The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade)
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You sure? If para is 10k a second that means it's only 1k a tick and most players can already manage that easy, they probably have that in evo before starting a para.
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Wow this thread is a dumpster fire. There’s no such thing as mass per tick it’s per second. A tick is how often the game engine updates the game state and processes new inputs and has nothing to do with the economy. Economy is mass and energy per second. Paragon is 10k mass per second. Engineers consume mass per second based on their build power, the total build time in seconds for what they’re building, and the cost of what they’re building. Their mass consumption is per second. It has nothing to do with the game tick. Hopefully I said all that correctly but it’s at least close enough. If you’re competent it’s easy to spend a paragon’s mass - just watch Yudi or most other 2k+ Setoners and you’ll see them stall it at least sometimes. Most sub 1.8k don’t set things up well enough to spend a paragon’s worth of mass.
Why are we even talking about this in a thread about the billy nuke anyway.
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@exselsior said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):
There’s no such thing as mass per tick it’s per second. A tick is how often the game engine updates the game state and processes new inputs and has nothing to do with the economy. Economy is mass and energy per second.
You are describing your own simplified mental model of the game, not the game itself.
Ticks are not just for taking input from players. The game state is updated every tick. (And there's a 5-tick delay between giving a command and when the command is executed.)
Moving units move forward every tick.
Collisions are checked every tick.
Weapons can be fired every tick (if there is a target and they're not still on cooldown).
Weapons cooldown every tick until they're done cooling down.
Mass is delivered every tick, not just once per second.
Mass is spent every tick, not just once per second.
Mass is actually tracked by the game in units of 0.1 mass each. Let's call these units "atoms" because they are indivisible. So if a mantis costs 56 mass, it costs 560 "atoms" (indivisible mass units) that are each worth 0.1 mass.
A T1 mex that gives, over time, 2 mass/second, is actually delivering 2 atoms per tick.
Does all of this matter? It depends. If you're just trying to play the game, it's probably smarter to use a mental model that only updates once per second. If you're trying to make blueprints for a new unit or tweak the balance, then this tick-by-tick stuff actually matters.
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Yes, you're right and that's why the first thing I said about game ticks is that it updates the game state, which covers what you said.
Calling it a simplified mental model is a stretch when it's how the economy is explicitly described and shown at every level in game. Thinking about the economy in terms of what the game engine is doing behind the scenes while in game is not helpful. As it is clearly people already don't understand that all of the values in game are shown per second so adding in all of this about game ticks just adds to the confusion. Sure it's technically simplified, but so everything else.
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How long does it take for a t1 Mex pay for it's self?
What is listed in the helpful hints on the loading screen?
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@veteranashe said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):
How long does it take for a t1 Mex pay for it's self?
What is listed in the helpful hints on the loading screen?
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/blob/deploy/fafdevelop/loc/US/strings_db.lua#L7767C28-L7767C28
It's 18 seconds though iirc since that doesn't actually say. 36 mass cost and returns 2 mass per second. I'm going to be very sad if I'm misremembering that.
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Not sure why billy nuke is underpowered when you can kill an entire t3 army with it and force a very large amount of mass of tmd note 20 tmd cost more than the billy nuke upgrade in terms of mass cost.
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Mobile shields can soak up almost the entirety of the damage dealt by a Billy.
A Billy deals around 12,000 damage.Just one Seraphim Mobile Shield has 10,000 HP.
The UEF and Aeon shields are a bit weaker, hanging around 3,000 & 3,500 HP.1 T3 mobile shield practically nullifies the damage,
3 or 4 T2 mobile shields also nullify the damage.This left Cybran as the only faction without a mobile shield, but to make up for it,
they used to be able to redirect a Billy.
But that ability has since been removed.
Another note, the upgrade has a 30-second global cooldown, so, even if you load it before then, you can't fire it again until the cooldown expires.
~ Stryker
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Only thing that scares you under sera shields as UEF are snipers, and billy kills the snipers.
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@ftxcommando said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):
Only thing that scares you under sera shields as UEF are snipers, and billy kills the snipers.
If they're under one shield, yes... the spillover damage carries on, but two? No.
Everything and anything survives under two Sera mobile shields.You guys say a Billy "deletes entire T3 armies", and it does.
But only if there aren't any mobile shields to protect against it.Now, I'm not implying it should wipe out shielded armies, either...
But, it's just weird, that's all. Maybe something should be looked at here.
~ Stryker
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Not to mention the range of sera TMD. Not like it's hard to follow an army with some engies if you know billy is a threat.
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@comradestryker Here's 2 seraphim shields and their friend, before and after being hit by a billy...
Am I missing something?
(To elaborate - I can't see how a unit easily hides under 2 seraphim shields to be undamaged by a billy nuke. It seems to require very specific positioning, where the billy only hits 1 shield, but the other is overlapped - it's rare for this situation to actually happen, and usually involves the unit being outside the blast of the billy in the first place.
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Put some units under there and see how much DMG they take
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@veteranashe The units get messed up. That's why the zthuee was there in that example.
Units under seraphim shields take almost 3000 damage.
More than 1 seraphim shield makes no difference from what I can see (and from what I understand of how shields work).
I'm struggling to understand what ComradeStryker meant by "Everything and anything survives under two Sera mobile shields". I can't reproduce this.
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Put about 20 t3 units under there in a standard formation.
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I was hoping you would test it out but I had some time.
Units close to the edge of the shield where the billy hits take like 2k damage.
Snipers towards the rear of the shields take less than half of their ho in DMG. Took 2 Billy's to destroy the mobile shields gens.
This is because the outer ring on billy is crap damage.
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@veteranashe The point I'm making is: more than 1 seraphim shield makes no difference.
(related: "Everything and anything survives under two Sera mobile shields." doesn't ring true.) -
Ohh yeah probably, I tested with 2 mobile sheilds.
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@ComradeStryker there's another use for Billy!
As UEF you can teleport into the back of an enemy base preferably into a back pond then get billy and then snipe an acu sitting in the water IF it has ras instead of a shield upgrade/nano. Only works if there's 1 ACU left or if it's a no share game, but I've done this enough to know it works!
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Can I throw in one more suggested change which is to reduce the size of the explosion graphic, it makes it look like an almighty explosion which is totally disproportionate to the actual damage caused, particularly in the outer ring.
Apart from that, along the lines of what's already been said, I'd love to see one or more of the following:
- Faster projectile speed (consider it a hypersonic missile...?)
- Slightly increased damage in the outer ring (or add a middle ring that adds another step between the high damage centre and the outer)
- Slightly reduced cost of the upgrade and/or missiles so it's a more attractive upgrade option.
