Another Novax conversation
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So lets make one thing clear. I dont really care if anything changes with the novax (or any other unit for that matter)
I was trying to fall asleep last night and was thinking about FAF because I am a complete loser with no life.
For some reason a thought entered my brain and the half asleep sad version of myself thought it was a good idea so I'm going to present it here because I have seen so many tears about the Novax since I have been playing FAF
The common argument seems to be that the Novax is unbalanced and has no counter.
My suggestion is simple. Give the satellites the capability to target each other.
Novax is suppose to be a defensive unit (based on its name) and this change I believe would allow it to function more like that.
I believe this change would force players into winning an advantage before they can punish their opponent.
Land, Sea, Air all require an advantage to be won as battles must be fought and won before you can start to punish your opponent so this would mean that you would have to win a Novax battle in order to be able to abuse them over enemy battle space.
If you make a Novax you would have to decide if sending it to your opponents base is the right move knowing that you can be shot down having to re build a satellite in the ground station.
If you were under siege by say 4-5 Novax then you could start making your own under shield cover and send them over to enemy battlespace (knowing you couldn't keep them in your base as they'd be shot down being outnumbered)
Now the enemy has to decide to send their satellites back to their base to engage the sats you are sending or not.
If this is considered than I would recommend that sats are not able to fire or be targeted until they reach altitude so that they cant be insta killed as they ascend to orbit from the ground station.
Pretty much any in game scenario I can think of where Novax are used seems to have a simple resolution if Novax can target each other and the more I think of it the more intriguing the scenarios seem to be with this adjustment.
If this is a bad ide it wont hurt my feelings. So many times ideas seem so great until they are subjected to peer review so thats the point here.
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Not a huge fan of this. Having novax being able to target each other would create a 4th category where u its fight in. Instead imo novax should be reworked to be vision only and cheaper
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Novax is exclusive to UEF, with his change you won’t have any opportunity to fight Novax if you’re not UEF.
The way to overwhelm this is to give this opportunity to every fraction, which would be basically an already suggested idea of SMDs shooting down Novaxes.
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Arty has an energy cost to fire.
Give Novax a large energy cost to fire weapon?
That way spamming lots of them can cripple your E reserves and stall.
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If you are an old fart like me you might remember this game. So what if your nukes (not SMD) had a toggle to detonate in proximity to a novax ( could even work for any air Experimental?) Double the build cost and maybe time for a replacement Satellite.
Would want to standardize launch times for all factions, if you are too close to the nuke launcher it should basically be an auto hit so it provides a way to deny areas to Sats. -
@Blade_Walker Holy nostalgia hit
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SMD killable novax on top of a rebuild cost increase? It being shot down by SMD itself would already make the unit completely unviable
The hell am I paying 36k mass for a unit that might kill a few mexes or win an arty war 15 minutes from now instead of an SML and 2 nukes from it?
Novax being pure intel isn’t a t4, it’s just the UEF eye and would deserve to be moved for the same reason salvation got moved into t4 tier.
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Satellite isn't unbalanced, it's just annoying to play against. If you simply target T3 mexes with it it basically does less damage in mass/s than the equivalent production in mass fabs (if the t3 mex are rebuilt eventually), and it eventually falls off as things become shielded, until an entire T3 arty has to be built to give it opportunities to hit stuff again (not guaranteed).
@Caliber said in Another Novax conversation:
Arty has an energy cost to fire.
Give Novax a large energy cost to fire weapon?
That way spamming lots of them can cripple your E reserves and stall.
This is a mere (hidden) cost increase to the satellite, since satellites practically never get rebuilt, so they cannot re-use the energy for the old dead satellite.
@Blade_Walker said in Another Novax conversation:
So what if your nukes (not SMD) had a toggle to detonate in proximity to a novax ( could even work for any air Experimental?) Double the build cost and maybe time for a replacement Satellite.
I like this idea in terms of economic costs: 16.5k launcher + 12k missile + at least 6280 mass in pgens (34.78k total) vs 36k novax + at least 10k per rebuilt satellite
This is way better than the SMD idea where sats basically die for free (7.5k smd + 3.6k missile + 2k pgen = 13.1k total)In terms of gameplay design it is a bit of an awkward solution with the targeting but at least both sides get something useful out of their investment if the nuke isn't used to intercept the sat so there's never useless mass wasted. Also balancewise imo it would be a poor, unsatisfying decision to make a nuke and use it on a sat that will kill its mass in 5 minutes instead of using the nuke to kill some poor player without smd (way faster mass killed/time).
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SMD killing Novaxes after two shots wouldn't be that unbalanced in terms of economics costs cause of coverage (nuke covers basically the entire map, smd isn't) and BP (two SMD missiles ain't cheap compared to novax rebuild)
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I think its a horrible idea. Even IF its not unbalanced then you have the other side which is "i send in sat and then nuke" as the sat "wastes" the smds
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What about reducing the speed a bit so players have more time to shield against it and slightly encourages defensive use (per its name). An E cost for its weapon usage would also be ok I guess but probably not that impactful.
It's already in a nice spot in T3 arti wars where 1 can be good but 2+ bad (which encourages unit variety); and on maps without lots of spread out mexes it's not very good. Removing its damage or making it be shot down by SMD makes it a really weak experimental, when UEF already suffers with its experimental options, while the SMD mechanic is also unintuitive and so is yet another non-new player friendly move.
My main issue with it is on certain maps even if you scout them building it early on and start shielding your mexes it's still tough to counter it, while the cost and build time means that it's going to be much harder to get a victory (and ignore novax defence) vs say a t3 arti. However, nerfing the novax damage then makes it weaker generally.
Only thoughts I have on ways to make it more 'counterable' either with shields or a land push without introducing some completely new mechanic would be:
- Have it take longer before it can threaten mexes - e.g. one way is the speed nerf suggestion above; another way is to increase the cost and damage by the same amount (although I'm not as big a fan of this as it becomes less distinguishable from T3 arti the closer it gets in cost)
- Decrease the individual damage but give it a significant aoe - would require VFX changes, be quite a deviation from the original unit design, and make it more like t3 arti so again overall doesn't feel great (my thinking for this was a way of having it be better against mobile units but worse against shields, so it could be used more defensively - so T2 shields could counter the novax even better than currently, but it would still have a useful role in helping deal with groups of enemy land units)
- Introduce personal shield upgrades for mexes, which would give an easy way to protect mexes from novax (you could cost these similarly to a t2 shield for a similar or even weaker effect, that only protects the mex, or alternatively only the mex and adjacent storage). This solves the main annoyance I have with dealing with a novax (need to spend a while shielding mexes), and is unlikely to have major balance implications outside of novax matchups since it'd be much more efficient to just build a t2/t3 shield to protect a particular group of mexes. It'd only help make things easier for protecting t3 mexes though.
If it was to be nerfed I hope that it'd be combined with some slight improvements to UEFs other experimentals to compensate
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Someone before mentioned giving it a range limit to enforce the defense part of the defense satalite, just a mention.
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@Nuggets said in Another Novax conversation:
as the sat "wastes" the smds
This part is easily implementable as a SMD button for toggle on/off "firing at satellites". So SMD won't fire if it's not necessary.
@maudlin27 btw it will be just reverse of the +50% speed buff from 2019 or smth
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a interesting idea ive hurd is make the sat do less damage the further away its being used so if ur targeting something across the map is far weaker than something close by but overall im with nuggets it should have no attack and just be able to see and be cheaper and if none of thats possible atleast cost more mass to build and mabye energy to use
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Balance aside, it is the most annoying unit to deal with. Depending on the mal it can be harder or easier to counter it with shields, but the fact remains is that its annoying. Idk if other disagree, but even if it will be balanced "perfectly", it will remain an anmoying unit to deal with, if it stays as an offensive unit.
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@Nuggets is it any more annoying than t3 arty in your opinion? Just shield spam+assist gameplay is boring but I very much doubt most people want to see t3 arty fundamentally changed in a similar way to your novax proposal
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@Paradox_of_War i think its WAY more annoying to deal with than t3 arty. For arty you defend like 1-3 high value targets, for sat everything is open. If your high value targets are shielded it will go after every mex instead (yes i know a good way to deal with it is just to rebuild behind it)
Basically, can be dealt with but incredibly annoying -
Just a heads up for anyone who hasn't played the original FA. In the mission where you get the satellites, aka Novax, Even if you build a novax the nuke defense in QAI's base shoots down your satellites. Most people are unaware of this fact.
Also, IMO, I think scathis should go back to what it used to be. With FAF being down, I have gone back to playing the Original Games of FA and OG SupCom and it takes some time getting used to it again. Missions are harder than in FAF and Endgame experimentals like Sat Nuke Mavor and Salv take forever to build. Most people who haven't played FA don't know that FAF actually dumbed down the time in which it takes for things to build. For example; nukes take 45 minutes to load. Yes, I said 45 minutes. even with 30 SACU Engineering Suites it takes the 5 minutes to load. Also you don't get the option to make a ras or engineering support com, you have to upgrade each individual support commander manually. Only one upgrade at a time. Support Comms also take 5 minutes to build and have way more health than FAF Support Comms. Max Vet Cloaked Cybran Support Coms have 500 HP shy of 80k HP.
Shields Don't share Damage. Air wreckage passes through the shields instead of Bouncing off. Time to build things is longer. Strat Bombers 4 minutes for example. Asfs 2 Minutes Battleships 6 minutes. It is a much longer game than faf is. Much more difficult too. Mass Fab t2 is 100 E consumption Mass Fab t3 in campaign is 1k E multiplayer is 3k.
What I am saying is that if you want a real challenge for a game try the OG and FA SupCom Missions in the actual games. You may find it harder for you to actually Micromanage. -
Just because Supcom might be harder in original FA doesnt make this something to consider for balance. The game will never be balanced around missions, it will always be MP and then missions can be made with the current balance.
Also, you are listing random example of changes without really considering why theses were implemented or what changes accompanied them. Plus there is also the fact that some changes made missions harder; easiest example i can think of would be aeon t2 gunships. -
@Nuggets hmm true ig. But queueing an extra 10 shields over Mexes and maybe rebuilding a few, after already queuing 10 shields over your air grid, smds, main production, etc (and assembling engines to assist shields) is only marginally more annoying, not "WAY" more annoying imo
