Veterancy removal for most units

I don't think it's wrong to take backstory into account. It's one factor among multiple factors. Realism is good. Having intuitive mechanics is good (intuitive meaning that someone who knows nothing about the game itself would assume that it's supposed to be that way--like the fact that a unit named a "bomber" is a plane that drops bombs, or that bigger tanks beat small tanks in a fight). Modeling every projectile is good. Units being responsive to orders is good. Those are all things that are generally good, and are generally supported in the game, but we compromise on all them in various ways because you can't have everything. Having good gameplay is the most important thing, but it's not the only thing.

If we only ever asked "what tweaks can we make right now to make the game a little bit more balanced/interesting" without worrying about those other factors, the game would become really bad, really fast. Probably every unit would have toggleable abilities like the Loyalists or like Overcharge to reward APM. We might cap the amount that you're allowed to zoom out because it makes the game more fast-paced. We could drop the unit count, make units bigger so they have flashier graphics, and add global upgrades so that players have to commit more to a particular type of tech. Basically make it more like StarCraft 2 and Supreme Commander 2.

That could be a fun game, but it wouldn't be FAF. Preserving the unique identity of FAF might be equally important to "Having a well balanced game with interesting features."

The veterancy impact on sim speed is absolutely inconsequential aside from situations with immense unit counts fighting one another. This is only a problem in combat between ints and asfs. You would accomplish virtually the exact same thing (if your main argument logic is centered around sim speed) by just removing it from those two units.

So remove it from air units and t1 spam like frigates and tanks and that's good. Why make a principle debate out of it. I think we mostly want to get rid of asf lag and maybe large navy fight lag.

I would still like to see some numbers how much it helps

@arma473 said in Veterancy removal for most units:

If we only ever asked "what tweaks can we make right now to make the game a little bit more balanced/interesting" without worrying about those other factors, the game would become really bad, really fast. Probably every unit would have toggleable abilities like the Loyalists or like Overcharge to reward APM. We might cap the amount that you're allowed to zoom out because it makes the game more fast-paced. We could drop the unit count, make units bigger so they have flashier graphics, and add global upgrades so that players have to commit more to a particular type of tech. Basically make it more like StarCraft 2 and Supreme Commander 2.

In your opinion it would become bad yes.

Neither tanks nor frigates impact it significantly. The point is that you have 100s of units all calculating their damage based on the proportion of damage they do when units suddenly die and so on. This doesn't exist anywhere outside of giant air fights.

@speed2 said in Veterancy removal for most units:

I would still like to see some numbers how much it helps

It was tested before and I asked Sprouto about it at some point once people started throwing around accusations of the vet system being some key reason for FAF being super slow and LOUD being super fast. He told me that it's mainly a factor during the situations I described above. I BELIEVE you could expect simspeed to fall 2 less than with vet on all units during major air fights but I'm not 100% sure.

This correlates with the information IceDreamer told us from his tests where he said vet is extremely inconsequential of a factor in sim speed performance as he was mainly looking at general trends through the game rather than specific spikes at certain periods of gameplay.

Do we want to make the game more inconsistent or remove an entire aspect of the game in order to speed up simspeed for 30-40 second air fights? I'm not convinced by the argument.

Well it can be easily tested as we have a perf test map that is throwing thousands of ASFs at each other. So I assumed it was tested there

The vet system brings too much gameplay and fun to the table to just blatantly remove it. Just so the Setons player can have instead of their -10 air fight, a -7 fight for their ~30 seconds. Not a very good argument against the whole vet, because normally there is not a problem with that.

The vet system is not perfect, but at the moment it is good enough to focus on other problems. cough RAS SACUS cough

Could be the air revamped to produce less spam? Debatable.

On some units I have noticed and used the vetting. early raiding bombers benefit quite a bit from it. It enables them to deal a bit more damage after the enemy got some mobile anti air up . Also labs benefit from it because they usually loose some hp because of bad micro and get some damage due to reclaim. So eventually they should die to engies but the regen allows them to keep raiding until there is a tank in their way. Same goes for early t1 tank engagements.

We could make veterancy less cancerous if we removed the "current hit points" gain when a unit gains veterancy. The unit's max HP could go up, while the current HP stays the same. That would completely remove the whole "vet vet vet vet vet vet vet" angle to the game, which Thomas correctly describes as an annoying mechanic. ("You try to kill some unit and then it gets some more health and then you get mad.")

OR, the unit's current HP increases proportionally in the same amount as the unit's max HP goes up. So if an ACU has 1400 hp out of 10k max, and gets a vet, and goes up to 11k max hp, it would only gain 140 current hp (up to 1540). So the veterancy bonus itself would not provide an instant "get out of jail free" card.

@arma473 said in Veterancy removal for most units:

That would completely remove the whole "vet vet vet vet vet vet vet" angle to the game

As for me that the only reason to keep vet on EXP and ACU
It brings emotions

How about someone makes a mod that removes vet and i run tests on sim speed impact. I would create huge naval battles, huge t1 spam fights and so on and see how it impacts things and prove with videos.

Vet is a silly mechanic. I thought originally it only added regen, not health.

I like vet and I wouldn't mind to see it even improved. To add some extra damage on the weapons like in vanilla.

@advena said in Veterancy removal for most units:

Remove veterancy for all units but

• experimentals
• ACU

As compensation buff hitpoints:

• Striker by 1 hp
• All T2 units by 10-20%
• All T3 units by 20-30%

Reason:
Sim speed (notably in ASF battles)

it just will broke the game
veterancy is the reward for good units usage and micro
and all strategies with seraf regen aura will be dead from that change

and for what? to fix some lags in asf battles? which exist only in eco-global games?
madness

it's better to buff vet instead of deleting it, this will bring more fun and skill-dependency to the game

@FunkOff said in Veterancy removal for most units:

I agree that veterency is rarely relevant outside acus and xps.

Like labs, that can get wet and stay alive and raid longer, like t3 bots that can do the same, like destros, or b-ships, or t1 or t3 bomber them you have only one. Really not relevant for you?

@speed2 yes, improving vet would be cool, but how to do so in a way that does not slow the game even more. If there were no lag concerns I'd suggest having rank 4 give some AOE buff to like accuracy or weapon range or rate of fire to similar units. And rank 5 be an AOE passive vet gain, or some other thing that maybe makes you want to bring them home. Idk, just sounding here.

And IMO the air game needs to be revamped in general. Idk what, but something needs to clear the skies and make the meta more than "Get a shit ton of them, then go at it!" Which is lag city. But lanchesters law is the law, so making something that changes that up would be an ordeal.