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

@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

@ComradeStryker
Your view of cybran land is flawed.
Cybran com stealth was nerfed. The additional costs makes it the equivalent of having t2 or nano on other coms (both of which remove the cybran's regen advantage, as well as, removing an advantage gained from the health buff).

The medusa is only good against large numbers of enemies otherwise it will consistently miss everything. And is the worst arty for taking out pd/structures.

The torps on any of the land are a joke and no-one should be scared of a unit that takes 5 minutes to kill a frigate (and costs more).

The only way a loyalist wins a fight with a titan is if it gets into close range. The titan has greater range-dps and hp.

And the brick suffers greatly from a lack of shields (which a percy gets) and is too slow to counter the snipers of aeon/sera.

And finally the rhino suffers from a low profile which means that half it shots get wrecked by terrain (or even worse it shoots walls which most other tanks shoot over).

The strength of snipers/shield combos and the existence of mobile shields buffing health pools has left cybran in a sad land state.

Maybe we should buff the omni sensor (increase the range or decrease the cost) because cybran air is strong but thinking that cybran land is in a good place is flawed.

It sounds to me that introducing jamming to strategic bombers is too strong, as it may be the difference between them being able to drop their projectile or not. But introducing it to the spy planes is interesting, and something I'd really like to see to add to the faction diversity. At the moment, Jamming plays a minimal role in this game even though it is an interesting mechanic.

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

The Cybran ACU has one of the strongest upgrades early on - Stealth.

Correct, early on, meaning late T1 stage at most. Look at other factions' options:

• UEF gun + nano
• UEF gun + T2 + shield
• Aeon double gun
• Aeon gun range + radar
• Aeon chrono
• Aeon double gun plus shield
• Sera gun + T2 + regen
  Most of these can't be fought toe-to-toe with a Cybran com until lazer. By the time you get lazer, it's T3 land time and a Cybran com with its 12k base health gets kited to death by 3 percies/bricks or 3 snipers. Only after you get cloak you can go rambo, and that's assuming your opponent doesn't have omni, or built a GC, or groundfires an experimental or strats at you.

The Wagner has probably one advantage no other amphibious tank has - The ability to go under the water and not above it.

That's a sidegrade at most. It means that outside of spamming T2 artillery Cybran has zero tools to get back in the water after being pushed out.

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.

All the more reason for Cybran T3 air to be strictly better, no? Other factions can shield their T3 arties and don't need air dominance to use them.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the Cybran AA (T1 & T2) can fight against land units... so it's a multi-purpose unit. It's not defenseless and it will attack land units, too.

T2 Cybran flak doesn't fight land units. You don't seem to play Cybran very much. No one seriously uses T1 AA's land DPS either, I'd very much prefer another faction's AA that doesn't take 5 years to kill a Mercy.

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

A while back all MMLs except the Viper were buffed, so it's not quite the terror in comparison that it used to be.

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

It sounds to me that introducing jamming to strategic bombers is too strong, as it may be the difference between them being able to drop their projectile or not. But introducing it to the spy planes is interesting, and something I'd really like to see to add to the faction diversity. At the moment, Jamming plays a minimal role in this game even though it is an interesting mechanic.

You just said jamming plays a minimal role and then proposed giving it to a unit where it has a minimal role lol

I’d literally rather have no jamming added than this purely for the self respect of UEF not getting ANOTHER mediocre jamming unit everyone forgets has jamming because any unit with a slightly useful jamming is immediately considered gamebreaking.

Also curious how you justify the strat with the best statline having stealth being no problem but UEF getting jamming suddenly breaking the game.

This topic is not about the Cybran strat, it is about these changes:

Problem:
When it comes to air, UEF seems to be less favored. Especially when comparing them to other factions > > > and their available units (Stealth, Soulripper, Ahwassa, Czar, etc.).

To help with this, I propose that the T3 Strategic Bomber, as well as the T3 Spy Plane, be granted Jamming.

Proposed Solution:
Add Jamming to both T3 Strategic Bomber and T3 Spy Plane.
Blackbird: -50 or Free? power maintenance cost.
Ambassador: -150 power maintenance cost.

Thanks for explaining that. So does that mean for the sake of coherency you also advocate for nerfing Cybran strat since stealth can mean your sams don’t shoot at them until they already dropped? Or is this just a UEF thing we gotta prevent?

If you want to talk about the cybran strat, make a new topic. Someone even made guidelines for you to follow, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them

What I think about the Cybran strat is wholly irrelevant for this topic ? The OP wants to add jamming to the spy plane and the strat, it feels to me adding it to the strat is too strong. What else do you want to know about the suggested changes from me ?

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

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.

It's not that strong though because it's not free and increases in cost with the number of ASF.
The one spyplane you need to have is quite cheap and you don't really need more.
So you're better off turning stealth off if you have like 10 ASF and the opponent has a spyplane
And once you get to higher numbers, 80 ASF need the same e as an uncapped omni so running stealth very quickly costs you more than the omni costs to counter it.

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

If you want to talk about the cybran strat, make a new topic. Someone even made guidelines for you to follow, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them

What I think about the Cybran strat is wholly irrelevant for this topic ? The OP wants to add jamming to the spy plane and the strat, it feels to me adding it to the strat is too strong. What else do you want to know about the suggested changes from me ?

There’s nothing to know because it’s incoherent and irrational to be satisfied with the current Cybran strat and consider UEF strat with jamming OP.

@ftxcommando I mean not all factions were meant to have the exact same values. UEF has better T2 and T3 land than Cybran, so should we just buff Cybran t3 land to be as good as UEF t3 land?

And jamming is pretty crazy on t1 navy when you don’t know if it’s 2 or 5 frigates

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

If you want to talk about the cybran strat, make a new topic. Someone even made guidelines for you to follow, but I'm sure you're already familiar with them
What I think about the Cybran strat is wholly irrelevant for this topic ? The OP wants to add jamming to the spy plane and the strat, it feels to me adding it to the strat is too strong.

I dont see why its weird to talk about cybran (or any other) strats here. Its clearly relevant to the topic, especially since you shouldnt talk about balancing units in isolation.

The OP even mentioned cybran and used it as a point of reference to come to his conclusion.

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

@ftxcommando I mean not all factions were meant to have the exact same values. UEF has better T2 and T3 land than Cybran, so should we just buff Cybran t3 land to be as good as UEF t3 land?

This is such an overused line thats so vague and can be literally said about anything.

insert any unit that sucks but why would u buff it cause this faction has a stronger xyz stage!

We would literally be stuck in 2012 balance

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

I dont see why its weird to talk about cybran (or any other) strats here. Its clearly relevant to the topic, especially since you shouldnt talk about balancing units in isolation.

The topic is about t3 uef strat and scout, if u wanna talk of any other t3 air unit or group of unit u kinda need another thread.

Anyway balancing is already done in isolation so why would it change anything xD

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

This is such an overused line thats so vague and can be literally said about anything.

It's often said on these forums because the fallacy it rebuts is also often brought up.

If you want to decide if a unit is too strong or too weak you obviously need to compare it to other units in its category. After all unit's strength is relative, not absolute.
If you want to have an interesting game you also need to compare whole rosters of units between different factions. So for example the strength of an UEF strat is influenced by UEF having Broad Sword, not having Air T4 etc.
That's why comparing the UEF strat to the Cybran one is valid. Even more important is looking at the whole roster of units and trying to figure out if UEF is already compensated for their strat being weaker then cybran one and what would be the effect of adding jamming to UEF strat. How would it impact the T3 Land stage, how would it impact strat rush, how would it impact the ability of UEF to snipe heavily shielded targets etc.