Cybran Frigates

Good morning, evening, whatever. I'm writing this from a 1v1, 2v2 perspective. Setoners, calm your tits.

Cybran frigates are wayyyyyyy too strong.

For example: They can beat a UEF frigate 1v1 with a good amount of HP left over, while costing less mass and having far better AA for killing torp bombers.

Best AA of any frigate.

Cheapest Frigate.

Higest dps Frigate.

Cybran frigates eat other frigates for brunch, then will relax on the beach sipping a mimosa as they fuck up your naval factory engis or exposed mass extractors. This is not cool, and very imba.

Quick and dirty testing replay for those who do not know: https://replay.faforever.com/14205092 If anyone wants to get together with me and do 'real' testing, I'm all ears.

Please nerf.

Closing thoughts, to avoid a few tangents I can see this argument branching off into:

Yes, I think Cybran is really weak. No I don't think they should have an over tuned frigate to counteract this. That is bad game design IMO to have a faction strong on some maps and weak on others, even more so when you are laddering into a blind map. Please fix Cybran weaknesses in other ways. Like give them HP on their structures for fucks sake.

Yes, Cybran does not have hover. Unfortunately, frigate balance is closely related to hover balance, of which this post will be trying to address frigate balance on its own. Hover balance is another terrible issue. IMO, hover should be used to raid and stuff, not be an alternative for navy. If this were the case, frigates could do their own thing instead of being overtuned to counter hover.

Yes, UEF has the best T3 navy. No, I don't think that is a fair tradeoff on maps like Roanoke, PoR, Oracle, where you get A-moved by 500 frigates by minute 12, and your t2 naval factory doesn't live long enough to see the light of day, let alone tech up to t3. I think it is fine to have that balance when their T2 navy is utter dogshit to get up and running, but T1 balance should not be so lopsided when it has such a large impact on the early game development.

So help me if any of you say UEF jamming is OP and that's why its balanced. Maybe if it didn't cost an extra 18 or so mass per frigate in energy cost to run the damn thing. I don't think its a far tradeoff even if it was free.

Discuss:

Would rather buff UEF frig than nerf cyb frig tbh. As you said way too much is tied into cyb frig where you nerfing it just absolutely annihilates anything cyb related. Even the salem gets hard carried by the power of the trident's combo of aa, damage, and hp. The strength of the frig is what justifies the sheer garbage of the cruiser aa and the lack of floaty.

Meanwhile UEF kinda has a meh t1 and a stinky t2 navy stage, it should have the 2nd best frig to allow it to at least buy the time to do a proper set up for its heavily specialized t2 stage.

As an honest question, why not look into the Torp Economy? Submarines, and Coopers (then lesser extent Torp Bombers, and Torpedo Launchers). Like is the issue with Frigates or that Subs are useless beside being glorified LABs? (This also gets into ground fire memes admittedly).

Issue with Subs being “reasonable” is it turns gameplay in navy very RPS. Increase torp damage so they can actually kill frigates reasomably. Just had to think how to do that. Or enable that. (Armour System is a thing that could be utilized).

I like the idea of buffing UEF frigate instead of the Cybran nerf, as a quick band aid fix. It solves the issue of this post, as well as UEF difficult naval game before T3, as well as the cybran hover issue. No major problems with that, and it would help more then it hurts. Also helps them vs hover as well, seeing as how riptides are not as strong as floaty flak, fobos, blazes, floaty shields...

However, without getting too into it (would need another thread for it), I don't want to be buffing frigates any more then they already are. I feel like they are too strong as is, and I would love to see an eventual rework of subs, torp bombers, hover, and frigates. But that is an entirely different issue I don't want to get into at the moment, which I why I proposed cybran nerf rather then UEF Buff.

Either way, as I said before. Moderate UEF buff would be quite nice to even things out, I would support this helping to solve the issue of this post. I do not know very well aeon/sera vs cybran frigates, as I have not tested it/played as much as I have as UEF navy, so someone else should weigh in if UEF frigates are as bad as other factions or not vs cybran. Aeon has their own funky thing going on.

Oh or follow up moving Cooper to T1. So its kinda like Aeon Shard maybe I dunno. Kinda spitballing here

Well cybran frigates certainly are the strongest, but the situation you seem to be describing as most problematic is before t2 navy can really get involved. However, aren't torp bombers a very good counter to even cybran frigates? I just tried testing it and 10 torps killed 10 cybran frigates with only 1 torp dying. Yes, torps cost significantly more in energy and a bit more build time, but they definitely can still be a very efficient counter. This also involved some micro though: shift g on groups of 3 to kill frigates as quickly as possible while also limiting overkill, which would be unrealistic and far less efficient if you are facing huge numbers of frigates. For example, right before that I tested sending 50 torps into 100 frigs and killed 15 frigs on the first pass, but if set to patrol after the first shift g attack, they just derp around and barely kill any additional frigs and all torps die with a large number of frigs still left. So you definitely need to micro the torps for them to be efficient. And the larger the number of frigates, I think the more effective their aa is because the torps will spend a lot more time in range of the aa.

Edit: in my next test I did 50 torp bombers vs 50 frigates and microed the torps. Ended up with 45 torp bombers left after killing all the frigs. So after that I'm left feeling like all frigates are not just completely countered, but ANNIHILATED by torp bombers, which are about the same mass cost and just need a bit more energy. But if we are talking about someone who has invested into 50 frigates, I don't think the extra couple t2 pgens you'll need for the air army that completely nullifies their investment is too much, considering how you really don't need anywhere near the same number of torps to counter those frigs. .

Maybe allow some more potential for micro, since the problem seems to be early 1v1 duel between frigates. Perfect hp/damage balance between frigate seems impossible because all factions have very different cannon with very different fire cycles.

If you make dodging easier or allow more ways to out-manoeuvre the cannon, you could have the result of a frigate duel being dependant on micro rather than pure stats.

Against a buff of any frigates, they are dominant enough as it is.

I personally agree more with the idea of the UEF frigate getting a small buff. Cybran in general needs love in other areas and I'd hate to see one of the few things they actually have going for them get nerfed, even though other factions getting their frigate buffed is still an indirect nerf to Cyrban. Granted, I also agree with your point that it's not good game design to have a faction that's only good on some maps and not others, but I'd really like to see Cybran in a bit of a better spot before they're nerfed even more. I think overall the whole hover and t1 navy issue needs some work it does not feel like it's in a good place right now so it's more of a bandaid fix to buff/nerf one or two units here

Then firing cycle of tridents is also op they have so little overkill. I think t2 and t3 Navy needs more up like 20%. Cybran frig is op reduce it’s hp to be low like all other cybran units compared to other faction counterparts.

@Exselsior said in Cybran Frigates:

Granted, I also agree with your point that it's not good game design to have a faction that's only good on some maps and not others

Wtf are you and tex talking about, the entire game is designed around the fact that factions are not the same and have defined strengh and weaknesses ?? Are you saying the existence of the aurora is bad game design ?

Faction diversity is a strenght of the game imo, it forces you to think about the matchup and about your strategy. I'm completly OK with cybran having the most powerfull frigate and having my aeon frigates suck ass, as long as I can develop some viable strategies to work around that (torpedoes, air, dropping, some micro, going t2 navy ...). That way instead of having identical gameplay where everybody makes the same units, the game tells you "nope, you're not winning against cybran frigate by mindlessly spamming your own frigates, think something else".

Now I agree there is a problem in the very early game, where cybran frigs can snowball out of control due to them winning any 1v1, and some counterplays are not very viable (subs are cool but don't really stop the frigate from rampaging mexes/engies). That's why I think of increasing the potential for micro. Maybe tweaking the turret turning speed or the firecycle, or the projectile physics.

Wtf are you and tex talking about, the entire game is designed around the fact that factions are not the same and have defined strengh and weaknesses ?? Are you saying the existence of the aurora is bad game design ?

No I mean that it's bad design for Cybran to only be relevant if it's on a map where frigates are relevant. Auroras with good micro can be relevant on maps regardless of if their hover is useful even though they do have some significant weaknesses but Aeon has the longest range gun com to help offset some of their weaknesses. Of course there are maps that favor different factions and that's fine and expected, but imo it's a bit extreme if it's all around a single specific unit.

That being said, I do generally agree with what you said.

If you think that Cybran is only relevant on maps where frigates are relevant then ...
Anyways, back to the topic : Cybran frigate is the best and it's intended that way, they have weak t2 stage, no hover, their t3 is ok, low hp Mexes. UEF on the other hand has weak t1 navy stage, ok t2 stage with destro that's good if micro'ed and an amazing cruiser (It can get though a shit ton of TMD's compared to Sera one) + shield boat which basically defeats any potential for enemy to use torp bombers (This is a huuuge advantage). Their t3 navy is the best with BC destroying all destroyers with ease and loosing only to Aeon t3 battlships. And these are just the things considering only navy.
Let's take a look at a classic t1 navy spam map : Roanoke
What advantages does UEF have over Cybran? Better intie, better arty for drops (6 lobo's 1 shot Cybran t2 pgen/t2 mex) while medusa are the worst arties for drops. They have a gunships that can drop units around which allows you to re - take small islands in the mid game, they have equal or better t2 navy depending on map (how much dmg can UEF cruiser do) and better t3 navy especially in early t3 stage with their BC's. You have Janus to kill all of enemies BP in the base once you win air (They are also equaly strong as corsairs vs big structures like Pgens and factories if micro'ed correctly). They also have access to TML on ACU which is an amazing upgrade for this map.
Cybran : Better frigate, wagners, corsairs, torpedo + stealth ACU, Stealth boats + nice t2 navy with stealth combo forcing 5 mass/ s scout stream in the mid game.
On another note I did some number crunching and testing to see how strong Cybran frigate really is compared to others. In order to equalize the difference as UEF you need to get 16 frigates for every 15 that Cybran has. In The early - mid game that means assisting with 2-3 more engies which drains 2.5-3.75 mass/ sec which means you need to have 2 more mexes then your opponent which you should be able to achieve with better inties by grabbing more small islands.
Such "imbalances" such as these only matter if you play exactly the same as your opponent, don't use any of the other available strategies and don't use other of your Faction's advantages. Not to even mention the fact that due bad eco control most games have significant difference in total mass of players. Much larger then the 350 mass advantage for Cybran in the early navy stage (7 cybran frigates vs 7.5 UEF frigates).

Just for A fact, Tex try to play other fractions instead only UEF, that seems so funny when u crying how good is cybrans units, but they was nerfed after 2017 and now is just a unplayable fraction like it was with aeons in 2018-2019.The proposal to further strengthen the Uef over cybran, this is just clownery, and not a statement of balance.

cybran frigate needs a slight aa tracking nerf and thats it, you cant swarm them with t1 bombers like all the other races frigates cause they so good vs air, the reason they strong is cause cybrans only unique naval stuff is semi useless t2 stealth boat. the super broken stealth field from t3 sonar and the cruisers are supposed to carry t2 gunships. If anyone ever used wagners or bricks in the water which they dont, you would see they are torpedo sponges beyond belief and their dps adds up. ps brick nerf with only 7.5k hp broken, the cybran already have no mobile shields and the brick is supposed to be a BRICK in the water and out

@Auricocorico
"That is bad game design IMO to have a faction strong on some maps and weak on others, even more so when you are laddering into a blind map."
So it's not a problem per se that certain factions have much bigger advantages on some maps than others, it's that you don't have the ability to pick your faction AFTER you see what map you will be playing on ladder (edit: or veto any maps...). If we could have the map shown after the match is made, and then you have 10 seconds to confirm/change your faction choice(s) I think this wouldn't be an issue since this game is not near as much like SC2 where people generally just play a single faction.

@BIG-BENNIS-MAGIC
I don't think the firing cycle has much to do with it because we are talking about 85 damage shots for uef, vs ~2000 hp frigates, so the percentage overkill is tiny compared to say t3 tanks. uef could theoretically even gain from a slower firing cycle because the higher alpha damage could help knock out enemy units faster, just like percies vs bricks. I do think the firing cycle gives cybran an advantage in killing enemy engineers around naval factories, though.

Edit: It's also not totally clear whether a slower firing cycle leads to less or more "overkill." In many land battles, the uef gun acu will have less overkill when facing t1 arty (except uef arty) because the slower firing cycle means it won't fire a waste shot at a unit that was already about to die from the previous shot, while an aeon gun acu will often shoot 3 times at 200 hp units that would have died from just 2 attacks, but it didnt' retarget since the 2nd projectile hadn't hit yet. So the projectile speed and distance matters too.

And against hover

The real example of bad game design is that seraphim gets the 2nd best frigate, best destroyer, zthuees, yenzyne, hover flak, missile cruiser with flak, best transport, nothas, and TML ACU. This makes it the obvious best choice on almost any 20x20 map or map with water.

Why don’t you just pick sera Thomas

the seraphim t1 sub and destroyer are buffed because they have no t2 anti sub, the t3 sub is a turd for its price if you know how to counter it, i have never seen anyone use the t3 shield to shield the t3 subs which in theory would make them broken for the price combo, the uef frigate and destroyer are bad because if you get shield boats they become super beefy. the golden navy is cybran frigate, seraphim t1 sub, uef shield boat, cybran t2 subkillers, aeon t2 destroyer, seraphim t2 cruiser, seraphim t3 subs and the uef battleships and battlecruisers, nerfing everything that each race specalizes in because people dont understand unit counters is dumb