Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient

Based on data provided here, it seems that the efficiency of the Sacrifice ability is, at best, 60% for engineers and 90% for SACU's. It appears to often be substantially less efficient than that as well...

I believe that the Sacrifice ability is not used much compared to abilities like stealth, jamming, etc. It seems to be too underpowered and too inefficient in too many cases. I propose that its efficiency is improved.

An example way to improve its efficiency would be to give a flat 90% efficiency for all units that have the Sacrifice ability (mass and energy costs could be fairly formulaicly equated for balancing this).

Alternatively, the current calculation system could be used, but with the change of peak Sacrifice ability efficiency of all units with the Sacrifice ability being improved to like 90% or maybe 95% (since it's often actually a lot less efficient).

(The above changes are just potential examples of ways to make the Sacrifice ability more efficient. If you have good alternate idea(s) for how the Sacrifice ability should be made more efficient, feel free to suggest them in this thread as well.)

@emperor_penguin said in Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient:

It seems to be too underpowered and too inefficient in too many cases. I propose that its efficiency is improved.

What is your metric to define that it is underpowered? How would you determine after a change that it is now balanced well? Sacrifice is an extremely situational ability, because there are few situations where you would rather have more mass in a building right now than to go the normal efficient path where you can keep your engineer. So I am not surprised that you don't see it used often.

It might be up, but nobody knows cause nobody uses it cause everyone forgets it exists

That is, until a GC appears out of nowhere and then everyone remembers it for a couple of weeks, and then it's forgotten again for the cycle to begin anew.

My idea, suggestion was already rejected.

1. Do we want a unique ability for Aeon engineers? --> if not remove it
2. Determine what this ability is supposed to do, during which stages of the game.
3. Design an ability to meet these requirements.

Removing tele-GC for something that is interesting and useful throughout the game is worth it.

Tele GC was the best move i have ever seen in supcom, the sacrifice mod on the sacu could also reduce hp on the sacu, so that if they tele into pd or a well defended base its not too op.

@zukko said in Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient:

Tele GC was the best move i have ever seen in supcom, the sacrifice mod on the sacu could also reduce hp on the sacu, so that if they tele into pd or a well defended base its not too op.

And you have already seen it so we can remove it now, YouTube will always remember it.

Tele-GC is a gimmick. It is no justification for a game-mechanic to be terrible 99.9% of the time. I'm simply advocating redesigning sacrifice to be a worthwhile mechanic without consideration to preserve tele-GC.

If it dies it dies, if not that is fine too.

It's so unbelievably shit for anything else than tele GC ... basically only usable in one situation that never happens : when you're stalling and you need some building/unit to finish asap. When you're not stalling, i believe it's just faster to use the BP of the engi.

But even in this situation how do you know how many engi you need to finish up something ? Like for example, how many t1 engis to finish 10k HP of an unfinished GC ? Many times i've tried to use this to finish a unit, and ended up not having enough engis ... So you're left with no engi, and your stuff still unfinished. Game over.

Now i pretty much never use it or even think of it ... it's just so risky to use wthout clear indicator of if you can finish the building or if you'll just suicide the engi for nothing

I think changing the effect would be the best way to make it useful. It could be a temporary hp boost for a part of the hp, a heal to units in an area, damage to a unit (a bit too much like mercies maybe), add a shield that can't be regened (not sure if that's even possible). Maybe even multiple of those, depending on what it's used on. Maybe different effects for different tiers of engineers, or additonal ones for higher tiers.
There's a lot you could do to make it more interesting than just killing the unit for an inefficient small advance in progress.

@femtozetta said in Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient:

It could be a temporary hp boost for a part of the hp, a heal to units in an area

I like this... Aeon is so vulnerable when enemy tanks are fighting in your base near your T1 factories. This would be great in those cases.

@femtozetta said in Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient:

I think changing the effect would be the best way to make it useful. It could be a temporary hp boost for a part of the hp, a heal to units in an area, damage to a unit (a bit too much like mercies maybe), add a shield that can't be regened (not sure if that's even possible). Maybe even multiple of those, depending on what it's used on. Maybe different effects for different tiers of engineers, or additonal ones for higher tiers.
There's a lot you could do to make it more interesting than just killing the unit for an inefficient small advance in progress.

I made best mod on the nod vault that modifies sacrifice

@auricocorico said in Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient:

It's so unbelievably shit for anything else than tele GC ... basically only usable in one situation that never happens : when you're stalling and you need some building/unit to finish asap. When you're not stalling, i believe it's just faster to use the BP of the engi.

When you're stalling mass it's probably still better to ctrl-k and reclaim mexes instead of sacrificing.

my main thing with sacrifice wish it wouldn't be pathfinding hell (and lesser extent it should have a hotkey for it. I keep forgetting to do a PR that adds said hotkey to the faf game I'll do it eventually). And to some extent wish I Seraphim had it. /shrug

@dragun101 Could we increase the range for sacrifice? That would solve the pathfinding problem?

I have always loved sacrifice. It fits into the lore ya know? Its interesting. And up until I read this thread I thought it was 100% efficient and that was it's only saving grace.

The pathfinding thing is the death of it, and I think range would help it. But there is still the component that its your build power and getting rid of it is pretty much always a setback not worth it. I think there are a few ways it could be improved or changed.

~ Boosting efficiency. Easy
~ Adding effects. AOE Heal, AOE auto reclaim
~ Changing effects. Remove build, have it do something else entirely that kills the unit. A last stand thingy? AOE Convert of enemy units of same tier. Regen field in build radius and health drain to death for unit. Satic shield of certain value (uncontrollable unit like ion storm, but a shield).
~ Putting on more units. Would labs be combat viable if they had a 100% sacrifice? Multiplied by veterancy
~ Unit simply detonates, every one the power of an ACU explosion. Can chain react. This is the Way.

Also, since we are talking useless economic bonuses, lets make a "recycling center" for the cybran. Like a land staging center you just hit a button and the unit goes to the nearest suicide booth and is turned back into mass at a high rate. GENIUS.

What are the thoughts of 100% efficient? Would it break anything?

Some lab sacrifice could be cool to kill some mexes, but you need to think of fire Beetles

Let me sacrifice onto hostile units and do damage! Also, increase the range of sacrifice to be equal to the engineer's build range.

Convert sacrifice into the ability to convert lower tier engineers into higher tier engineers, say double the mass value in the lower tier so 6 t1 engies for 1 t2 engie.

Can be a decent synergy with Aeon tmd 4head but would also require you to have an hq of some sort built.

Ftx I think that would break since you could get T2 where normally you wouldn't like proxies or islands that are typically vulnerable to tech

And 1 t2 engie is going to cause your proxy to survive when you could have had triple the bp making pd or?