Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient

@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

I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.

Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project

@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

I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.

Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project

@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.

You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

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?

@veteranashe said in Make the Sacrifice ability more efficient:

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

If you make having an appropriate HQ a requirement it shouldn't be a problem.

Using my ideas again smh

image0.jpg

Me, farm, and petric discussing FAF circa 2020

@veteranashe Actually if you could sacrifice to convert mexes that would be hilarious.

And I don't think the fire beetles need to be that unique. Aeon already have the other kamikaze unit.

You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

Wasn't saying about fire beetle uniqueness, but use and cost

Maybe aeon land units should have a "sacrifice" ability where they die but leave behind 81% of their mass.