Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.

I just had a match yesterday where my opponent rushed novax at the cost of having fewer ASF. He lost air, the bottom ocean got torped, his novax did almost no damage at all, then I sniped his SMD and nuked his novax. I did build a lot of T3 shields to protect my mexes. (I guess I could have done just T2 shields, I was under the impression that T2 shields would fail against novax, at least over time.) It was a big investment and it didn't pay off.

My nuke forced the enemy team to make a bunch of nuke defense. That's not so different from forcing the other team to make shields, except it's easier and more consequential to snipe SMDs than it is to pick off t2 shields here and there covering mexes. I think I did hundreds of thousands of mass worth of damage with a few nukes, compared to my opponent made me build a few shields that are nice to have anyway.

I can think back to a match where I made something like 6 novax and they wouldn't break the enemy's shields. They made a significant number of shields but they spent a lot less on the shields than I spent on the novaxes.

@arma473

1. Anecdotes are very weak evidence because they are extremely susceptible to bias (cherry picking data). I can counter with dozens of examples where someone didn't stupidly "rush" a novax in a game situation that made it a disastrous strategy, and it was instead a very efficient and effective strategy for the reasons I explained.

2. Nukes work similarly in that respect, that in a game where they force out multiple smds exceeding the cost of the nuke, they are a good investment, so long as you don't sacrifice so much to get there that you lose horribly. So I could also come up with an anecdote about how rushing nuke is terrible because there's an example where it didn't work out for someone, but that's not a good argument.

3. Making one novax is good because even if it does ZERO damage, it forces out a far higher amount of mass in shields. Additional novax have a far lower marginal benefit because when you concentrate their fire, it is much easier for your opponent to concentrate their efforts on supporting shields in that area to ensure the novax wont break through. In reality they have to build shields on everything for just a single novax because you have to micro units all the time and cant watch it constantly to build shields only where it goes. So you basically have to preemptively build shields everywhere. But with multiple novax, you focus more and just build some additional shields and assist where the novax concentrate fire so they don't break through, but don't have to have 6x the shields everywhere. That's why I said building even just a second novax probably wouldn't be worth it most of the time. But that DOESN'T mean that a single novax is not extremely strong on setons and similar maps.

If you build a novax and I build sheilds in response, and then build around 10 k in t3 units, I still spent less

so far,i haven't seen a single game where novax spam beats arty grid spam and the single usage of a novax efficiently can probably be the t2 mex hunt if they are split across the map,aka setons but that's it?
i was also thinking about killing t1 assist,but making novax in order to do that isn't the best idea

@rezy-noob Ya that's accurate. t3 arty is much better than novax for killing bases. But novax can snipe isolated targets very efficiently, so it's excellent on any map with enough of those targets for it to pay off. t3 arty is also much more useful on the common 10km teamgame maps than setons because of the range.
So the answer is obviously that novax is really terrible on some maps and really good on some others (but mass novax is pretty much always bad). People saying anything other than that are missing the point.

@thewheelie said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

@exselsior said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

It’s even worse than what @CorvathraNoob said because a single sat breaks t2 shields covering mexes.

No it doesnt. And even if it does it will be so time inefficient its not worth doing it at all

Just for fun I quickly tested this to make sure, it takes ~5 firing cycles and a little over a min of game time for a sat to break a uef t2 shield and kill a t3 mex. Now, the thing here is that the only maps where sats are cancer are high eco maps with spread out mexes. Meaning often the mexes will be surrounded by mass fabs. Killing the mass fab rings kills the t3 mex even faster if I am not mistaken, was too short on time to thoroughly test that part though.

Is this time inefficient? Probably. I can test this later but I'd bet on the novax killing distant mexes faster than a t3 arty would though, assuming mexes are spread out.

@arma473 said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

I can think back to a match where I made something like 6 novax and they wouldn't break the enemy's shields. They made a significant number of shields but they spent a lot less on the shields than I spent on the novaxes.

You're doing it wrong. You don't build 6 sats unless you're doing that purely for laughs. You build one or two and then a Mavor. Good luck defending vs a mavor and 2 sats without having a ton of hives + sera t3 shields. And at that point unless you have a para all you can do with your eco is assist shields.

Edit: Also you should have synchronized the sats firing if you had that many. It would take a very large amount of assistance to defend against 6 sats on the exact same firing cycle.

@rezy-noob said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

so far,i haven't seen a single game where novax spam beats arty grid spam and the single usage of a novax efficiently can probably be the t2 mex hunt if they are split across the map,aka setons but that's it?
i was also thinking about killing t1 assist,but making novax in order to do that isn't the best idea

Same thing I said to Arma, if you're just spamming sats with no arty then you're not using them effectively imo. It's sats + arty, not just spam sats. That combo brings down shields better than just sats do, and then the sats kill the shield generators the instant they go down to arty. Just arty and there's a decent chance it misses or lands after other shields come back up. With a well managed sat if there's any blip in the shields you start picking off shield gens.

That being said, on smaller and more compact maps sats make less sense than purely spamming arty, unless you don't have Aeon on your team then they're very nice for vision and situationally worth it.

Honestly the only situations where sats are arguably op are almost exclusively high eco 20x20 team games with spread out mexes, but they are obnoxious as hell when they are useful in a way that nukes, bombers, and arty aren't. Their perfect intel + perfect accuracy with decent damage is a pretty strong combo. That's just my opinion though.

@exselsior said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

Just for fun I quickly tested this to make sure, it takes ~5 firing cycles and a little over a min of game time for a sat to break a uef t2 shield and kill a t3 mex. Now, the thing here is that the only maps where sats are cancer are high eco maps with spread out mexes. Meaning often the mexes will be surrounded by mass fabs. Killing the mass fab rings kills the t3 mex even faster if I am not mistaken, was too short on time to thoroughly test that part though.
Is this time inefficient? Probably. I can test this later but I'd bet on the novax killing distant mexes faster than a t3 arty would though, assuming mexes are spread out.

Ah forgot about the novax dps buff that happened. Guess they can break it now. But yea, still so inefficient you should never bother to do it though

I've always thought making SMD able to shoot novax would be a nice meta changer. Gives UEF the ability to drain SMDs, changes up end-game strats a little. Too many SMDs for your yolo to get through? Try throwing some novax's. Either give the novax sat a decently long time to rebuild or add a cost to rebuilding it.

Idk. As they are, they're pretty boring & hit or miss. Either you get them early enough without being spotted and they wreak havoc for a while, or they're not that great because everyone has shields already. I think they could be far more interesting. Then again, I guess most experimentals are pretty boring in the end.

@snagglefox said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

I've always thought making SMD able to shoot novax would be a nice meta changer. Gives UEF the ability to drain SMDs, changes up end-game strats a little. Too many SMDs for your yolo to get through? Try throwing some novax's. Either give the novax sat a decently long time to rebuild or add a cost to rebuilding it.

Idk. As they are, they're pretty boring & hit or miss. Either you get them early enough without being spotted and they wreak havoc for a while, or they're not that great because everyone has shields already. I think they could be far more interesting. Then again, I guess most experimentals are pretty boring in the end.

I generally agree with this. Honestly I quite dislike the Novax. Regardless of how good it is in a given game it is always annoying and horrendously boring. It does not feel good for gameplay regardless of the map or situation. Arguably a creatively and well used sat is always op in Setons in particular - it forces 4 players to shield every mex they have + defend the air grid + add more shields and assist shields on smds. It often forces more build power to be built or at least moved from other tasks to accomplish this. It provides intel in a way that's arguably easier than the Aeon eye since you need a huge amount of energy to spam change the eye's location. You can precisely and permanently deny assistance on enemy navy factories in a way that you cannot do with any other unit. It can completely hard counter Cybran stealth navy where you just sit it over their navy killing their stealth boats, sonars, and any engies trying to reclaim while providing vision on anything that's still stealthed. It can force a reliance on ras bois to expand your eco. It doesn't have any range limitation like t3 arty does, a t3 arty on setons has to be built in a very exposed location towards the middle of the map.

Rant aside, it would be nice if there was a toggle options on SMDs to shoot down the Novax satellites and then the sat itself had a larger cost and time to be remade. Would give it counter play that's much better than spending a stupid amount on shields and build power everywhere on the map while leaving you more open to nukes if you choose to use an smd charge to shoot it down.

In LOUD we've had the SMD able to shoot down satellites for years - with a separate weapon that doesn't drain the SMD. It contained the Novax, at least in terms of it just sitting overhead without any challenge. However, as I mentioned earlier on, this just shifted the meta for it, to one of area denial, and the same fundamental gameplay issue continues to exist. The Novax can effectively seal a player into his shielded base, and even trying to escape using mobile shields is not effective in breaking that blockade.

I imagine, that as long as the Novax continues to exist, it should be considered a need to have some kind of anti-sat units and/or weapon, that can effectively counter it. The Black Ops SMD solution is, as mentioned above, somewhat effective, but not entirely so.

@jip the replay desynced after bottom air got killed, but this replay where the novax killed ~250k mass and completely obliterated bottomss economy, sniped a comm, helped finish off another, completely destroyed bottom airs powergrid, forced building shields everywhere and more is supposed to prove they are easy to counter? That game was lost by top for many reasons, but the novax wasn't one of them. Of course in this game he hit diminishing return, and investing in nukes after a couple of novax would have been way better, there were also better targets after a while I think than what he used them for.

@cptant but this replay where the novax killed ~250k mass and completely obliterated bottomss economy, sniped a comm, helped finish off another, completely destroyed bottom airs powergrid, forced building shields everywhere and more is supposed to prove they are easy to counter?

While he was building the novax the other guy on mid got on bottom navy got the battleships that destroyed 2 entire players + got nukes (since he was sera), got aircraft carriers that won air control + forced TMD all over the map

Go see the mass destroyed bye those battlheships...

I once had a 70k mass killed atlantis on sentons. Time to nerf them theyre clearly op

@thewheelie

A => B does not equal !B => !A. I did not claim this was proof they were OP, I said this is a weird case to showcase how they are not.

I wasn't responding to you

I've always wondered why the novax doesn't consume power when its firing similar to a SMD or something when they are building missiles.

Requiring energy to fire the Novax seems like a good way to subtly nerf it. Just like how T3 Arty consume energy to fire. Please flame me if I'm mistake as I've not fact checked.

That'd be such a minor nerf as to be irrelevant. By the time you have a novax (or T3 arty for that matter) you have the power overflow to sustain it.

It's like T3 PD. Did you know that costs energy to fire? Yeah, no one does because it doesn't matter.

@deribus I knew.
But yeah, it's not super relevant, unless it was made to do damage based on how much power was consumed and was uncapped. That would be hilarious.

@jip said in Novax needs to be nerfed, here's why.:

I just had a game vs a player that did this and they lost:

• https://replay.faforever.com/15171437

They're annoying, but really cheap to counter. And remember: if they spent 30K mass on a Novax, and you spent 10K on some shields, it means you have a 20K advantage.

You can not build shields around all map.