Bad Teleport Upgrades

Currently there are 2 viable teleport upgrades in the game: Cybran and Seraphim. Both rely on late game snipes focused on air grids or ACUs. Aeon and UEF on the otherhand, currently suffer from clown upgrade syndrome with regards to their teleport and I literally have never seen either faction make this upgrade except to troll games by teleporting ACU around in water.

I've got 2 main ideas for how to make these factions more viable. The first two proposals will be for UEF and the third will be for Aeon, but the idea behind the proposals are similar.

There are two ways to make UEF tele not a clown upgrade, far as I can see.

Proposal 1: [UEF] Move the Upgrade

The first is to keep the upgrade the same and put it on the right arm so you can do a T3/Billy/Teleport ACU.

I've heard people say this is OP, which I think is patently ridiculous. You need 560 mass in TMD to actually stop a billy (if you're not Aeon) for a wide breadth of range. I would wager an air grid could be protected by like 3000 mass in TMD total. That's like 10 TMD. Not to mention, it's incredibly easy to emergency build 2 TMD to shoot down a billy compared to the respective counter against Cybran or Sera which will require a decent setup of hives and shields at a minimum.

You need approx 10 or so t2 PD to actually dissuade a Sera or Cybran teleport which comes up to around double that mass cost in TMD. Beyond that, a billy requires payment for each missile and if the first one misses, the ACU isn't accomplishing anything for the next FORTY seconds as the missile builds. A Cybran or Sera ACU can always teleport to a new location or walk around outside of PD range to get more value. They also can outrange T1 PD defenses if they actually got gun upgrade.

However, even with all those negatives, a teleport billy allows you to be more aggressive in getting good shots against unit mixes or unprotected bases. For that, it should still require the default teleport cost.

Proposal 2: [UEF] Cheapen the Upgrade

The second is to make teleport a two t3 pgen cost item or so as then it could allow UEF to have a period of time to actually make use of a t3 ACU proxy base teleport. If the upgrade is kept on the back, there is zero tools for the UEF ACU to utilize aside from their T3 suite.

Therefore I propose:
Mass Cost: 15,000 -> 5,000
Energy Cost: 1,500,000 -> 500,000
Buildtime: 4000

This means that a T3 ACU will be getting the upgrade for about 110 mass a second, 11,250 energy a second, and for 45 seconds. Effectively, it becomes viable around a t3 pgen later than Cybran or Sera late game ACU upgrades.

These costs seem reasonable as the e cost gates it to the time periods you need to worry about these sort of cheese upgrades and the mass cost is around what you would need to actually make use of a T3 ACU teleporting around the map.

Proposal 3: [Aeon] Do Both

Move Aeon Teleport to the right arm so that you can do:

• Shield/Range/Teleport
• Chrono/Range/Teleport
• Shield/T3/Teleport
• Chrono/T3/Teleport

I don't PERSONALLY think any of these combos are insane, but I'm open to Aeon keeping their teleport on their middle so you can't give the extra HP of shield on the teleporting ACU if people think that's OP. I think, cost wise, there is no real reason for UEF or Aeon to differ if that's the way UEF goes because the main threat in either faction is the T3 suite.

Moving both of the faction's Teleporter upgrades to the right arm is probably the better option of these that you offered.
It would open up more plays for these factions as they are quite limited with how they currently work.

Though, I'm not certain of what other unseen effects could be caused by cheapening a tele upgrade.
Cheapening the upgrade sounds like it's just calling for a cheese strategy. Having an ACU teleporting into your base at 15-20 minutes by an air player sounds absurd.

~ Stryker

Aeon teleport would need to be cheap regardless, it doesn’t have a quick utility option like billy/double gun/laser. If your air base loses in bp scaling to a t3 acu idk what to tell you. You can’t teleport engies with you.

But, as Aeon, you have other options too.
Aeon (as well as Sera) have the Teleport SACUs option available to them.

And I've seen a lot of plays with Tele-SACUs, already.

Aeon may not have a good Tele-Snipe on their ACU, but they more than makeup for it with their SACUs.

~ Stryker

You’re making the argument that Aeon should have no teleport because their SACUs exist. And that’s fine with me, I don’t care if people remove teleport from Aeon and/or UEF. But my point here is to make them work as viable upgrades within the game for that faction.

There is no coherent argument for Aeon keeping their current teleport, it’s beyond useless and a joke upgrade.

I'm not saying that they SHOULDN'T have teleport...
I'm saying that they do have other options, too - (since you mentioned that they can't teleport engineers.)

But yes, I agree that Aeon Teleport is less-than-adequate.
Though, again, the simplest form I see is to move the upgrade over, as you said.
Making it cheaper on top of that would just be a meme.

~ Styker

Moving the teleport does nothing for Aeon, teleporting at 5 t3 pgen stage with just the ability to build a tml base is trash. That’s literally what they and UEF can do right now and it’s used in 0 of 1.2 million games.

Cheaper tele sounds like it would be cancerous on larger maps. It's cheap enough to make before the enemy gets radar coverage on every single inch of the map, so one could tele a com somewhere out of the way and make a stealth proxy base without taking the risk of getting a drop past the enemy.

You can get an omni on 1 t3 pgen and you can make 8 spyplanes to properly cover half of a 20x20 constantly. The cancer levels here are drastically lower than needing 5000 mass invested per 20k mass in infrastructure against telemazor.

There has got to be another way to balance Teleport than to just make it cheaper and thus easier to obtain.

~ Stryker

There isn’t unless you change chrono to do something like perma shut down any building in Y radius around ACU and you can only use the ability every 20 seconds or something. Teleport at its current pricepoint is a “win game” option, if it doesn’t do like 50-80k mass in damage at minimum it’s terrible. That is impossible for Aeon to accomplish.

It’s also impossible for UEF barring billy, but at least UEF has the upgrade to make it viable already there.

@ftxcommando said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

You can get an omni on 1 t3 pgen and you can make 8 spyplanes to properly cover half of a 20x20 constantly.

Just because you can doesn't mean anyone does, it's an initial investment and a bunch of energy that should go into early T3 air. That's why Cybran cloak costs 750k energy, it's so that by the time you spent 1.25 million e on cloak and mazer AND got your ACU into position your opponent has had time to get multiple T3 pgens and has no excuse not to have omni.

Same goes for radar, especially when you can throw up a stealth gen field in five seconds on T3 com. I had multiple situations where a stealth drop went into vision range for a couple seconds and it still succeeded because nobody paid attention at the time, to the point where I just do that regardless on the off chance I can get engies through. There's absolutely potential for cancer if missing a radar blip for five seconds means a stealth proxy base 15 minutes into the game.

@mazornoob said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

Just because you can doesn't mean anyone does, it's an initial investment and a bunch of energy that should go into early T3 air.

That’s not true. I make early t3 pgen and omni before min 15 in teamgames as a front slot if I’m not pressured. I don’t need more than the 1000 extra e to power my t3 army and the omni with pgen adjacency only costs like 1200 e.

@mazornoob said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

That's why Cybran cloak costs 750k energy, it's so that by the time you spent 1.25 million e on cloak and mazer AND got your ACU into position your opponent has had time to get multiple T3 pgens and has no excuse not to have omni.

Personally I’d rather look at cloak than relate these upgrades to cloak. It’s more useful than the clown upgrades of drone/tele/bubble shield for UEF but it’s definitely in the tier after that for clown upgrades. It should be cheaper but I don’t think it’s very interesting to play around with the fact you either have the hard counter or you don’t. I’d prefer it make your ACU cloaked as a toggle but didn’t give any signs that your ACU has it (beyond the chasis upgrade but stealth already has that).

@mazornoob said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

Same goes for radar, especially when you can throw up a stealth gen field in five seconds on T3 com. I had multiple situations where a stealth drop went into vision range for a couple seconds and it still succeeded because nobody paid attention at the time, to the point where I just do that regardless on the off chance I can get engies through.

Yeah but that also fails in 80% of your games and nearly always fails against decent dudes. If you’re playing mazornoob, make 5 extra spy planes because rather than continue scaling he makes secret tml base attempt once he has t2 eco.

@mazornoob said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

There's absolutely potential for cancer if missing a radar blip for five seconds means a stealth proxy base 15 minutes into the game.

You need to play way more greedy than missing a simple radar blip for this stuff to do serious damage. And I’m all for making greedy play less optimal.

@ftxcommando said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

Yeah but that also fails in 80% of your games and nearly always fails against decent dudes. If you’re playing mazornoob, make 5 extra spy planes because rather than continue scaling he makes secret tml base attempt once he has t2 eco.

I'd put it at around 60%. And that's really the whole point. I make a single 500 mass initial investment for a fair chance at making a TML base at a good spot. That's less than a single T2 arty transport drop and has potential for more damage. You'd also be surprised how many players still don't send scouts on patrol around their own bases.

@ftxcommando said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

You need to play way more greedy than missing a simple radar blip for this stuff to do serious damage. And I’m all for making greedy play less optimal.

Obviously it won't work on 1v1 ladder, like many other things. But on teamgames where you don't always keep tabs on what other players are doing, that's an option. I did enough desparate-but-embarrassing mazer drops on higher level players in teamgames to know.

First, it isn't that cheap because you're spending the mass on transport, engies/bricks, t2 air and/or t2 land, and if it is engies then on the tml/pd/facs to make those drops worth anything. Second, this upgrade requires an idle ACU, at least 2 t3 pgens of useless power not making anything, and a T3 ACU still getting upgrades. There is a TON of telegraphing that something is happening so not only do you need to play max greed with no intel protection on your side, but you also need to not respect your opponent at all and think they're too dumb to do anything except sit there and lose.

Beyond that, a handful of spy planes cost essentially nothing and counter exactly what you're saying. The reason nobody does it is because nobody bothers with drop cancer so nobody feels the need to do the counter. You do it a lot, so the counter is made, and it isn't a problem for anybody that knows it is coming. It's no different with a teleport at this pricepoint.

It IS that cheap, assuming you're going T2 land, which you usually already are. 120 mass for a transport, 200 for a deceiver, 120 for a T2 engie. Possibly another 100 for T1 engies. The only risk is in getting to position, once you make a radar and confirm the location is safe all further mass investment is safe. Worst case scenario, you ctrl-k and reclaim everything after being spotted. In all my games I only had one where my opponent was smart enough to scout me, let me land, invest mass, then destroy it before I'm done.

As for max greed being easy to spot, maybe. My experience says it's not always the case and there are ways to mitigate. Upgrading underwater, using air player overflow, spending 5 minutes upgrading on T2 pgens + overflow instead of being greedy and making T3 pgens to get the upgrade 30 seconds faster all can help. Maybe at highest levels scaling is so optimized that one can tell when someone's not scaling as fast as he should, I dunno.

Being underwater requires your ACU not being at front, meaning you're either safe getting RAS for scale or doing cheese upgrades. Or you're just bad. It's a telegraph.

Using air player overflow requires an air player that is not producing air or your air player is just bad. Still a telegraph.

If you made more than 2 t2 pgens in a teamgame, that's a telegraph of cheese of some sort.

I still succeeded pretty often and that's including telegraphing a T2 air fac + stealth T2 transport + the risk of getting the commander to land safely next to another one at the time there are SAMs/ASFs present so I don't know. Maybe it's a top 20 thing. I still get the feeling that having a tele only slightly more expensive than mazer that also sidesteps all the risky aspects of a comdrop is a recipe for cancer.

Also note that 2 T2 pgens and random teammate overflow is perfectly serviceable for a 6 minute mazer.

Is there a way to alter upgrades when mixed with another upgrade?

So, Chrono can work like standard but when paired with Tele, it gets an absurd buff to help in Telesnipes?
Perhaps shutting down bases and units with heavy AoE damage and stun effects?

~ Stryker

having different costs for exactly the same thing between different factions makes no sense imo, if specific faction's teleporter would be cheaper, then it also needs to be proportionally weaker (limited range, longer teleport time, both) to compensate, balance is irrelevant

what is needed is to have something worth getting the teleporter for for uef and aeon, like cybran and sera already have (absurd dps) rather than mess with its costs, if you want these factions to use teleporter in same way as other 2, separating teleporter from billy so you can have both for example sounds fine to me, idk what aeon can get to have a use for it though, but don't forget aeon already have tele-instant-gc from sacu capability for their teleporter gameplay, meme or not, does every faction even need to be equally strong in teleport gameplay in first place?

@comradestryker said in Bad Teleport Upgrades:

Is there a way to alter upgrades when mixed with another upgrade?

So, Chrono can work like standard but when paired with Tele, it gets an absurd buff to help in Telesnipes?
Perhaps shutting down bases and units with heavy AoE damage and stun effects?

---

~ Stryker

teleporter itself could have an "upgrade" that only works if you have it first (like t3 engineering suite needing t2 first to be able to upgrade to, in this case tele leading to chrono v2, call it telechrono upgrade, so you have upgrade paths like (tele) -> (tele+chrono v2), (chrono v1)), the "new" chrono upgrade to tele, because it is technically a new different upgrade in code, could then have different stats compared to alone one (normal chrono you can get without getting tele first) to buff its use only when you have both, of course, nothing is stopping someone from just getting this upgrade and using it without using tele just because it is stronger than "normal" one, but at least they would need to get both, the chrono upgrade could then also have its own teleporter upgrade it leads to of its own, which could also be balanced around it differently and which has different stats compared to chrono itself and teleporter itself when they are alone