Reworked Mercy, how do you like it?

Mercy being bad or good at its new role is so besides the point. It wasn't going to stay what it was, it was impossible to balance because it was inherently toxic to a simulated projectile game. For such an instant death unit to work you need hitscan mechanics where the intended counter for said unit instantly obliterates it.

It can be given smaller adjustments to fit the new role because it is now healthy for the game in said role, whatever the adjustments need to be.

Don't get why people see more ambitious changes than changing a few lua stat lines and are immediately up at arms because the first implementation isn't 100% perfect when it's working to remove a poisonous aspect of the game. Especially when said unit wasn't even necessary for Aeon to have an extremely strong t2 air stage in the first place.

I've talked to Jip and I'll be looking at some visual upgrades for Mercy DoT.

In other news I do think Mercy could use a damage buff. I think it does 600 damage at the moment (blueprint value is incorrect). 600 damage over a very short DoT would be acceptable, but for a unit to be able to sit in the cloud for 10 whole seconds and only take 600 damage seems a bit odd. A UEF T2 engineer has 6+ seconds to walk out of the cloud and still live. At that damage rate it seems like an inconvenience at best to T2 and up.

@ftxcommando
That sorta comes back to me not really understanding its role. Initially I thought 'oh given the bomb ignition point I could use this to soften up a firebase before I attack it with real units'. But a bunch of them wouldn't even take down half a shield in an offensive role.

If I'm defending they do a good job at forcing unshielded snipers and mobile arty to relocate. But again, shields.
Emp would be good in this scenario since it would interrupt firing and not let them kite as easily, can also serve both defensive and offensive roles.

Might be cool to do 600 dmg or if it hit a shield it does 2000 DMG to the sheild

@veteranashe said in Reworked Mercy, how do you like it?:

Might be cool to do 600 dmg or if it hit a shield it does 2000 DMG to the sheild

Cries in cybran. Why is it aeon that always get's the cool shit.

Everyone gets cool shit except uef

Yeah, my big sub experiential doesn't even have torp defense

How's this? @Jip @Ninrai
https://imgur.com/a/46jsVbP

@Deribus
I appreciate the work you put in. Looks better than the version before. Overall, i just don't like the effect in general - looks like the green jelly army from Lord of the Rings or a massive toxic wasteland. I didnt mind the effect for arties, prolly bc it was on a small scale, but this now looks more like the result of a scud storm than enlightened higher power alien Aeon tech. Eyesore.
In this case, I d opt for something new. RK4000 has shown that many cool effects are possible - maybe there is something that aligns well with Aeon? Even changing the color prolly will make it look better.

@deribus said in Reworked Mercy, how do you like it?:

I've talked to Jip and I'll be looking at some visual upgrades for Mercy DoT.

In other news I do think Mercy could use a damage buff. I think it does 600 damage at the moment (blueprint value is incorrect). 600 damage over a very short DoT would be acceptable, but for a unit to be able to sit in the cloud for 10 whole seconds and only take 600 damage seems a bit odd. A UEF T2 engineer has 6+ seconds to walk out of the cloud and still live. At that damage rate it seems like an inconvenience at best to T2 and up.

I think the green DoT smoke is fine too, mostly because it's consistent with the Miasma.

I think a shorter DoT life and higher overall damage would be good. It feels like its usefulness falls off very quickly.

That is a great start @Deribus

I agree with Ninrai that we're not there yet. But this is a great first step and I'll merge that on its own until someone makes more refinements.

I think if you are changing the role of the mercy away from acu/xp snipes, you should remove the other nerfs, meaning give it better hp (200 or 300), vision, turn rate, fuel lifetime, and fuel recharge. The only reason the mercy ever had crappy stats in these fields was because it was nerfed harshly while maintaining the core snipe function.

I think the green gas looks less 'cool' that the old effect when I'm only considering how effects look...
When I'm considering how well it represents the ingame effect, though, I think this green mist effect is much more representative of the current mercy behaviour.
(Not that I've built a mercy for decades - I'll have to give them a try - if I can only figure out when they're useful now!)

If the mercy has more than like 30-59 HP it will hit every time

@ftxcommando Ah yes , lets take the backwards stance on balancing , lets make a T2 unit effective only against T1 units , just as the original game intended.
T2 units should NEVER be useless at their own tier , the mercy is now useless on structures and only good at deleting T1 spam at a MASSIVE price , which is not justified , especially when 5-6 T1 bombers will do a much better job long term in deleting T1 spam(and will also be tougher in general).

Ah sweet, can you prove that the original game intended what you preach as gospel? You can't because I can name like 5 units where what you just said doesn't hold in steam balance.

@ftxcommando go ahead.

specter, renegade, blaze, mongoose, hoplite, titan, valiant, neptune

@ftxcommando Specter and the regenade are both great against both T1 and T2 units , as long as no ASFs are attacking.
Mongoose also deals quite the decent amount of damage , its effective both against T1 and T2 as long as the range is kept(and quite usefull in fact as a support unit)
I dont get how the titan is useless at its own tier ? 4-5 of these can easily take on a brick and for their cost theyre good.
Hoplite is the same as moongoose , ranged and more damage dealing option with less health that needs to keep its distance in engagements, still effective against T2s.
The neptune is effective both against T3 and T2 navy , its 700 DPS and 3K lower mass cost makes it a viable choice , compared to the battlecruiser with 450 DPS and longer range. (the fact that its also laser-based is another bonus to its ability to take out enemy navy)
I dont see how the valiant is not good against T2 navy compared to other naval units.
Blaze, just like the riptide and sera hover tank are all units with reduced DPS but the abiltiy to hover over water , they're all effective against T2 and T1 navy and enemy T2 land provided you have enough of them.

You know he's talking steam balence?

The original intent of the Mercy was not well hashed out. I remember being on gpgnet the moment the patch came out that added the DLC units to supcom. The first thing I did was test them real quick in Sandbox mode. Then I went and told the devs this was OP as shit, what were they thinking?! XD

I think the current mercy adjustment is probably fine. I'm sure somebody will come up with a use for it.