Weak Overcharge

After last patche overcharge 15k for 60k energy, its useless againts anything, even monkey can not be killed. Why ruine game features? Without vote or discuss, from patch to patch there is less game freedoms and fun things, game is dying!

https://content.faforever.com/patchnotes/3696.html

You aware the OC change was implemented 2 years ago? This recent change just makes it a more intuitive linear scale and doesn't really impact much at all?

Why was it changed back then? Because OC was also bonkers OP and only justified through the fact t3 itself was nuts. So it gets brought down to a more reasonable level alongside t3 being nerfed.

Just mod it back to how you like it and host games.

You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

I remember that nerf t3, it was sadly and hurt, few times thinked delete the game, and now they nerfed overcharge, they do everything for ruin game. One of my favorite tactic was defense on mid outpost, wait for monkey, kill and reclaim it, but now commander unit useless. Game features die one by one.

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@Flash_asd You can still do all that, you would just need to a bit more energy storage (59k in storage would be 11 storages, which cost only 2750 mass total to make, that's very small compared to the cost of a ML) and enough power generation to run them, or extra storages (if you want to save up a second shot you would want to spend about 5k mass to get 20 storages).

If you want to continuously fire massive overcharges every 4 seconds, you need 60k power every 4 seconds, which is 15k power/second, which is 6 T3 pgens. But in practice, nobody is going to be needing to dish out that many full-power OCs. With just 2 T3 pgens, you'd get 5k power/second, which is enough to fill up 120k of energy storage every 24 seconds. Every 24 seconds you could fire off two full-power OCs (30k total damage to a monkeylord, which if it's got some other damage, should be enough to kill it). Every 24 seconds, you could fire 4 half-power OCs, 30k power for 7500 damage, which is the max HP of a no-vet brick.

@psions A no-vet harbinger can only have 4600 HP, which would mean 18,400 energy storage, which you can get with just 3 e storages (5k each plus the 4k that your ACU has). So it would cost 750 mass to get the ability to one-shot a harb. If you want to shoot off 18,400 every 4 seconds, the max rate of fire for manual overcharge, that's only 4600 energy/second that you need, which you can supply with just 2 T3 pgens.

CORRECTION: you need 4 e storages, you need 20,445 e in storage to one-shot a full-health full-shields no-vet harbinger. This is because when you have 20,445 e in storage, your overcharge will use 18400 energy and leave 2,045 in the bank. Overcharge will only use 90% of your energy bar (unless 90% would be less than 5k, in which case the overcharge will use 5k, because overcharge can never be smaller than 5k)

also, in practice if you take a harb down to about 300 health, it doesn't take much for your ACU or something else to kill it with regular shots, so maybe it's fair to say 3 storages are enough to stop a harb even though technically you would need 4 storages for a guaranteed one-shot

So it costs 750 mass to get enough e storage to kill the first harb that is rushed out at you. (Which is less than the total cost of a harb, 840 mass.) And if you want enough in storage to kill two harbs, you need 4 more e storages, another 1k mass. For 1750 mass, you can have enough e storage to kill 2 harbs (combined cost, 1680 mass). Overcharge is still very cheap compared to the cost of making harbingers. And that doesn't take into account that you can refill your power bar at no mass cost, and if you smash harbingers, you will get significant reclaim.

If you scale up your e storage and e production over time, the cost won't even seem like very much.

But there's really no point in arguing about it. The change isn't going to be reverted any time soon. The game will normalize around the new balance. We can check back in 2-3 weeks to see if players are making it work or if they still hate it.

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You're right @WhenDayBreaks, 3 isn't enough. I think that's because OC doesn't take you down to zero power.* It leaves some minimum amount in the power bank. With just 3 storages, it's not quite enough to kill a harb with full shields. So basically it would cost 1000 mass to get enough e storage to one-shot one harb, and 1750 mass to be able to one-shot two harbs.

  • Per the patch notes, it never takes more than 90% of your stored energy, but actually there is an exception to that rule. I sandboxed it, and the OC will actually take you down to 0% power if you have exactly 5k energy in storage. But I guess if you have at least 5556 e in storage, an overcharge will leave at least 10% in your power bank.
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You only need 1k of mass to get enough e storage to overcharge a harbinger in one shot. That is undeniable. How much mass does it cost to get the power that you need to fill up your power bar? It depends.

It depends on whether you get overflow from teammates. It depends on whether you already built power in order to achieve something else. Maybe you built an extra t2 pgen so you would have enough power to get Seraphim's first nano regen upgrade. If you already overbuilt power, you don't need to spend any extra mass on it.

You can get the power by harvesting it from trees.

If you want to build pgens to get enough power to overcharge harbingers, how many pgens do you need? Well, if you fire an overcharge that costs 18400 power, and you want to replenish that for a second overcharge, how many pgens do you need? That depends on how quickly you need it to regenerate.

If you want to spam manual overcharges, you have 4 seconds to come up with 18.4k power, that's less than 5k power/second, which means 2 T3 pgens would be sufficient. For 7480 mass (the cost of 2 T3 pgens + 4 storages), your ACU can become a death god that kills 210 mass/second of harbingers (and that's assuming you only kill 1 at a time, if two or three are clumped up, the rate doubles/triples). 210 mass/second is like having 8 storaged T3 mexes. If you want to be able to deal damage destroying 210 mass/second of your opponent's units, it's total reasonable that you would have to invest 7480k mass up front for that. If you are blapping harbs non-stop, the investment would pay for itself (meaning you break the same amount of your opponent's mass as you spent on mass to get it) in less than 36 seconds, and that's not even counting the reclaim you would get if you're able to stand your ground and reclaim the battle site. It doesn't count whether your other units are able to get favorable trades because they suddenly outnumber the enemy harbingers.

If you invest significantly less, let's say 8 storages (2k mass) + 2 T2 pgens (2.4k mass), that's a total cost of 4.4k mass. You would be able to overcharge harbs twice without refilling your storage, and it would take 18 seconds to refill the storage enough to do it again or 36 seconds to fully recharge storage. So in the span of 40 seconds, your ACU could one-shot harbs 4 times. That's 3280 mass worth of enemy units killed (more if you can OC multiple harbs at once, which is not unreasonable, if the enemy sends harbs at you in small numbers that would be suicide). For an investment of just 4.4k mass, in 40 seconds you can kill 3280 mass of enemy units and maybe scoop up 2400 mass of reclaim from those kills. The idea that overcharge is nerfed to the point of being uneconomical is just not true.

A harbinger itself costs 9.6k power just to make and only 18.4k power to one-shot. If you overcharge 2 harbingers at once, you literally spent less energy on that OC than your opponent spent to build them in the first place, and you spent zero mass. What about the fact that your opponent needs to build T2 pgens just to make harbingers in the first place?

And none of this math takes into account the value of having such an ability on your ACU: it helps you to survive land-based attacks/snipe attempts. And the fact that you can position your ACU where you want it, to do the most damage. Your ACU might have massive shielding, big regeneration, or stealth. You can have mobile shields covering your ACU. You can put all of this firepower anywhere you want on the battlefield, you can even drop it from a T2 transport. It's not like investing in point defense that will only protect 1 area or artillery with limited range. Your ACU might have T2/T3 upgrade so it can lock down reclaim fields and quickly scoop mass.

Compared to your other options in this game, overcharges are still massively overpowered in terms of the damage you can do, for the amount of mass/energy you need to invest. That doesn't mean they need to be nerfed further. You have to risk your ACU to use them, and they serve a valuable purpose of making it hard to kill the ACU. They play an appropriate role to improve gameplay/game balance.

I really like all and every changes.
It gives chances for new play and keeps me entertained and amazed by this epic game.
Also Units and abilities wich were unused in past metas will get brought back to live by balance changes 😄

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