Another Novax conversation
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@CM_Nicholas said in Another Novax conversation:
Maybe something could be done about the damage, but if your nerfing damage you have to give it something else, someone mentioned more aoe, but then would that give it shield spill at that point which would arguably be even better than it is now, or then you have to think "oh shit, they can hit two pgens at the same time" which will kill your grid faster, makes targeting engies much more worth, etc, etc...
Shield spill is applied to all damage against a shield, of any kind. The only exception that I can think of is the tech 3 mobile shield buster of Aeon - I'm not sure if that spills.
@CM_Nicholas said in Another Novax conversation:
I think novaxes are relatively fine as they are, Maybe a slight balance change, but you have to remember a novax is 36k mass iirc, 2 of them costing about the same price of a t3 arty +/- 2k mass, but the damage output is nowhere near t3 arty, yeh arty doesn't have the precision of a novax, but a novax doesn't have the damage of an arty, it takes 2-3 artys of novaxes to be able to penetrate anything heavily shielded, and at that point you could have a Game Ender up.
In my point of view, the current 'goal' of a novax is not to bust a shield. It's either to grab all the unprotected but high value targets. Or to assist a Mavor to destroy the shields when they are depleted.
It also highly depends on what map you play. A Novax has little to no value on a map such as Dual Gap. It's much stronger on a map like Seton's Clutch where resources are more scattered.
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I personally don't think the Novax needs to be changed, but it seems the biggest complaint has been about shields. I know there's issues about hidden behavior in the game such as damage resistances. But I wonder if in this case it would make sense to reduce the damage vs shields and increase if it's damage vs non shielded targets. I'm not thrilled about these ideas of building different satellites and all this crazy stuff. It's already a micro intensive unit.
If it just does less damage to shields perhaps a 1 T2 shields can easily stop it, and it does more damage to units, you would be incentivised to use it for defense more, or it would really require other standoff damage units to make it able to get anything done against base infrastructure. -
I like the idea of lower damage to shields
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The impression I get is the main issue most people have with the novax (outside large teamgames on maps with lots of spread out mexes) is the apm required to shield mexes and rebuild any killed by the mex, than the strength of the novax if they had infinite apm, which is also consistent with my experience when I'm on the receiving end (unless I have a fatboy, but then fatboy can get countered by air anyway). Dealing less damage to shields wouldn't solve that issue (e.g. personally I just get t2 shields over all my mexes since while they dont fully counter a novax, they make it take so long it becomes very inefficient).
However, giving a low apm counter to the novax would solve the issue; low apm counters that wouldn't need to completely rewrite how the unit works could either be an offensive counter like SMDs having a manual toggle to fire at novaxes (with the novax satellite cost set to be the same as an SMD missile), or giving mexes a personal shield upgrade (that would give a similar effect to if they had a t2 shield covering them).
The latter (personal shield) would require almost no apm to do, and would just need a build time long enough that if you wait until the novax is already out and attacking your mexes you will suffer some losses, but if you scout the novax early in its construction then you should largely counter the novax's ability to do significant damage. E.g. if 800 mass upgrade for a T3 mex gives you a 5k personal shield with 120 regen, 26s recharge time, and -100 E drain then that's only likely to be worth getting to deal with an enemy novax, and it'd take a novax roughly 93s to kill a t3 mex (vs the current 27s).
As a simple comparison, for the same cost as a novax you could get a gateway+5 RAS SACUs that yield 55 mass per second, or 5.1k mass in the same timeframe (plus giving build power and energy). With a mex costing 4.6k (or 5.4k with the upgrade option) that means you could end up ahead if they tried targeting your mexes with the novax while you'd just got RAS+shielding (and the personal shielding for mex option means that the apm required for this woudl be negligible).I also can't see anyone getting such an upgrade outside defending against a novax - t3 arti tends to target power grids since they're much easier to hit and spark a chain reaction (vs trying to kill a lone t3 mex), TMD would be far cheaper (and more effective) to counter enemy TML, and combat units will usually be in large enough numbers that the extra health would barely make a difference. So the balance implications should just be limited to a lowering of the novax's strength through lowering the apm required to counter it.
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@maudlin27 there is no apm problem in shielding every mex. it's not harder than upgrading them lol.
The problem is the time and expense it gets to achieve this. I can order shield next to every mex I own, but they won't spawn immediately, and it has nothing to do with the apm
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@Sainse If upgrading protected novax, then it'd be 2 commands - double-click on t3 mex (to select all mexes); press upgrade hotkey (maybe a 3rd command of then pausing some other production while you wait for the upgrade to complete)
SMD targeting would take a bit more time and effort (probably want 3-5 per team depending on map size), but it'd have the added benefit of protecting from nukes (something players often do preemptively anyway)Vs currently where (if shielding with t2 shields) it's:
-Find nearest T2+ idle engineer (if you dont have one, then find non-idle engineer)
-Press hotkey for shield
-Potentially place in location that covers multiple mexes
-Find other mexes nearby for that engineer to go to that it can realistically reach and queue up shield build order
-Repeat above process a few more times with other engineers, until you've queued up shields to cover the main mexes you want to protect
-Potentially build a transport, load engineers, drop onto plateau, and have them build a shield (for any plateaus with mexes you want to protect)I don't get your expense argument - a T2 shield costs 500-700 mass; you could build 10 of them and it's still a fraction of the novax cost. It's not perfect novax defence, but it's good enough (and you can get a t3 shield where it'd cover 4 mexes or to cover t3 pgens). You'd need relatively large teamgames, and assuming players aren't going to get any shielding at that stage of the game, for it to cost more to defend the novax (e.g. in a 4v4 where each player gets a t3 shield to cover core base, air player gets another 1-2 t3 shields, and then yo uadd on the t2 shields cost ontop of that then it starts costing more)
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@maudlin27 T2 shields will only protect single t2 mexes. For core base you would need several T3 shields, which would bring the cost up to 12-20k mass. And then multiplied by the number of players in the team it will exceed Novax cost.
It's much more likely to be a real limitation in the game than the hypothesis that players cannot click t2 shield 10 times.
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Using "several T3 shields" sounds like heavy shielding for a Novax to nullify all damage it deals. Imo some core bases should be able to get away with T2 shields except those dense air/fab grids but that's besides the point.
If you pre-emptively shield heavily against T3 arty on every single slot it would also amount to ~80k mass (22 sera shields) or more, no? If that is true, then novax is balanced as "artillery" but is just so cheap people see it as coming out unfairly early. It's a similar idea with nuke where the nuke + missile + 2 pgens needed cost 34980 mass but an SMD + missile + minimal power costs 12680 mass so the nuke basically always pays off unless it's a map where everything is defended by 2 SMD.
I guess if we don't want to make it 2x cost 2x dps, then just like nuke it should simply have a cheap factory, no free sat, and extreme sat buildtime so it has an eternity to be scouted (way easier to scout a built structure than an unfinished one) and prepped for. The buildtime would depend on the estimate of how long it takes to shield things.
Also while the final shield cost can exceed the novax cost, you can build eco instead while the novax is building, and the equivalent mass in T3 fabs/pgens without any adjacency is 96 income or a premium Sera T3 shield every 38 seconds, while the Novax takes around 1:30 to cross the map, and then only does 57.5 mass/s of damage in a rather ideal scenario where it can kill a t3 mex every 40 seconds (2 reloads) and the mex gets rebuilt on top of its wreck. This is basically re-iterating the concept that the economic cost of the Novax isn't that bad because you can out-eco it easily, so if you go with a nerf it really has to be light on the overall cost of the unit. A nuke cost style nerf would honestly necessitate a small total mass cost reduction considering this.
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I don't get your expense argument - a T2 shield costs 500-700 mass; you could build 10 of them and it's still a fraction of the novax cost.
It's not just an expense argument. As the Novax moves, if means you need to move around engineers to counter it. Engineers are slower. Note more importantly to your point; a single Novax will ;
- over power and kill a Cybran T2-d1 in 1 shot, (4) Shots if Sera T2 - unassisted
- over power and kill a Cybran T3 in (4) shots, or (6) if Sera T3 - unassisted
- most mex's get surrounded by fabs, so it doesnt need to kill the mex, the fabs do that FOR the SAT
- Novax's do extra damage to shields, so as soon as the shield drops- ITS DEAD
So if you succeeded in shielding your base for 1 sat, you have to get more shields / engineer assist even after shielding. And so you make strongholds where shielding is better. But that only works up to (3) sats. At (4+) sats (around 1000 dps), you're fucked.
In the meantime, you basically get ripped apart on the edges. SATs are practically like the stereotypical American-Sitcom In-Laws. There's no defense, no escape, and they chip, and chip and chirp away at you unstoppably....
Which underlines the point of this thread- balance aside- its a very un-fun unit in its current state.
But, for instance if Sat players had to micro them around SMDs; that would be an elegant counter; already in game.
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Just a bit of an out there thought.
Cut price of Novax by half and remove laser. Replace it with something similar to Aoen emp burst, that way the Novax can be disruptive, but cant destroy anything. It will wind up being used to help with assaults or to slow building. Also make it blockable by shields, to allow air grids to be shielded and keep production at full.
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@Printer this is why reducing damage to shields would be an effective balance. It removes the burden of needing insane shield assistance. T2 shields are cheap and fast to build where you need them. This all but removes the incentive to spam them to brute force your way through base shields. You'll use it else where or you have to pair it with Arty to then target structures when the shields go down.
