The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade)

Jip

Yes, it can happen if it hits a unit somehow. But not arbitrary projectiles.

ComradeStryker

@barry_whiter said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):

Here's a Billy Buff suggestion; increase the maximum speed of the projectile. Maybe quite significantly.

The increase in usefulness is two-fold:

targeting will be easier. Instead of reducing the damage fall-off, or increasing the max-damage radius, just make it a bit easier to put a missile where you want it.

a quicker projectile will spend less time within the firing radius of TMD. If not passing directly through the centre, a faster projectile might have a better chance of passing two TMD's with some health remaining.

I was rereading some posts and recalled this one, so, I wanted to bring more attention to this post and this specific suggestion, as this could be a meaningful change without making the projectile too strong.

At the moment, the Billy's main strength comes from the First projectile the ACU fires, as that's when the enemy doesn't expect it. Any projectiles after that have diminishing returns as the opponent has already started building more counters.
With increased speed, subsequent projectiles would be a little more viable, especially the projectiles fired from a longer range.

Though, I still want to point out some other issues, as well. Specifically the missile HP in terms of random projectiles hitting it and destroying it, fall off damage in terms of minimal damage, and the projectile cost/upgrade cost.

Any thoughts on this?

~Stryker

Tagada

I will look into changing the billy for the next balance patch (not the one coming soon tm) so probably in ~3 weeks

FtXCommando

@tagada said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):

I will look into changing the billy for the next balance patch (not the one coming soon tm) so probably in ~3 weeks

Do you actually think billy is bad or is this more of a fine tuning than a buff?

Zeldafanboy

Buffing the missile speed is barely more than a qol change imo

TheWeakie

It's not a qol since it does nothing but buff it against tmd, which are you know, the units that are supposed to counter it and buff it against big t3 armies against which it already is more than strong enough. Buffing missile speed would probably make billy OP if you ask me.

Tagada

Mostly fine tuning, maybe small buffs. My initial idea is to decrease the inner dmg while making the outer stronger but probably less AoE. Make it more reliable. Would be nice if you could change the icon to actually see it (that would be an obvious nerf and would need other adjustments ofc)

veteranashe

Probably should keep the inner ring dmg high enough to snipe acus, or a loya would make you snipe yourself.

Nooby

https://replay.faforever.com/18054669

488K mass killed in a setons game average rating 1744

Billy is very good at taking opertunistic shots at high value targets (structures, armies, Also very good against landed clouds of ASF) in teamgames. On large teamgame maps there is almost always a target that is worth it to hit.

TaxesAreTheft

Just want to bumb this thread.

May we get a billy change regarding buffing the inner circle radius to 20. Don't care if this needs some compensation in dmg and increase the outer circle damage in some form. It bothers me that u see a nuke and the outer damage is neglectable.

ComradeStryker

@TaxesAreTheft

Tagada also mentioned something like this.
I'm interested to see where that goes.

@tagada said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):

My initial idea is to decrease the inner dmg while making the outer stronger but probably less AoE. Make it more reliable.

Though, preferably, I would like to see a projectile speed increase as some others have mentioned before, or a projectile cost decrease.

Another point I forgot to mention in this post, is that there is a 30-second global cooldown per projectile fired.
You can load a Billy, but you can't fire it if you fired one in the previous 30 seconds.
I can understand why the cooldown is there, but does it have to be enforced at 30 seconds?
It makes assisting the construction of a missile nearly pointless.

~ Stryker

Sylph_

I'm seeing so many of these threads - are UEF actually in a bad state, ATM?
I watch youtube videos and play a few games, and UEF are probably the ONLY faction that I don't hear streamers moaning about being rubbish...
'seraphim worst faction', and 'cybran worst faction' seem common comments. Even complaints about aeon aren't unhead of. Are UEF really in need of an overhaul?
I only play random, and UEF feel really good as a solid all-round good faction; but then I keep reading these forum discussions about how to 'fix their problems'. I expected to see issues about their racial identity, rather than requests for more power, but all of the topics seem centered around making UEF stronger.

UEF were my favourite faction before FA came out, and I only moved to seraphim for a change of pace/exploring new content, before going over to random.
Is the suggestion that they are too weak, as a faction (as most of these threads seem to ultimately converge on, despite sounding neutral/encouraging diversity in the first few sentences), or is the problem more about variety and racial identity?
(And if it's the latter - is 'solid, fundamental faction' really that bad as a racial identity? (OP Janus aside. ))

FtXCommando

Can't think of anyone decent that would say seraphim is the worst faction. Basically their whole roster is viable and quite "noob-proof" since there aren't a lot of options that could be outright wrong decisions. Most unintuitive thing about them is probably that their t2 stage is still centered around the zthuee in a teamgame scenario. They have a bad weakness to t2 subs during the t2 navy stage, that's the biggest hole I can think of.

Aeon was insane broken over the last year at one point having the best t2 land, best t2 air, and best t2 navy while only really seeing the real noticeable pains in their roster at the t1 navy and t1 land aspects of the game. You can make a case they still have all of those but now that their ACU is brought back into humanity you can actually deal with their land, their destro isn't immediately superior to everything that can exist while even contending with BCs, and their air no longer has a random i win button you can abuse due to the way the game simulates projectiles.

Cybran currently is suffering because they have no mobile shields so t3 pushings and t2 all ins are not viable for them especially when combined with the lack of survivability on their ACU. Recent update to give them nano is attempting to close that gap. Ideally you want something like absolver in their roster too so that they have an actual solution to mobile shield deathballs beyond just tanking the hp or ignoring it and going immediately into t4s.

UEF has the largest roster of clown noobtrap elements. As an example their ACU has 3 useless upgrades in form of drone/tele/bubble shield though bubbleshield got addressed this recent patch. UEF has also had a constant problem with t2 navy. Janus being OP is a meme and while it's strong, it's strong at 1 set thing while being horrendous otherwise. Other t2 air options provide massive flexibility in terms of investment and utility over a larger span of potential game states. Doesn't help that UEF t4 options are a total disaster and combining that with the t3 rework making percies pretty much require ideal circumstances at all times to do their job, their late game has been seriously hampered. Their t1 bomber is a joke, their t2 gunship is a joke.

Overall sera/aeon definitely top 2 and cyb/uef bottom 2 across a large schema of maps. This is teamgames though, cybran becomes generally better in 1v1 due to mantis and aeon loses a bit of superiority due to more focus being placed on the aurora which requires you knowing how to minimize their weakness (aeon gamers try to figure out how to handle not having a top 2 unit in a category challenge).

Sylph_

@ftxcommando said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 2 (ACU Billy Nuke Upgrade):

Can't think of anyone decent that would say seraphim is the worst faction. Basically their

Oh, I didn't specify 'decent" I don't think...
But in response to this I searched youtube for 'supreme commander 1v1, and lo and behold, the first video I found prepared to venture an opinion introduced seraphim as the 'worst faction'.
https://youtu.be/4Ef3ZkIY6pg?t=39

It's not me, it's them. I promise!

I personally love seraphim, and think they're really cool! As I said, I play random, and enjoy all the factions, albeit from my very limited 'noob' perspective (I played competitively back in 2007, but I know that's aeons old, and I've forgotten so much! )
To me, seraphim feel really strong, but with some 'holes' in their tech. Cybran feel very shifty, aeon feel specialised, and UEF feel all-round solid, albeit with a lack of specialisation.

I'm interested in Aeon, particularly - I've heard that they've been broken-OP for ages. They were considered broken decades ago, too, although that was more down to the mercy! Has the recent change to their guncom 'fixed' their overpowered T2?

I'd personally love for the 4 factions to be balanced - it's just interesting that I can't see any concensus on which factions are too strong or too weak! I find UEF really solid, and they seem to be strong even at a high level from what I see of more skilled players.

(And as a random player, I can earnestly say that I'm too low-rated to know which factions are too strong - all I can offer is it's not the ones I'm using! )

It's just that, in light of this lack of clarity about the worst factions, all these topics about fixing the UEF seem a little like overkill, currently.
And as mentioned, I'm wondering whether 'middle of the road' is actually a bad racial identity?

(ps. regarding 'Janus OP' - it does seem really, really strong! Fighter-bombers feel really strong as-is, and the janus seems far harder to evade, and far better at blitzing both high-value targets, and low-value spam. )

FtXCommando

Pretty sure willow mainly plays sera so that's supposed to be a joke

Sylph_

@ftxcommando Thx for clarifying.
Willow isn't the only one I've seen saying it; and others seem more inclined to focus on cybran being the worst... But even so, I really don't hear many opinions about UEF being in trouble?
(outside of 'problems with the UEF' forum threads)

ComradeStryker

As UEF is one of my preferred factions, I have noticed some areas for improvement.
Hence, the series I have written about them; which was meant to address and tackle these concerns.

Most of my posts speak about problems that did require addressing, like the Fatboy, and the Bubble Shield.
Others are more so suggestions like the Ravager and the Shield Boat posts.

The biggest concerns for UEF are currently the Percy, Valiant and Fatboy.
Other, less important concerns are the Atlantis and Stinger. But not limited to these units.

As FTX mentioned, the Percy fails -for lack of a better word- to do its job, which affects the role of the Fatboy, as well.

Arguably the same thing could be said about the Destroyer.
The Valiant is just a supped up Frigate, but at least the 2 other support vessels were both adjusted to better fill its weaknesses.

And the Fatboy? It needs near-perfect conditions to be even worth considering for construction.
And even then, it's almost always better to invest in something else.

If it's worth mentioning, I am not the first to post about these issues.

Hope that helps clear things up, as well.

~ Stryker

TankenAbard

Related but unrelated, UEF is a guilty pleasure to me. They feel so solid in terms of using them. I'm sure others would say otherwise, but I think they're mostly great, my only hangup is the T4 stage. I suppose I'm used to having some large, durable assault unit that can break lines and trash fire bases.

More related, the Billy is a curious thing. With Nukes or Tactical missiles, you can identify a launcher of some kind. With the Billy, the commander has a backpack and you're not sure if you're in for a good time or not.

Shields stopping the Billy can make it difficult to take out a hardened fire base, and the missile flies slow so hitting oncoming units is difficult. I don't think I've used it very much, mostly because similar to the Fatboy, I find it very situational.

CoffinNoob

Yea billy is an odd up grade. But I still see a fair amount of use. Admittedly I have avoided using it due to its range. Seen many player have their commander open to attack as he just cannot reach an enemy base to billy it.
Maybe a range upgrade may be in order:
Although, I'm sure the balance people have considered that already - having a stalemate game end because a lazy UEF player just billies everything that is not covered by 2x tmd is silly. I always considered UEF to be THE TURTLE faction

Particularity as was mentioned by @TheWheeley it does open a different game option, where tmd positions can be bombed.

Lets just be honest, that is how the Nuke war goes : bomb smd → Nuke!

Additionally Billy would be a hellava final strike after a group of titans or percies run a amok in a stalemate land war - dropping tmd and opening a base up to attack - not unlike the nuke war...

I'm not a Balance chief, but I like billy, and it does offer a threat and twist in some games.

Sylph_

@comradestryker It does help, thankyou!
I just needed a more 'general' understanding, being so new to what is obviously a deep 'can of worms' regarding balance and racial identity.
I guess I specifically wanted to understand whether the UEF faction's an outlier in having such sizeable 'holes' in its strategic options, because while I can absolutely see most of the points you spell out, I see similar 'holes' with other factions, too. In fact, from my very limited understanding, it seems as though the UEF actually has the least/smallest 'gaps', compared to other factions.
'Direct fire experimental' seems the most obvious, glaring one, but at least it can somewhat be filled by percivals , right? IE more than can be said for aeon's lack of an (OP) fighter bomber or T1 'mob' tank, cybran's lack of shields, seraphim's lack of all sorts (from LABs all the way up the tech tree) etc.)

I guess, at the end of the day, I'm just surprised that you're not writing these threads for the other factions 'problems', and wanted to better understand why. Apologies if I shouldn't have been asking this here, and I appreciate the time you've taken to help explain for simple little me!

(That, and I quite like the 'gaps' in the factions, myself. I'd feel a bit gutted if they were homogenised more. When I've discussed this specifically I've been told that team-game balance is very different from 1v1, and in many ways more important (most supcom players seem to prefer the big 4v4s and up!); but my experience in team games has always been that engineer passing is allowed, so that nobody is really missing ANY technology... And that makes me think that perhaps 1v1 and 2v2 are the more critical areas to 'get this right'. )