@comradestryker said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
@evildrew said in Why are base SACU's getting a health nerf?:
RAS Upgrade / RAS SACUs:
Deathweapon: Damage Radius: 10
Deathweapon: Damage: 1000-->5000
That's a pretty neat idea.
Reducing RAS Preset effectiveness is the main targeting point for these upcoming changes.
May as well do it directly to the RAS Preset instead of modifying all base SACUs.
Though, the other changes to their stats seem to help out in altering the SACUs in their combat or engineer effectiveness, rather than just an overall "Do-Everything" unit.
May want to incorporate some of those changes, too.
They seem to point the SACUs in a better spot.
~ Stryker
The idea was to reduce the damage and damageradius on death of all SACU then make the RAS upgrade increase both, that is doing it directly to the RAS preset.
I have tried arguing why RAS upgrade is too cheap but Mr Balance did not agree with my methodology which I say is correct while his is wrong. Probably he neither agrees with my wholistic attributes point system i posted some days ago. So unlikely they will change RAS cost.....
@evildrew said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:
@Tagada
Your math is technically correct but your methodology is wrong. You take Mexes with storage and Pgens connected to Mass Fabs as a given. This is simply the wrong way to look at it. I have never seen storages on an underwater Mex, it's not possible. Should we ignore these Mexes? Adjacency bonus is a feature that enhances a building's value like the SACU with its HP. mobility and other features enhances the RAS upgrade.
Also as you scale up your Mass Fab and Pgen farm, you need to keep adding Engineering power from either a factory or making Kennels/Hives. RAS SACUs have the equivalent of say 600 mass of T3 Engineering power to keep the math simple (nerfing the bp aspect to 400 wont do much in the sum of things as shown below). There is a difference in the upfront cost to supply that buildpower, i.e. Quantum gatewy vs T3 Factory. There are other factors that are relevant such as pathfinding as you scale the Mass Fab Pgen grid. You can't keep reinvesting your full income into one building at a time and therefore compounding at the same rate with engineers alone after a certain point. Also you would at one point have to put expensive shields up repeatedly to protect say every 2nd cluster of 4 building to protect them from arty.
So what it really comes down to is the methodology, you start from the point of people only build T3 Pgens and T3 Mass Fabs in grids of 4. That is like if I asked you 'where does milk come from' and you say 'from the bottle', and I ask 'well where does that bottle come from' and you then say 'oh yes, from the supermarket'. You have to look at buildings as stand alones when balancing the game overall not just in terms of efficiency at completion but also in terms of the path to reinvest and compound long term, transitioning, weighing risk and reward aspects, etc.
Lets list some relevant facts:
Mass Fabs
Advantages:
Adjacency bonus with Pgen
Adjacency bonus with Factory
Adjacency bonus with Mass Storage
Disadvantages:
Low HP
Takes up a lot of space
AOE of explosion is huge (14) and damage is huge too (5,500)
Needs power to produce mass
HP of adjacent buildings (listed above) is lost (Your 2 Pgen 2 Mass Fabs basically has 6,000 HP instead of 24,000 when connected)
Can only keep up in efficiency with RAS upgrade on SACU when using its adjacency advantage.
On a stand alone basis less efficient than RAS SACUs.
RAS SACU
Advantages:
No power stall affecting Mass production
Submersible
Able to defend themselves (several T1 PD equivalent worth of resources)
More HP
Mobile
Scale more consistenly
Build power (almost 2 T3 Engies worth)
Disadvantages:
I honestly don't see any - 1,000 damage on death - the other SACU around it are laughing
So if you rate all advantages and disadvantages positive and negative values (subjective I know) you would see that RAS SACU are by far superior, especially in an arty war. I am sure the Gap crowd would agree with that from their own experience.
So lets try to rate 2 Mass Fabs + 2 Pgen vs 3 RAS SACU to determine balance in a wider scope. I will put some values in and yes they are my opinion based on almost a decade of playing the game.
*The efficiency of the RAS upgrade is 101.5% as efficiency as 2 T3 Mass Fabs and Pgens in producing mass and 98% as efficient at producing E, so lets say near equal with a small immaterial advantage to the RAS upgrade.
Mass Fab Pgen grid vs RAS SACU comparisson:
-Space (-2)
-AOE Explosion (-3)
-Power Stalling (-2)
-Indirect HP Loss when adjacent (-5)
-Superior return on investment (+5)
-Diseconomies of scale due to pathfinding (-2)
-Self defence (-2)
-Not submersible (-3)
-Immobility (-3)
-No build power (-1)
I get -18 but maybe someone else gets -12 or -25, I dont think the number itself matters.
Basically it all comes down to how many points you want to give to a 30% superior rate of return on the Mass Fab Pgen grid with adjacency but you would have to value that extremely highly just to overcome all the other disadvantages of a RAS SACU. Notice that the RAS upgrade is an income stream without adjacency bonus enhancing it.
I looked at it purely from a stand alone perspective on Github which would give you similar results to this methodology and I think intuitively anyone who frequently plays the late game eco war will tell you that it feels like RAS SACU are way better overall, why else would they build them.
