FAF Beta - Feedback

I 100% agree with bi montly iterative patches as Blodir said. This "balance patch" literally will not change gameplay too much except for the nuke balance and air exps maybe.
Although I feel the biggest point is Blodir's comment of "U are allowed to change multiple stats at once to compensate"
I feel like these patches are just a little hesitate to change balance in any impactful way you know to make the game feel a little newer in someways. I don't like to bring it up but kinda how SC2 does it.
Don't get me wrong I'm no 2400 like Tagada & I havn't won any tournaments but like if you are going to make a balance patch why not shake up the balance more then just nerfing some late game units in which I believe wont even make too much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. The biggest one for me is changing Ahwassa Dmg Radius from 20 -> 19? Like what... that literally makes no difference. 1000$ no body will notice this in game and it won't affect anything. Ayslum is 40 -> 45, it's ok i don't mind it. Although yet another small change although probably will be kinda impactful depends I don't think you'll ever build a lot of them (I'm talking like building 10+ I feel like it's usually like 5-7 you build to cover an army + acu.

Sniper bot nerf is a god send. I don't know if its overnerf. That's not really my field of expertise lol, but a nerf was definitely needed.

Ripper unironically needed a buff not a nerf lol
T2 UEF Destroyer change is good.

"Could be tackling bigger design issues and actually making significant changes" what a dream... (Also im not trying to be toxic in this post so don't berate me) but seriously tho what a dream for tackling real design issues.

Please don’t do big changes for no reason just to shake up meta, thank you. If I wanted that I would simply pick a different map to play.

My problem here is that (some) problematic units that fall into clown tier are identified (kennel but I would also still say uef destro) but the buffs are too marginal so the units go from FF-tier to D-tier, you still don’t want to make them and work to ignore them except in the rare 1 of 25 game situations. UEF destro buff seems to be done in the context that bulwark exists and stacking even more hp on the destro in combo with bulwark can be hugely oppressive. But the issue currently is that UEF doesn’t have a great frig to fall back on to delay and allow a build up of 6-8k mass in destro/bulwark/coopers. If UEF frig is an ultimate meh unit then it needs a destro that can support itself independently so it doesn’t immediately die to either cybran frigs or aeon destros. The current situation of giving this tiny buff with no adjustment to UEF frig keeps UEF navy in its “t3 skip or ignore navy” dynamic.

And sparky is nice but it’s still just so residentsleeper it has no ability to build land facs. Like just let people load a transport with sparkies and do aggressive drops what’s the deal?

Unlike others I would love the issues the patch addressed if the changes were a bit less timid in terms of buffs. Timidity in nerfs is ok because of the prevalence of nerfs in FAF IMO.

Also no chrono nerf?

@ftxcommando said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

Please don’t do big changes for no reason just to shake up meta, thank you.

True & Fair, that's not exactly what im saying I'm kinda of saying what you are saying. " My problem here is that (some) problematic units that fall into clown tier are identified" -> "the buffs are too marginal so the units go from FF-tier to D-tier"

I think that sums up the complaining.

I do agree with one thing and that is the BUG/soul ripper did not need a nerf. It’s already such an awful unit compared to the ahwassa and Czar’s performances. Kinda like the Atlantis aswell.

As FtX said, maybe we want to move these from F tier to C or B tier. Some units fill in niche purposes but they at least should do it decently. Atm some units (such as the Atlantis or T1 subs) don’t even cover a niche slot because there is another option that does their job much better or/and have extreme flaws (such as the soul ripper being slow and lackluster or a sub instantly dying to a Torp/becoming useless past T2)

@femboy said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

I do agree with one thing and that is the BUG/soul ripper did not need a nerf. It’s already such an awful unit compared to the ahwassa and Czar’s performances. Kinda like the Atlantis aswell.

Yeah, this seems very odd. Washers are definitely too strong but lumping in the Soul Ripper just because it's also an air T4s is not enough justification to nerf one of the currently worst units in the game. If the ripper gets it's E-requirement doubled it drastically needs some sort of compensatory buff, otherwise I can't see a realistic scenario to build it over gunships/bombers, something I'm already having a hard time doing.

@taunoob1 said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

@femboy said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

I do agree with one thing and that is the BUG/soul ripper did not need a nerf. It’s already such an awful unit compared to the ahwassa and Czar’s performances. Kinda like the Atlantis aswell.

Yeah, this seems very odd. Washers are definitely too strong but lumping in the Soul Ripper just because it's also an air T4s is not enough justification to nerf one of the currently worst units in the game. If the ripper gets it's E-requirement doubled it drastically needs some sort of compensatory buff, otherwise I can't see a realistic scenario to build it over gunships/bombers, something I'm already having a hard time doing.

Literally everything this man said. Cybran air T4 has been lacklustre, this makes it more so.

It'll be interesting to see if the sniperbot nerf is too strong.

Generally I like the approach to the changes - I'd much rather small to moderate changes to buff/nerf something to see how it goes rather than overcompensating and ending up either ruining a unit or needing a new balance patch to nerf an overpowered unit.

The only two that surprised me were the soulripper nerf (it makes sense given the changes to other air experimentals but would ben ice if it could have something to compensate it, e.g. a small mass cost reduction, since it's by far the weakest of the three), and the nuke silo change (more for the reasoning, as while seeing 1 early nuke is very common I've rarely seen multiple nukes and if I have it's usually been to that player's detriment - i.e. I'd see the issue more that an early nuke is very powerful in teamgames, especially a heavily hive assisted one that can be both built and loaded quickly, rather than that building a second nuke is really powerful. However, I'm not sure what alternative option would achieve that better - construction build time increase? increasing energy cost of the missiles?)

In terms of each specifically:

• Asylum - fine, it was the best mobile shield
• Titan - fine (they're really good). Feel bad for the loyalist as it feels weaker than the titan
• Sniper bots - Hopefully it's not an overnerf, but most of my experience using them is with my AI since I struggle with the attention/apm to use them as a player so Im not well placed to comment anyway
• Ahwassa - fine, it's really strong if you have air control
• Czar - fine - another strong experimental
• Soulripper - as above feels like it could use something to compensate
• Valiant - good, since it's the only destroyer that is bad vs subs
• Salem - good
• Sparky - good, it could use a small buff and fits well with its theme
• Kennels - good, they could use a buff and this still gives them a clear differentiation to hives
• Nukes - as above, overall ok but I dont see a fast second nuke as that much of a problem
• TML change - nice QoL change

I think nerfing bug e is fine. If you buff its weapons to be as good as the others, it would then just need its e nerfed like the others anyway. It's just that the weapon buff hasn't come yet.

Dunno what you could do to help bug though, give it emp like rambo scu, or maybe some big aoe gun like a treb but direct fire, or a bunch of hoplite rockets, or something else idk. Considering how infrequently they're built, you could make their emp quite large/powerful before it becomes too good. Maybe it could even emp t4s and still be balanced, so it could act as an exp sniper.

First of all, thanks for all the feedback, keep it coming.
I will be reading through everything and replying in bulk.

Aeon Chrono:
The PR is done and awaiting the last tweaks, once it's merged it will be featured here.

Soul Ripper:
I will look into buffing it in some other areas, it seems as if the personal stealth buff introduced in the last patch was not enough to make it viable in most scenarios.

Kennels:
More changes will likely be coming but they aren't here yet as they require more discussion and testing. For now, these are meant to bridge the gap between the hive and the kennel but I agree that something more is needed.

Loyalist:
We will look into slightly tweaking it in other areas as currently, it feels like a slightly worse version of the titan with occasional big impact due to its ability (Yes it's actually useful and very powerful if used correctly although that's pretty situational and hard to pull-off)

We're planning on tackling the navy, mostly underwater, gameplay and adjusting it to make the navy - torpedo bomber and surface-underwater interaction more interesting and less one-sided. There will also likely be a frigate rebalance alongside so that while cybran will still have the best frigate it will be much less oppressive.
I can't guarantee it will make it into this patch (January) but we will do our best.

In terms of other more drastic changes: I am not in favor of doing big changes without good reasoning just to shake up the meta. FAF gets a lot of its diversity from maps so I don't believe we need to change the meta drastically every other year because, in my opinion, it doesn't really get stale if you consider how different the game plays on Theta, Loki, Ditch, Seton's, 16 bases 20x20 mapgen.
That is not to say that we are opposed to bigger changes, they just need to be done on the merit of the gameplay being either boring and simply not fun, or broken. If you have any suggestions you can create a separate thread or suggest it here as well. You also don't need to propose concrete changes, just a direction.

Overall I feel like currently the balance and the meta are in a good state without any single strategy being dominant in most map scenarios (T3 land rush was too strong hence it got nerfed) and the biggest offenders: Ahwassa, Nukes, Snipers, Titan/Loya rush and spam on bigger maps were eliminated.

We will also be looking into adjusting the costs (probably some Energy Cost nerfs) for T3 and Experimental Artilleries as well Yolo/Para. Alongside adjusting the Reclaim % left by higher tech units we hope to prolong and improve the dynamism of phases: late T3 / early T4. Hopefully, it will also be enough to create a new phase of mid-T4 that is rarely seen which will feature many land and some air experimental fighting instead of people defaulting to Nukes/Artilerries which will cost significantly more E and therefore require more infrastructure and won't be as easy mass dumps as they are right now.

Traditionally, gunships didn't cost as much energy per mass as other air units. So that would be another reason not to make the soul ripper more expensive in terms of energy. The more compelling reason of course is that it doesn't get used very much because it's not great.

@taunoob1 said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

@femboy said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

I do agree with one thing and that is the BUG/soul ripper did not need a nerf. It’s already such an awful unit compared to the ahwassa and Czar’s performances. Kinda like the Atlantis aswell.

Yeah, this seems very odd. Washers are definitely too strong but lumping in the Soul Ripper just because it's also an air T4s is not enough justification to nerf one of the currently worst units in the game. If the ripper gets it's E-requirement doubled it drastically needs some sort of compensatory buff, otherwise I can't see a realistic scenario to build it over gunships/bombers, something I'm already having a hard time doing.

The problem is you need exactly 1 t3 pgen to build a soul ripper in 3 minutes in a teamgame under current e cost. That’s 70k hp that asfs could target in the middle of an air fight instead of enemy air causing a huge snowball loss. The reason you don’t see it is because washer and czar cost nothing in energy infrastructure and can do the same thing for air fights while also killing bases. It isn’t about “do I make gunships or strats or soul ripper” because any person at min 12 in a teamgame can make a soul ripper with zero infrastructure while strats require extra factories, bp, and pgens since they are drastically more e intensive per unit of mass.

With that said it can still get a buff, but it’s still problematic at the e cost it was at.

Soul Ripper doesn't need to have great offense, I kind of liked that it was the tankiest air unit (just like Megalith is tankiest land EXP and Brick is tankiest T3 unit, albeit at inefficient cost). However, it could not adequately perform its damage sponge role due to the extremely high DPS per cost that comes out of ASF swarms. And buffing its HP to compensate for that would make all other sources of AA damage useless. Idk if a low DPS high HP air exp is possible in this game, but it would be cool to see it work.

@ftxcommando said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

That’s 70k hp that asfs could target in the middle of an air fight instead of enemy air

Set target priority to "Fighters" and the bug becomes close to useless. Maybe its missiles will kill 3 ASF during the air fight.

UI mods shouldn’t be a baseline for default game balance. It still doesn’t address the real problem of it costing zero infrastructure to make a bug from any position in a game.

@tagada you have my attention when you said improve dynamism of phases of t3 and t4 sir. I'm content, the gods have spoken to me.

I do have a suggest for prolonging mid-t3 maybe late-t3 is probably very uhhh not agreeable idk, but making SACUs be the only ones that can build Experimentals maybe even nukes/smds/t3-t4-strategic-artillery but that'd be a giga balance change so I doubt it'd be considered but I decided I'd suggest it anyhow. (please show mercy xD)

On the Soul Ripper:

The Problem:
Currently, it feels like an air experimental without purpose. We have the ahwasser for massive AoE, and the czar for great single target damage. The soulripper is an awkward middle-of-the road. If you want to snipe a com or land exp, czar is better. If you want to flatten a base or t3 army, ahwasser is better. The soul ripper doesn't excel at any of these tasks, and especially as cybran you are better off just building t3 bombers or gunships to fill these roles. Additionally, the strategic capabilities of the Soul Ripper don't feel special at all. In most regards, it feels and performs like a group of T3 gunships.

On raw combat power, the soul ripper is not as cost-effective as T3 gunships. Having less efficient T4 is not a problem on land or navy, as you get a higher concentration of combat power compared to building more T3 units. But in the air, packing lots of units close together is not nearly as much of a problem. Thus if a T4 air unit isn't as resource efficient as T3, it has to offer other capabilities to compensate. Both the ahwasser and czar do this sufficiently by offering unique abilities not achievable with T3 air, while the soul ripper does not.

Proposed solution:
One way to give the Soul Ripper a more distinctive role and feel could be to make it a long-range bombardment unit. For example, what would happen if we give it a range of 62? This would enable it to hover on the edge of a battle or hostile base (conveniently just outranging SAMs, being able to avoid them with good micro), poking away at the enemy and drifting in and out of vision with it's stealth. Kind of like a lategame air version of cybran stealth com or hoplites, or tempests in starcraft2. In combination with the stealthed ASF it can be used to deceive the enemy and bait air fights, fitting the general cybran philosophy well. Due to being an air unit it can attack from unique angles unlike any other long-range unit in the game today (just think of the possibilities on mountainous maps like gap!). This would add a new micro-intensive strategic dimension to the game.

If it proves too oppressive, values like range, dps, hp and speed could of course be tuned. But I would love to see a new angle being explored with the bug, instead of its current existence as a strictly bigger gunship.

@xayo said in FAF Beta - Feedback:

conveniently outranging SAMs

Yes, a Fatboy should also get a buff so it outranges t2 arty.
Units that can be countered are pretty boring anyway.

And the soulripper was buffed compared to the other air t4s.
Its e cost was only increased by 98.3% compared to an 109.2% increase for the czar and a 146.2% increase for the ahwassa. Even before it was less e per mass than the other two (14.12* vs 16.25* its mass cost in e). So even though it might need more buffs, saying it wasn't buffed compared to other air t4s is just wrong. So making a soulripper compared to an ahwassa is now more viable than before the patch.

@xayo

This seems like a really good role for it, but I don't know if outranging SAMS is great... since it has stealth already, maybe make it have the same range as SAMS? That way you could outrange SAMS if out of omni or vision range

I’m not sure about that, couldn’t that mean you could stack 2 soulrippers and just clean up every base if you win air? Since SAMS can’t stop you anymore, you’d just continue making ASF and soulrippers and win game. Specially with them bearing a 99k health bar