The SCU Rebalance
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one of the main mechanics is being able to swich assist around and making quick tech/strategy swiches that way, especially because scus should also be an offensive option making them unassistable will be a pointless nerf for 1v1, while on sth like setons you might spam a few gates with mex adjacency and some fab adjacency
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In my earlier post I suggested removing all upgrades completely, but it seems some people have interprited what I said as haveing different themed SACUs each with their own set of upgrades. For example, a 'base engineering' SACU with low hp, low damage and no combat upgrades, but is cheap, has high BP and upgrades for things like faster build speed, longer build range, RAS, extra mass/energy storage.
And I have to say, I like that idea more. A lot more.
By giving players the ability to build for example a 'base combat' SACU at the gateway that has stats compareable to t3 units but then can be upgraded furthur as needed still gives players some freedom to customize SACUs while still maintaing most of the upsides mentioned before.Now ontop some other points I desire to be clarified if possible.
Seeing as all SACUs (at least currently(ignoreing the engie drones)) are land units, are there any plans on expanding their impact in air and naval play? Other than spambuilding SAMs/HARMS and reclaiming they really serve nearly no purpose for either.What is the high end of strength to be expected for SACUs? The low end has been clearly set as to around t3 land, but how much stronger will they get after that with full upgrades, will we start see SACUs 1V1 GCs and winning? David meet Goliath.
Are gateways intended to only a lategame option, or will gateway rushing become a viable strategy to deplay? For example, suppose a player went T1 and T2 land but skipped T3 and went right to building combat and combat-support SACUs to use as the heavy land units.
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I think the ultimate goal should be for SCUs to be used as support units in small numbers in the mid-late T3 stage. I don't think there should ever be a transition to "full" SCU production over T3 units.
If you make Quantum Gateways assistable, the Quantum Gateway in effect becomes an HQ, because you pay a lot for the initial building but then subsequent BP from engies is much cheaper. That would make scaling BP into SCUs much easier (and allow for bigger transitions into SCUs).
The idea behind making Quantum Gateways unassistable (whether by increasing the BP/BT significantly or just straight up making it unassistable) is that SCU production doesn't scale. Unlike land/air/navy production, where doubling your BP at a certain tech doesn't cost 2x as much (e.g., you've transitioned to T3 land - the Land HQ costs 5220 mass for 90 BP, but your next 90BP from a support factory only costs 1440 mass), your first 180 BP and next 180 BP for producing SCUs costs exactly the same amount. IMO this is a nerf for bigger teamgames, where you would have the ability to scale SCU production more, rather than 1v1 like you suggested. This means that in 1v1 situations, where the transition is likely to be tight and you won't have too much resources to spare, you can build the Quantum Gateway and have your first few crucial SCUs arrive on the battlefield in reasonable time. This also means that in larger teamgames where there are more resources, you cannot transition into super heavy SCU production as easily.
Unassistable Quantum Gateways are already relatively better for 1v1, but if you want to further make it more useful you can balance other areas, e.g., reduce the time it takes to build SCUs (from like ~60 seconds to ~40).
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the goal for SCUs is giving additional options at the T3 stage. One option is using SCUs as a support unit for your army, using either support presets or rambo presets that interact well with your army (like cyb rambo stun helps a brick army with kiting).
in addition to that there should also be the option of using rambo scus as your main combat unit (maybe together with some t3 backup to prevent them getting overrun). considering they all have a pretty low dps/mass it will be a constant drain (over a long time) on apm for those more enjoying single unit micro (where if you fail your micro you will just get run over).
considering that i dont see any reason why gateways should not be assistable, especially since economy scales aswell and high cost SCUs (e.g. oc) would take ages to build.
So i dont see any reason why SCU production should not be scalable. only thing that change would adress is hive ras scu spam which might then just change to adjacency gate spam -
I'm against setting SACU presets in stone not for balance reasons but for emotional reasons
They are support-ACU
ACU should have option to upgradeAlso:
Why them have more base(unupgraded) hitpoints than ACU? Seems counterintuitive.
They are support-ACU -
@Turinturambar said in The SCU Rebalance:
Cybran
The Cybran have 1 rambo preset and 2 support presets. The rambo preset is the same as in current balance (AoE stun). The first support preset provides a large stealthfield (it can easily stealth an entire army). The second support preset provides a speed buff field, which increases the movement speed of its surrounding, non experimental, units. Both support presets also have the aa upgrade. Multiple speed buff fields do not stack.
I imagine no one is ever going to use a stealth SCU.
By the time you start building SCUs, stealth is no longer particularly useful. The enemy is going to have T3 spy planes and omni.
Beyond that, if you want stealth, you have other good options in deceivers and MLs. The Stealth SCU seems like it would only make sense when you're forwarding a unit composition through enough splash damage that deceivers are unlikely to survive, but can't yet afford a ML... in the unlikely case that keeping your reasonably late game army stealth really matters to you.
I get why stealth was a natural choice for a Cybran AoE ability. Its thematic... but I don't think its going to be a particularly useful unit. Good on paper, but I doubt it will be useful in practice. Maybe someone will use one to hide a massive drop from time to time on maps large enough for that to be possible...
If the unit is destined to be largely ineffective, it might be better to narrow your focus and just ensure that the speed field works really well. Much better to have a single SCU type with high utility than to have two where one is essentially useless - even if it is thematic.
Beyond that, if a unit just isn't useful, it shouldn't be in the game. No unit should be a "noob trap", a unit that players don't realize doesn't really serve a purpose that they have to learn isn't worth building. Am I correct in my presumption that a stealth SCU would be so useless as to have no purpose whatsoever? I can't sure of that, but I also believe that there won't be many instances where an expensive single SCU is better at providing stealth than several cheap deceivers or a spider.
If we really want to give Cybran two support SCUs, where both of them have a real purpose, trade the stealth for a shield. I know... Cybran's supposed to have crap for shields, and has never had a mobile shield, but maybe it doesn't need to have crap shields that deep into the tech tree.
If you disagree with this assessment, maybe you're right. I haven't used the SCUs. I could be wrong, but please consider this when evaluating the stealth SCU yourself.
TLDR: Either cut the stealth SCU concept because its not going to be useful in late game engagements and just focus on the speed field support SCU, or change the second support unit's AOE ability to something that would actually be useful for Cybran players - like a shield.
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Stealth support SCU is not just a huge walking stealth field, it's a support unit that can reclaim, build, can have a SAM built into it and on top of that provides stealth field with a very large radius able to hide a whole t3 army.
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Stealth sacu in water? sounds usefull. Depends on upgraide slot, cost, maitenance cost...
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So what happened to this? Any plans to still do this?
Edit: @Tagada -
@chenbro101 damm I’m sad, first time seeing this thread and thought this was a recent new thing…
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Same, tried to make sera rambo com work but they are too expensive and the fact that they have slower speed than any other unit in the game beside scathis mean that they get kited by everything and have trouble following an army.
Getting sensor + Regen field as support sera would be nice and i wouldn't be against adding a little bit of E storage to OC upgrade
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@brannou use the combatant preset, the rambo one doesn't get a range upgrade. with range the scu is a lot better
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Still, comba sacu are overly expensive and they get kited by everything and still weak enough to get mopped up by exp or T3 armies
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Get the advanced combatant preset. The sensor upgrade gives sera sacu more range than percivals. Their movement speed is a little higher than percies and a little lower than bricks. This means they can only be kited by snipers, megaliths and fatboys (t3 arty&mml irrelevant). They also have the ability to overcharge so if you give them enough storage they will absolutely melt T4s. They also get 265 regen per second so if you dip in and out of fights they are excellent units. if you are unable to get its mass value back then you're just bad at using them, simple as
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The real issue with any of this is that there is no temporal space in the game to have a force of SACUs become the core of your army.
The power and built time cost of all units and buildings that come after the SACUs need pushing up by an order of magnitude
In team games there is barely temporal space for t3 atm nevermind a whole extra phase before t4 come out
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What kinda teamgames r u playin
Also boys essentially are a varying flavor of t4 stage. It’s just that you can get the first ones out quicker than a t4 but a ball of them is just as dangerous and capable of basebreaking as a t4.
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@ftxcommando maybe theyre ability to chain react does not help them as combat units
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Boys chain reacting in combat is about as impactfull as the little pew pew guns on a ML
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read this and thought it was new because of recent comments, sad.
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SACU rebalance is old enough to read by this point
