A Big Discussion on Balance. Part 1

[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.

[KnownSniper]

Just gonna answer the OP.

First of all i don't get the logic of ignoring the paragon because there are, in your opinion, more pressing issues regarding balance. If there is an easy and simple solution to fix the current paragon problem it can just be quickly implemented. Also some issues are way harder to tackle than others; A good example being the SACU rework which arguably is the most important balance rework but it requires so much attention/detail/time to work on it to properly balance it, in combination with the classic lack of manpower in the balance team, that it sometimes makes more sense to just try to quickly fix a few smaller/simpler issues.

Funnily enough out of the 8 issues you mentioned that you deem more important than the paragon change i think at least 3 aren't even issues to begin with and the other 5 are either as important or just slightly more important than the para change.

So clearly we have different opinions on what's important to change. You say you spoke to multiple people that agree with you. I have also spoken to multiple people that think para's have been broken OP for years now and the only reason why you don't notice it often is because game enders are rare to come across.

So who's to say who's right and what's more important? A ladder player would think the stealth/titan/othuum issues are more important. A teamgame player would think the novax/czar issues are more important and a seton's player would think the novax/stealth/paragon issues are more important. All of this shows that, going back to the beginning, it makes no sense to ignore an improvement to the game because somebody else thinks there are better improvements to make.

Now regarding the individual balance issues you mentioned.

• Mercies: They aren't completely ineffective, they can be pretty good, but it's extremely rare to see it happen so they should see some sort of rework yes.
• Absolvers: They are already super strong and are a sleeper unit that people refuse to discover. Thinking about buffing it is nuts imo.
• Czars: They are probably the most balanced air t4 in the game right now. They tend to perform relatively average but have potential to be absolutely insane because they're very flexible.
• Titans: They are pretty fine right now. It being weaker than a loya doesn't mean it's bad, because a percy is stronger than a brick after all. Somehow u listed the e drain as a negative while ignoring it's because it has a shield, which is basically always a good thing (the shield is why harbs are one of the most dominant t3 units). It also has a big role of protecting percies against slop while loya's have a role of charging into percies to try and stun them. Titans also have mobile shield support while loya's don't. I do agree titans are on the weaker side, but i don't think that's any issue given the current UEF roster (not every unit has to be as strong as another factions unit) and the titan covers a few specific roles.
• Spearheads: They are a great example as to why the absolver could be a sleeper unit. For years and years players in faf thought the spearhead was bad and almost nobody ever made them. Now most people see them as being too strong even though they basically didnt get a single buff. They should probably get a nerf though, it mostly being hp so its easier to try and snipe them like other long range units.
• Novax: nowadays everyone agrees it's an annoying unit, it's not really OP though. Just an annoyance that makes the game unfun, so it probably at some point needs a big overhaul (not just making it useless) but it's gonna be quite some work.
• Othuum: right before i left the balance team i already buffed the turn rate/maneuverability. I wanted to make it more but at the time ppl were against it because it would look unnatural (iirc)
• Stealth: not sure what to think. Stealth is super good but the lack of shields (which are insane) needs to be replaced by something good. Also after 30+ min in a teamgame you can't stealth your asf while building more asf if you didnt make spare pgens to overflow. 250 asf (a relatively normal amount) is -7.5k e drain. You also have to keep in mind that cybran asf are worse than the others without stealth

And last but not least: Paragon

Paragon is the most broken game ender and it has always been that way. The reason why it's broken isn't because of the game ender vs game ender balance, but because of the game ender vs non game ender balance.

Let's take setons for an example (it's very similar on almost all other maps but this makes it easier to explain):
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a mavor they still lose the game because the map control of the ponds is more important than the mavor.
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a scathis they still lose the game because the map control of the ponds is more important than the scathis.
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a yolo they still lose the game because the map control of the ponds is more important than the yolo. Yolo has a bigger chance to win though than scathis/mavor) since the assist buff it received.
If team 1 loses both ponds but have a paragon the map control is completely irrelevant and they auto win the game.

Now quite some people would say "Well you shouldn't have let them build a para" and that's one of the most wrong/stupid statements ever. Eventually lategame you can build a game ender, even a paragon, in a few min and because of defenders advantage it is extremely hard to deny it. This counts for every game ender.

The issue is that for every non paragon game ender you have a chance of winning if you don't have a game ender yourself, while this isn't the case for para's. So for some reason, for a meager 25k more mass than a mavor/scathis, a paragon is allowed to win the game while u sit and turtle in a corner and people somehow accept that as not being completely and utterly broken.

I've seen so many games, even recently one on sentons, where quite literally the entire team loses all of their slots over a 30min game. Mid lost, beach lost, rock lost, air lost. But because they had an aeon player they just gambled on a para while sitting in the corner and eventually they won. No other game ender even comes close to this being possible.

And once again this is purely about game ender vs NON game ender gameplay. game ender vs game ender is more balanced. Para's are insanely OP in this situation and it requires fixing.

Yapper out.

[IndexLibrorum]

Much to agree with what you wrote, but to comment on this:

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

Also after 30+ min in a teamgame you can't stealth your asf while building more asf if you didnt make spare pgens to overflow. 250 asf (a relatively normal amount) is -7.5k e drain. You also have to keep in mind that cybran asf are worse than the others without stealth

At almost all rating levels, 3x T3 pgens worth of power is no concern at minute 30, so this point feels kind of moot.

[FtXCommando]

Paying 10k more mass for equivalent units is not moot, by this logic late game costs for anything don’t need to follow any expectations and we could just make UEF t3 arty cost 8k more mass because it’s moot

[Skrat]

@KnownSniper Thanks for the feedback!

I’m glad that different players are sharing their opinion, which is exactly why this post was created.

As for priorities, I realise that some issues (such as the SACU rebalance) are very difficult to rebalance, which is why I didn’t even mention it in this post. In any case, the balance issues with T2/T3 units are more pressing than those with the Paragon, as the latter is rarely seen in game, in contrast to Titans or Mercy.

I agree with you about Mercy, Novax (especially if they do change the firing mechanics and make single-shot damage, as Ftx mentioned above) and Spearheads. And I hope they’ll increase the turn rate or overall speed for the Othuum, if the first option seems too unnatural.

• As for Absolver, I agree that it can deal massive damage to shields, which is pretty cool given the cost, but its scope of application is far too limited. And it’ll never be as popular as Spearhead. Perhaps they should replace the shield damage with an EMP, rather than giving them both weapons. At the very least, it would be interesting to give it a go

• I agree that the CZAR is the most versatile Tier 4 unit, but because it’s so slow, you can easily protect yourself from it, and it doesn’t have stealth like the Soul Ripper to appear invisibly. I’m not suggesting upping the speed x2, but instead of 0–8, making it 0–10 or 0-11 that would be interesting for my opinion

• Titans. I agree that not every unit has to be as strong as another factions unit. But you can’t always make Percy straight away. Especially when you play 1v1 or 2v2/3v3 on an open map with a lot of mexes. You’ll have to spend a lot more mass on your Titans to stop a raid by any other T3 unit. I’m not suggesting make x2 DPS for Titans, but they do need a small buff

• Stealth. I agree that the Cybran ASF is weaker than the others without stealth. Perhaps the ASF is the one unit that shouldn’t be changed. But I don’t understand why you’re against making other types of stealth units more expensive. Especially the Mermaid and T3 Gunships/Strats. Increasing the energy drain from 100 to 200 (using the Mermaid as an example) will not make the unit unplayable.

About the paragon. I like the suggestion of Drimer (GodFuper) on GitHub. I think it could be a compromise.

[FtXCommando]

That paragon suggestion is not feasible in a teamgame. There is no fluid dynamic for a team to understand when overflow ends or begins so what you’ll have is everybody overbuilding engineers and then once the paragon player has resolved his overflow now the entire team has a 30k mass surplus in engineers to deal with. The optimal way to play and minimize inefficiency would still be donating all eco to the team while one player utilizes the paragon /some donated bp and not doing that would just operate as a noob trap due to inefficient bp scaling.

I would personally find it extremely frustrating to never have an understanding of where my economy stands until it’s too late and the paragon overflow stops if I was on the team with the paragon.

[Terarii]

@Skrat said:

Mercy. They are completely ineffective in the current balance because they are very easy to shoot down. Change – increase HP and increase speed

I've heard this argument back when they dealt 2400 single-target damage and had 10 hp, and it never made sense back then, and doesnt make sense now. Mercy is incredibly good in current form, as its MASSIVE 7.5 splash, low cost, low buildtime and relatively high speed allows you to make 1 or 2 of them very early on in the game without setting you back on t3 hq timings/mex count, and destroy your opponent. Even one mercy sent to pretty much any player can absolutely devastate their eco and ruin their day, wiping out dozens of pgens, engineers, leaving no reclaim, and locking air factories from producing anything for 10 seconds. They are so good that it is rare for me now to not build a few mercies from an air slot, even if i know that they have a high probability of not getting through.
Some numbers:

• Mavor has 7 splash, and op cybran strats used to have 7 splash that allowed them to kill 4 mexes in 1 bomb on a large amount of maps
• 2 corsairs/nothas cost nearly 2x energy, mass and take exactly twice as long to build as 2 mercies (4800 bt, which is 40% of a t3 hq), often not even being worth it unless killing a few mexes and a pgen, which can happen, but from my experience is about as rare as a mercy getting through.
• Giving mercies even a small speed increase of 0,5 will make them as fast as stingers, and 1,5 will make them as fast as t2 transports, that are notoriously known to be impossible to catch with ints in time without perfect micro.

@Skrat said:

Absolver. Too small a specialisation. Change: - add an EMP weapon. And include the option to switch between two firing modes: against shields/EMP.

The unit is very good as-is. It makes seraphim snipers obsolete against aeon, crushes mobile shields, renders uef acu/rambo sacus impossible to use, and blows up any t2 shield bunker in seconds if paired with snipers and mobile artillery.
Giving it EMP will straight up break the balance, allowing a single aeon double range acu with 5 absolvers to instakill mobile shields, stun any t3 units and sacus, and then farm them for free with overcharge.

@Skrat said:

Czar. The least effective air exp in the current balance. Changes – decreased cost and increased speed

As previous posters have said, czar is perfectly balanced. In my opinion, it is generally the best air experimental to build when the air sitaution is roughly equal, as it has a massive vision/radar radius paired with the highest range AA in the game (120 with 1000 dps), as well as some epic 2000 dps flak and a 30k hp shield that regens 240/292 hp per second, outperforming soulripper's measly 75 hp/s regen. I've probably seen dozens of games where a czar helped one team to win air, got to kill the enemy air grid, regen it's shield back to full and become basically like new, killing 100000 more mass worth of random buildings. An ahwassa could never achieve that without an already established air dominance and careful micro.
It's main laser weapon is also not that bad, and is actually way better than ahwassa's bomb on single targets/smaller armies, capable of killing a gc in only 30 seconds.

@Skrat said:

Titan. Poor unit in terms of value for money. The Loyalist easily defeats the Titan in 1v1, 5v5, 10v10 matches, and so on. At the same time, the Loyalist has unique abilities (EMP Weapon, Tactical Missile Deflection) and does not use energy. The Titan is also very weak against other T3 units. Change – increase speed or increase damage

While titans are weaker than loyalists in direct combat (so are bricks compared to percivals tbh), they excel in their primary use cases of being a destroyer of t1 slop/raider. The 700 hp shield with recharge rate of 15 seconds allows titans to engage a bunch of slop, or a pd, kill it, and regain 22,5% of its hp back in no time. Titans also have the luxury of mobile shields that loyas simply do not have.

@Skrat said:

Spearhead. Huge DPS for a low cost. Change - increase the cost, reduce the speed

Spearheads are definitely overtuned, but i'd just bring their hp down to ~1000 to be in line with t3 arty, and increase mass cost by 100-200, because their current damage/mass ratio is surreal(240 dps for 400 mass). I even had to cancel a 95% acu shield upgrade today because of a spearhead rightclick — if i waited for 5 more seconds for it to finish, i'd die at 99,99%.

@Skrat said:

Novax. It is dangerous because it allows you to switch quickly between different targets. Change - increase the cost and/or reduce the initial speed of the satellite (that the satellite progressively increases speed)

IMO its pretty balanced as-is, but most people seem to hate it, so i dont mind a nerf or a complete rework into an intel unit with an addition of a brand new uef air experimental.

@Skrat said:

Othuum. They are less agile than their rivals. Change - increase the turn rate

Yes, and also nerf it's main cannon dps in exchange for some range. For some reason they require 6th sense and 100% situational awareness to use, you MUST only attack when the opponent moved his units forward and looked away, or else you lose 50% of your othuums by the time they get in range of enemy bricks/percies/harbs.

@Skrat said:

Cybran

Stealth, stealth, stealth. Cybran units are good even without stealth, but with stealth they become far too powerful. If the enemy army has AA, you’ll need to carry out a stream-scout with T1 air factories to counter it. In most cases, one air factory is not enough for this, and you will need two, three or more factories for stream-scout. And with a hypothetical 100 income, you’ll be forced to spend 12–20 mass and 120-240 energy just to see the enemy army (10–20% of your economy) . That’s far too much

Deceiver. Change - increase energy for stealth drain by 2 times
Beetle. Change - increase energy drain for stealth by 2 times
Barracuda. Change - increase energy drain for stealth by 1.5 times
Mermaid. Change - increase energy drain for stealth by 1.5 times, remove the anti-torpedo (in fact, they have the most powerful anti-torpedoes in the game)
Gemini. Change - increase energy drain for stealth by 2 times
Revenant. Change - increase energy drain for stealth by 2 times
Wailer. Change - increase energy drain for stealth by 2 times
Soul Ripper. Change - increase energy drain for stealth by 2 times

Outside of navy, stealth is not that big of a problem, but i agree that the energy drain is comically low on some units.

@Skrat said:

’d like to make a separate comment regarding the Paragon and the discussion about nerf (you can read more here: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/7131). I have discussed this with different high-ranked players and almost everyone against such a strong nerf

Paragon currently is outstandingly strong, to the point that it will still be the best game ender if you nerf its cost to 300k and mass gain to 3k. As farms said, its the only thing in the game that allows you to easily win with minimal effort from 25% of map control. And when i say minimal - i mean MINIMAL. For some reason people seem to think like it's hard to queue a line of t3 factories, build infinite t3 engineers from them, assist 1 t3 shield on your paragon, and then queue a line of smds, salvations, czars, and most importantly new paragons, that pretty much hard counter any nuke/arty/air attack/land attack/teleport your opponent can attempt on their limited mass supply.
I myself have won countless of games with a paragon, and the only times i had to tryhard is when the enemy also had a paragon. The rest of them i treat kinda like sandbox games, doing whatever, building millions of air/land units and throwing them at the enemy.
Example: https://youtu.be/P0e9BPX0Tck?si=DXjIdGJfn7NAKaqW&t=3772

Any change to the paragon that makes it share/overflow mass is incredibly busted and should definitely not be implemented, that's equivalent to giving mavor 4 barrels instead of 1, each one individually controlled by a different teammate and dealing 1/2 of its original damage on hit.

[Sladow-Noob]

Have I read all the messages? fuck no. Am I still throwing in my two cents? Yes.

Regarding the czar:
Most ppl dislike the czar because it feels "underwhelming". I've had this discussion a lot (especially trainees reaching from 500-1800 range) but the main issue is that they're using the czar wrong.
Especially low ranks see big laser and big unit => must throw into enemy base.
Meanwhile it's about kiting air units (while being covered by a few sams) and stacking multiple czars with the goal of winning air, if your opponent doesn't micro properly, the ASF will get one or two cycled by the czar stack => air won.

Just something to keep in mind and especially which direction the czar's purpose should head to.