@Tagada said in The SCU Rebalance:
Regarding the suggestion of removing the upgrades altogether and having only presets, I think it's an interesting idea however I am not sure if it's even possible, I will add it as an experimental idea to the doc.
It is not difficult at all to add a unit to FAF. This change would be almost as simple as making a "super-heavy pillar" and adding it to the UEF lineup just by copying the pillar's lua files, changing the name, tweaking the stats (20% extra hp and damage?), and adding it to a list of units that UEF t2 land facs can build.
Here, you would just be adding something like 4 new units per faction (support SACU, gun SACU, engineer SACU, RAS SACU), removing 1 unit (the existing SACU), updating the quantum gateway build list, and then making small tweaks to the 3 new units (you could remove the upgrades entirely and update their stats to reflect their diverse new abilities).
With no shared upgrade path, we wouldn't have to worry about balancing upgrades between types. The engineering SACU, if it can get upgrades at all, would have completely different ones available from the gun SACU. We wouldn't have to worry about whether the gun upgrade is on the same arm as the engineering upgrade. And it would allow the gun SACU to have upgrades that make it very different from an engineering SACU with upgrades.
Having completely separate units would mean no shared upgrade path, it would also mean you could make big changes between the unit types, like having different base movement speed. It would allow for things like: engineering SACU has no main gun at all; gun SACU only has t2 build suite--those in particular are probably very bad ideas. I'm just saying you could make these SACUs very different from each other in ways that are currently not possible, or at least, at the moment very difficult to do. It would be complicated now to have the upgrade paths for SACUs affect things like movement speed and the size of the death explosion but if they are 3 separate units with completely separate lua files/blueprints, it would be very easy to do.
The hardest part would be getting unique 3D models to work for each type of SACU. This would also open the opportunity to have significantly-different models for each type of SACU. Maybe some of the SACUs shouldn't even be shaped like humanoids. Seraphim could have some weird alien shape, Cybran could have a bug SACU, or Aeon could get a hover SACU. In the short term, we could stick with the existing 3D models (the SACU models + their upgrades) but in the future we could replace them with brand new models, which would open up opportunities for diverse new artwork in FAF.
Maybe make RAS an upgrade that only engineering SACUs can get. So you could use assistance on the upgrading engineer SACU (and it would already have enough build power to complete its RAS upgrade in a decent time). It's not like the bad old days where you had to click on each SACU separately to upgrade to RAS. Here you could double-click to select all engineer SACUs and give one command to upgrade them all to RAS. People generally keep RAS SACUs safe anyway, so their main use apart from generating resources is for build power.
Remove the ability to assist the gateway. That is lore-friendly (gateways are not like factories, you can assist a factory, you can't assist a transfer through the quantum realm) and would balance things better.
Having them as separate unit types would allow us to de-designate gun SACUs as "engineers" (so when you select combat units, they would be included). A lot of good things could come from this proposal.
It would also simplify the game. Right now there is almost nothing like the SACU (other than the ACU itself) in terms of being able to upgrade it in completely different directions. If you have 3 distinct types of SACUs that can but don't need to be upgraded after they are first built, it would in a way make the game simpler.
Having 3 distinct unit types would also make it easier to do something that Farms and other players want, which is to give them toggleable abilities that require more APM to use. E.g. cloaking but it only works for 30 seconds and then needs 2 minutes to recharge.
Idea for a Seraphim 4th SACU type: "artillery." They can manufacture and store one "missile" at a time, except they have multiple launch buttons. One launch button would send a long-range high-damage TML, maybe it has an extra 50% range 50% damage (9k damage) and 50% health (takes extra TMD shots to stop). Another launch button would simultaneously launch 2 regular tac missiles at a single target. Another launch button would send out a "cluster" missile that breaks open and does area damage (it would look like a mercy except once it opened, the individual warheads would spread over a wider area). I don't like the idea of a seraphim SACU that fires missiles non-stop because then there is no element of surprise and much less control over it.
Aeon gun SACU could get a special "shield-killer" toggled ability, like an "overcharge" but it fires an absolver shot. These things are basically not possible in the framework of having a shared upgrade path but they become much easier to do if the SACUs are completely separate units. Perhaps the Aeon gun SACU should be a hovering unit. That takes away some stealth and fits with the faction.
Teleportation should be nerfed for SACUs, e.g. limit the range so you have to get closer to the enemy to pull it off, and not all types should have it, or teleport SACUs should be a "fourth type" that can't do much else very well. Maybe a "scouting SACU" type that can teleport over short distance and provide intel which you could use to scout and expand but not really to break enemy bases/snipe SMDs. They would have less firepower, build power, and weaker death explosions but they would have a very specific role and could still be used for example to set up a stealthy TML base. Not all factions would need to have teleportation for their scout SACU.