Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank

The balance team (I don't speak for them) generally avoids adding new units where possible to keep FAF resemblant of base FA. There were only a few exceptions such as the T3 MAA and even those were controversial.

I understand you want it balanced for lower-rated players, but I think it is best to balance around how units are played at the top level. Lower rated players and even ones at my level really struggle with some basic concepts, so it is hard to say if it is due to it being harder to fight at a lower level, or just less experience in the matchup:

If an Aeon player plays 30 ladder games, and we say for the sake of argument that all factions are picked evenly, then he will gain experience against 'normal tank' factions 75% of the time. On the flip-side, a UEF player will face a 'range tank' faction (aeon) only 25% of the time. So when you're a new player with only 30 or so ladder games, it's quite often that an aeon player of the same skill level will have double the experience in a matchup. This is part of what I think contributes to new players having trouble against Aeon.

@evan_ said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:

I think it is best to balance around how units are played at the top level.

Yes.

If you try to balance for low-rated players, what do you think would happen? High-rated players would figure out how to exploit the new units. The meta would change. Everyone else would try to copy what the high-rated players do. And then things would be broken again for the low-rated players.

The balance will always be "broken" for low-rated people. 99% of them would win 10% more games if they just made tiny, tiny changes to the way they played.

So the attitude towards newer folk is "get gud skrub"

I mean, reasonable to a degree. If we kept altering the game to cater to new people who have difficulty understanding the systems we have all put a decade into understanding, those systems would be gone, and it wouldn't be the game we are here to play anymore. But we can still do things to help out lower level players and help them have a fun time too. However, I don't think the answer to that is a T1.5 tank, especially for a faction we are asserting is too complex for noobies to get into, because of it's micro of a wide variety of units.

Still going to make a unit mod for it... Eventually.

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

why do you guys think aeon needs a new t1 unit in the first place? has there been a patch that has brutalised aeon to the unplayable t1 stage?
aeon has a great trade off in air and better t1 land,you lose air-you lose your land,it's a bit of more work for players but surely worth a shot,imagine giving sniper bots to all factions,bit broken isn't it?same for aeon gun com that can be uterly broken if used correctly and yeah,aeon is requiring more skill to play as you are forced to always babysit your stuff,this game doesn't need new units,it needs a rebalance for the existing onces in the first place

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

@rezy-noob said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:

why do you guys think aeon needs a new t1 unit in the first place?

In my opinion Aeon is perfectly balanced, but not as it should be. Especially for beginning players it should be more accessible... Merely renaming the Aurora from "Medium tank" to "Sniper tank" or "Medium tank destroyer" could help in that regard.

However, the other topic shows that the Aurora is not fun. Best idea I saw is for Aurora to become normal, preferably with a personal shield, and the Flare to become a sniper bot with Aurora 's old range.

Some people prefer the addition of a unit instead to resolve the fun issue I think.

Except that idea is what already exists. You want aurora to be a medium tank because aurora sucks in dealing with small raids compared to other factions. Except this is why they have a lab that basically functions as a proto-tank. Aeon still has a weakness but it isn’t one without a solution and it still keeps the uniqueness of the aurora. Swapping the roles of the two just brings them back to where we are.

aeon was never designed for the newbies in the first place,even in vanilla sup com you start with uef then cyb with aeon being the last one.
by giving auroras more advantages for "new players",you completely destroy the high level games where this is becoming a game changer as the not that aeon has stupidly strong labs,but also a counter raid tank and an assault raid,there is no way or need to do so,that's why you aslo have the faction diversity-you feel bad with aeon->play uef,cyb,sera

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

@ftxcommando said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:

Swapping the roles of the two just brings them back to where we are.

No, it brings us to a better place. People see a tank that is actually able to tank, and they see a sniper bot that is meant for staying at a distance and dying up close.

Isn't that beautiful? - To maintain the same balance while providing clarity to new players?

Though tbh, if the aurora becomes a real tank and the flare gets its old range, there will still be some significant tuning work to be done. And symbol changes, does a T1 sniper bot icon even exist?

Why would you assume that a lab being a sniper bot is any more rational than a lab being a proto-tank? If anything the current implementation is more intuitive because the lab is just functioning in the lab role except the relevancy period is larger. This solution requires changing two units entirely from what they were in base game rather than just extending the role of 1, the former is a much larger pain for new players.

@ftxcommando Why do you think that changing the Aurora to be an actual medium tank is not helpful if its old role is still fulfilled by another unit?

Because I implicitly assume that ruining faction diversity is bad and I am against adding new units. If you make Aeon have a tank and no lab, they are garbage competitively, therefore, the only option is adding a totally new unit which goes against the initial principle of making Aeon easier for new players because now they need to balance two units. I know they need to balance two units because Aeon is already strong on t1 stage and adding a new unit is only justifiable if you nerf other aspects of the roster read: aurora, requiring them to do complex unit mixes to be relevant to the game.

"oh if Aeon is garbage without lab then that balances it out" Except making the game turn into "cripple the Aeon player by min 4 or lose" is not good and also yet again brutalizes newer players.

aurora can win a 3v3 if you move them back just before the enemy tanks come in range (which only requires you to have a scout with the auroras and a little attention (while still easily having 2 survive...).
also I dont see where you get the idea from that auroras cannot raid. especially if you have sth like a 3 aurora+1 scout group raiding in the back they can be an actual pain to chase down due to their superior range (especially if you chasing units will start moving in a line...).
also where did new players come from? this is about low/mid rated players. for new players the only priority is getting more than 2 landfacs spaming, expanding out of the core base and not stalling e the entire game.
for a replay demonstration look at #15497168. its litterally 1 click for the auroras, causing them to trade godlike.

Forumpros doing balance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wTcguJZh3A .
When a canis player remembers to build more than 3 units https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hjp8xJHuyA .

the sniper unit suggested here would most likely just be utterly broken on 5x5 in ACU vs ACU fights

Forumpros doing balance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wTcguJZh3A .
When a canis player remembers to build more than 3 units https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hjp8xJHuyA .

Auroras almost always miss their first volley for some reason in my experience, which can be very bad because getting the first alpha strike is important for Aeon. Could we make Auroras more accurate while slightly lowering their DPS?

put the xbox units in the game pls u_u

@zeldafanboy Could you get some video of that "first shot miss" thing. Because as they are the slower unit being able to get the first shot in is one of their advantages.

@Rezy-Noob This thread was forked from another about why so few people play Aeon, and the lite consensus there was "The Aurora."

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

Aurora missing was fixed last year http://patchnotes.faforever.com/3714.html

@thomashiatt really ? 5 auroras miss 5 shots after attack-move, only 2nd shot hits. https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/video/5599610?key=392f0c86ef1d15cd0333095e565302b7

I expanded the motivation section in the first post, and also moved the unit stats there (slight tweak since I realised the range must not exceed T1 PD).

@turinturambar said in Aeon T1 addition: heavy tank:

for a replay demonstration look at #15497168. its litterally 1 click for the auroras, causing them to trade godlike.

Thanks for the replay Turin. I have two things to say:

  1. This assumes the Aeon player reacts and the other player does not (as demonstrated, running in to an even fight vs retreating Aurora is bad even for Mantis). If the objective is to control position, chasing is not necessary.
  2. As I said above, Aurora have too much DPS for their range. Try the same thing with T3 sniper bots and, say, a T3 assault bot.

for that you can position the auroras a bit in front of the spot you want to defend, so you can kite back without losing anything relevant. also your entire argumentation assumes that a low/mid rated players main issue is bad micro/lacking attention, while it often enough is weak ecobalance+expanding, with too much micro often being a reason for these issues. also the comparison with snipers is completely off, since you cannot just say unit x has 146% more range than unit y. what matters is the amount of time the unit B takes to pass the distance to unit A , which on t1 is maybe 2 seconds (and also the time if unit A kites after a reaction time of a few seconds), while a Harb/brick/percy will take way longer untill it can shoot a sniper.
Snipers and auroras fullfill so obviously very different roles, that this comparison made here shows you the weakness in your argumentation and why simple stat comparisons are insufficient.

Forumpros doing balance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wTcguJZh3A .
When a canis player remembers to build more than 3 units https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hjp8xJHuyA .