Another Novax conversation
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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
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I hate novaxs
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@Nuggets @Paradox_of_War I wasn't suggesting a change per say. I was suggesting playing the campaigns of the OG games and then See what you think should be adjusted. I think some of the balance from the original FA and OG SupCom would be nice for the game. But that is my opinion. So plz take it with a grain of salt. Not trying to insult people here
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@Nomander said in Another Novax conversation:
Satellite isn't unbalanced, it's just annoying to play against.
This.
But serious question- how much do I need to donate to patron to get something done about this fun killing unit?
Just leaving it as it is, means there's more than a 25% chance, every game of an unblock-able, perfectly accurate, no power costing, invincible*, fast moving, weak-but scalable 'artillery' unit.
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It seems the majority dont like the novax as it is
another idea is to make the vision and intel function same as the soothsayer
large e cost or very small vision and no radar.
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What do you do when you see a novax? Rush to preemptively shield every minutely valuable thing in your base. HQs, mexes, power, storage, exp's being built.
What do you do when you see t3 arty up? Shield your power.
Novax is OP by virtue it can instantly change target with 100% accuracy. It will find a gap in your base and exploit it.
Arty while still annoying, takes time to aim at something new, fire, and maybe hit that target. You're not aiming at mexes with T3 arty (unless you basically already won and have nothing else to hit).
You have time an opportunity to shield your base as needed when defending against arty, and generally a lot less of that with a novax.
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@snoog You hit on something I forgot. With (1) sat, an entire team, needs to shield up their base, near, and far mexs to 'counter'.
A typical t3 shield is around 3000 mass and a typical 8 person map has 4-6 close mexes, 1-2 expos, and then whatever far mexes exist. By the time a Novax shows up, there's also probably a main t3 power grid; so conservatively a player has 3-4 places to shield.
That means the first Sat, can require an investment of 12-15k mass, and power drain of 1200-1600 per second; per player.
By the numbers then, to 'counter':
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a Setons team- if they're each only getting (4) more t3 shields, 48-60k mass.,
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a Dual Gap team - assuming there's some over lap, across 7 players, getting (2) that's 42k mass,
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a Random Map team - assuming 5 players getting (3) each, that's 45k mass
ofc, that's plus power drain, cost of engineers going around, and mass to build power. And, that's with NO DAMAGE DONE, and only assuming 2-3 shields a player. So just by existing, a SAT almost immediately pays for itself.
Artillery is slow firing and inaccurate. Bombers can get shot down. Sats cost nothing once built and scale as a flock better than anything else.
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How about we disable the laser function for a year and see how it plays out. What does it take for the balance team to decide to action something like this?
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@Dorset You can't "just disable it". That would make the sat worthless and dumb to build. There needs to be an adjustment to move it to t3, make it cheaper (maybe e upkeep?) and maybe change vision radius
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@Nuggets I don't see how it would be any less dumb to build than an Eye. Novax without It's attack function is still very op in my opinion. An indestructible scout that can just hang out over a front line with an attacking Army or full Intel on your opponent's base forever. It's an insanely strong asset even without the laser.
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@Dorset You didnt really get my point. Its the current mass cost for "just a scout" is dumb. Eye is way cheaper. It should be priced similar to that
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Eye: 3k mass
Novax: 36k massYou can’t fathom why one might be worth building and one wouldn’t?
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Clearly there would have to be an adjustment to the cost of it because that 36k includes the laser, I try not to state the obvious when I'm speaking.
One thing is for sure. It seems pretty clear that it needs a rework. Been a hot topic for the 6 years I've been playing and nothing's been done about it.
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I truly believe that allowing them to target each other is the best place to start. Why doesn't FAF take a year and make quarterly adjustments to see what the community prefers. 3 months of allowing Novax to target each other then 3 months of novax costing less but no laser and so on? I think the ultimate solution is allowing them to target each other but it can only be known if we try. Same as many suggestions. I also think that perhaps FAF just allow Novax to be unit restricted but still allow for a ranked match would be an interesting idea too. Whats a year of live "beta testing" to see what works. A year is nothing anymore lol
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@Dorset said in Another Novax conversation:
I truly believe that allowing them to target each other is the best place to start. Why doesn't FAF take a year and make quarterly adjustments to see what the community prefers. 3 months of allowing Novax to target each other then 3 months of novax costing less but no laser and so on? I think the ultimate solution is allowing them to target each other but it can only be known if we try. Same as many suggestions. I also think that perhaps FAF just allow Novax to be unit restricted but still allow for a ranked match would be an interesting idea too. Whats a year of live "beta testing" to see what works. A year is nothing anymore lol
So i will try to take your comment seriously and try to explain.
By having Novax being able to fight / shoot each other would make the only counter to Novax, the Novax. Yes you could argue that you can still shield your stuff, but allowing them to shoot each other clearly shows that that is INTENDED to be the counter. I'm sure there are comparisions in different games but i believe that would categorize something as OP, if the only counter is in its own faction.
Its like saying only one faction will have AA and the others can just shield their stuff.The 2nd biggest issue is, as i mentioned before, that by allowing novax to shoot each other, you create a 4th category to fight in, which includes only 1 unit. You have water, air and land, and you are now trying to create a category for a single faction. This is not the case currently. Currently novax is similar to an arty, just stronger (as you can only shield against it).
Dont really know how to explain this properly but i hope you get why creating a 4th category for a single faction is a bad idea? -
@Nuggets I dont disagree. My 1200 brain likes the chaos of the idea more than anything I guess because at least its not what we have now lol. In any case I guess when I started this post it was to try and spurn the conversation for change. I made this post right after a game where the effect of what Snoog mentioned earked me.
Our team was winning on all fronts despite them having arty and us not. We see 1 Novax Sat coming our way and our entire team has to stop and spam sheilds and power meaning the advantage we were actively pressing got put on hold. We could no longer replace units on the front as fast as before because we were spending on novax defense and, I beleive was the clear reason we lost the game...1 single novax that didnt really kill anything important.
Every Novax thread has alot of ideas and heart but they all seem to have one thing in common. Enough people hate it that it should be changed and so I guess I am wondering what it takes to have the actual decision makers work the problem and implement anything.
Easy for me to say because I don't have to worry about it much beyond this thread.
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Double the current damage of Novax against shields and reduce the regular damage to 0 + as long as the beam is active and hits a target without shields stalls the unit (what the chrono bomb from the aeon T1 attack bomber does).
This makes the Novax a support unit (scouting / shield disabling / stall effect).
This means that a Novax only becomes dangerous if you also have a T3 Arty nearby, for example, and the investment costs for effective use of a Novax increase accordingly, as the Novax is not dangerous without regular damage units. -
@Salz Gives the UEF faction auto win late game.
Makes one arty as powerful as 3 or more.
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@Dorset said in Another Novax conversation:
Clearly there would have to be an adjustment to the cost of it because that 36k includes the laser, I try not to state the obvious when I'm speaking.
One thing is for sure. It seems pretty clear that it needs a rework. Been a hot topic for the 6 years I've been playing and nothing's been done about it.
The adjustment would be making it like 30k mass cheaper. It’s not a t4. You made a t4 unit a t3 unit.
It’s a combination of a soothsayer and an eye, nobody would be paying anything higher than 8k mass for this.
And doing this, now you need to explain what UEF compensation is for having no air t4.
