A Big Discussion on Balance. Part 1

[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.

[Skrat]

@Sladow-Noob Thanks for the feedback!

I agree with you on how CZAR should be used. However, I don’t think it’s worth 45k mass and 1.5 million E. Reducing the cost by 10% would be a good solution, in my view

[Tersto]

thanks for your input @sladow-noob , much appreciated

[Skrat]

@Terarii Thanks for the feedback!

• Mercy. I agree that they deal good damage for their price. But at the moment, they’re being taken out by just two shots from T1 Inties. And if you couldn't kill Mercy, then it's a skill issue. I’m not suggesting give them hp like the T2 gunships. Increasing the HP to 250–300 would be reasonable. It’s difficult to take down T2 transports, mainly because you don’t have enough time to destroy them (they have 1500+ HP). If Mercy has 250 HP and a speed of 14, this won’t be such a problem. That said, I’m okay with improving only HP if the balance team decides that the speed boost is excessive. As I said from the start "I am not a member of the balancing team, and my suggestions may not be ideal, but when I asked players which units needed rebalancing first, the majority of them mentioned these ones"

• Absolver. The discussion here has convinced me that Absolver is good value for money. I’ve already mentioned this above. I’ve updated the main post to make it easier for everyone to follow. But I still think this unit has too few uses. I think replace shield damage to EMP would be an interesting solution, which would make it possible to build Absolver more often. EMP settings can vary, so it would be a good to test different options with FAF Beta Balance

• CZAR. I agree that its air defence is very strong and will help you win the air. But it’s too expensive for that kind of use. The Ahwassa isn’t particularly effective in air fights, but it is twice as fast and can help defend both sides at once; also, it’s effective against mobile AA and SAMs, whereas the CZAR, on the other hand, is very weak against sams and mobile AA. I’m not suggesting making CZAR half the price and twice as fast, but a few small changes would make this unit more interesting

• Titans. Yes, the Titan can handle T1 spam well, but is that really the main job of a T3 unit? Percy is a brilliant unit that works well with Titan. But when you’re playing 1v1 or 2v2, you can’t always afford to build Percy straight away, and there’s nothing you can do about a raid by Loya, Harbs or Othuum, even if you spend more mass on your Titans

• Spearheads, Othuum, Novax. I’m glad you agree that these units need rebalancing. Let the balance team decide exactly which stats should be adjusted.

• Stealth. I also agree with you that not all types of stealth (apart from Mermaid, Revenant and Deceiver in the early T2 stage) are imbalanced, but the energy drain is comically. Increasing the energy drain would be logical

• Paragon. I’ve never denied that a paragon that uses its full potential will win the game. But as I wrote on GitHub, it takes more time to build + time to deploy. Any other game-ender, on the other, can be built more quickly and starts doing damage straight away, which is why building a paragon is a risk. And that risk would be pointless if Paragon were nerfed by 60%

[DommyMommyDostya]

I think describing the Czar as: 'the least effective air exp in the current balance' is extremely misinformed. The Czar is in a very strong balance state right now, it feels extremely effective to use in the current balance.

A single Czar has 1000 DPS of extremely long range (120 range) SAMs, Plus 1920 DPS of 44 range Flak. Nearly 3000 DPS of total AA. The Czar can very comfortably defend itself against a swarm of 25 ASF alone without any support. It is effectively an experimental Restorer that gets 3330 air to ground DPS, plus a nasty depth charge; the ability to add to a team's total air production, and a high regen shield. It is an exceptional experimental air unit.

Describing it as 'the least effective air exp in the current balance' is honestly just a concerning statement to be reading from the balance team when the Soul Ripper is in the current state it is in, and the Czar is being built consistently in high rated map gen games these days. Please refer to my recent post on the Soul Ripper's current state in the balance for a more in depth discussion on the state of air experimental in the current balance patch.

[DommyMommyDostya]

Just want to clarify that I thought you were a part of the balance team, but now realize that this is not the case. *Sorry for the misunderstanding.