Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?

Auriko

Hm. If the total damage is high enough to kill a building (unless the ennemy goes for a panic repair), this could be interesting. Instead of sniping ACU you could snipe building and/or zone away units, just like other faction do with fighter-bombers.

Resistance

@Tagada
yeah,that's something better i guess but need to consider giving them somewhat a balanced dps and it's a great unit

Tex

I honestly think mercies are fine for everyone but Cybran players. Sky slammers cant do fuck all vs a mercy due to their terrible projectile speed. Regarding mercies, Its a fairly huge investment that takes time to pull off, and I think in most cases equal mass spent in t2 gunships/figher bombers will yield the same/better result. I do agree that the gameplay mechanic is poorly thought out and not fun, and could use a change. But I disagree that they are OP.

IMO the only time mercies are a problem is in huge teamgames when players aggressively push without scouting, AA, or air, and that's mostly their fault for doing so, especially if they see enemy air player is aeon.

That being said, I would be onboard for changing the role of the mercy, or even tinkering with it to make it less 'feels bad man' when you get sniped. I would support either lowering the speed of the mercy, or keeping the speed the same but making activation radius super low, making it so that AA even with/slightly behind ACU can stop mercies from killing ACU.

Someone had a crazy idea of making the mercy behave like a dumb TML missle, which sounds pretty cool if it could be balanced. Buff HP, make it not able to track units, but weak to TMD/AA, and use it to snipe stationary targets.

TLDR: I don't think mercy is OP, but I think its a bad unit that could benefit from a rework.

FtXCommando

It isn’t pushing without aa, shields, scouting. You need to keep your aa in front of your ACU and even then, there’s no actual guarantee that all your aa won’t target the same mercy and now need to reload at which point the surviving mercies are all in activation range. I’ve even had flak that just flat out missed entire groups of mercies.

You can even send your own scout plane as an Aeon player to force aa turrets to need to turn around to hit the mercies, wasting even more time and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

It’s not like gunships or strats or bombers where you can gain several seconds of survival through decent micro which then controls for the variance of early aa targeting. Mercies by design are entirely dependent on that first 1-2 seconds which in a game that doesn’t use something like hit-scan, means even proper preparation won’t save you in some situations.

JazzFunkNoob

I could imagine giving mercies bit more hp but a smaller activation radius. That would make it more predictable AA wise. You wouldn't be puhished so hard for mispositioning your aa. But one or two AA wouldn't cut it anymore if there are a couple redundant mercies coming your way. Cybran AA would still be crap but mobile flak might have a decent chance.

ANALyzeNoob

@Tagada said in Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?:

While discussing if such mechanic is healthy for the gameplay is another topic the main issue right now is that because of the activation radius which is 25 (that's quite a lot, for comparison the vision of an ACU is 26) and the fact the projectiles that AA shoots needs to reach the mercy before it can transform itself into projectiles that cannot be stoped creates the situation where even if you have a lot of aa around you then if it's not between your ACU and the mercies you will still die.

It seems to be both unrealistic and problematic for gameplay that the mercy has basically nil hitpoints, but is still invincible during the most important phase of its attack, which should be the most dangerous phase. So what if we made it into a more realistic actual kamikaze plane? We could give them a more normal amount of hp (similar to what other bombers or fighters would have), a lot less maneuverability and slower speed, but targetable the entire duration of the attack. I am also imagining a very cool stuka-like sound effect for the attack path (about what the activation period would have been, or longer).
I concede this would be a significant change and probably requires quite a bit of testing to figure out the best balance of hp, damage, etc.

edit: to get an idea of the type of sound effect, this clip gets the point across.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W3KDB0yHYM

Also, perhaps you could make it so that the mercy can only begin its attack dive from a certain minimum distance away (30, 35 perhaps?), and the sound effect begins at that point and so it gives a little bit of advance warning of the impending attack.

FunkOff

Area denial is a neat idea. Personally, I would buff the mercy's fuel/manueverability/health but write the projectile script differently. It fires I think four projectiles? Write the weapon script so that the first projectile hits the selected target but the other projectiles will home in on other targets, if present. This would constitute a comprise in that ACUs could be sniped by mercies still, but only if they are alone and or if the mercy player takes more time and micro (it there are 10 tanks with the acu, each mercy will hit 3 of them, so 4 mercies have to attack one at a time to take out 10 tanks before following mercies will fire all shots at the target acu.)

veteranashe

My idea - Mercy as a Kamikaze Plane

Have the mercy have stats and behave like a t1 bomber, but instead of a payload it's volatile so if it gets killed in your base it can take things out or it gets killed in the air it will take out escorts or other mercy's, so to use them you have to split them up and attack from many angles.

On the Kamikaze attack run it doesn't transform into projectiles but just flys straight in, like a kamikaze would do. If it survives to hit all the way it does more damage than the volatile explosion, so it still snipes the dumb without aa or the player that got all his aa killed in preparation for a mercy snipe.

The volatile explosion should be enough, ~1500 with little aoe, that you could make a few and try to massively hinder a t1-t2 army the way a few janus can.

The Kamikaze explosion should be enough to snipe a aa less acu with ~4-5 mercy's, and also enough that the same amount could seriously harm a unguarded group of t3.

This version of a Mercy could possibly be used to hit clouds of gunships or asf, sniping mexes or power, depending on cost.

Would probably need a adjustment in cost as well

epic-bennis

Mercies add character to the game. Dont take away the games character! If someone pushes mindlessly without scouting he shouldnt be saved by 100 mass worth of unmicroed t1 aa against a t2 2000 mass investment that requires tons of build power and has literally 1hp and dies instantly if scouted

Every noob deserves to die to mercies once to learn it the hard way, and seasoned veterans deserve to die if they dont do their homework (scout) and or forget the old painfully acquired lessons

Valki

Aeon T1 feels a lot softer than T2. Auroras are easily overwhelmed when cornered and the Aeon bomber isn't that great in helping them. In my 650 rated opinion, Aeon has no "hard defense option" other than the ACU and PD. Not saying Aeon, is too weak, win often enough at T1.

@Tagada said in Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?:

Here is a working concept for the Mercy as a Crowd Control unit through low dmg over time. Mind you that this is just a concept and the dmg, hp and everything else is a place holder. I mainly wanted to test the visual side of things here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yhyemj-tMs&t=13s

What about making mercy a T1 unit and having this effect, except with a much smaller AoE and damage befitting a T1 unit?

Having a suicide T1 unit could be a costly but effective way to get a "panic hard defense" option they lack at T1.

MazorNoob

@BIG-BENNIS-MAGIC said in Is mercy too strong in team games? What you think?:

a t2 2000 mass investment that requires tons of build power and has literally 1hp and dies instantly if scouted

I don't understand this part. Mercies are 30% cheaper and require 15% less buildpower than fighter bombers, 6 mercies take as much time to build and are cheaper than 5 corsairs (which are not enough 90% of the time to snipe a full HP ACU).

Resistance

they win any t1 fight if we take in consideration the mass equal amount and with decent micro.

maudlin27

My view is Mercies are fine provided that having T1 mobile AA by your commander stops them (in addition to inties). I.e. they should be a way of punishing a player moving their ACU far out at the front with no AA support, or targeting areas with no AA, but no good against a player with AA nearby.

As such I'd be ok with a reduction in their activation range, coupled with a boost to Cybran's mobile AA (e.g. give them increased gun velocity but slightly higher mass cost). However it'd be nice if Mercies could get a slight fuel increase to soften the blow, as I don't see them used often as it is.

Eternal-

what about the maximum damage system that Mercy can do? Regardless of the number, always leave the minimum remaining health to the commander, at the level of 1500-2000

ANALyzeNoob

@Eternal Well I don't think that does a whole lot to solve the issue, because it will just mean a shift from 6 mercies for the win to 4 mercies plus 2-3 gunships. Though that is actually what is often done already...you send in a gunship or two first to draw the maa/flak shots and have the mercies trailing slightly behind so they still work perfectly, despite the aa.

humanpotatoe

i like to use interceptors and scouts to distract aa fire for my mercies but they still bad if enemy isn't dumb

OGW_PR_Outreach

here are examples

https://replay.faforever.com/14067172 around 11 minutes
https://replay.faforever.com/14228121 around 16 minutes

Arran

My 2 cents. https://replay.faforever.com/14226235
"My units derped/misbehaved even though I had adequate protection!" is the main complaint. Erm... my advice: watch the replay, don't make ground AA and instead make interceptors then position them before your com, build radar, scout, pay attention and then you won't die unless you were seriously out eco'ed. I'm sorry to say this, but if you died to mercies, as Harstem would say, "you suck!".
I'm also appalled that 'high rated players' are griping about mercies. Are you guys just trolling? If not, please provide replays to validate your claims.

Auriko

Here's more replays ...
https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=504&hilit=scfareplay

The art of having the same conversation over and over since 2012 xD

Mech

Hi guys,

I know i am quite late to the topic, but i consider myself an mercy expert, so i basically had to reply to it.

To begin with i want to say that i reached my rating of ~ 2100 mostly by sniping people with mercys, so i definitly think (unlike most other high rated players) they are way too good. And yes, mercys work vs very high rated players aswell if you know what you are doing.

The reason why they are so good is because if anyone of my opponents is pushing with t1 units and gun acu they are basically dead. (dont even get me started when a cybran acu is pushing, cybran acu (only 1k hp) and their useless mobile aa is just a free kill vs mercys)
There are also some methods like forcing turrets to turn against the flightpath of mercys, so the turret has to turn 180° before starting to fire. So it is actually possible to snipe people protected by shields aswell.
Also a good point of mercys is the fact that the t1 aa will try to shoot at the first mercy, but if it transforms to the projectiles the shot wont hit anytinhg and even the mercys behind it will be able to fire at the acu.

What i like to do is to just make a aeon gun acu and basically force my opponents acu to come to the front and then snipe it with mercys. Guaranteed to work! (8/10 times)