Tactical missile launchers

Who am I?

I like to think of myself as a well-rounded 1300 Ish player who takes part in all aspects of FAF but mainly team games like TMM and custom games.

The Problem as I see it

There are not many sights worse than seeing that slow yellow dot ceaselessly moving towards those valuable and very painfully constructed T2 mass extractors.

Given the vast range of the TML it is exponentially more effective to use when mexes are more spread out as creating defences in multiple areas by slowly dragging your sloth like T2 engineers around can take so long, by the time you have a T2 engineer somewhere useful all of your valuable recourses have long been violated.

A situation made worse if your opponent rushes T2 just to make TML’s and you or your teammates don’t even have access to T2 yet, made even worse if you come across an TML user with a brain and kills your HQ locking you out of any tech so you are forced to just watch your entire base and eco just slowly get picked off one buy one.

Given the relatively low cost of a TML compared to how much mass can be easily killed they are very cheap and worse of all can hold multiple missiles, so if a player builds them in storage, they can unleash several within a very small-time frame killing all you have in seconds.

Not to mention the cheese ACU snipes, I won't say any more than that.

And again, to make things even worse if you are against a Cyrban using TML omg I hate those things.

In a Nutshell

I believe the TML is too cheap and can be brought onto the field too quickly, particularly if your HQ is taken out.

Costs and maths and stuff

Cost of a single TML is 800 mass and 4000 energy with a missile drain of only 120 energy and 8 mass

Now compare that to the TML on an ACU of 800 mass to 21,000 energy

Although the extra cost of an ACU tac missile upgrade does buy you the ability to move your com and place it within water, I think the cost is far more reasonable on the ACU than on just a standalone TML.

Replay?

I don’t think you need a replay to understand this, I think many of us if not all of use have witnessed this at some point.

My recommendations

Have the TML once built instantly explode in their face to remind them that they are bottom feeders – only joking

Seriously though

These are just some thoughts of how I think it could be changed in one or many ways

Increase build costs and build time of TML by 25% of the launcher and the projectile

Reduce build time and costs of TMD by 25%

Reduce damage from 5000 to about 3000 Ish to make cheese ACU snipes harder. not that I have been caught out by that at all, ever, not me........ you got lucky bro.

Make TMD a T1 unit but probably not.

Reduce storage to 1

Or I think the best way is to increase missile costs to fall in line with T2 costs as currently the energy and mass cost of a tac missile can easily be made on a T1 economy, such as missile cost per second to be 600-800 forcing them to make at least one T2 power generator before attempting to rape your economy or locking you out of T2 tech.

Thanks for reading.

Please nerf mantis i die to them all the time. They just raid my precious mexes and there is nothing i can do about that!!! I propose doubling their mass cost, also move titans to t2 thank you.

More of a map design issue than a balancing issue.

I found the best way of avoiding TML crush games is to not play certain 10x10km team game maps, or at least be very vigilant that a TML is strong on these maps. The kind of maps where one person rushing a TML slightly outside their base can hit the core Mexes of 6 opponents. I still very vividly remember one open wonder game where someone rushed T2 upgrade and build a TML on full t1 eco, and proceeded to kill like 20k mass worth of mexes and HQs.

On larger maps (say 15x15), or even 10x10s with spawns far enough apart that you need to establish at least some mapcontrol before building TML (like plateau of arracis, or adaptive millennium), I find the TML perfectly balanced.

Sounds like a skill issue. Tmd is cheap and hard counters tml.

@caliber said in Tactical missile launchers:

A situation made worse if your opponent rushes T2 just to make TML’s and you or your teammates don’t even have access to T2 yet,

This means you
A. have more tanks or an acu combat upgrade and should be able to punish your opponent for going T2 and TML whereas you didn't
B overecoed and simply have no answer to tml, which is entirely your fault
C were simply outplayed

TML is quite insane and mostly isn’t abused because everyone is lazy, though.

Kill a single t2 mex and you have basically paid it off if you consider reclaiming the launcher and/or the fact that you killed the wreck as well. And all it really takes is a few suicidal bombers to kill a tmd and open up 2-4 mexes to kill.

complaints not valid until people become good enough to start abusing it

Thats what happened to chrono my man

Also reminds me of old wonder open 5v5 where 1 guy rushes t2 hq on 0 t2 mex resulting in a tml when u got 2 t2 mexes done in range of everyone in the game. It was very map specific though

Chrono still never got nerfed, right?

You can also kill the TML itself with a few suicide bombers.

Talking about the reason why it got mega strong to begin with

@thewheelie yeah that stuff probably happened because everyone went t2 mex at min 2 and try to be full t2 mex before doing anything else. dude rushing tml would probably get crushed by gun acu + spam, or just some t1 bombers suiciding into the tml lol

i try bombing tmd sometimes and it's usually rebuilt pretty quickly. it's a nice move to pull off but tml, even in combination with bombers, doesn't need a nerf imo. catching bombers before they get to ur tmd is a skill too, so it's certainly counterable

also are u implying 3k hp buff is what made chrono strong? i see no other changes, besides stun duration going from 3.5s to 2.5s lol

I think what he means is that chrono was always strong but people were just too bad to realise how good it actually is, that is until the buff shined some light and people finally noticed that it exists.

It happens all the time in League for example.

@xiaomao I noticed that it makes your own T2 PDs miss a lot.

what about making tmd t1

Just remove tml from the game while ur at it

TMD is probably one of the most effective defensive structures in the whole game, its cheap has good range and scales well making a TML high risk high reward because a single(!) TMD can basically invalidate any strikes in a whole swath behind it. A single flak can't stop a T2 bomber, a single SAM can't stop a strat.

To me they are fine and great fun but maybe a bit too strong. It shouldnt be able to kill a T3 HQ in 1 shot, thtat's just silly and destroys the whole BO and investment of a player just because of a missed TMD.

TML doesn't kill any T3 or T2 HQ in one shot except for cybran T2 HQ's

It happend to me in a game. Just looked up the stats: T3 HQ of Cybran Land Factory is 4.95k. Damage of an Aeon TML is 6'k. It actually does one-shot a t3 HQ

.. a support Factory. If you go for a fcking t3 support factory, that shit deserves to die if you don't have the mass for a TMD