Balance Patch 3750 - Feedback

@tagada I think the soul ripper changes are a lot more power-neutral than they initially seem. Once you add in the extra mass cost/build time needed for the additional power infrastructure I would expect the overall mass cost to be about the same. The decrease in build time in combination with the E-cost increase has roughly (I don't have a replay to check the exact math) doubled the power drain from every engineer constructing the unit.

sounds like you can just reduce number of engineers building it then

I think this patch has indirectly buffed every t3 arty and mavor, because hives got nerfed. Don't get me wrong, I am personally totally fine with hives nerf, they were imbalanced. But now it is way harder to defend against mavor and t3 arty, since the most efficient way was with hives. Engies are also solution, but assuming their pathfinding, range and quantity of them it is way more difficult. Because when you have a big base, which you should have on the mavor timings, there are not so much place for shields and engies take so long to get off from a place where you need a shield in 2 seconds. Please, debuff t3 arty and mavor, now they got even more powerful, which is painful:(

@ftxcommando I respond that even old cost of nuke was quite high. if one guy build a nuke - he spend a lot of res and anyone can simply defend his base using 1\3 of nuke cost. even 3 far placed bases will spend same amount of res as 1 player, also evey who build smd will slow down 3 times less than a guy with nuke.
Still Nuke was too profitable thing in hand of skilled players behind the frontline it happened almost every 2nd game that someone rushes nuke and it was quite annoying.
Balance team picked the right way of recalculation nuke cost the only thing i am fighting for that they picked wrong numbers. Nuke cost simply doubled in E + some mass increase - thats too much. High risk investement became senseless because even retard can load smds with new cost.
I support changing nuke cost + 50% in E only to what it was before - just what is enough to let you think twice to build nuke or not, because of high risk that it could not hit anything worthy. now nuke costs like 5 smds lol - nobody will do it except rare cases.
as I told before - looks like this patch is released to make small group of people to enjoy their "healthy" games without anything they don't like.
I also would remind that cost of T4 units increased too much. 3 ahwassas = 100% of mavor E and 75% of mavor cost. I dont see anyone doing ahwassas anymore - only for fun when it is over. Czars being made more often. they are 25% cheaper.
reduce exprimental cost in E by 20% from current numbers, expecially ahwassa

I guess nukes and washers are the new t2 air and I need to get 10 replays of them winning games

Didn't nukes use to be treated as mini game enders, as in if one team could spare the mass to make one and the other couldn't make SMD in response, the game was over? The "main bases should always be comfortably safe from nukes" rationale is something new.

No, there was just no real consideration of macro, spaced-out 20x20 maps because full share teamgames used to only happen on sentons and everything else was tightly compact wonder/canis/hilly where 1-2 SMD keep your whole team safe. Now that competitive teamgames have branched out into these larger 20x20 maps with the evolution of preferences and matchmaker, it's different. Even on those old maps, a nuke was only a game ender assuming insane greed gameplay where your whole team decided they didn't want to make the SMD.

It's like the cost of a GC for the launcher and first nuke. It isn't supposed to be a mini game ender any more than any direct fire t4 is a game ender.

Just ended a game because I built a nuke ~35 min and killed their top rated with it. Nukes are totally not viable anymore /s

Do we have data on how these changes have impacted the average game length in team games? Average game length and faction win/loss per patch and per rating bracket would be very interesting data, with further breakdowns for the most common maps.

I haven't really played any games since the patch, definitely interested to see how navy feels now.

@t_r_u_putin I played a TMM game today and had multiple enemy asswashers bombing the shit out of my battleships while I advanced my navy and killed the SMD (with my mega) and then nuked the enemy to death. Everything seems to work just fine.

@mazornoob said in Balance Patch 3750 - Feedback:

Didn't nukes use to be treated as mini game enders, as in if one team could spare the mass to make one and the other couldn't make SMD in response, the game was over? The "main bases should always be comfortably safe from nukes" rationale is something new.

Nukes is 3 times more expensive than SMD (before the "patch". If one team build a nuke but opposite cannot build SMD to defend them - they are simply bad noobs. Also nuke loads slower by 1 minute + time for launch animation and fly + 25 45 seconds additionnaly depends on the map size.
you get nuked simply because u don't scout in time having so much advantage in SMD cost and time.
The last patch simply removed nuke threat completely - you will be nuked after 30 mins of the game if u simply forgot to build and SMD and never scout the enemy

Somehow, the units have grown in price, but the meaning of their effectiveness has fallen. In the game, you can't balance a noob's ally so as to win a loss from the clutches of victory.The patch before these changes was better.

@t_r_u_putin yes but that’s for dual gap. Outside of dual gap, one nukes makes opponents create 3-5-8 SMDs, easily making the nuke pay itself off just in making opponents waste stuff on SMD and then nuke can still destroy armies/navy, adding more value to itself

@whiterush said in Balance Patch 3750 - Feedback:

Somehow, the units have grown in price, but the meaning of their effectiveness has fallen. In the game, you can't balance a noob's ally so as to win a loss from the clutches of victory.The patch before these changes was better.

Maybe people didn't stop complaining about the units, maybe they just stopped building them.

@femboy said in Balance Patch 3750 - Feedback:

@t_r_u_putin yes but that’s for dual gap. Outside of dual gap, one nukes makes opponents create 3-5-8 SMDs, easily making the nuke pay itself off just in making opponents waste stuff on SMD and then nuke can still destroy armies/navy, adding more value to itself

On Valhalla It is the same. Maps with 2 SMD covering all bases need 1 Nuke to cost somewhere around 2 SMD. Bigger maps need more SMDs per SML therefore they want nukes to cost more. The only solution for all is to reduce range on Nuke Launchers to the point where the 1 nuke = 2 SMD principle is met and revert their cost back to pre patch.

Wise members of the balance team, is 'absolute garbage' a technical term?

yeah, in layman’s terms it means it’s ass, next question

When it come to how powerful nukes are, it really depends on the map. I don't have the time right now to do all of the math but this is the gist of it: SML is 16.5k mass, nuke is 12k. An SMD is 7.5k and anti-nuke is 3.6k. That means that the first nuke costs 28.5k mass which means that if enemy needs to build 3 SMDs then you are already ahead (Yes I know that nuke costs more power but I can't be bothered to account for that right now). This means that on any map that requires enemy to build >= 3 SMDs then nukes are basically always a good and safe investment. They are low risk and extremely high reward unit, simply a no-brainer in a lot of scenarios. Now consider maps that require only 2 SMDs, this means that either you are playing 1vs1/2vs2 which doesn't have major expansions or you are playing a turtle map with all bases clumped up. Then the nuke is not as strong but it isn't weak either. Remember that with 3 SMDs the nuke was basically worth it BEFORE it killed anything. But even if enemy's main bases are protected then there are still plenty of viable targets: expansions, armies, navy, forward bases etc.

If the range of the nuke would be reduced enough that you couldn't reach enemy's main base from your own it would just make the unit basically useless on those maps, especially in 1vs1 which I am not interested in (any smaller nerf siply wouldn't do anything either). The game is balanced around a set of competitive 1vs1 and team game maps. If you play on a map that strictly favors defensive play by clumping up all of the players together and doesn't encourage a lot of expansion either then you can expect the game to NOT be balanced. That is not to say that I think nukes are weak on DG, they are still viable. You just may not see 1 rushed every single game.

thanks mister ftx

And, if you use BrewLAN, where you have mobile SMD - then all of that thinking goes out the window.

@tagada said in Balance Patch 3750 - Feedback:

If the range of the nuke would be reduced enough that you couldn't reach enemy's main base from your own it would just make the unit basically useless on those maps, especially in 1vs1 which I am not interested in (any smaller nerf siply wouldn't do anything either). The game is balanced around a set of competitive 1vs1 and team game maps. If you play on a map that strictly favors defensive play by clumping up all of the players together and doesn't encourage a lot of expansion either then you can expect the game to NOT be balanced. That is not to say that I think nukes are weak on DG, they are still viable. You just may not see 1 rushed every single game.

I'd say on some of those maps, if you design it to work like t3 arty where say one air on senton can only hit 3 bases, you just make the meta for the back slot to always still rush a nuke. You don't change anything about nukes being insane, you just remove the noob mistake of 2 full eco players not both going nuke and one going SMD instead of nuke on these maps.

Air player on maridia still has like 3 bases to kill rather than 5, he still forces those front 3 players to be playing on the timetable of a nuke rush killing their whole base.