There has been a lot of discussion in the the last thread about RAS SACU balance about reclaim, especially dead land armies in the T2 through T4 stages.
The core of the issue is that a failed assault at that point in the game leaves an enormous mass gift on your enemy's doorstep. This discourages aggressive tactics, and encourages strategies like nukes and T3 artillery, which in a worst case die quickly only for you to reclaim 81% of the mass back.
There are countless ways to address this, but first I think there should be some guidelines to agree on:
- Map reclaim should experience minimal, if any change. This includes unit wrecks like on Seton's. Most maps are already tuned with a specific amount of reclaim in mind, and updating hundreds of maps is unrealistic.
- Players should be rewarded for fighting for and securing reclaim fields, but not to the point of becoming more important than mexes or creating an endless snowball.
- Reclaim at the T1 land stage is relatively healthy, and should be looked at as an approximate goal.
If you disagree with any (or all) of these don't hesitate to say so. I'm happy to change or refine these.
With that out of the way, what are some ways to nerf reclaim?
- Reduce reclaim speed. This has been done before but could be done again. I don't think this is the proper approach though, since the limiting factors for reclaim are typically the amount and the travel time, not the engineering capacity to grab it all. It also impacts map reclaim just as much as anything else.
- Reduce reclaim value by tier. This is perhaps the simplest and most brute force method, but that doesn't mean it's the least effective. It would however impact map reclaim unless some kind of exceptions were coded in. As an aside, it could be interesting if T4s did their death damage a split-second after the wreck spawned, reducing the reclaim value.
- Introduce a reclaim decay system. Make higher tier unit wrecks slowly reduce their reclaim value over time. This would encourage players to grab reclaim as quickly as possible. Again, exceptions would have to be made for map reclaim.
What are some other ideas? What do you think about those above?
Community ideas:
@KaletheQuick said in Reclaim:
- reduce wreck HP by tech level
- add 'wreck' option to target priorities
- buildings should still leave 81%
- Add "better reclaim view" and "unit selection cost" to the base game of FAF
- Instead of reducing reclaim by tier, determine the % reclaim left after a unit's death based on the ratio of energy cost to mass cost.