The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance

@Psions said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

@Tex Yes, but then people also don't calculate the payback time properly either.

The delay isn't merely 10 minutes for payback, it is also the accumulation time.

So it takes time to accumulate the 6500 mass, then it takes time for the unit to pay back that 6500 mass. The total of that time, is how much mass is otherwise lost.

You can just as easily say it takes time to accumulate mass for mexes or for any other unit. The mass that you accumulate to build something and the mass that it has to pay back is the same mass. You even say yourself that it pays itself back in 10 minutes later on in the same post.

Maybe what you need and maybe the only change that is needed is for Ras SACu specifically to have an increase of their death explosion damage to 4000, so that like with t3 fabs if one or two die this will chain react and kill the other sacu near it.

This has been suggested several times in the thread but SACUs are really easy to keep alive. They have high health and regen and can build shields, and you can move them around. Adding a couple thousand points of explosion damage won't change anything.

@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

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.

@Biass how is this discussing a preset and not the unit itself?

because the unit IS the "ras sacu preset"?

I think his complaint would still be the case if you build a normal sacu then upgrade ras on it.

@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

@Tex Yes, but then people also don't calculate the payback time properly either.

@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

and the people complaining about them don't understand how to do excel tables properly,

@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

6500/11 = 640

The irony is off the charts

For once I have to agree with thau. Math in its simplest form has finally defeated psions.

@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

6500/11 = 640

The irony is off the charts

And +1k energy which equals 10 mass in fabricators.
So payback time is actually halved, 5.3 minutes is not that long to pay for itself.

Hey guys we've been getting quite a few reports from this thread. Play nice and stay on topic

@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

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.

100% Agreed.

What about the suggestion about incorporating diminishing returns? Did I miss a response to that suggestion?

Seems like that would be easy to tune by the balance team and keeping RAS SCUs useful.

Incredibly incoherent with the rest of the game. We don’t need units with additional exceptions that break the core rules of how things work.

RAS SCUs aren't strong, lategame aggression is just super weak. Same thing for t3 arty. It's a massive mass investment, but it's not like you can just mount a land attack lategame. Navy situation is a bit better, but it's a bit too slow paced too imo. Balance team might want to consider playing around with some stat changes for all of t2+ (scale change magnitude by tech level) to provide more mid/lategame aggression opportunities

• reduce cost, reduce strength
• increase movement speed, reduce strength
• increase dps, reduce hp
• reduce reclaim % (scale % inversely with tech level, like 60%, 40%, 20%, 10%, for t1, t2, t3, t4 respectively)

@Blodir said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

• reduce reclaim % (scale % inversely with tech level, like 60%, 40%, 20%, 10%, for t1, t2, t3, t4 respectively)

This I think is needed. People are punished too much for using T3 units and so much of the meta around the use of T4 units is about where the reclaim ends up. Reduce the reclaim that is left and attacks become a lot more economically viable. This would also be an incentive to tech up (so you don't give so much mass to your opponent). We would see a lot more aggression I think.

I don't like the other suggestions. Watering down T3 or boosting its DPS isn't going to solve the problem.

Apart from land units, air/navy/buildings should probably keep leaving the same amount of reclaim. No reduction based on tech level.

Strats are the only 'usefull' t3 land/air unit cause they can sort of damage something ('snipe') if this stuff is not protected by asfs sort of 'fast'. We need way faster t3 units, so they could 'outrun' t4 and harass/get around them. t4's alread have more hp/dps, so they should be slowert than regular t3 units. Then you have to invest in your own t3 OR mobile arty/radiding forces will just wreck your base.

Edit: also planet annihilatino have 'teleporation gates' so you can deploy your forces fast to needed point. This could solve the problem of 'slow land units'.

While this is going wildly offtopic I also can't be bothered to start a new topic. In this post I give some justification for my suggestions

The two main goals are to increase the amount of interaction between players during t2-t4 stage, and to fix the volatility curve. Imo the game should be least volatile in the t1 stage and most volatile in the game-ender stage and gradually transition inbetween. Currently the volatility evolves something like this: from most volatile to least: game-ender > t4 > t1 > t2 > t3

(just to remind: all points are talking about t3 phase units and to a lesser extent t2 phase units)

reduce cost, reduce strength

• small runby's are more justifiable since their cost is reduced while they can still be effective even with reduced strength
• reclaim is more spread out with bigger armies, making reclaiming slower, and sometimes allowing both players to get their piece of the pile (as we see in t1 fights)
• player's reach significant numbers of t3 more quickly, and no longer need to wait for t3 mex. The transition to a t3 army is extremely slow currently

increase movement speed, reduce strength

• units get to the frontline faster so defenders advantage is reduced
• game becomes faster paced, it's easier to out-multitask your opponent like in the earlygame

increase dps, reduce hp

• battles become more volatile, easier to out-multitask opponent with aggression since each mistake is more punishing
• raiding is significantly more effective
• certain slow paced matchups could be sped up slightly (very long battleship wars on seton... don't get me wrong they are cool, they just take a bit too long right now imo)

reduce reclaim % for high tech units

• significantly reduce defender's advantage in the lategame. This would allow you to take favorable fights on the enemy side of the map (whereas currently even a significantly unfavorable fight is better for the defender due to reclaim)

There's certainly much more that could be said, and probably a lot of important things I forgot to mention as well...

changing reclaim values will change sentons mid reclaim.

i rest my case

I have said this in other posts, but we already have a model or method to enable faster deployment of higher tech land:
Support Factories. They just take so long to build, and even more to maintain a consistent rate of production given how BP with EngiMod has worked out.

Why not make Support Factories take less time to build/reduce mass cost and maybe reduce their BP. (If we reduce there cost cost and BP by 33% you keep the same mass to BP relationship. But previously where you could only maintain 2 Factories you can now maintain 3 Factories. 2 Factories will finish 4 units admittedly in the time it takes 3 factories to finish).

This additionally could add reclaim that decreases as you tech, from 80% to 60% to 40% if the controller/owner/army NotCivilian which wouldn’t as such mess with any reclaim on a map.

OP is 100% correct and any arguments against him are flawed. The correct move for the good of the game is to remove the upgrade entirely, and to remove the static resource generation from the base body as well.

Mobile, build-capable, self-defending units should not be able to produce resources, period.

The only, read, ABSOLUTELY ONLY reason it is even slightly acceptable on the ACU is that you only have 1, and if it dies, the game is over. That's the downside to a mobile, build capable, self-defending unit. Oh. No, there we go. There's the balance guys. If you want to keep the RAS SCU upgrade, the way to balance it is that when it dies, you lose the game. That might, maaaaybe, make it doable.

Anything else is not enough.

Remove the upgrade.

The big problem is late game economics where is simply too much mass in-game, and all is concentrate in core mexes that are super easy to defend. Nerf this will overall help the game to be more aggressivee.

@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:

They should just be nerfed into irrelevancy or even removed just for the sake of promoting a healthier game.

I'm curious why you've always been incredibly against adding units (see T3 MAA) but are so chill with straight up removing one.