Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread

@shadysocks said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

That's approximately, at an utter minimum, 10k mass in t2 PD and I think another 3kish in ACU upgrades? Now put that across 4 slots, and you have around 52k mass in defenses.

Water, t1 pd and shields you can walk through

Water covers ACU, doesn’t cover smd/air grid/large mex congregations

t1 pd is often times more expensive because if you really want to cancer with laser, you can get gun and laser critical things right outside of t1 pd range

shields: yes, but that still makes the cost insane factoring in 4 bases and multiple teleport targets and makes the calculations so tedious for no real change in reality.

I should also say your “just make tml” solves nothing really because an air grid or half of one being sniped late game is well worth an ACU dying and if you’re telling me you perfectly time your TMLs for when right when the ACU pops in, I want 3 replays of it happening in real games.

Hey, a general balance thread. Adding my two cents.

• Telemazer ACU and Novax aren't really comparable since Novax isn't putting itself in harm's way. Once you kill the ACU that's it. So arguably, we should compare the cost of shielding everything with Novax not against "kill ACU before it does damage, everywhere" defenses, but against "kill ACU before it does damage in the few places where it can lose me the game, and kill it before it teleports otherwise" defenses. AKA packs of TMLs here and there rather than PDs and shields all over the place.
• Nerf to mazer damage also nerfed non-tele strategies, which is sad.
• It's weird for a naval equivalent of a T3 PD to be outranged by regular lower-tech units. It's as if Ravagers were outranged by Hoplites, except you also can't build shields in the water.
• When talking about T3 arty, remember that when it comes to arty duels Cybrans have the most inaccurate T3 arty and the worst shields.
• I lost all hope in the balance team when they made a blanket 15% increase in vision for all units without a warning, passed it off as a minor technical fix and increased deceiver stealth radius by 15% to "compensate" as if it was an equivalent exchange in any way.

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Once you kill the ACU that's it

Full share.

Maybe we should make full share illegal.

It's still being down a player. I recall reading someone on the forum making a case for full share in team games, saying that being down a player is still a big loss. That's why people switched from no-share to fullshare teamgames. Wouldn't this argument work here as well? Unless killing your target wins you the game, you're still behind.

It is a big loss, but min 28 ur base runs itself so losing a player is trivial. No mexes to upgrade, minimal scale to keep going beyond dumping more mass into the mass fab grids you are already scaling in your home base.

As another aside, what if teleporting to within omni range gave a warning?

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

It is a big loss, but min 28 ur base runs itself so losing a player is trivial. No mexes to upgrade, minimal scale to keep going beyond dumping more mass into the mass fab grids you are already scaling in your home base.

How is it both a big loss and trivial, what? I’ve always been generally against fullshare, especially on non-Setons maps, but now you’re admitting that it’s actually not a big loss at all once a certain state of the game is reached? (Obviously map dependent) You didn’t use to argue in those terms on the topic of fullshare.

Edit: just to prove I’m not going crazy, this was just a year ago

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/4608/full-share-cannot-avoid-reality-of-math/49?_=1695818543382

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Telemazer ACU and Novax aren't really comparable since Novax isn't putting itself in harm's way. Once you kill the ACU that's it. So arguably, we should compare the cost of shielding everything with Novax not against "kill ACU before it does damage, everywhere" defenses, but against "kill ACU before it does damage in the few places where it can lose me the game, and kill it before it teleports otherwise" defenses. AKA packs of TMLs here and there rather than PDs and shields all over the place.

You should also factor in when you need to start making those defenses, which is once you see the novax, then you might loose a few mexes if your too slow (so he already put his 50k mass in)
vs
once the game launches and your opponent has cybran, because scouting the enemy ACU making tele and/or laser isn't really feasible and if you start making defenses once the upgrades are done, you already lost the game. (you need to preemptively spend mass to prevent the eventual laser snipe)

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Nerf to mazer damage also nerfed non-tele strategies, which is sad.

They are worse, but cloak-laser is still kinda doable or not?

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

It's weird for a naval equivalent of a T3 PD to be outranged by regular lower-tech units. It's as if Ravagers were outranged by Hoplites, except you also can't build shields in the water.

I don't think it's fair to compare torp launchers to pd, as even in the t1/t2 stage they just function very differently

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

I lost all hope in the balance team when they made a blanket 15% increase in vision for all units without a warning, passed it off as a minor technical fix and increased deceiver stealth radius by 15% to "compensate" as if it was an equivalent exchange in any way.

I also think the vision upgrades were handed out a bit too liberally with the argument of fixing the vision bug. I think structures and some units that already have a vastly larger range than they have vision should be exempt or at least be argued for differently as to why the change is made.

@zeldafanboy said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

It is a big loss, but min 28 ur base runs itself so losing a player is trivial. No mexes to upgrade, minimal scale to keep going beyond dumping more mass into the mass fab grids you are already scaling in your home base.

How is it both a big loss and trivial, what? I’ve always been generally against fullshare, especially on non-Setons maps, but now you’re admitting that it’s actually not a big loss at all once a certain state of the game is reached? (Obviously map dependent) You didn’t use to argue in those terms on the topic of fullshare.

Edit: just to prove I’m not going crazy, this was just a year ago

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/4608/full-share-cannot-avoid-reality-of-math/49?_=1695818543382

Because 90% of games are decided before min 28

I have always held this opinion, teleport suicides are one of the few situations full share is worse because there is just not much of a cost in losing a player that late generally. In the other 90% of games it’s still nearly universally better than no share and you can just house rule teleport cancer away for the other 10%.

@melanol

LOL. This is a joke right.

@Sladow-Noob

Hey! Just another quick question...
Anything in regards to the UEF Bubble Shield?

I recall @TheWheelie said in their stream, a while back, that the values for it were identical to the Personal Shield because there was really no direction for it just yet.
The values were practically 'arbritary' and would need more feedback to adjust.

Now that more feedback and info has been obtained, will there be more adjustments in this next balance patch?

~ Stryker

@clyf said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Was there much exploration of changing teleporter balance on a per faction basis (cost, range, etc.), not just in regard to synergistic upgrades?
 
@relentless, @FtXCommando
For a variable cost, you could have the number popup next to the cursor. Looks cool, very intuitive, technically easy.

I would much prefer an approach similar to how Aeon gun range was changed recently.

All factions have a cheaper short range teleport. Aeon and Sera have an additional upgrade to that which is much more expensive and allows global teleport. That's much more clear and bypasses the issue of seemingly identical upgrades having wildly different costs and capabilities depending on the faction.

@mazornoob said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

I lost all hope in the balance team when they made a blanket 15% increase in vision for all units without a warning, passed it off as a minor technical fix

This bothered the hell out of me, too. I'm still hoping that it gets re-visited, but it seems like discussing it just isn't desired!

@deribus
Personally i think every fraction should have access to unlimited ranged teleportation. Making multiple separate upgrades is a good idea, but making it expensive can mess with telesacu.

Imho if some specific upgrade interactions have to be changed from balance perspective better to focus on target nerfs. For example maybe we could add downside to laser and billy upgrades: reduces the teleportation range to 350. It even makes some sense since both upgrades consumes a lot of energy and tele depends on energy a lot.

Please, no special rules/exceptions or any of that bullshit.

Has anybody ever gotten Cybran teleport without getting laser? Nobody gets UEF teleport now, it would be tied entirely to billy. Making exceptions tied to laser/billy doesn’t make sense when those upgrades are basically the whole power of teleport.

So UEF can no longer get teleport and T3 together? Some very popular casts of games used this combo. I mean they were amusing and involved some inventive strategies.

@ftxcommando said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Because 90% of games are decided before min 28

Are they? Is Min 28 the earliest telemaser timing? Are any of these statements possible to make in general without accounting for the map? The answer to all of these is the same.

Can be pedantic about it all you want, there is a big difference between optimally spreading reclaim engies, scaling power, and utilizing mex bp while managing unit fronts at min 7 vs attack moving 2-3 engie facs on the giant reclaim pile at min 25, and putting more engie stations next to your gateway producing boys to scale mass fabs. There is no map where you're making teleport where your generic scaling isn't done unless you have 50 mexes to manage.

What's the inventive strategy of UEF teleport btw? Stealth gen and tml base? Billy + T3 + teleport is insanely powerful, it isn't an option to be allowed. T3 + teleport is a meme gimmick that I have only seen in games that were won 10 minutes before. Billy + teleport carries vastly more utility and makes UEF teleport legitimately viable in late game.

Billy + T3 + teleport is insanely powerful, it isn't an option to be allowed.

This was my gut reaction as well (shield + t3 + teleport also seems like it could be pretty beastly in some situations), but why not simply tune the cost of teleporting to make it not so?

I agree that special rules or exceptions are bad, but there's already precedent for adjusting teleport cost based on energy/mass cost of the unit (bp values TeleportMass/EngMod--could add in build time if you like). Include the cost of enhancements when calculating teleport cost* and you have many, many wheels to spin, all based on a central existing algorithm.

*Picking this out because it's an important possibility and I don't want to it get lost in the specifics here--mass cost of the telemazor (4000) is double that of the Cybran commander (2000). Just taking that into consideration--it isn't right now, TeleportMassMod is 0 for everything--could vary balance of teleporting with and without other enhancements significantly.

"But that's too complicated for players to learn"--there's a ton of shit (most of it, I'd say) that's too complicated for players to learn, and they approximate instead. Make the cost clear at the time and they'd do the same with teleporting.