The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (The Ambassador & Blackbird)

@xayo said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

If you want quick and aggressive playstyle, pick a faction that does that. If you like building sandcastles, pick UEF.

Did you get ur rating playing dual gap mid? UEF literally has the most aggressively focused t3 land stage lmao

@comradestryker said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

@ftxcommando

stealth has no functional impact on cyb air stats beyond making air units cost e to run the ability.

So, you don't think hiding a powerful unit is functional?

I'd argue that Stealth is absurdly strong - more than jamming or anything else, but that's a topic for a different discussion.

---

~ Stryker

It isn’t about it being powerful. It’s about counterintel capability not factoring into the balance of Cybran t3 air vs other faction t3 air. You remove the ability for Cybran to use stealth and they’re still equal to other factions on a statline basis. The only exception is their spy plane being strictly worse as it takes 1-2 less asf shots to kill.

I don’t even think jamming is that relevant for anything here. I don’t even consider stealth to be that big of a deal for Cybran air, including strats. It can be kind of annoying when you are macroing on a large map but it doesn’t determine game situations and the reason people love Cybran strat is the aoe not the stealth.

The relevant part of Cybran stealthed air is the ASF stealth which can allow optimal air engagements against a needlessly aggressive enemy. Likewise, this would be the only relevant part of t3 air that has jamming. Dudes that think it’s OP just haven’t had to deal with competent Cybran air play. I wish Aeon and Sera had their own counterintel aspect to put on their ASF to make spy plane management and intel a more relevant part of t3 air play. Right now it’s only really a thing against Cybran.

@FtXCommando

Once again, the game is currently balanced around the UEF having the least powerful late game air. As you say the lack of a true air experimental to leverage after winning air is a bigger factor than the effectiveness of their standard T3 air units (which are completely average).

The fact that UEF has no real air experimental is an intentional design decision just like Cybran has no mobile shield.

As for the UEF having a weaker strat bomber than the Seraphim, the Seraphim has no T3 gunship which is why their strat has a slightly more optimal aoe to damage ratio. Overall I would say that UEF and Seraphim T3 air is roughly equal, Aeon is a little better, and Cybran is the best.

The t3 gunship reason is irrational when Cybran has the best strat, an air t4, and a t3 gunship that isn’t really any different than broadsword. That reason makes no sense and it’s why next balance patch is reverting that.

The whole talk about superior air is pointless when Sera is the strongest late game air purely due to washer. Which is the whole reason them having a better strat is incoherent.

I don’t see any reason that jamming makes UEF objectively more powerful, just as stealth doesn’t make Cybran objectively more powerful. There’s more margin for misplay against Cybran which requires better play from you, but the units themselves are identical.

I think if we add this in there might be good reason to add it to other uef units to complete the theme.

@ftxcommando said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

The whole talk about superior air is pointless when Sera is the strongest late game air purely due to washer.

Maybe at the late late game, but early T3 (where T3 air is the most impactful) is far more important and the AOE and stealth of the Revenant makes it the best at killing T2 mexes by far. On many maps it can still often vet even after the mass killed requirements were increased.

On the whole the Gemini is the best ASF and the ASF dominates all other air units.

@zeldafanboy said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

@ftxcommando

My whole point was that if UEF T3 air was as good as Cybran it would make UEF unbalanced. It already has the best T3 naval (Neptunes are anti meta because they are good against frig spam) and the best T3 land that synergistically fills in the weakness of its siege T4 land unit. The game balance is supposed to be holistic, every faction isn’t supposed to be equally powerful in every arena at every tech level…

Also just wanted to quote this cuz I almost forgot about it. Nowadays UEF is definitely not the best t3 naval. UEF t3 navy is honestly quite hard countered by Aeon t3. Both exodus/shields or Omen are brutal against neptunes and Tempest is very painful for summits to properly deal with, especially since tempest kills all shieldboat protection in one volley.

That isn’t saying UEF t3 navy is trash, really every t3 navy stage is decent and has varying situations they’re solid at and it’s up to players (and maps) to make it possible to make those situations happen. Summit for example is horrible early on (slow, takes forever to shoot, easy to dodge) but is the best bs in terms of production scale combined with the shieldboat to compensate for their inability to dodge. Only tempest spam can really compare. But this is a highly specialized segment of navy combat that requires situations like sentons rather than something like Point of Reach or even Metir for navy combat where you rarely see more than 5 battleships per side. That’s where other factions are superior. When it comes to neptune, they’re fine (so long as no sub spam) but that comes at the cost of UEF t2 stage being total trash so you’re forced to rush them or slowly lose.

I also don’t see why UEF t3 land is the best for the same reasons just reversed. UEF needs to do enough damage with titans to either win the game through them or build up a snowball that then allows local advantage in the form of percy, t4, or SACUs to win. As it currently stands snipers win any sort of stagnate t3 game and therefore Aeon/Sera have the significantly easier to use “passive buildup” t3 stage. If you don’t pressure with UEF or Cybran, you’re just dead.

These are actual, healthy areas of the game where it doesn’t come down to “this faction is autowin at this stage” but instead it comes to forcing game states through play of the game. This is much healthier than something like being forced to rush neptune since players actually have an advantage to play for at that tech stage.

It’s also why I get sick of reading dudes say one faction “deserves” to autowin something (hello cybran frig) because of “holistic” balance when that’s just terrible game design. This situation of a faction “deserving” a shittier strat for “holistic” reasons is the same.

This in turn is why I would want all T3 air to have unique counterintel aspects, because you can’t make one faction “stronger” or “weaker” when they all basically have the same units barring the unique Aeon ones. If you gave ASFs counterintel you can then make some weaker or stronger forced depending on the air force size, or if not, then you at least introduce spy plane dynamics into air fights and punish lazy players that just make two blobs fight.

@comradestryker

To be fair, this could be taken either way. Seems to me that for you - there is no issue, but to me, the fact that UEF is least picked is detrimental - we want to see more races on every slot, no? Cybran's Stealth just greatly overshadows every other faction.

Looking solely at T3 air do I prefer Cybran over other factions? Yes
However, your thread/theme is "problems with the UEF". If all 3 factions are inferior at T3 air stage to Cybran, that's not a problem with the UEF, and if it was considered a problem that Cybran strat and asf are considered preferable to all other factions, the solution should be one relevant to all the other factions (rather than just giving a 'make your own thread on the other factions' type response).

I also dont understand the rationale for the problems/units focused on in the later parts of your problems with the UEF series. While I'm preempting the thread slightly, the UEF has a real difficulty with the T2 naval stage thanks to Cooper and Valiant - it has a weak destroyer, and the weakest anti-sub naval options, yet it sounds like you'll be focusing on the shield boat (a unit that is very useful in some scenarios)

@ftxcommando lol how would ahwassa or Czar make you win air and let’s not even count the bug because it is awful. Some dude invests 40k mass into an ahwassa, just invest 20k mass into ASF and you should clearly beat them. You yourself said it takes like 20 ASF to kill 1 ahwassa. Sounds very easy to kill one before it does anything with 40k worth of mass in ASF…

If you lose due to enemy having air Exp and you not having one, it’s because you didn’t invest enough into air.

Your first mistake is assuming you need to be an air player to make a washer. A sera player on any slot can at any point devote their eco into a washer because it requires like 2 t3 pgens to rush. You cannot counter it as an air player because the enemy air player is still making ASF and the mirror of the washer player can't counter it without investing half a washer of mass into t3 air infrastructure which will only finish once the washer is already up. The only real counter is winning through land or navy prior to the washer being created or just hoping the team can shield and sam up everywhere important so you don't lose the game.

Aeon and Seraphim both have the capability to do this and win a game, Cybran less so due to the fact a Soul Ripper can be countered fairly reasonably via flak and doesn't output much crash damage/immediate damage. UEF has no possibility to do this at all because they need to set up t3 infrastructure to do any late game air damage which any faction can counter.

@javi
https://replay.faforever.com/17678810

Ahwassa is balanced.

@ftxcommando you are telling me some dude spent like 45k mass in ahwassa + T3 pgen and your ally couldn’t build anything meaningful? Sounds more like a player issue rather than a balance one. Easily can make 50 ASF and just suicide them into enemy ahwassa with a 45k mass budget

Ahwassa is overpowered if you’re even remotely competent when using it and at the very least needs to cost more e. Ftx is completely correct about that. It’s entirely too easy to have a single bomb drop + wreckage from the washer to win the game. Also it takes far more infrastructure to ramp up enough asf prod to offset a quickly built washer.

There have to be a ton of replays of a team slowly losing due to putting mass into a washer and then the washer just turns the tide and wins the game in a way no other exp does outside of the game enders like Mavor.

I think I saw this somewhere in this thread but sera strats definitely do not need a buff or shield or whatever. Sera air is already very strong.

@javi said in The Problems With The UEF - Part 4 (Ambassador & Blackbird):

@ftxcommando you are telling me some dude spent like 45k mass in ahwassa + T3 pgen and your ally couldn’t build anything meaningful? Sounds more like a player issue rather than a balance one. Easily can make 50 ASF and just suicide them into enemy ahwassa with a 45k mass budget

maybe don't act arrogant if you don't know what you're talking about

Ngl, I kind of want to take Javi's sarcasm and make it real to break the monotony of the air meta.

Cyb - Stealth, more maneuverable but weaker asf
UEF - Jamming but average asf
Aeon - Shielded but less maneuverable?
Sera - Tier 3.5 asf

It would probably not work all that great, but I'd be curious to see it

@mazornoob

The ACU has very few options for combat at T2 and T3 stages compared to other factions, save for T4 stage lazer + cloak.

The Cybran ACU has one of the strongest upgrades early on - Stealth.
That upgrade alone is quite powerful in almost any situation and it was buffed recently to grant the ACU an additional 2,000 HP as well.

Arguably the worst T2 tank. Don't have Pillar's amazing HP to mass ratio, doesn't have Ilshie's range, doesn't have Obsidian's close range DPS and tankiness.

The Rhino is cheaper than an Obsidian and Illshie, and better in almost every stat compared to the Pillar. You get what you pay for, no? The Obsidian and Ilshie are strong T2 land units, and the Pillar is mainly just cannon fodder. The Rhino has almost double the DPS as a Pillar and almost has the same DPS as the other 2 units.

Say what you want about it, it is quite strong in its position.

Perhaps one-on-one, or mass-to-mass, they may lose against every other main battle unit. However, similar to the ACU's upgrade - mix in one deceiver, and the battle changes in your favor. Range, damage, mass-to-HP ratio - none of that matters when you can't even see what you're shooting at.

Is saved somewhat by medusas being great at T2.

Medusas have a stun / EMP ability. Quite effective in large groups or against large groups.

Amphibious tank after HP nerfs is a T2 lab and useless for anything but raiding.

The Wagner has probably one advantage no other amphibious tank has - The ability to go under the water and not above it. This can be useful, especially in sneak attacks OR, like you said - raiding. It also has torpedoes to fend off a sub or frig or two.

Stealth is alright

Stealth is strong.

UEF and Sera have long range counters to them and Aeon have the gun, so they're not OP.

What counters are you talking about? If you are referring to the Mongoose, just know that the Hoplite outranges the Mongoose and it also outruns it.

Beetles are a meme.

Yes. Yes, they are.
Though they were buffed a few months ago as well.
A lot of their stats were improved.

Worst DPS per mass T2 PD. Designed for fighting T1 rather than T2.

The T2 PD. Its fire rate is great, and its lack of AoE prevents any reclaim from being damaged. It's also the cheapest and quickest to build out of all the other T2 PD's.

Loyas somehow became weaker than Titans after balance changes and have a meme ability no one ever uses.

Funnily enough, the Loyalist actually beats the Titan 1v1, barely surviving the attack with a handful of HP.
But yes, the EMP ability is quite... unremarkable.

Bricks are good, but no mobile shields to protect T3 armies from strats hurts.

Bricks are great! They can go toe to toe with a Percy, have the highest HP of any land unit (excluding Exps), have remarkable damage and firerate - meaning they can take on all sorts units and still have an advantage. And they even have torpedoes. Yeah, the Torpedo damage isn't great but better than none.

T3 mobile arty used to be OP, then deployment time rebalance happened. No mobile shields = no protection from air = dead arty.

This is quite a fair point, but why build them if you don't have air to cover them?
It's all situational.

On top of the great land choices they have, they also have the cheapest and strongest land experimentals of the game. The Monkeylord and Megalith.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Cybran AA (T1 & T3) can fight against land units... so it's a multi-purpose unit. It's not defenseless and it will attack land units, too.

Let's not forget about the Viper! That MML is annoying to deal with as its missiles split when destroyed.

So yeah, in my opinion - Cybran land is anything but weak!

Thanks for the comment!
Hope to hear more from you.

~ Stryker

@ftxcommando

It isn’t about it being powerful. It’s about counterintel capability not factoring into the balance of Cybran t3 air vs other faction t3 air. You remove the ability for Cybran to use stealth and they’re still equal to other factions on a statline basis. The only exception is their spy plane being strictly worse as it takes 1-2 less asf shots to kill.

That's fair.

I don’t even think jamming is that relevant for anything here. I don’t even consider stealth to be that big of a deal for Cybran air, including strats. It can be kind of annoying when you are macroing on a large map but it doesn’t determine game situations and the reason people love Cybran strat is the aoe not the stealth.

If Stealth isn't that big of a deal, why must every other faction need to mix in spy planes into their ASF mix to try and counter it? That ability alone is costing you ASF and mass.

Granted, every air player should be doing this by default, but the fact that it needs to be done, or a dedicated front-line omni needs to be built - just shows you how strong that ability is.

The relevant part of Cybran stealthed air is the ASF stealth which can allow optimal air engagements against a needlessly aggressive enemy.

It also allows a player to be far more agressive as well - as you can take by surprise an enemy; anywhere on the map.

Likewise, this would be the only relevant part of t3 air that has jamming. Dudes that think it’s OP just haven’t had to deal with competent Cybran air play.

I find it quite annoying how in most of my games, the air player would rather have Cybran Tech. This shows that people go out of their way to get the strongest advantage there is in a game.

If you're unfortunate enough to be facing Cybran as a non-cybran faction, you're forced to basically create only ASF as you need to counterbalance that first engage that will prevent your asf from firing at stealthed ASF.

On top of that, Stealth allows the ability to attack from any angle. An enemy player is forced to actively scout every section of the map or risk being strat'd from those extremities.

You're forced to take engagements outside of your element, you're forced to almost always build only ASF, and you're forced to have Omni, or vision everywhere... all to counter stealth.

~ Stryker

@veteranashe

I think if we add this in there might be good reason to add it to other uef units to complete the theme.

Perhaps - originally I had planes to also propose that the Wasp get jamming but that seemed out of the question.

You can see how much drama non-asf units are creating - now imagine if I included the ASF in this post, haha.

If I did, I would've proposed to greatly reduce the number of false radar signatures to at least 1, but this might be a topic for a different discussion.

~ Stryker

@maudlin27

Looking solely at T3 air do I prefer Cybran over other factions? Yes

My point exactly.... likely because of the Stealth, no?

However, your thread/theme is "problems with the UEF".

Yes. These are all UEF-related issues. But this also plagues other factions as well, though those other 2 factions have some options to help, whereas the UEF doesn't.

If all 3 factions are inferior at T3 air stage to Cybran, that's not a problem with the UEF, and if it was considered a problem that Cybran strat and asf are considered preferable to all other factions, the solution should be one relevant to all the other factions (rather than just giving a 'make your own thread on the other factions' type response).

I believe this affects the UEF more than other factions. Hence my reasoning to apply Jamming to 2 more air units. Sure, it may not help against everything air-wise, but it would help the faction in general or overall - Jaming would help it become a more viable option. For example, let's say you're about to play a Seton's... what faction would you choose? Something tells me that you won't be choosing UEF willingly.
Why is that? - Is it because they don't have a Czar? Is it because they don't have stealth?

As FtX stated in a previous post, (I'll be rephrasing here) a strong counter is that every other faction has proper air experimentals... ones that can be built by anyone - not just the air player. This draws the focus, again, away from UEF as they are the ones unable to counter.

Sure, the Novax exists, but a T2 shield counters that. As for a Soulripper, a Czar, or Ahwassa - you need way more things to counter that.

I also dont understand the rationale for the problems/units focused on in the later parts of your problems with the UEF series.

Well, to be honest with you, as stated in my first post, this was originally planned out to be a huge article reaching almost 8,000 words. So, all of this is pre-written, and I'm just doing some minor editing as we move past each section. I wrote all of this about a month and a half ago. Ask Spikey or Jip - They'll tell you how long I've been working on this. The title is just a title to fit the theme, that's all. I'm just trying to bring attention to issues I believe affect the Faction.

While I'm preempting the thread slightly, the UEF has a real difficulty with the T2 naval stage thanks to Cooper and Valiant - it has a weak destroyer, and the weakest anti-sub naval options, yet it sounds like you'll be focusing on the shield boat (a unit that is very useful in some scenarios)

Though I agree that the UEF has bad anti-torpedo and torpedoes overall, I believe they are balanced as is for the most part as they have a dedicated torpedo unit; The Cooper.
However, not to spoil too much, but I wasn't quite focusing on stats for the shield boat this time. I may talk about the stats, but I'll mainly be focusing rather on the shield itself and its shape. You'll see it tomorrow.

~ Stryker

@snagglefox

Ngl, I kind of want to take Javi's sarcasm and make it real to break the monotony of the air meta.

Cyb - Stealth, more maneuverable but weaker asf
UEF - Jamming but average asf
Aeon - Shielded but less maneuverable?
Sera - Tier 3.5 asf

It would probably not work all that great, but I'd be curious to see it.

It would take the meaning of faction diversity to a new level - which I am all for!
That's the whole reason I wrote this post -to help diversify the factions and help UEF in its air problem whilst doing so.

~ Stryker