Do we really need veterancy?

Before FAF, SupCom was calculating experience earned only for last-hitting. Since FAF, every hit consumes compute. And veterancy doesn't add anything of importance into the game, but makes it less realistic. I would rather dedicate the compute wasted to making sure units don't shoot hills.

I'm afraid a trade like that is not possible. We also do not control in Lua whether units shoot at the terrain continuously. The best approach to prevent units from shooting at the terrain is to change your positioning.

There has been a discussion about veterancy before:

• https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1986/about-the-veterancy-system?_=1630239168572

Veternacy is highly important especially in fights

I really like the veterancy system. It has great gameplay effects at least at non-experimental stage. It gives a reason to keep fighting with an almost dead ACU, and on units it is not just a badge of honor but also provides tangible feects sometimes. Aside from veterancy being silly for computers, as well as an ACU suddenly gaining more repair nanites after introducing a certain amount of wear and tear on his gun...

The only thing I really hate about veterancy is how it matters too little for the small units that sometimes do amazing things.

A vet 3, let alone a vet5, LAB or T1 tank is the result of something amazing happening.

@valki said in Do we really need veterancy?:

Aside from veterancy being silly for computers, as well as an ACU suddenly gaining more repair nanites after introducing a certain amount of wear and tear on his gun...

You can't apply logic here as it would break too many game mechanics.

• Why would a computer stand still while being damaged from enemies out of sight?
• Why can you build quantum rift technology, but missiles from a stationary missile station can't track targets?
• Why don't engineers reclaim if they have nothing better to do automatically?
• Why do you have to rebuild your ACU customizations on every planet?
• Why does a power loss lead to total shield failure instead of just shutting down a few which are in a safe area?

@brutus5000 I only have a good answer to #4 B(

@brutus5000 said in Do we really need veterancy?:

@valki said in Do we really need veterancy?:

Aside from veterancy being silly for computers, as well as an ACU suddenly gaining more repair nanites after introducing a certain amount of wear and tear on his gun...

You can't apply logic here as it would break too many game mechanics.

• Why would a computer stand still while being damaged from enemies out of sight?
• Why can you build quantum rift technology, but missiles from a stationary missile station can't track targets?
• Why don't engineers reclaim if they have nothing better to do automatically?
• Why do you have to rebuild your ACU customizations on every planet?
• Why does a power loss lead to total shield failure instead of just shutting down a few which are in a safe area?

I'm sorry, it was not a criticism - I really like the gameplay resulting from veterancy, I found it too funny not to mention. I should have been clearer and I have edited the post to clarify.

My half-suggestion for +500% hp +100% damage on vet 5 LABs is even more illogical.

You don't have to apologize, you didn't do anything wrong. It's just a general thing were you add some mechanic which doesn't make sense but it adds to nice tactical depth (e.g. sniping power and then go in on the shield battery).

I think I'm a fan of the idea that only a few key units should have the ability to gain vet. Mainly ACUs, support commanders, and experimentals in my mind. But any unit that where vet can enhance gameplay is fine with me.

I don't know how much of a performance hit the vet system makes, but I'd say it's only worth changing this if there is something to be gained. If we can save some cpu cycles by removing vet from all of my ASFs or T1 spam, I'd be all for it.

We do not need veterancy bonuses.

It's nice to know how much mass each unit has killed so you can track whether it was efficient, or for sentimental reasons. We can track that info (at very low CPU cost) without giving any bonuses.

Removing veterancy bonuses from ACUs would affect balance. It barely affects the balance of anything else.

We could also remove the instant HP boost to ACUs. We could keep the regeneration rate boost but not give free hit points to the ACU when it goes up in vet. For example an ACU with 10,000 max HP, 2000 current HP gets its first vet, it has 11000 max HP, it instantly moves up to 3k current HP. That extra 1k hp could help it to survive. If instead it went from 2,000 hp to 2,200 HP with slightly higher regen, veterancy would still be important but it wouldn't have as much immediate impact on the game. Or we could just fiddle with the balance so ACUs don't get any veterancy bonuses at all.

Veterancy costs very little to compute and it’s an important game mechanic that rewards skill. Don’t change it.