Smol ACU Adjustment

@ftxcommando

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

I very much doubt anything needs to be touched with manual OC because people drastically underestimate the cost that comes from keeping attention focused on your ACU. Like 3 guys in this game even use camera hotkeys to quickly cycle between something like your ACU and your base to get back to macro. These guys should be rewarded for that extra effort. Those of us being insane lazy with turning on auto-oc or even just zooming in and out whenever they hear ACU is under attack should face a penalty for it. I do not have a problem with the strength of an ACU when it comes with an attention deficit, I do when it’s basically free. I fully disagree that play won’t change, attention is a critical resource and it already showcases itself with nearly everybody in practical terms managing 2 bases worse than 2 people managing 1 base each even though theoretically that makes zero sense.

You say you have a problem when it's basically free. What are your misgivings with associating mass or time costs with a stronger acu?

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Could we put an experimental change into faf beta to test out ACUs getting auto-oc removed and/or halving the direct gun damage (and therefore gun upgrade doubling just brings it to the current damage)?

I'm mostly interested in seeing how such changes could impact how teamgames play out since there is a lot of talk about how little room t2 in particular has and either one of these changes would help that segment of the game get room to breathe.

Re-reading your first post, I now feel like you're not particularly interested in a discussion about potential solutions to the problem you mentioned, T2 land being weak. You are specifically interested in how your suggestion would help address it. Have you considered making a mod and trying it? I believe there are instructions linked in the pinned thread with the balance guidelines for this forum. It's also a bit ironic you made that thread yet your OP hardly follows said guidelines. Wouldn't you feel a bit silly criticizing others for such non-compliance in the future, having set this unfortunate precedent?

Don't see why I'd feel silly at all nor do I care about your pointless garbage in that post.

I address ACUs because ACUs are the crux of the problem in the issue. I do not want to directly nerf OC because it's one of like 3 tools in this game that actually reward unit management. You got veterancy, shield juggling, OC, and that's about it. So instead, I want a soft nerf on OC that punishes lazy play while rewarding active play. I don't care if auto-OC is kept but it needs to have a drastic nerf to how often it gets shot at minimum. Like literally doubling it.

My main crux is nerfing ACU damage which is what will really make spam much more viable in general for games and actively require players to back their forward ACUs with some cushion of units to retreat to rather than just impulsively building 2 t1 PD and getting gun once they see 30 tanks.

Speed nerf to gun ACUs not only doesn't address this issue fully, since it extends all the way down to base ACUs, but it actively hurts proper rambo pushes which are now slower and have a harder time catching enemy ACUs out of position. It doesn't even really resolve the actual problem since a gun ACU is still going to be getting insane passive value, you just make UEF and Sera stronger since they are the ones that can actually carry a base with their gun ACU.

Nerfing HP is also not a solution because that hampers everything about ACUs beyond the early T2 stage where ACUs are totally fine. It also buffs snipes that are already basically meta in a coordinated teamgame. Funny enough, these attempts to make ACUs less of a bedrock essential factor in being at the frontline from everybody would actually help counteract that meta.

The only other solution that would lead to anything decent that I can imagine is a general nerf to com explosions so that armies don't get blown up when ACUs die which in turn makes snowball pushes less of a necessity when committing to attacks. This, however, carries implications for draw gameplay and just a general quandary on it looking incredibly stupid that a big nuclear explosion from an ACU does no damage.

@ftxcommando said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Don't see why I'd feel silly at all nor do I care about your pointless garbage in that post.

Then I have entirely misjudged you. Your post must have been meant to broach a potentially controversial change the balance team is considering, gauge feedback, and gather all criticism unto yourself while shielding them from it for now.

It's a noble thing to do in their aid, as their task is already hard enough. I will defer to their better judgement although a little hope remains that some suggestion in this thread inspires them, should they have the mental fortitude to read through and endure mine and others' ramblings.

As I must have misjudged the present relevance of the forum guidelines, perhaps the recent criticism for a perceived lack of transparency makes enforcement problematic right now.

What about making it half as good? As in it needs double the power for the same damage as normal OC? So that it's more of an investment to keep auto OC vs t2 and t3 units. It won't make it that much weaker but it would be imo step in good direction. Same with small cooldown nerf to 6s from 5s.

Eh, it mostly just comes down to intuitiveness I guess. Not sure if it would be very clear or how to make it clear to people that you would need say double the energy. In terms of it being a solution, there's definitely a number where energy cost nerf can match a time nerf.

An energy-cost solution has less impact in a team game than in a 1v1 because of team overflow, since it is increasingly unlikely that every commander is engaged at the same time the larger a team is. It would also impact manual OC. On the upside, lower rated players would feel the change less, since there's generally more overflow in lower rated games, so the idea's not bad. An energy-storage based solution could scale similarly in 1v1 and in team games, and both amount to a mass tax but energy storage isn't shared. If manual OC is to remain unaffected, auto-OC fire rate would have to be tied to e-storage as well, and even though damage already is, it might not be a problem. The issue outlined in the OP is with t2 spam, and at that stage, anything beyond 2 e-storages is basically overkill. Requiring extra e-storages at that stage purely for the benefit of auto-OC doesn't impact the later t3 land stage as much, since by that time, the risk has inherently increased as well and having the extra OC damage earlier is maybe not as problematic. I have no other suggestion for making this intuitive than a UI change that shows auto-OC fire rate, maybe it's possible to display it inside the OC icon, and have a text bubble explain the relationship in more detail when you hover over it, along with OC damage potential which is currently not displayed

If we want to penalize people for using auto OC, why not just remove auto OC? The argument in the thread is that higher rated players shouldn't want to use auto OC, checks out since it doesn't exist. For lower rated players, having to manually OC a valuable target every once in a while is about as valuable as any kind of nerfed auto OC. Yes it's more micro, but so is manual reclaim, LAB and tank micro, bomber micro, drop queueing, engineer management and all the other things a player must learn.

@mazornoob said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

If we want to penalize people for using auto OC, why not just remove auto OC? The argument in the thread is that higher rated players shouldn't want to use auto OC, checks out since it doesn't exist. For lower rated players, having to manually OC a valuable target every once in a while is about as valuable as any kind of nerfed auto OC. Yes it's more micro, but so is manual reclaim, LAB and tank micro, bomber micro, drop queueing, engineer management and all the other things a player must learn.

If you want to penalize people for using auto-OC by removing it, not by having them spend mass, that means you've identified a problem and come up with this solution after weighting the pros and cons. My worry is that lower rated players will feel less inclined to try out an aggressive play style until they gain more experience relative to how things are now.

This postponement might mean more new players remain stuck in astro gap lobbies, choosing instead to become experts at that, since they have some vague idea of what to do and only have to build on that, rather than exploring and finding the enjoyment of a more dynamic play style, but having to face the frustrations associated with learning a very powerful mechanic with very high risk so late in the process. Players are softer on themselves and take criticism from teammates more lightly when they're new, but it gets old really fast and the more they play just astro, the more likely they are to keep playing just astro.

I'm worried that until the matchmaker comes to dominate, or by some unimaginable twist of fate Supremacy or something like it becomes the preferred victory condition in casual custom lobbies, this kind of decision effectively costs us future play partners. A small player pool is extremely bad, for team matchmaker and for tournament play and for keeping the game alive in general. If other solutions exist to the problems this proposal addresses and are somewhat viable, maybe they're worth exploring first, with this in mind? It is not a minor change, compared to the examples you listed. Few of those units are as useless without constant micro as a com with half the DPS and no auto-OC, and losing any of them is not the same as losing the commander.

Counterpoint: auto-OC makes it so that a player that overbuilds power has a better chance of beating back an enemy that makes a bunch of T2 tanks. Therefore, it teaches players to overbuild power and not push with units.

I hardly see managing some base thing instead of using overcharge as a tradeoff. Overcharge gets you hundreds of mass per second of net gain, double if you get the reclaim. Managing anything else in the game is negligible in comparison. And if your are using your ACU aggressively, but not watching it, you are just going to die.

@mazornoob building power could be seen an investment in eco that can quickly be repurposed for increasing the chances of your ACU's survival, by pausing some energy draining structures. OVERbuilding power shouldn't be as good as making tanks, and could be a choice of less mass production but more insurance. But since it's something that happens anyway the lower your rating is, a nerf to OC damage per energy purely on this basis feels less bad to me. The failure to address larger team games remains, and it feels like that's where the original problem is worse, because unit mobility is less valuable.

Who's talking about nerfing OC damage? Your reasoning is: No auto OC -> players who didn't learn to OC lose games -> players get discouraged and go to gap. This is wrong for 2 reasons:

• Your argument also works for T1 bombers. Players who don't know how to defend against bombers get discouraged just the same.
• It also works in the opposite direction for T2 land. Bad players who build T2 land lose to bad players who enabled auto OC. They get discouraged from being aggressive with T2 land and only do gun + T1 + auto OC.

@thomashiatt said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

I hardly see managing some base thing instead of using overcharge as a tradeoff. Overcharge gets you hundreds of mass per second of net gain, double if you get the reclaim. Managing anything else in the game is negligible in comparison. And if your are using your ACU aggressively, but not watching it, you are just going to die.

Well according to FTX, you can use your ACU aggressively, AFK it and you're not going to die. If you mean you SHOULD just die, I can't but agree in general principle. But please, ensure that if you, for instance, have decided that you want to try an aggressive play style this game but have been caught slightly out of position by an attack, and are now a few overcharges behind because of all the orders you have to issue to units and factories and possibly engineers to salvage the situation, please ensure that's not the end of it right there because of a few missed spellcasts. If that were to be the case it might prove a souring experience, maybe not as sour as getting shift-g'd but of the same general flavour.

@mazornoob i thought your comment about energy was in reference to xiaomao's suggestion and my reply

@mazornoob i've failed to make myself clear, apologies. My argument was for nerfing auto-OC, not manual OC, but not removing it completely, with a mass tax for making it gradually better, thus providing an alternate path towards a good guncom that taxes attention less. I think energy storages could enable this mechanic just as they enable variable OC max damage, with storage count governing auto-OC fire rate.

You already have that path, it's called ACU upgrades.

@mazornoob said in Smol ACU Adjustment:

Who's talking about nerfing OC damage? Your reasoning is: No auto OC -> players who didn't learn to OC lose games -> players get discouraged and go to gap. This is wrong for 2 reasons:

• Your argument also works for T1 bombers. Players who don't know how to defend against bombers get discouraged just the same.
• It also works in the opposite direction for T2 land. Bad players who build T2 land lose to bad players who enabled auto OC. They get discouraged from being aggressive with T2 land and only do gun + T1 + auto OC.

An early T1 bomber can be devastating, no doubt. But as a noob, your first encounter with one is most likely in some team game. You lose a few engies, ask for help, see inties and maa responding and countering the threat and teammates dodging with their engies. You get tested on what you learned from this interaction as more T1 bombers show up. The learning loop is shorter, it's not game over unless you're playing 1v1. As for T2 land, I want a betterment of the current situation, and I've said multiple times I agree the problem exists. Ideally the t2 land spammer should win, unless the defending player has built enough t2 storages (more than 2, maybe 6 or so) to make auto-OC as good as it is now OR they manually OC, at the cost of whatever else they might have been doing with their attention