Reclaim
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If you are attacking enemy main base that is not generally going to be a raid, that is more an attempt to end the game by crippling the opponent entirely, or killing his com. Reclaim is an afterthought, the big loss if you fail in such an endeavour is the huge amount of mass you invested into the attack.
No. The reason people only attack an enemy base with intent to end the game is precisely BECAUSE they don't want to leave reclaim behind.
If I spend 400 mass to make a little army, and I attack your base, and I kill 600 mass worth of your stuff, that attack could be considered a failure. Not counting reclaim, there was a net 200 mass in my favor. But it would leave about 500-700 mass of reclaim, which means it's a net -400 to me. In general, net negative = bad attack and net positive = good attack.
(The only exception to this is if one team has a lot more income than the other team; in that circumstance, the low-income team can't rely on trades that are 10% more efficient to make up the eco difference. If Team 2 has 150 mass/second and Team 1 has 100 mass/second, then if team 1 is over and over again killing 10 enemy tanks for every 9 that they lose, that's just biding time until Team 1 loses. Whereas if both teams had 100 income, those trades could snowball into an unstoppable advantage for Team 1.)
And the ONLY reason it backfired was because of reclaim.
Take away the reclaim, and that would have been a successful attack (net positive mass for me).
If attacks like that brought success to the attacker, we would see more of them. People would not only attack an enemy base with the intention of destroying it entirely. People would be willing to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack.
Right now, if someone is trying to attack an enemy base "just" to cause more damage than the cost of the attack, they are primarily using low-cost units (light arty drop) or they are trying to do massive damage (corsairs to snipe all t2 pgens, the value of corsair reclaim will be less than the cost of a terrible power stall)
And the reason for this, it cannot be disputed, is the reclaim mechanic. If you take away reclaim, many attacks that would now be considered failures would be properly classified as success. And many attacks that now are considered to be successful would, without reclaim, properly be considered failures.
Here's the simple math:
Because of the 81% reclaim, the attacker is going to donate 50-80% of the mass of their attacking units (some reclaim will be destroyed during the fight), and the defender is going to recoup 50-80% of the mass that they lose (rebuilding on wrecks and again some reclaim can be destroyed in the fight).
If I attack you with 1k mass, and there was no reclaim, I would only need to do 1001 mass of damage for the attack to be worthwhile. With reclaim, if you're going to get 50% of the mass of my attacking units, now I need to do 1501 damage in order to make an attack by 1k mass of units worthwhile. Except out of the 1501 mass damage i did, it only costs you 750 to repair it. So really, I need to destroy 3001 mass worth of stuff in your base to make the attack worthwhile.
On my side of the ledger, I'm -1000 mass for the cost of the units
On your side of the ledger, you're -3001 mass for the damage done, but +1500 for the value of your own losses, and +500 for the value of my losses. Which means you're -1001 mass overall. If I'm -1000 in order to cause you to be -1001, that's a success for me.But it's a VERY small success (just 1 mass worth). When you take into account the risks involved (my attack is not guaranteed to be a success, maybe it doesn't do as much damage as I hoped), risking 1000 mass of units for the chance to move the game 1 mass in my favor is actually a terrible investment.
So really, I shouldn't attack with 1k mass worth of units unless I have a very good chance to destroy 4k+ mass of your stuff.
If you take reclaim away, I can justify attacking with 1k mass of units in order to destroy 1001 mass worth of stuff in your base, or with a risk-reward analysis I would want a decent chance of destroying at least 1500 mass. So you can see that 81% reclaim makes a HUGE difference in what kind of attacks/raids on a base are good or bad.
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@JusticeForMantis By that logic killing 2 t1 engi with a mantis is not sufficient cause of the reclaim.
Come on now. Also I said a capped mex, if you can read.
By all means make this change to reclaim, and you will see what I said holding true in 6 months time.
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By that logic killing 2 t1 engi with a mantis is not sufficient cause of the reclaim.
Sending 1 mantis to killing 2 t1 engineers inside an enemy base would accomplish very little, unless the opponent is overflowing mass.
Catching engineers around the map, where they are not easily replaced, is different.
It is disrespectful to twist someone else's words.
make this change to reclaim, and you will see what I said holding true in 6 months time.
You think it takes 6 months for the community to react to a major balance change?
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For those who care, I did a thing, and made a mod. Basically I reduced the mass given from a dead wreck for T2 by 20% of it current total. T3 Mass & HP of wrecks reduced by 40% of the current total and Experimentals been reduced by 60% of the current total. Numbers are reworkable easily enough and I could even modify generic BP wreckage bp if that is so desired. And if interest try and make it so civilian wreckages stays the same, as it as now.
Let me know if any issues occur.
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Dead wreck as in units, structures, or both?
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Currently both but I can modify it be anything. Currently only seperated by T2, T3, and Experimental. But if or group of units has a category to make it unique in its BP, I can include it or make it seperately.
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So since no interesting pushback against reclaim reduction I think I’ll do one.
Part of the problem is that early game has a lot of variance for aggression. You can go for expand engies, reclaim engies, kill early expansion to delay it, kill power building engies, kill power itself
Late game reclaim is gone pretty much, only a map like selkie or ditch is gonna have reclaim left during late game and that still would require it to be a 1v1 or 2v2. The only exception is reclaim from massive engagements. But problem is if you lost a massive engagement, you aren’t getting that mass back and you won’t be able to stop someone from scooping it as it’s the area with the largest force concentration now.
This leaves: expansions? Hard to dislodge something that has been held for 15 minutes without overwhelming power, even more ro actually hold it. So you will need to build up a ton of percies/t4/whatever.
Engies? They themselves tend to be in the most secure area (the high level ones) same as late game power. So the only real way to touch it is some drops or t3 air play.
Losing some t1 engies wont do much, since a lot of the time they’re already done with their job at that stage of the game. Like you won’t really be suiciding units into bp supported land facs or air facs since they tend to be super secure. Navy facs you just do it with frigs anyway.
The reclaim nerf would assist in doing things like making it viable to use a percy to go kill 2 t2 mexes instead of 3 or whatever to pay off. But it’s not going to change that much in general because by t3 stage a lot of the powerbase for players is hugely concentrated. You just don’t see loose t2 mexes decide game state and I don’t really see the reclaim nerf doing anything other than making those sort of raids just a tiny bit more viable. Which is more likely to be countered by more core base t3 mex safe play rather than large scale t2 mex upgrading.
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@FtXCommando said in Reclaim:
So since no interesting pushback against reclaim reduction I think I’ll do one.
Part of the problem is that early game has a lot of variance for aggression. You can go for expand engies, reclaim engies, kill early expansion to delay it, kill power building engies, kill power itself
Late game reclaim is gone pretty much, only a map like selkie or ditch is gonna have reclaim left during late game and that still would require it to be a 1v1 or 2v2. The only exception is reclaim from massive engagements. But problem is if you lost a massive engagement, you aren’t getting that mass back and you won’t be able to stop someone from scooping it as it’s the area with the largest force concentration now.
This leaves: expansions? Hard to dislodge something that has been held for 15 minutes without overwhelming power, even more ro actually hold it. So you will need to build up a ton of percies/t4/whatever.
Engies? They themselves tend to be in the most secure area (the high level ones) same as late game power. So the only real way to touch it is some drops or t3 air play.
Losing some t1 engies wont do much, since a lot of the time they’re already done with their job at that stage of the game. Like you won’t really be suiciding units into bp supported land facs or air facs since they tend to be super secure. Navy facs you just do it with frigs anyway.
The reclaim nerf would assist in doing things like making it viable to use a percy to go kill 2 t2 mexes instead of 3 or whatever to pay off. But it’s not going to change that much in general because by t3 stage a lot of the powerbase for players is hugely concentrated. You just don’t see loose t2 mexes decide game state and I don’t really see the reclaim nerf doing anything other than making those sort of raids just a tiny bit more viable. Which is more likely to be countered by more core base t3 mex safe play rather than large scale t2 mex upgrading.
Which I think the secondary issue to beat this one my dead horse crusade, but issue of T3 (Land) is deployment of T3 in mass in an effective way it achieves something beside glaring at enemy. Travel Time et all.
Through a reclaim nerf (honestly partly why I'd advocate a much harsher reclaim T3 Nerf) will make it so spending T3 on enemy defenses to breach a firebase is far more reasonable I think solution to T3 needs to make it less painful to lose, and make its deployment more accessible/reasonable /shrug
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Reclaim reduction like the one proposed is obviously aimed at 1vs1 play where it's impact is gonna be easily visible and change the meta a bit during t3 stage. However as Ftx pointed out team games won't feel this change too much since they generally have very few non core mexes so there is nothing important to raid really. The only possibilities left are drops, air agression and slow pushes. The later will be buffed and nerfed at the same time. If you would have a lot more units then your enemy and managed to get a good fight and take that area from him you will now get less mass from reclaim but at the same time you won't be punished as hard if you overstep just a little bit and leave reclaim. Over all I don't think it's possible to promote more agression in team games (on turtly maps) without drastic balance changes and neither is it worth it, if those people would want such gameplay they wouldn't play those maps in the first place.
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Don’t really think this is just a turtle teamgame problem.
You have immense intel in late game -> raids just walking by won’t be happening.
You have established map halfs -> there is a general line of defense/reinforcements coming in to halt minor raids
You have heavily concentrated value targets in 1 or 2 locations -> not really that much value in sending that loan percy around.
It will like, make a 2-3 titan raid party more worthwhile I guess just for cancering loose mexes but the meta will just evolve to safe eco scaling instead. And even then, a lot harder to get use out of those raid tanks unless it’s cyb with stealth following loya. Some t2 gunships get made and deal with it.
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Yeah, it's a map layout problem that denies most forms of aggression that are not all in.
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No, it isn’t. Sentons didn’t turn into “lemme put random bs here to go raid mexes” after water reclaim nerf made things in water like 40% value. It makes frig cancer earlier on more justifiable, but t2 and t3 pushes are still all in affairs that typically decide the overall game state in that area. You see this with all big navy maps. Land will operate the same regardless aside from SOME potential with early raid bots.
Don’t get me wrong, it HAS an effect on increasing aggression. It is nothing like what you’re advertising it as, though. If you want the thing you’re advertising, you need to rethink the entire dimension of how late gameplay converges.
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??? As I said already, it's a map layout issue, if a map is designed in a way that it doesn't promote aggression then there won't be much agression no matter the changes you do (unless they would be very drastic).
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Yeah ok beast I guess if every map is hollow and comet catcher than ur aggression will work out
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... you ignore everything in between.
There are more maps then insanely raid heavy 1vs1 on one end and Dual Gap and Seton's on the other.
With reclaim changes you buff aggression on most 1vs1 maps and some team game maps (mostly 2vs2 or 3v3) while having minimal impact (I think only positive) on most team game maps. -
No you don’t. There will be marginal gain in t3 raids on a map like phenom let alone more closed 2v2s. You’re applying the logic of initial t1 raids to initial t3 raids when they operate in entirely different game states. It’s not a simple thing of just looking at reclaim. The ability for quick air response, the ability to have wide reaching intel, the lack of care for most expansion engies, the consolidation in expansions, all of this impacts aggression.
Why can’t I just send 1 solo battleship to go and kill the 3 beach mexes on beach in sentons? Probably because it’ll get immediately seen by sonar and torped or crushed by reinforcements.
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@FtXCommando Setons was always about all out pushes, because once you win the navy (commonly you win rock and lose beach), you can't physically reach enemy air base or other navy, so you then have to prep game enders to finish them. Commonly you will see either Nuke subs spam, T4 spam, or a paragon after enemy team has lost half their mex. At this point in the game incomes are sufficient that its not even worth building mex on enemy beach.
Reduction in reclaim made winning a naval side before your opponent less game ending.
team maps should by design if you want aggressive gameplay have a substantial amount of mex which are not "core" mex that are fought over in the early - l ate stages of the game. Reducing reclaim negatively effects these maps.
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FtX, if you want to lower reclaim value (which I generally agree with), please also increase wreck health. The nerf to sea wreck values was only necessary because wrecks on the bottom of the ocean are all but immune to damage from further fighting. By contrast, most land wrecks die to further fighting, particularly if armies are using artillery (artillery obliterates wrecks). Therefore, a reduction of wreck value of 81% to 40% should be accompanied by a doubling or tripling of wreck health. This would make wreck values more consistent because less of them would die to "random" artillery fire and to intentional snipes (in the case of MLs).
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@FtXCommando said in Reclaim:
So since no interesting pushback against reclaim reduction I think I’ll do one.
TL;DR: As an attacker, you can/should get some/most reclaim for yourself. Your analysis ignored the lost mass while the mex didn't exist, and the time/focus/opportunity cost to do the reclaiming/rebuilding. I'm a really aggressive, semi-high rated player who sucks at every skill in the game except for understanding this mechanic and I should have credibility on this issue.
Full post:
This is pretty unfair and you totally ignored my post. In all your posts about the value of a t3 percie raid etc., you also totally ignored the possibility of the attacking player getting some of the reclaim for themselves. I know it's possible because it's an aspect of my play I've worked on developing, grabbing some of the reclaim as the attacker by giving engie orders to an area I know I will attack with enough strength. If an attacker can hold a specific area they are attacking for even 25-30 seconds, they can get back a lot of the reclaim of the battle they just won. And, as the attacker, you have the big advantage of knowing exactly where and when you will attack! Utilizing this advantage is key to being a successful attacking player, and grabbing some/all of the reclaim is a big part of that.
Again, just because people don't play well and don't take advantage of something doesn't mean it's a problem.
And if you're talking super late game, combat SCUs could make this super easy.
Further, Your analysis of the t2 mexes a percie would need to kill etc. totally ignored build-time, lost mass income while the mex is being built, and opportunity cost/attention for the engineers doing the reclaiming. If you launch a percie at me, suicide into my base, kill one t2 mex, and die, surrounded by idle engies who are happy to reclaim the percie, the mex, and rebuild it asap, that sounds like a bad raid. No reason it should be a good value.
In real games, in my experience, often it isn't so trivial for the defender to snap up all the reclaim, as there is reclaim all over the map and it's not easy to get. Further, if "raiding", it might be better to go for a more isolated mex that isn't so easy to rebuild. If you deny your opponent a minute or two of a t3-capped mex existing, use his attention to rebuild, and then a minute or two later he gets a percie wreck, it's honestly a good raid.
Not to mention, percies seem like a bizarre "raiding" unit to pick off a random mex, probably a loyalist/harb would make more sense, or if it's a defended position and really late game, SCUs that can pick up reclaim (heck you could be cute and do a little with a few harbs).
The bigger reason why there is more raiding early and less late is because early there are a lot more undefended or lightly defended positions. The nature of firebases and defense being so strong in sup com, and the exponential economy, means that by the t3 phase most important positions are very well-defended.
If you really wanted to alter this, again as has been said, map design would go a long way. Since I try to play so aggressively every game, I can say from personal experience that the maps where all the bases are clustered together, with a ton of mexes in the bases, are brutal for aggressive play, and those maps are super popular (hilly plateau, canis, etc.). Fewer really safe mexes, and not having the bases so on top of each other would make a big difference (Badlands, Open Palms, Lush NA all are way better for this).
If you really really wanted to push this, buffing aggressive options (mmls? titans? harbs? combat engineers? t1 arty?) or nerfing tmds or t2/t3 pd would make an impact. But, again I don't think any of that is really necessary.
I don't know what rating you are these days, but last time I saw your rating we were around the same. And I am genuinely awful at micro, managing the battle, and generally all RTS skills. The only thing I have going for me is good strategic decision-making on raiding, unit-composition, etc. Understanding this sort of situation is actually my only strength as a Forged Alliance player.
Further, as far as I can tell, I play way, way, more aggressively than the vast majority of the player base and always try to push them hard while they are teching. When I win in a team game, it's because I've pushed successfully enough and reclaimed enough to overwhelm an enemy, and when I lose it's because I fail to do so, and I refuse to ever get a t3 mex. I know if it comes to a nuke/t3 arty game I'll lose, so I do whatever I can to avoid it coming to that. I'm telling you it's absolutely possible right now to take advantage of players teching too hard, because it's the only thing I do well.
I've got to be one of the most aggressive, semi-highly rated players out there and understanding strategic decisions is my only strength as a player. I have to have some credibility when I say lowering reclaim isn't necessary to achieve the intended effect, and might actually be counterproductive (because attackers should be getting a lot of the reclaim from a successful attack). You don't see me weighing in passionately on t3 land balance, or destroyer balance, or SCU ras or whatever, but this one change is in the one area where I really have some expertise.
Lastly, reclaim is one of the unique/interesting mechanics of these games dating back to TA. It'd be such a shame to see it diminished like this as a result, in my opinion, of poorly executed/decided late game attacks.
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You don't bring engies with you on tiny raids. They are slow. Raids are fast. You bring engies with you on risky, more thought out attacks into expansions so you can scoop up either battlefield mass or build up a base to sit on. Didn't ignore this element at all, in fact I assume it's a given in competent play. I didn't consider it because it's irrelevant to the topic. The rest of your first paragraphs are just saying what I said before, well, for the most part.
Bringing up aspects of opportunity cost and delay are muddying the discussion to pointlessness and begs a specific replay. No one can tell you what any of that would be without seeing specific game conditions. I generally don't think the loss in mass income is that significant, often you can just use the dead t2 mex reclaim to go boost safer t3 mexes instead. Like are you saying 1 percy killing 1 t2 mex is worthwhile or what? You can make an argument for 2 I guess, that's still a massive ask.
Exponential economy doesn't really matter. If it required exponential ground to cover, then t3 raids should be totally viable all the time. It doesn't. Exponential economy in fact seems to cover less ground than the initial ground you need to maintain relevancy in the t1/t2 stage. No one cares about losing your t1 mexes at front when you have 8 t3 mexes at home.
Firebases are basically what I covered. You have concentrated bp around the relevant areas of your current economy and will have streams of units going to the fronts that should be able to stop or cut off raids. If they can't, you always have air. If air takes too long, emergency pd can come up and finish up the raiding units or force them to stop for your units to finish them off.
Defense is strong because reclaim is high and you are guaranteed good returns from enemy units. Lower returns and defense gets the range of snowball reduced. Assuming attack failure. I still don't think a reclaim nerf means you will see more risky attacks that do fail, just as you do not see more risky navy fights because reclaim is 40% in water. Instead you might see some more abuse of titan/loya early on.
Percy is just a unit to pick because it's what gains the most extreme benefit from the reclaim reduction. Raiding parties of loya/titan can be used too. I don't really care. By the way, I do think loya/titan raiding groups are viable as they are now. This reclaim reduction will make them MORE viable but the reduction in mass left isn't extreme enough to expect some meta shift. Unless of course a bunch of high rated dudes start doing it because of the reclaim nerf and now everyone has to go do it.
Badlands is a bad teamgame map beyond 2v2, it's the definition of 1 note. It's the anti-astro as a 4v4 map. Open palms also sucks above 2v2 because the entire bo is built around cheesing a crush by min 2 since you're basically as close to the enemy as you are on winter duel. The other maps you mentioned as super popular also are meh for 4v4, but they're certainly better than these two.
It's great that you're my rating. Maybe join a high rated teamgame then. Don't really understand all these paragraphs about aggro stuff. The value of raids as an aggressive player typically revolve around the structures left behind by the defending player (pd, mexes, factories, whatever). This change really influences nothing on the all in push that you seem to be basing your post on here. The entire point is making minor jabs with t3 land viable.
