]

@Nuggets said:

@FtXCommando said:

Stealthed asf doesn’t give Cyb an advantage against anybody except incompetent players. By default you should be screening your ASF with spy planes for intel, Cybran just has the ability to cause that to harm you with an even worse first engagement than the other factions.

Thats just wrong. It happens to everyone that you suddenly get jumped because you forgot enemy is cybran. Yes, you should be screening with scouts, but scouts can also be shot down, you dont pay attention for 2 seconds and its over.
Now I'm not saying cybran or worse or better, as I'm not sure myself, but I just disagree with that stealth doesnt give an advantage.

If your spy planes got shot down then stop being aggressive and pull back, if you didn’t then you should be confident in having around 33-50% more ASF than the opponent so the bad turn potential won’t cause a loss.

I have never forgotten my opponent’s faction, this is literally one of the first things I scout and remember in a game.

These are just bad air plays which should only be happening in scenarios where air needs to make bad plays because the game is in a really bad spot. If you’re doing this in non “do or die” scenarios you’re just a bad air user/player.

[Nuggets]

@FtXCommando Yes thats what you should do in theory but in practice its rarely that simple. While I agree that its a blunder / bad when you get jumped by the asf, it still happens to everyone excluding you apparently. Also just because you know what the optimal move against stealth is, doesnt change the fact that stealth gives cybran an advantage, even if its only lowering the enemies attack opportunities, and thats only in a straight ASF vs ASF fight. You can also use stealth to go around and snipe your resto / strat / torp or whatever

[FtXCommando]

Yeah, you can abuse enemy laziness with cyb stealth. I personally do not have any problem with cyb asf, yes. Like I said I never pick cyb in a tournament for air because I don’t value stealth asf much, it’s really not a big deal when you play properly. It’s more of a problem when you’re doing a 1v1 or a 2v2 and have a litany of things to manage and cannot spend the time properly screening air. But that’s also a problem for all factions until omni is up in 1v1 and 2v2 and unattended air fights happen in these game modes often in general.

I strictly see cyb stealth as reinforcing really interesting gameplay in t3 air stage and have no desire to make it less pervasive. Like I said it’s way better for almost every faction to have stealth asf instead but if that’s not gonna happen then they should just stay where they are.

[Skrat]

@FtXCommando Titan is absolutely not okay. Their only advantage vs t2 is speed. 8 ilshies (2 880 mass and 14 400) equal in strength 6 titans (2 880 mass and 31 512 energy). In 9 out of 10 cases, you can’t afford to fall back to give time for Titans to recharge your shields. Otherwise, you’ll lose your mexes/reclaim or simply be killed. And without recharging the shield, the Titans will easily lose to Loya, Harbs or Outhuum, even if you spend more mass on them

[FtXCommando]

In 9 out of 10 cases you say? Pretty crazy I was winning games with pure titan spam 2 years ago before they got their bt changed then. I think you’re confusing you deciding to not retreat them with you can’t retreat them. Can’t believe I’m losing my mexes and reclaim over a 15 second shield recharge time, pretty insane gameplay I must be in. I thought you just mentioned how fast titans are why am I simply being killed now? They can just run away, even against loya since you should be hovering around max range anyway.

Titans have a huge speed advantage against ilshies, you should trade equivalently when you are playing terribly and just walk them into the literal t2.5 assault bot. Harbs and othuums crush titans? They crush loya too, I don’t get it.

Titan got renerfed after everyone realized it was worth making and went back to its old statline with the bt. Loya got another buff because it was still seen as too bad relative to titan. It needs to revert back to titan because titan is the normalized level a t3 raid bot should be, loyalists are just too strong against the top end of t2 thanks to its dual stun tools. It’s fine against titan in terms of dps, titans just require more micro to stand up to them which is fine, bricks need more micro to stand up to percies too.

[Skrat]

@FtXCommando Yes, if the Loya go to raid for kill your mexes, and you retreat with your Titans, to recharge your shields, you’ll lose your mexes in those 15 seconds!

I don't see how the Titans' speed advantage will help you if your ACU is under attack by an enemy ACU with ilshies. But I know that Loya, Harbs or Outhum will be able to help you

Harbs and Othuums are stronger than Loya as well. But when Harbs and Othuums fighting vs Loya, their losses will be far greater than in a battle against the Titans.

If your suggestion is to weaken Loya rather than make the Titans stronger, then perhaps it is worth considering.

[FtXCommando]

Losing a t2 mex to win the loya reclaim is worth the trade. Especially since if the loya is just sitting there doing damage to the mex I could have gotten free damage in on the loya with said titan.

Why is your ACU unsupported exploring the world at t3 stage. I used to do shield + gun + t3 acu as a support for titan spam that arrives later to deal with the now sizable enemy t3 army and build a firebase. I would love it if my ACU gets swarmed because now i can converge all my titans there and get a giant reclaim pile to snowball with. Possible because of the speed advantage allowing me to dictate when to take a good fight, and that’s why titan spam was meta back then.

Far greater? I doubt it. Maybe lose like 1-2 more. Nobody is charging loyalists into harbs/othuums.

[IndexLibrorum]

@ETFreeman said in A Big Discussion on Balance. Part 1:

I agree on:
Mercy buff
Czar buff - maybe laser aoe increase?
Spearhead nerf - maybe, the're really good
Othuum - i'd prefer +0.1-0.2 speed buff

Dont agree on global 2x on stealth e drain, seems quite harsh
The rest idk

And the real issue: loya is completely op vs ilshavoh on open maps, so or should have stun nerfed or some other solution for sera provided

Seconded. 2x energy sounds like a lot. Could explore other options, such as a speed nerf when stealthed.

Would love to see more mercy, thing never gets built now because it's just not good.