Snipers/sera mobile shields need a rebalance

waffelzNoob

Something like nerfing dps would be a good start. They should play a role in slowing/whittling down percies/bricks to make up for othuums/harbs being inferior, but not utterly annihilating them. Nerfing percies/bricks and then buffing snipers was a hard double nerf to the percy/brick vs sniper matchup. Seraphim mobile shields just further magnify this issue.

Maybe something like removing the sniper's ability to shoot while moving (or just decreasing its accuracy when its on the move) without touching its dps could also work, since it will still deal a lot of damage but atleast allow units to catch up to them.

Maomaoo

Bring back old epic t3 balance.

veteranashe

Ever try rushing with labs?

TheWeakie

Low accuracy is kind of a shit rng solution. Will end up with retreating snipers doing 10 shots for 1 hit if u get bad luck. Better do some combination of less dps/lower speed/more mass instead imo

Resistance

maybe just increase sniper bots cost with 15-20%

waffelzNoob

only increasing mass cost still leaves u with the main issue where the only reliable and consistent counter to sniper bots is an arty base
i think having their movement speed and dps reduced would be good to improve matchups for other units vs snipers (can also throw mass cost increase in there lol)

Arran

Snipers won't get a change. They've already had a cost increase because of this exact issue. Nerfing them into oblivion will make sniper factions struggle unfairly against armored assault bot factions.
Instead, divert your argumentative efforts into a fruitful pursuit.
Example: Has anyone noticed how cracked the Titan's shield recharge speed is after collapse?

Yeager

While sniper bots do potentially pose an unanswerable counter; A rebalance would need to direct the power else where. It also begs the question: what is the sniper bot for? Ilshies use to have a speed of 2.9, while t3 bots were at 4, now ilshies at 2.5 and bots at 3.8. This means that outside of drops and their rather bad t2 hover tank, seraphim army lacks any raid option, and therefore lacks a key counter raid option. sniper bots dont fix this well at all (they are arguably countered by raid bots plus shield/ stealth). So the question is: do the seraphim (and to a lesser extent aeon) get to have busted snipers because uef and cryban have hugely better direct fire? or do both need rebalance? Also mind that currently sniper bots are the only cost efficient land unit the seraphim have for experimentals. Ytho loses as long as the other unit micros the slightest bit, (just dodge eye once or twice) and OC supcoms are (despite what some may think) not mass efficient in the slightest.

Jip

Give them an pack / unpack sequence that forces them to stand still, like the artillery. This allows units to easily catch up to them, such as titans and loyalists.

Or, from another angle: reduce their movement speed if they are trying to fire at a target. That makes sense for a sniper. And it would allow for micro to occur - if you want to run away you can disable their attack.

edit: both these solutions are about two lines of code, so it wouldn't be difficult to implement either

Blade_Walker

1st one is too much like t3 mobile arty and would spoil the feel of the unit

the second one sounds really fitting tho - give the unit a 'cool up' instead of a cool down to allow more counter play

veteranashe

Code accuracy while standing still, miss more while kiting

maudlin27

A nerf that involves changing an existing stat (eg mass cost increase; damage change) has the advantage of not changing how the unit fundamentally works vs the original fa/steam implementation. Something like randomness while moving or a deployment time would be a significant departure and in the case of inaccuracy while moving wouldn't be obvious to a new player.

Jip

I think just reducing the movement speed while aiming is sufficient for a nerf, making it a lot more vulnerable to fast units.

FtXCommando

Titan is already really good against snipers it doesn’t need to be buffed. Problem is that snipers just immediately hard counter percies and bricks in a way that harb/othuum doesn’t hard counter titan making percy vs titan a false choice which in turn ruins a lot of the potential variety you could see in t3 stage.

Turinturambar

nerfing sniper speed can also have the opposite effect vs percies. Currently snipers are significantly faster, so if kite on max range and move them back they will get out of range and you have to move them back in. nerfing sniper speed down do percy speed might make kiting vs percies (and also bicks for that regard) even easier and stonger since the snipers will never get out of range (considering their massive range advantagethere will still be enough time to react.
So I would expect that to main affect sniper vs hard/othuum

Turinturambar

This post is deleted!

Blodir

While snipers are kinda busted, nerf would make no difference in almost all cases since u shouldn't be attacking in a tg anyway.

Reckless_Charger

Yes is this proposed rebalance for team games (tg) on flat maps? Is that how FAF is balanced nowadays? Obviously long range direct fire units when they reach a critical mass are going to be powerful on such maps. But 1v1..? Also can you TML the shields?