FAFBeta Patch Notes Iteration II of 2023

TheWeakie

Since the summer has ended balance calls have started again. This means that over the next weeks/months the list of balance changes will slowly start to grow.

Please leave your feedback here. Note that the list of balance changes are NOT final.

If you want to contribute to Beta you can find the current list of issues here

Beta

Changelog:

Land

T3 maa

Non Sera T3 maa

Mass cost 800 > 600
Energy cost 10.000 > 7.500
Build time 4.000 > 3.000

Sera T3 maa

Mass cost 960 > 720
Energy cost 12.800 > 9.600
Build time 4.800 > 3.600

Non Cybran T3 maa

HP -300 (each faction has a slight difference in hp)

T3 maa gets a buff mostly intended to deal with the lack of flexibility they have. While flak are usually around twice as cheap as a normal t2 land unit t3 maa tends to be closer to be almost equal in cost. Because of this it tends to be hard to justify making one instead of a normal land unit. Cybran maa gets a bit of love by not losing some hp, to counteract the buff a bit, since they don't have mobile shields.

Air

T2 Transports

Movement speed 14.3 > 13.5

After the big transport mobility buff from last patch it made the already strong transports even stronger and made it so it's extremely hard to kill a drop before Asf are out. While aggressive gameplay with transports is something we want to encourage it currently is deemed too oppressive, hence why we decided it should be easier for inties to catch these transports.

Janus

Mass cost 420 > 360
Energy cost 8.400 > 12.600
Build time 2.400 > 2.800

Janus are currently in quite an awkward position where they tend to not be too usefull until you mass spam them into a death ball at which point they become a do it all unit. These changes are meant to achieve the following:

If a player wants to mass spam janus it will still be possible, but because of the extra infrastructure (more e/bp needed) it will be delayed giving the other team extra time to prepare against it
It is more viable to try to counter janus with int spam since it will be harder to sink mass into the janus
Janus should be more viable outside of all in strategies because of the cheaper mass cost.

Stinger

Mass cost 240 > 192
Energy cost 4.800 > 3.840
Build time 1.600 > 1.280
Movement speed 12 > 13.5
HP 880 > 700
DPS 66.6 > 53

Stingers have almost always been one of the weaker gunships (or atleast in the last years) because it doesn't excel in anything aside from being the cheapest and most spammable gunship. However this doesn't benefit gunships anywhere near as much like it does to other units like mantis or cybran frigs since flak exists. These changes are meant to achieve the following:

Because janus are meant to be an anti unit fighterbomber it means that unlike other factions uef doesn't have a good way to deal damage to mexes with air. Stingers will be the fastest gunships in the game only 10% slower than all fighterbombers. This makes them the best gunship for raiding and will also make them a lot better at dodging aa
At the same time stingers should excel in defending against raids that don't have flak with them because you can make them so fast and you can appropriately split the dps

Vulthoo

Mass cost 300 > 500
Energy cost 6.000 > 10.000
Build time 2.000 > 3.333
Movement speed 12 > 11
HP 1.080 > 1.800
DPS 80 > 100
Mesh scale +10%

Vulthoo mostly gets the reversed stinger treatment. The gunship was always said to be a T2.5 gunship since sera lacks a t3 gunship but in reality it was more like a T2.1 gunship with slightly elevated stats over the other gunships. This change is meant to give sera a better early t3 air stage since the gunships will be usefull against certain amounts of flak for longer.

ASF

Mass cost 350 > 450
Energy cost 40.000 > 51.200
Build time 3.000 > 3.840
Hp +500 (each faction has a slight difference in hp)
Damage 400 > 500

ASF have always been one of the hardest units to balance in faf. You change 1 stat and it affects 3 other units. You change some stats on those units to balance things out and that affects 6 other units, and like that it snowballs into affecting everything regarding air. This change is meant to:

slightly reduce the massive buildup of asf over the course of the game. We know that the inherent issue of why people are spamming asf isn't solved with this so that will need to be addressed in the future, but one of the reasons why this happens is because ASF currently are very cheap compared to their land counterparts. For comparison inties are almost equal to t1 tanks in mass cost, but ASF are on average twice as cheap as a t3 land unit.
Change the early t3 stage interaction between inties and asf. Asf will waste more damage on inties since they will overkill them more which means in a straight up fight inties will be more usefull against asf. On the other hand the extra hp allows asf to back off from a fight more easily in order to heal. This means that in theory it should be more efficient to have numerous smaller fights before the asf player will win air control (Although this is mostly relevant for 1v1/2v2 where inti spam is more prevalent)

Buildings

T2 Air HQ

Build time 2.000 > 2.300

T3 Air HQ

Build time 10.400 > 12.100

T2 and T3 air hq build times are equalized to their land factory counterparts. Because of the vastly superior mobility of air over land it doesn't make much sense that it's faster to make than a land hq when the units also have a faster impact on the game.

Not yet in beta

(S)acu upgrades

Teleport upgrade

Max range ∞ > 350
increase teleport fx radius by 25%
Move UEF acu teleport upgrade to the left arm

Telemazer is considered one of the strongest tools lategame for a relatively low price. Especially in games with full share it allows an acu to suicide while dealing a lot of damage with no downsides (aside from losing the apm of a player). These changes will add some more strategy involved when it comes to tele snipes. The added fx radius means it is more easily visible giving you some extra seconds to respond. If the teleport is cancelled or the acu tele's away in time you know the acu is still to relatively close proximity which means you have a bit of extra time to hunt down the fleeing tele acu. A slight downside to this is that it makes non telemazer teleports weaker as well, but given the overall impact of telemazer compared to these other teleports we think this is a small sacrifice to make.

In addition to this UEF acu's get their teleport upgrade moved to the left arm which allows them to both get teleport and billy (but not t3) at the same time. This means you can teleport in, shoot 1 billy, teleport out and reload with engineer assistance. Ofcourse in combination with the max tele range it is possible to hunt down the acu if you have decent map control.