Reclaim balance suggestion

@Tagada

I guess I can see why veterancy will slow down the game – it's just a lot of numbers the game has to calculate in real time. Also, you're right on engie vet. I was thinking that engie vet could provide some exciting moments for casters, but I realized it likely just has the effect of creating "random bullshit" moments for players, so that idea can be shelved.

Nice points. That's a pretty precise summary of the various gameplay outcomes that nerfing the reclaim rate will lead to. One other effect the change has we haven't talked about is to actually help fix an issue you brought up before: contested mid mass deciding games on certain maps (e.g., Shoal). If a player successfully drops engies and wins the reclaim, the other player has more time for counterplay (e.g., making a bomber, dropping later and still getting some mass, etc.).

I dont think reclaim vet calculation is as complicated as mantis laser tickle damage logging and proportionate mass value vet calculations. My intuition tells me that this shoudlt be too excessive of a burden to the simulation. I am a fan of the reclaim log. Useful data to evaluate bos and to make decisions. However, i am personally a big proponent of ditching vet on all non acu units and non experimentals all together as it is only slowing down sim and has zero impact on gameplay. Like even if a battleship gets vet it hardly matters at all. It pretty much only matters on t1 bombers and maybe on strats. An alternative would be to dramatically increase vet effects. I mean we got this ressouce hungry system, why not buff the regen granted to normal units so that it actually matters and micro would be rewarded. Imagine: you micro a tank well and he kills two tanks and gets a vet level but he has 20/280 hp. Currently this tank would just die in the next fight with maybe 30/280 hp, the vet has no noticable impact. Give regen so that he would heal to 150/280 in maybe 2-3 mins then it would actually be worth sending him back for that time and reusing. The slow regen means that investing micro into low tech units is futile because by the time they are healed their tech becomes obsolete.

Anyway. Regarding nerfing reclaim rate: i agree that this is a good idea in the region of a 1.5x nerf. Not more why: because it would make gameplay more slow and stale. Getting reclaim fast and making units from it fast is nice for apm whores because you usually the cap for reclaim grabbing and reinvesting in huge spam vs spam scenarios is apm. With the proposed change its build power. It would make gameplay slower and of course reward the careful surgeon kind of player, but i think that faf has tended to these kind of players enough in the past patches and that sc like apm fiestas should have their place in faf too.

Regarding

I think this idea is relevant to this discussion, so I'm going to repost it here.

I think it would be good to disable the ability to reclaim small map elements (trees and small rocks) manually.

There should be a class of reclaimable that is passive reclaim only.

By this I mean that those elements should still be reclaimable through patrol and attack move, but not by manual clicking.

My motivation for wanting this change is to reduce the mindless click spam that occurs early in game... but it will also have the effect of reducing the net mass/energy gained via reclaim... so I think it fits in with the suggestions made in this post as well.

The mindless click spam is an indication of a bad game mechanic, if both players on many maps are forced to literally click tiny rocks or trees dozens or hundreds of times... that's an indication that something has gone terribly wrong.

Large changes to reclaim will have large impacts on the game, perhaps this one is small enough to fly... and it would perhaps kill two birds with one stone.

Early reclaim has a lessened role early on, and the need for clickspam disappears completely. Many of us in the community are getting older, no need to have a mechanic that is just asking for carpal tunnel injuries.

This is a terrible idea and I've already answered why in another thread so don't even try to ruin this discussion by adding it here. If you do then I think it will be really healthy for this thread that your posts be removed as you do nothing but post your insane ideas around the forum and argue with people which demotivates everyone around to read through the threads and post anything meaningful.

@moses_the_red

Your solution, disabling manual reclaim for small props (trees and small rocks), but allowing them to be reclaimed by attack move, is possibly the most inelegant and unintuitive solution I can even think of. It reads as if I just described the issues with reclaim to my 8 year old cousin, who has absolutely no understanding of the game, and had him try to create a solution to the problem.

It belies a complete lack of understanding of the fundamental tenets of game design. Are we going to have to create a must-read forum post now describing what is manually reclaimable and what is not? That seems necessary to make it clear what is manually reclaimable and what isn't. Your solution makes it difficult for a new player to even learn what is reclaimable, and even for the experienced player your solution adds unneeded complication. It will be extremely frustrating to manually click reclaim only for some of the commands to not go through. This adds a whole new set of complications – with your solution, players likely now have to learn what reclaim is manually reclaimable on a map-by-map basis.

I took the time to respond to your post and point out the issues with it, not because I think your opinion deserves it, but because the community needs to realize just how useless the drivel you spew is. I agree with Tagada that there should be some kind moderation for misleading or harmful posts.

I double the moderation request, and not just for moses or the balance discussions, but some other you know who individuals too, this shitposting is the reason noone on the balance team takes any forum talk seriously and barely anyone even reads it. Quite mindboggling how this forum managed to top the old one in the sheer idiocy just after being released.

I mean i do agree that his post doesn't contribute much to the discussion. However, i do agree that the manual reclaim fiestas required to be top on various maps is abit stale and that strategy and unit micro should be more important to get an advantage than reclaim clicking and order of building. I lost many games because i didnt know the random insane mass values of almost invisible reclaim patches in my early days (loki ??????) And that not a cool gameplay feature. Make reclaim wrecks only, clearly visible and in contested areas of maps: same mechanic and more straightforward even to new players.

I would like to see reclaim happen at speeds based on the amount of resources. So if you're reclaiming 100 mass worth of broken trees, that should be about as fast as 100 mass of dead tanks or 100 mass of rocks. You would have to have engineers take less time, basically zero downtime, between reclaiming different targets. That would reduce the need for manual reclaim orders, because attack-move would be nearly as efficient. If you could shovel 100 mass into your face just as fast with attack move as with manual reclaim orders there would be a lot less clicking.

Another way to fix it might be to have attack move always work like factory attack move (where the engineer walks to the waypoint and then reclaims at guard range, instead of traveling down the path acting like it is on patrol). You could quickly queue up a series of attack-move orders so you don't have to babysit engineers and constantly adjust their orders to get the benefit of factory attack move. FAM can be at least as good as manual reclaim orders, so in most situations, manual reclaim would be unhelpful.

@arma i asked for default attack move to be fac attack move before. Apparently its not possible due to engine restrictions but maybe thats just as excuse my either nostalgic or lazy devs

@Tagada said in Reclaim balance suggestion:

This is a terrible idea and I've already answered why in another thread so don't even try to ruin this discussion by adding it here. If you do then I think it will be really healthy for this thread that your posts be removed as you do nothing but post your insane ideas around the forum and argue with people which demotivates everyone around to read through the threads and post anything meaningful.

For all your inane shit talking, you've failed.

Other people agree with my views. You don't like that its a reasonable discussion point that you don't agree with, so you bitch and moan and attack because you're too immature to put forward a decent argument.

Fundamentally, you're trying to argue that clicking a bunch of things repeatedly is a good mechanic. Its not something that you want to have to defend, because its so obviously stupid, but its something you're good at and its something that helps you and at some point that convinced you that its a good mechanic when its clearly not.

I watched a few of your replays, you may stop queuing up manual reclaim at 3:30, but your engineers continue to process that manual reclaim up to about 5:30. It is an advantage for you, and it is a stupid advantage gained through a ridiculous mechanic.

By all means, complain, attack me, whatever... it does nothing to obfuscate the clear absurdity of your position.

So what are we supposed to do during this time? Watch anime on second screen? Ponder on the balance?
Enjoy aeolus? What you are doing is literally crying 'cuz you can't be arsed to click few rocks.

Like yeah few maps are fucking stupid with the reclaim they have, but it's not the problem with mechanic but with the map design itself. We already nerfed it by half, by fucking half, and you want even more nerfs on top of that?

I mean this game is already slow AF, so slow that even boomer like me can sleep throughout the most of the game and not have lack of APM. The effin reclaim at least gives me something to do during the boring downtimes that supcom have in the early phases. Cuz I sure AF don't enjoy staring at single factory doing it's thing for 4 minutes without having anything to click.

On a side note, to say reflect a sim of prior damage dealt for reclaim gain, to say, might be reasonable to suggest the amount of reclaim is with a variable amount versus a present one.

Thanks

@moses_the_red said in Reclaim balance suggestion:

Tagada said in Reclaim balance suggestion:

This is a terrible idea and I've already answered why in another thread so don't even try to ruin this discussion by adding it here. If you do then I think it will be really healthy for this thread that your posts be removed as you do nothing but post your insane ideas around the forum and argue with people which demotivates everyone around to read through the threads and post anything meaningful.

For all your inane shit talking, you've failed.

Sorry but what was the point of posting this? The purpose of the balance forum is to propose the ideas to the balance team so it could be put into the next patch. Trying to act like you’re some second rate Ben Shapiro for no real reason literally damages everyone involved in the thread.

• the balance team stops looking at player suggestions
• higher rated players are not interested in giving feedback to suggestions because they don’t want to crawl through garbage
• lower rated or newer players don’t get a seat at the table due to repeated negative experiences
• you get a bad rep for being an idiot

This has literally devolved into useless arguing, and you know that means something if I’m the one saying it of all people.

Please allow the balance team to moderate the balance forums.

I'm in support of a reclaim nerf. Having wrecks take longer to reclaim gives opponents more time to make a counter play. It also means if you have laid claim to a large mass field post-battle, your rate of absorbtion will slow down, meaning it will be easier to manage balancing the incoming mass.

The only part I would want to keep the same is the rate engies reclaim hostile units. I feel it's important for an awake player to reclaim a raiding LAB or tank with a quick reclaim order. If a LAB can go toe to toe with a reclaiming engie and kill it, I think that takes away a "large" bit of early game micro that rewards players that put the attention and effort in.

It would be very interesting to see how a significant slowdown in reclaim would affect how The Ditch is played.

@Keene Hostile versus Non-Hostile would be nice, but, in terms of faction vs same faction seems questionable.

I understand the concept but not sure in a general sense how reasonable that is for alot of gameplay in FAF.

The rest seems 50/50 back and forth, which for the current situation is without for say same outcome.

Thanks

@Mvk_ said in Reclaim balance suggestion:

@Keene Hostile versus Non-Hostile would be nice, but, in terms of faction vs same faction seems questionable.

I understand the concept but not sure in a general sense how reasonable that is for alot of gameplay in FAF.

The rest seems 50/50 back and forth, which for the current situation is without for say same outcome.

Thanks

????

Most of his posts are gibberish like that.

maybe it is possible to make a mod that simply removes all reclaimables (rocks, trees, initial wrecks) from the map at game start? then people could play maps without initial reclaim and see how it actually affects the way games are played out. it would probably make games slower overall, but how much is hard to say.

what about reclaim that appears after killing units

Such a mod would be unranked meaning it would not get played more than likely.