Experimental changes on 2026.06.25 Feedback

maudlin27

Re Q2, sucks to see the bubble shield nerfed so hard for what already was a unit I'd rarely see. Using mass costs for simplicity, before it was 7600 mass (2100+2000+3500) for a 55k shield [i.e. 7.2 shield per mass] that would (when discharged or down) regenerate at 256 health/s (150 when up).
Now it's 5200 mass (1700+3500) for a 22k shield [i.e. 4.2 shield per mass] that would (when discharged or down) regenerate at 200 health/s (160 when up).

As a comparison, Sera T3 mobile shield although significantly smaller, benefits from far better speed of 4 (2.2 for the SACU), and costs 720 mass for a 10k shield [i.e. 13.9 shield per mass] that when down regenerates at 250 health/s (133 when up).

In terms of potential value from a UEF perspective, a percy gets 5.6 health per mass investment; granted this shield protects from aoe damage, but at the same time it also takes damage faster because it's easier to hit with indirect projectiles (far more so given its size compared to other mobile shields).

Before the shield was so high in health that it could both be used as an alternative for base defences in some scenarios (e.g. I found it made a good tele defence for smd/arti/game enders compared to static shields where a SACU could teleport in and its death explosion could kill the static shields), and was an option for covering slower attacking units with the defensive buff justifying delaying the army a bit. The shield would recharge painfully slowly and coupled with the slow SACU speed it was difficult to get continued value from them (compared to mobile shields).

Now it feels like that's been made even harder - it still has the really slow speed compared to other mobile shields, but no longer has the high health to compensate. It's also (vs single target damage) more efficient to just get percies vs getting a mix of percies and shield SACUs. I presume the intention is therefore for it to no longer be used primarily as a shield unit, but instead as a hybrid combat-shield unit, but also one where the increase in damage spill means it's worse in numbers (with its large shield size harming building it in larger numbers disproportionately compared to the other mobile shields, since it's more likely to overlap with other shields; the bulwark would be a useful counterpoint for where a high shield size can still work, but the bulwark is significantly faster and the shield size so large it doesnt need to be on the frontline). But if it's only intended to be built as a single unit to support an army, it then works out even more inefficient unless the gateway was being built for other SACUs (maybe the wider SACU changes mean it would be). So I expect I can still use it for teledefence (cheaper vs SACU tele, weaker vs tele-laser), but other mobile shield uses for it feel much weaker.

Appreciate you primarily wanted in game testing, whereas I usually approach things from a more theoretical 'if I had the apm to use this unit however I wanted, what use cases can I see for it', since I can then both have my AI apply those use cases, and use them myself as a player occasionally. However I'm really struggling to see how I'd be better off building percies, a gateway, and 1 or more of the bubble shield units vs just building percies (given the shield gives less health than the percy),

Also just checking how things compare at the t2 mobile shield stage re shield health vs combat unit health, t2 mobile shield gives 3k health for 220 mass (while being fast moving and recharging much faster). A pillar gives 1500 health for 198 mass. It's a similar story for othuums - i.e. T2 and T3 mobile shields give significantly more health per mass invested than an equivalent combat unit, compared to the new bubble shield SACU which gives less (so maybe its combat potential makes up for this, but then it's less of a mobile shield than before, when the rationale for the change was that it was being rebalanced with mobile shields in mind?)

Skrat

Snipers should not be given such speed with such characteristics. They won't be countered. With the help of T2 pd, you can only defend yourself. It will become impossible to attack

It's a bad decision to make cheaper already the most effective rembo sacu in the game (sera with OC)

Lunyshko

Please rethink your life choices, this is not what a real human would think of. This feels like it was written by AI.

Nomander

@maudlin27 I think you're underrating the shield by rating it purely on its stats/mass for a few reasons:

A big shield HP pool is super valuable to the UEF roster due to their reliance on Percies which are very vulnerable to AoE from Ythotha, Megalith, Fatboy, and SACUs.
Percies are also vulnerable to overcharge which is imo a bit too early to be building shield SACU vs ACU, but Sera SACU can have OC that the shield would be good against. The shield generator also does not die to a single OC like other mobile shields.
Due to overspill shields have a cap of 3.3x their HP in terms of how much damage a shield ball can block, so having 2.2x the HP of Sera which is 3.3x UEF and 2.85x Aeon lets even just the first shield have much more effective HP than stacked mobile shields. Sure you can micro shields in/out or off/on to mitigate overspill, but vs burst damage there's no time for micro, which plays especially nicely into UEF's roster countering the air snipes that Fatboys experience.
The single large bubble takes less damage from AoE than stacked small bubbles. For example billy nuke definitely would not go straight through and kill the shield generator, while it can 1-shot giant stacks of T2 shields and 2-shots stacks of T3 shields due to how AoE interacts with multiple small shields defending each other to deal extreme damage.
The SACU also has buildpower, can be upgraded with sensors, and has tons of HP letting it survive to recharge instead of dying like normal mobile shields.

maudlin27

@Nomander
Ythotha was the main unit I had in mind where it'd be beneficial as I'd have thought fatboy's firing nature means it deals much higher DPS against a bubble shield than it does normally (all its shots hit); but I was thinking not just as a standalone unit if it might be worthwhile but also compared to old bubble shield which was rarely seen and would also give aoe protection to percies.

Since megalith's firing nature is a bit easier to control in sandbox and you've suggested it as a use case, I figured I'd run some simple sandboxes to test my theory that I'd be better off just getting more percies vs getting percies+new bubble shield (as if that's an example of the bubble SACU use case, I'd expect it to come off reasonably well).

Granted this isn't perfect 'live-game' type scenario since you wouldn't expect a megalith to be unsupported, but it does still give useful information on how the new bubble shield compares.

I'd kite the megalith backwards after it started firing (until all percies were in range of it). Percies would start off grouping in a 2 line group before advancing as a group. Effects of crash damage were ignored (as that was reliant on at what point I got around to just having percies attack when switching army views).

25 percies vs 1 megalith: 4 percies survive
17 percies + 2 new balance shield SACUs vs 1 megalith: 3 percies survive
19 percies + 1 old balance shield SACU: If the shield SACU is grouped with percies and advanced such that the megalith fires at the unprotected percies first, mega wins; if instead the shield SACU is put slightly ahead of the percies so a kiting megalith targets it down first, then 8 percies survive.

Worth noting in most cases this setup would be expected to be favourable to the shield SACUs - 2 new balance shield SACUs with 17 percies mean the shield SACUs cover every percy, without the shields overlapping. I'm also ignoring energy costs, or the cost of building a gateway (essentially assuming they're free). One other thing that might give the shield SACU a better result is if say it was x3 the number of units so percies took more aoe damage from the megalith, but then there'd be shield overspill balance to counter it.

TLDR sandbox results

Getting more percies results in a better position than mixing percies with new bubble shield SACUs
Old bubble shield SACU gives a better result if the megalith can be baited into firing at the shield SACU first (and/or if the percies can all fit under it initially I expect, but that'd be harder to micromanage)

#27323961
#27324001

Sheppy

My Impressions which I already voiced on discord for summary:

the whole SACUs rebalance is a lot of fun and adds alot of variety, I love it and I really look forward to having it in the mainline FAF-balance
the Sera-SACU base combat has a Intel-Icon which is confusing, I didnt know that the Upgrade also gives Gun-Range and probably most people don't, so the icon for it should be changed to display gunrange & intel in one Icon for both the Upgrade and the preset
Sera OC has too high alpha, but many people already noticed that, personally do like the idea of "energy infrastructure" for OC "surviving" an SACU death, while the max dmg certainly needs a lower Cap, I wonder if increased energy cost of OC would be a good idea aswell
SACUs are too strong in general, but I really, really like the ACU T3-QG progression path, I would prefer if you don't nerf it out of existence and similary the viability of SACUs into the later T4 stage was also pretty neat

Semi-related:

Ravengers can always be dodged obviously, but the small, high-hp SACUs are a whole new level of missed DPS for this Unit, maybe consider increasing projectile speed or size long term?

Skrat

Together with banani, I conducted a survey on the proposed balance changes amongst the Lots 2025 participants (as they are the strongest players in our community, with extensive experience and a high level of understanding of the game).

Out of 16 players, 9 voted, whilst the rest voted abstain or did not respond. I have attached the survey results below. I hope the balance team will examine them carefully.

If you have any doubts about the survey results, you can ask the Lots 2025 members directly how they voted.

Nuggets

This is not really useful at all if they dont say what is bad about them. They could all have different ideas about what is bad...

Skrat

@Nuggets Bad is bad. It wasn't my goal to offer an alternative balance for each point. I've gathered the opinions of different pro players. Most people think it's better not to change snipers and sacu at all than to change it like that. Because it will destroy the balance at the t3 stage.

The other proposed changes are interesting and no one objects to them.

KnownSniper

@Skrat said:

@Nuggets Bad is bad. It wasn't my goal to offer an alternative balance for each point. I've gathered the opinions of different pro players. Most people think it's better not to change snipers and sacu at all than to change it like that. Because it will destroy the balance at the t3 stage.

The other proposed changes are interesting and no one objects to them.

I literally didn't answer it because i couldn't voice my intent with a question like this.

I think that the sniper change isn't needed at all but i don't think there is anyone that disagrees with a more balanced sacu considering they are almost never build in any serious (tournament) environment. Rebalancing sacu's has literally been on the balance agenda for 5+ years at this point and everyone always wanted it to happen. Just because the current proposal of nomander is not well balanced doesn't mean that the idea for rebalancing it is wrong. It just means that the current iteration is bad.

This is why the questions you asked are pretty irrelevant because you only ask about the current iteration (which is on fafdevelop, a testing mode, for a reason) and not about people's opinion about the big picture.

Sheppy

@Skrat Bad is bad is a meaningless statement.

It matters "why" something is bad. Have you even followed the discussion. E.g. the consensus for SACUs on fafdev state already is, that they are too strong.

So even if you were to provide replays to show why something is "bad" - which you didnt - it wouldnt mean anything because adjustments are already on the way.

How about you play some fafdev games when lobbies are up again and the new changes are in and then give some valuable input as what and why you think certain things work and certain things don't.

Skrat

@KnownSniper Yes, in the survey, I specifically asked about the proposed Nomander iteration of changes. The survey format does not include lengthy comments.

In the description of the survey, I left links to the discussion in discord and on the forum. For more detailed comments.

I 100% agree with your opinion about snipers and sacu. Snipers are not needed in rebalancing. Sacu needs rebalancing, but the proposed version is bad.

Skrat

@Sheppy I've been following the discussion on discord and on the forum and leaving reactions under some comments. You can easily see them. The survey was created on the day of publication, but it took a long time to get the answers.

Bad is bad is a completely normal statement. You don't have to play 100 games and write 1,000 words of explanation to say that increasing hp only for UEF ACU alone to 1 million is a bad decision.

Nuggets

Bad is a normal statement, you are correct. But just saying bad is also not helpful. If this was a vote made by the balance team to "all of faf" then you could argue its a yes or no. But when adjusting balance on fafdevelop just saying bad is not relevant. Bad can mean many aspects, its not some universal thing.
One player could argue that bad regarding sacu is the fact that they are cheaper, the other could mean with their bad that the adjacency buff is too strong. We will never know unless these people clarify.

The only thing the vote told us is that something needs to change. For all we know substracting 100 hp from all support commanders is enough to make it good in the eyes of the players who voted.

I'm not trying to shittalk here or anything. Im just saying if we could get the reason for WHY its bad, it would be 1000x more helpful. Even if its just 1 sentence

Skrat

@Nuggets Unfortunately, our community is not the most active. None of the surveyed knew or were interested in these changes until I wrote to them about it. And even among the active players with lower ratings, with whom I was discussing this, almost no one knew about these changes.

Therefore my main goal was manage to convince the balance team that it was not possible to release changes in such an iteration. Before they are added to the game. Because the reaction to unsuccessful balance edits in FAF is very long and weaky or too strong units can remain unchanged for years.

I didn't see the point in asking specific suggestions from the interviewed players separately, as I left all the links to the discussions in the survey description. And anyone who wants to can write a detailed comment here or in the discord.

I am grateful to Nomander and the Balance team for their work, especially for fixing a lot of bugs and working on improving the FAF. And as I wrote above. I like and support their proposed changes to GC, CZAR and beetles