Points of Imbalance.

This thread is getting some renewed attention from https://forum.faforever.com/topic/814/balance-thread-guidelines-feedback regarding T4, so continuing from there I have a thought or two:

• Monkeylord is about as good as mass equivalent number of bricks.
• Bricks and percies are in general mass-effective against T4.
• Monkeylord is not more mass effective against other T4 because it has way less range and can't micro against them.
• Therefore, there's no reason to build Monkeylords instead of mass equivalent numbers of Bricks.

My reasoning here is, Aeon and Sera don't have an equivalent of Bricks or Percies, so they have to build T4 to attack. In exchange they have snipers, which are great against T3 armies. Fatboy has huge range and can kite enemy T4s as long as it has space to retreat to, so UEF have a reason to build it over Percies.

To some extent same goes for Megalith, but Monkeylord doesn't seem to have any advantages over T3 spam. Maybe it's harder to strat since no mobile shields? Then again, ML has a total of 45k HP versus cumulative 67,5k of 15 bricks.

@MazorNoob said in Points of Imbalance.:

This thread is getting some renewed attention from https://forum.faforever.com/topic/814/balance-thread-guidelines-feedback regarding T4, so continuing from there I have a thought or two:

• Monkeylord is about as good as mass equivalent number of bricks.
• Bricks and percies are in general mass-effective against T4.
• Monkeylord is not more mass effective against other T4 because it has way less range and can't micro against them.
• Therefore, there's no reason to build Monkeylords instead of mass equivalent numbers of Bricks.

My reasoning here is, Aeon and Sera don't have an equivalent of Bricks or Percies, so they have to build T4 to attack. In exchange they have snipers, which are great against T3 armies. Fatboy has huge range and can kite enemy T4s as long as it has space to retreat to, so UEF have a reason to build it over Percies.

To some extent same goes for Megalith, but Monkeylord doesn't seem to have any advantages over T3 spam. Maybe it's harder to strat since no mobile shields? Then again, ML has a total of 45k HP versus cumulative 67,5k of 15 bricks.

15 bricks = ~ 4700 dps, 72k build power
mk = ~4200 dps (+ minor anti air), 27k buildpower, 0.2 units faster + stealth field
Bricks require t3 factory and 3 times slower to build, by the time monkeylord started moving something, you would be on on your 5.5 brick. Also monkeylord can vet and get same +10k/20k hp way faster than a blob of bricks.

Actually seems balanced - you want firepower NOW - go ML, you just want firepower 'somethere in the future' - go bricks.

This thread filled with direct comparisons of the monkeylord and other experimentals to blobs of only expensive units like bricks and percies is very unrealistic for a simple reason, its because most players don't use units such as t1 and t2 air, t2 mobile shields and t1 artillery spam in combination with t3 heavy units to easily crush monkeylords and moderatly overwhelm the galactic collosus and even chicken(lightning ball after death needs balance work).

For the price of 1 percy or brick you can get 35 t1 artillery with a combined dps (according to the unit database) of 1300 for cybran 2300 for uef 3500 for aeon(misses alot say 1750) and 1700 for the zhue(more expensive), that is ignoring all t2 units and any mobile or emplaced shields that might assist the army from prior combat and firebases, you can also drop engineers with a transport and build shields for the army in the time it takes any experimental to slowly walk its fatass across the map.
Experimentals veterancy is the single and only thing that helps them from being totally cost ineffective (useless), They exist only as a concentration unit to help break entrenched positions with massive support from your land army and air forces. If we take the numbers from previous posts and do some gentle tweaking within comparable mass costs we get these values

ML: 20000 mass, 27500 BT DPS 4000
10 bricks: 12800 mass, 48000 BT DPS 3120
15 bricks: 19200 mass, 72000 BT DPS 4680
8 bricks 10240 mass 71 medusas 2560 mass BT IDGAF DPS 5196 TOTAL MASS 12800
10 bricks 12800 mass 177 medusas 6400 mass BT IDGAF DPS 9846 TOTAL MASS 19200
this is not factoring any shields or any sort of air support vs a single monkeylord at comparable cost, with minor positioning and air support or artillery a monkeylord is literally suiciding to attack any position by itself, mass inefficient beyond belief.

Experimentals exist only as a superheavy base breaking unit that sacrifices extreme cost for a chance at damaging heavily defended areas, this doesn't include the fact that if an experimental is sniped it can be the end for you or your team since it deposits a giant load of mass on the enemies doorstep since the reclaim system has issues

I have also forgotten to add, None of this factors in the adjacency bonus of having factories connected to mass and power buildings lowering total costs, you could easily shave another 10% of a mobile armies mass costs from every single unit in comparison to an experimental that has no way of reducing its cost in any form

25/04/2022 - More points of Imbalance.
Each point has been playtested in sandbox games and when needed, appropriately calculated.
Galactic Colossus. Reduce claw weapon reload time from ~6.7 seconds to ~5.6 seconds to bring it closer inline with the Ythotha's anti-army capabilities.
Harbinger. Decrease Harbinger ShieldRechargeTime (after collapse) from 30 -> 17 to give same Shield HP / Sec while recharging as Titan. Otherwise increase ShieldRechargeTime of Titan from 12 -> 21 to get the same result.
Oblivion. Increase damage radius from 2 -> 2.4 to better reflect the ground on-hit animation radius. Or reduce animation radius. Increase damage per shot from 600 -> 650 so Mongoose gets oneshot like Hoplite (no more UEF favoritism). Keep DPS the same by increasing reload time from 4 -> 4.3 seconds. Changes could also go the other way. Decrease damage per shot from 600 -> 500 and decrease reload time from 4 -> 3.3 seconds.
Chrono Dampener. Increase energy cost per fire to 2500 energy (requires the full overflow of a single T2 Power Generator to function). Add 2000 HP to com (same as Cybran stealth).
Torrent. Increase shots to destroy missile from 2 -> 3 to make the unit more effective considering its high cost and singular functionality (unlike cruisers).
Swift Wind. Change popup tooltip to mention that the Swift Wind is only cost effective against T2 Air units, Transports and nothing else.

Aeon missiles swerve and can miss stationary targets. The only faction that can miss. There would be too much baby rage for the devs to implement the following change, yet it would be nice if TMD actually had to hit stuff to destroy it. Balance the scales as it were.

P.S. I used to take the time to explain in the post my reasoning, logic, math and post replay ID's of sandbox games. This time, do it yourselves or just take my word for it.

@arran said in Points of Imbalance.:

Swift Wind. Change popup tooltip to mention that the Swift Wind is only cost effective against T2 Air units, Transports and nothing else.

Vs T1 inties, cost effectiveness will depend on micro. Did you take this into account? IMO the biggest advantage of Swift Winds is being able to better control the map compared to the lower speed of inties, which is independent of the prior statement.

Your other points sound good, but I'm no balance pro.

You are somewhat right about Swift Winds @Cyborg16. With superior micro, they certainly can shred interceptors, but the stat lines are against them in such a battle.
I felt a tooltip change would help new players realize that (with their not-pro-level air micro) interceptors are better at killing other interceptors.

T1 bombers have a better DPS per cost ratio than strat bombers, I suggest buffing strat bombers until they perform better on a mass to mass basis :^)

This is what people who say Swift Wind bad sound like

@moses_the_red I ran the test and bricks absolutely dumpstered the monkeylord

Similarly 10 percivals destroyed the monkeylord leaving 5 of them dead.

The Monkeylord has never (IIRC) been better damage&armour per cost vs bricks/percies (at least, before veterency); it's not designed to be. Instead it has speed and stealth. It's best used as an ambush unit, not a front-line unit (Cybran and UEF don't have front-line T4 armour, but they do have the best T3 armour).

uhhhhhhh mega?