Weak Overcharge

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

Arma473 as it stands guncom is not worth the investment. It costs too much mass, delaying significantly meanwhile you're still taking a huge risk by having your com at the front making it an easy snipe target.

The extra mass is icing on the cake, really.

Its much more efficient just to build Harbs, Percy, or hell strats after ecoing. Nano com is only effective in a certain window of the game, and all this does is make that window shorter, its now at the point that the window is not sufficiently long enough for you to see a benefit.

My secret spreadsheet? Just do the mathematics yourself. How long does it take to accumulate income. How much income do you get from each building, and compare against the building of a game ender on that basis.

Hmmm Yes, Gun soo bad, mmm, Yes, sooo thrash. Next time I play I will remember that.
If you honestly think that gun or rambo acu is weak then you really have no clue what's strong and what's weak. A gun acu with some support units is easily worth around 3k mass in t3 units (given you have few E storages and some overflow). And that's just an ACU with a gun and a t2 or w/e. If you add Shield(UEF, Aeon)/Nano (sera) then the ACU becomes a No-Go zone for any units, especially t3. Like just any 2k+ ladder game and see how strong ACU's are.
A note here: I actually think that ACU is pretty OP and it's power isn't too healthy for the gameplay but if you would nerf it then the game would become more stale since other aspects of the game are not promoting aggressive gameplay. I think that with tweaks to Reclaim % values and some nerfing to Rambo ACU's you would get a much better gameplay that focuses more on trying to attack around the map instead of doing 1 big push through the middle.

I really wish we would have a few guys that would be responsible for deleting all the stupid posts (in the balance forum) but I guess then we would be too "elitist" . Also probably a waste of their time since most of people that actually have a say in balance have abandoned forums long time ago since it's so thrash.

i've learnt to read only the relevant post, i guess you should try ignoring these guys.

@Tagada said in Weak Overcharge:

I really wish we would have a few guys that would be responsible for deleting all the stupid posts

Ask and you shall receive.

All posts that did not actively contribute to the conversation and/or contained personal attacks have been deleted. Keep it civil, keep it on topic.

As my calculations and post on the OC nerf in a thread discussing OC got deleted, I'm simply going to restate the facts that we know about the new OC and then an opinion on what this does.

The facts:

You need roughly 4 e storage and a t2 pgen to support killing Harbs, and to kill Bricks or Percy you now need roughly 7 e storage, and 2 t2 pgens.

You are now looking at an extra cost of 2200 mass to 4100 mass on your nano or shield com. This significantly delaying the window where guncom is effective.

Opinion:

Guncom is very risky, because as soon as a T4 pops, you're whole investment is gone, as you have to retreat. Guncom is inherently risky mid-game cause your com is at the front instead of with ras at the back. This is directly supporting a less aggressive gameplay.

Now, we might ask, well guncom is still more efficient mass for mass than T3? Yes, but guncom can only be in one place at a time. At what point do we just call it a day, and eco into building a T4 instead and not have to worry about the constant threat of a com snipe. Guncom is most effective in the middle game where T4 are not easily built, and where there isn't sufficient air that you are likely to get stratted. Now that window is significantly shortened due to the extra upfront cost on making guncom effective, and therefore the time it takes to accumulate said resources.

@Psions said in Weak Overcharge:

The facts:
You need roughly 4 e storage and a t2 pgen to support killing Harbs, and to kill Bricks or Percy you now need roughly 7 e storage, and 2 t2 pgens.

You are now looking at an extra cost of 2200 mass to 4100 mass on your nano or shield com. This significantly delaying the window where guncom is effective.

Yes, instead of 3 e storage and 3/4 of a t2 pgen you now need 4 e storages and 1 t2 pgen which makes it cost: 550 more mass, such an insane nerf.

Opinion:
Guncom is very risky, because as soon as a T4 pops, you're whole investment is gone, as you have to retreat. Guncom is inherently risky mid-game cause your com is at the front instead of with ras at the back. This is directly supporting a less aggressive gameplay.

Yes, gun com vs t4 is risky, I wonder why ... I am sure that this is the reason why your dual gap games are not promoting agressive gameplay and it has nothing to do with the horrendous map layout ..

Now, we might ask, well guncom is still more efficient mass for mass than T3? Yes, but guncom can only be in one place at a time.

I see that your t3 units have magical ability of teleportation so that they can be in 3 places at once? Not sure if you knew but ACU can be transported via a t2 transport as well.

At what point do we just call it a day, and eco into building a T4 instead and not have to worry about the constant threat of a com snipe.

Try doing that on any normal map, GL with that

Guncom is most effective in the middle game where T4 are not easily built, and where there isn't sufficient air that you are likely to get stratted. Now that window is significantly shortened due to the extra upfront cost on making guncom effective, and therefore the time it takes to accumulate said resources.

Using terms middle game and t4 in one sentence tells the whole story here.

If you want to see any aggressive gameplay I suggest playing other maps that do not involve having 6 monkeys packed in small space closely together throwing banana peels at each other.