The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance
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Psions please read the opening statement of this thread
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I found the thead in the old forum.
So currently the approach balance team takes is to nerf their build time and reduce their bp.This is not dealing with their fundamental problem: the combination of power and mass generation which removes the need to protect either generation in lategame, and their overall currently underpriced value proposition, they are too good for their cost (the little bp nerf doesnt cut it)
Why?
The Yudis will just make a few more hives which undos the change.
I still believe that ras is too powerful of an upgrade and should only be available once on the acu. I think i dont need to explain how powerful it is. The best static basebuilding air bos get acu ras before full t3 mex, thats how efficient it is, and thats not taking into account that its eco that doesnt need to be protected extra.
I propose for ras upgrade to be removed from sacu.
Because it will force people do spend the mass on anything else, and that will always make games more exciting than spending it on defensive ras boys. They are simply put shit for the gameplay experience. They incentivise people to play "meme as hard and still get away" style.
If thats too radical or a change, and people still want to use them, for example for lenghty coop missions as moveable base, or for increased difficulty meme style against noobs, then nerf them by increasing cost by 50%.
Another good idea raised in this thread was to make them only produce power as a choice to get safe power production. But why offer that choice? There isnt any save mass production either, except for the infamously broken ras acu.
I think protection of economy is a key principle that should stay even in lategame and ras sacus weaken that principle in ways not healthy to the game.
Also it would mean an indirect nerf to mindless hive spam which is a bonus.
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@LittleBoyBennis said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
This is not dealing with their fundamental problem: the combination of power and mass generation which removes the need to protect either generation in lategame, and their overall currently underpriced value proposition, they are too good for their cost (the little bp nerf doesnt cut it)
Would introducing diminishing returns mechanic make this viable?
Say first (5) SACUs are 100%, next (1) 125%, next 150%, etc cost? The 10th SACU would be 225% more (15k mass) which would be very cost prohibitive. Lore wise, that also makes sense as it's supposedly a human in each one...What of the Quantum gate? If SACUs are nerfed, kinda makes them useless. I saw one mod YEARS ago that turned them into Nydus Canal like structures or very rapid T3 factories... ...just saying if nerfed too much- what's the point of the QG?
Only 1100, sooo just some noob thoughts. Also...youtube vid of awesome gate mechanic
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What if we made RAS a toggleable ability, like Selen cloak? It does produce eco, but disables itself in the process, and if you want to use it for anything else you (temporarily) lose the income.
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You could just as easily be in the middle ground and nerf BT of QG and Nerf RAS Income.
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Bt nerf is inconsequential because by the time you have enough mass for ras sacu spam you have enough mass to make a few more hives or engis or QGs anyway. If you nerf nerf their bt by 100 % you just need to spend another 1100 mass to make another qg. Not a big thing.
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@LittleBoyBennis if you remove the ability to assist QGs and increase the price to that of a land factory hq, it will take significantly more time for ras acu to pay itself off...
that way you wont have 50 ras walking around in a few minute, one way of nerfing them without having to change any stats besides the QG cost and maybe even the its build time...
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@Marked_One said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
@LittleBoyBennis if you remove the ability to assist QGs and increase the price to that of a land factory hq, it will take significantly more time for ras acu to pay itself off...
that way you wont have 50 ras walking around in a few minute, one way of nerfing them without having to change any stats besides the QG cost and maybe even the its build time...
It will just make building a bunch of massfabs around 3-4 gates make more sence, its kinda optimal anyway, just takes more space.
Spending all mass on assisting with excess build power is faster and more space efficient, but less optimal.
Building a bunch of mass fabs with spare mass pays for itself in 200 seconds vs 650 for QC. But not space efficient. But something like 'mass-fabs' meta is probably healthier, than 'mass ras sacus'. -
Just have to point out that removing the ability to assist quantum gateways is an extremely stupid idea. Flux economy and controlling the amount of buildpower you use on something is the bedrock mechanic which the entire game is built on. Excluding launchers, which have some weird behavior when mass stalling that I think is stupid, everything obeys the elegant and simple rules of mass, energy, and buildtime. You cannot just say that this one type of factory is impossible to assist because you don't like the units it produces or because of quantum magic, it would be an unforgivable sin going against the main design principle of the game.
If you want assistance to have less of an impact on quantum gateways you just increase the buildpower of the gateway and increase the buildtime of the SCU so that the external buildpower has less of an effect. Exactly the same thing that was already done with nuke launchers.
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I think RAScoms are pretty balanced where they're at. They're quite a large investment and they don't start snowballing until you have a handful of them. If you really want to nerf them i'd do something like halve their bp so they can't be both eco machines and fast base builders, because at the moment there is pretty much no need for engineers once rascoms start rolling out. In the current meta rascoms make more power than they really need and you can use the surplus to spam fabs with rascom bp which makes them even better. I think another way to nerf them would be to make their energy yield less than the power/mass ratio that's spent to build them, so you still need to make pgens if you are dumping your entire eco into gateways.
personally I think they're fine, but a lot of you seem to have a problem with them
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I am starting to think that our perception of RAS SACUS being op is a bit influenced by those epic yudi games where he doens't really participate in the game. His team holds out long enough and then he can super hardcore carry the game because he just ecoed. Only the games where it works out get casted and praised. I don't want to jump to conclusions but why did yudi drop down to 1.8k global?
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@LittleBoyBennis said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
Bt nerf is inconsequential because by the time you have enough mass for ras sacu spam you have enough mass to make a few more hives or engis or QGs anyway. If you nerf nerf their bt by 100 % you just need to spend another 1100 mass to make another qg. Not a big thing.
BP on boys is good because you can use it elsewhere besides your gateway. Ofc the bp is mostly irrelevant when you're talking about building boys, but it means they are a lot weaker in quite some scenario's if they have less bp
On sentons for example: They are a lot less good when reclaiming navy wrecks during big fights. They won't be able to insta spam sams (and harms) if the situation requires them to. They're worse at spamming up shields to defend vs arty/mavor or w/e. In general they just lose a lot of flexibility.
Btw, current change that is in faf beta (and has been in there for a few months now) is BP 56 > 20
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Make the ras SCU build time like a nuke and the build power of the quantum gateway like a nuke silo. I.E. super high build time for scu and super high build power for gateway. This makes it extremely hard to spam them out even with hives. You would need a very large operation of hives/t3 engies and multiple gateways to pull it off and even then the rate in which you spam them is reduced.
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@TheWheelie
im talking about the BT required to make a ras boy which is supposed to be increased (as per github)
I argue that this isnt doing anything.
Their stock BP is just another insult to the injury they represent to the game. The nerf to their BP isnt the biggest of deals imo and I even go as far as saying:
The scacu needs that build power to be a good utility support unit and should keep it. together with ras its OP, so remove RAS not their BP.
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@LittleBoyBennis besides the ability to spam sacu i dont see how they are in any way OP... remove the ability to spam them and they should be fine
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They aren't "OP" in the sense of being a dominant strategy but they promote inherently toxic gameplay. The only thing that should combine mass + e + flexible BP is the ACU itself. When other units do it, you open up the ability to do things like protecting infinite eco in a single, condensed area. Lategame eco should be about factoring in the risk/reward of additional eco adjacency efficiency and additional risk of exploding mass fabs. Not make boys and forget.
They should just be nerfed into irrelevancy or even removed just for the sake of promoting a healthier game.
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@FtXCommando The only thing im against is having 30 of these guys running around late game.... but i dont want them removed entirely... They are Support ACUs so they should be doing the same job as a ACU just not at the same level...
Just remove the ability to spam them everywhere and you will fix 90% of the problem
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just reduce mass income to + 10 and energy to +800 but for the same price as before. that nerf is enough.
big changes will not be welcomed by the public. there is no need in them. the problem is that RAS sacus give too much res for their price -
Its just a bad mechanic, a terrible unit concept, get rid of it don't discuss +8 +10 or +500 +750. No matter the number, the idea is garbage.
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Games in FAF end because (1) someone gives up (2) an ACU dies or (3) because the battlefield gets more and more dangerous over time.
Factor (1) is going to be based on (2) and (3) anyway (people give up because they would lose for other reasons) so it's not worth looking at.
Factor (2), ACU death - basically ACUs die due to snipes or due to overwhelming military force and they can't escape. Both of those are good mechanics that promote fun gameplay.
Factor (3), that the game gets more dangerous: what I mean is, at minute 4, you're not worried about a corsair snipe. At minute 10, you don't need to worry that a T3 heavy arty across the map is going to blow up your base unless you put in lots of shielding. As the game goes on, more and more dangerous stuff comes in, like nuke launchers, long-range artillery, the possibility of 20 strat bombers or an experimental showing up. And this makes it harder and harder, as the game goes on, to keep your stuff safe, and by stuff, I mean everything: your armies, your raiding units, your air force, your bases, your mexes, your ACU.
RAS SACUs mess with this because they provide mobile economy and are hard to kill. They are very survivable when everything else is in big trouble. They provide a kind of loophole from what is otherwise a consistent theme.
In StarCraft, the same thing doesn't really exist. In that game, the primary game-ending mechanics are either your base gets completely overrun, or you run out of minerals and you can't mine more. (Or: you realize that such a fate is inevitable, so you give up.) If someone added a RAS SACU unit to StarCraft, let's say there is a "Prince of Zerg" unit that can spawn new mineral patches, it would completely ruin the game. RAS SACUs are, in a small way, ruining FAF. So let's get rid of them.
