@exselsior
Hey, Exselsior! Thanks for coming back.
reducing its maintenance by that much is a nontrivial buff to a unit that really doesn't need it. That's a whole t1 pgen less per parashield for its maintenance cost, might not sound like much but that adds up fast, especially in higher level play.
Oh, I'd beg to disagree. You see, it all comes down to mass, correct? To create power, you need to spend mass on pgens. So, technically, Aeon, again, is far more efficient due to the fact that it requires less power to maintain, which in turn means less mass to be dumped into pgens.
Let's look at some stats: So, the UEF's Parashield is not only just 220 mass. Including the mass costs of the 4 T1 pgens it requires adds an extra 300 mass PER Parashield. Meaning one Parashield costs a total of 520 mass! On the other hand. The Asylum, a far better unit, in my opinion, has a total cost of 388.75. (Needing 2.25 T1 pgens).
That is over a 130 mass differential between the units. On top of that, the Asylum has better stats overall making it even far superior in its mass and gameplay efficiency.
UEF T2 is already strong, it doesn't need to be stronger. Just because the parashield is worse than asylum doesn't mean it needs a buff, balance doesn't work that way since you have to look at the bigger picture.
I am trying to look at the bigger picture. Hence why I am mentioning that the Parashield can only be used on land, whilst the Asylum can be used on Sea as well. And, as you read just now, it is a far worse investment than stats show - which is why I made this post to begin with.
Hover is nice, but Aeon arguably needs hover more than UEF because Aeon frigs are trash tier,
I never mentioned that the UEF Parashield needed hover. However, though I would agree that Aeon frigates are - less effective - than other navies, I would not say they are 'trash'. After all, most navy games are dependent on how many frigates you have, and not their stats. On top of that, they have torpedo defense, too, making them. Yes, they can't directly combat subs, but they can - in numbers - ignore them.
Aeon t2 in general has a different philosophy than UEF t2. Both of which are in a pretty good place now though I'd agree with Tagada's statement that the Asylum is a bit too strong.
It is a strong unit, hence why I'm mentioning that the only thing the Parashield needs is a small reduction in maintenance costs. I offered a different suggestion as well to see if we could diverse the units a little bit more. Specializing in their respective manners. One is multi-use (land and sea) and the other is solely for land, so it should be stronger in the Shield HP sense.
UEF also gets the shield boat so they have t2 shields that are useful on the water. Cybran gets stealth and op frigs, sera gets strong t3 hover shields for late game navy on mass heavy maps, though now I'm going a bit off topic.
The UEF has a strange Shield Boat. I will post about it later in part 5 or 6. If the Parashield hovered, I would be using those instead of Shield boats as they would be far better gameplay-wise and mass-investment-wise. However, I'm getting ahead of myself.
This is already a point that UEF is strong, buffing parashield would compound that even more. I'd hate to be cybran vs that but I guess at least Aeon and Sera have snipers which are a whole other topic.
Every faction is strong in its respective manner. It's not just the UEF that is strong. There are many ways to counter each and every unit in this game.
Thanks for the feedback.
Looking forward to hearing more from you!
~ Stryker