Another Novax conversation
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One thing I think gets lost in all this, and I don't even know if it can be considered and addressed but nonetheless I'll mention it.
There is the scientific approach which couples in with common sense but then there's the practical reality of what actually occurs which amounts to very little scientific thought and practically no common sense.
Probably true that it is incredibly inefficient to spam novax but my goodness every time you see one novax coming it seems like there are 3+ not long after. People don't seem to care about the numbers they just know the effect it has on the match. It's often not even the Eco type player that is building them so there's always that positions weaponry that you'll have to deal with as well which is usually your t3 arty spam and or game ender.
It may be a huge reason why there are so many 1300 to 1600 rated players who just don't rank up after thousands of games (myself included) We get into these habits that seem effective to us and give us the false illusion that we're actually good. We blatantly ignore such inefficiencies as Novax spam and no doubt we are ignoring a lot of other things... (Probably not even ignoring them because we don't even know they exist to be able to ignore)
I wonder what the novax usage is in 1.8k+ matches compared to the more typical standard custom match which is a 1.2k+ situation.
If any of this is true then it's kind of a conundrum because we have a weapon that fits fine within the pro-level realm but is out of place anywhere else because of its power and the user's inability to understand or care when they should be deploying it.
What would novax spam people build if they didn't have the novax?
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we need multiple sats per ground station. As many as we want. There is a mod that does this, make it part of the main game.
There. Done. Problem solved.
Oh and SMD can shoot i down. One sat, one anit nuke. Easy peasy.
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The power of the Sat is not the damage, instead, their strength is their ability to disrupt the opposing team and cause initial mass drain. Such drain can quickly shift the balance of an equal fight, perhaps, just enough that the opponent on the sat side can grab crucial reclaim mass in, for example, a navy battle, quickly tilting the tide in their favor, generating a snowball effect.
Simplify the problem:
Say every player has an average of 12 mex
Of these 12 mex, they can be covered with ~8 t3 shield gens
Average cost of shield gens between factions = 3390 mass8 shield gens x 4 players on opposing team = 24 shield gens required
24 x 3390 = 108,480 mass drain on the opposing team.
Granted, there may be maps where half the shield gens may suffice, thus 54,240 mass drain...
(108,480 + 54,240)/2 = average mass drain of 81,360.
This does not even consider sunk costs to power those shields and more.
So set the price of a sat to be equal to their mass drain on the enemy team, since they are about disruption. A good sat user will find creative ways to overcome this shield counter.
~72k - 81k should be a fine new price.
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@Mr_Blastman
To use your own numbers for mexes, but doing a more efficient replacement of T3 shield with T2 shield with an average cost of 600 mass
8 shield gens x 4 players on opposing team = 24 shield gens required
24 x 600 = 14,400
That leaves c.21k for a gateway with 3 RAS SACUs which both give more than enough power to cover the shields, and generate extra resources to more than compensate for the very slow rate at which the novax could kill the t2 mexes (or 2 RAS SACUs assuming you have an air player that wants some t3 shielding to cover their air grid).It's annoying to counter, because you have to build all those shields quickly enough, rebuild any shields and mexes if they decide to target them, increase the shielding if they get a second novax, and have issues if you have fatboys or low health high cost unshielded units you want to attack with. 72-81k cost would make it completely unusuable and you'd be better off getting t3 arti or more units or eco.
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@maudlin27 said in Another Novax conversation:
@Mr_Blastman
To use your own numbers for mexes, but doing a more efficient replacement of T3 shield with T2 shield with an average cost of 600 mass
8 shield gens x 4 players on opposing team = 24 shield gens required
24 x 600 = 14,400
That leaves c.21k for a gateway with 3 RAS SACUs which both give more than enough power to cover the shields, and generate extra resources to more than compensate for the very slow rate at which the novax could kill the t2 mexes (or 2 RAS SACUs assuming you have an air player that wants some t3 shielding to cover their air grid).It's annoying to counter, because you have to build all those shields quickly enough, rebuild any shields and mexes if they decide to target them, increase the shielding if they get a second novax, and have issues if you have fatboys or low health high cost unshielded units you want to attack with. 72-81k cost would make it completely unusuable and you'd be better off getting t3 arti or more units or eco.
T2 shields by themselves are generally wholly uneffective at stopping sats.
They need to be bumped, substantially in price, to reflect their disruptive ability to the other team.
They also have effective uses beyond simply killing a mex or pgen.
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If your best use case of 36k mass in your games is making a tool to eat thru the 7k hp of a t3 mex and the 9k hp mass of a t2 shield over the span of 75 seconds then you probably should have started an actual game ender and finished it in 5-6 minutes.
72k mass novax would quite literally never get made.
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@FtXCommando said in Another Novax conversation:
If your best use case of 36k mass in your games is making a tool to eat thru the 7k hp of a t3 mex and the 9k hp mass of a t2 shield over the span of 75 seconds then you probably should have started an actual game ender and finished it in 5-6 minutes.
72k mass novax would quite literally never get made.
I think some of us are fine with that.
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Its not really about being fine with it but it being balanced
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@Nuggets So they are balanced now?
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Perfect balance is checkers. Maybe the fact the pros don't use Novax much maybe means; its not majorly out of balance.
But for the sake of fun and the type of gameplay- I think it needs some upcoming adjustment. Remember:
- Old RAS SCUs?
- Vanilla Telemaeser?
- Vanilla, HARMS with destroyer range, better survivability and dps HARMs?
Those were all "balanced' by the numbers & opportunity cost originally- but because of the type of game-play they generated; they were changed.
Or how about some of the rules we have in the community; like "no building a factory under a dropping transport" - this works amazingly well against drops - but its bannable.
I'm just trying to highlight; from what's been done; its not only about balance & opportunity cost.
Simply put, and to quote another player @Cascade "Sats are Anti-Fun".
And that's why I really think they need a counter. Best of which, in my opinion is a:
- normally "disabled" player toggle
- on the smd to target the sats.
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Or how about some of the rules we have in the community; like "no building a factory under a dropping transport" - this works amazingly well against drops - but its bannable.
Is this actually true? If it is I've suddenly lost a whole lot of faith in FAF because what kind of elementary school BS is this lol.
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@Dorset said in Another Novax conversation:
Or how about some of the rules we have in the community; like "no building a factory under a dropping transport" - this works amazingly well against drops - but its bannable.
Is this actually true? If it is I've suddenly lost a whole lot of faith in FAF because what kind of elementary school BS is this lol.
What are you talking about? This is kind of an exploit and can get you banned?
Imagine you are going to drop some t3 units and your enemy just builds a t1 fac under transport and they insta die -
@Nuggets said in Another Novax conversation:
@Dorset said in Another Novax conversation:
Or how about some of the rules we have in the community; like "no building a factory under a dropping transport" - this works amazingly well against drops - but its bannable.
Is this actually true? If it is I've suddenly lost a whole lot of faith in FAF because what kind of elementary school BS is this lol.
What are you talking about? This is kind of an exploit and can get you banned?
Imagine you are going to drop some t3 units and your enemy just builds a t1 fac under transport and they insta dieNot to get off topic here but I would just say skill issue and that's coming from a 1300. Like seriously... Why drop so close to any builders lol.
Sounds like a rule that came into effect for pro-level players in 1v1 play. I have played 5,000 games in the last 6 years and had no clue this was even possible. Never even come across it until I saw this post. I think I've come across every other situation where someone could exploit and get banned but this one is a new one and I stand by what I said earlier that it's pretty weak lol.
What's next we're not allowed to build t1pd in our base because a mazercom won't be able to telly in there lol.
I can already imagine all the arguments against it in my head (from1.8k+ players only lol) but it all comes back to me thinking it's a cheap elementary rule that shouldn't be in the game but again that's not what the thread is about so I'll stop being off topic. I'm a nobody anyways and my opinion doesn't matter and I'm okay with that
I will however finally read all the bannable offenses because heaven forbid I get banned because I was building a factory in my base for some reason at the same time someone was trying to drop
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@Printer said in Another Novax conversation:
And that's why I really think they need a counter. Best of which, in my opinion is a:
normally "disabled" player toggle
on the smd to target the sats.This is such a powerful counter it's basically removing sats from the game. Every suggestion for the laser sat has been to remove it, that's why I recommend coming up with an actual rework so that Novax isn't a 36k mass artillery piece. Balance team agrees on that direction afaik, so it isn't unrealistic to rework it.
My favorite idea so far is making it have a powerful stun beam for buildings/T4s + less powerful AoE stun for T3/air when the main beam finishes. It would complement fatty, UEF T3 gunship spam, UEF lategame air fights (like how air T4s can help force air fights), Percies, navy, and maybe even UEF artillery since it can stun buildpower or shields idk. -
Keep sat as it is and just allow one per player as upper boundary. (And maybe reduce HP of central a bit OR reduce sat movement speed)
Would solve the problems with it. -
Novax is really annoying for people because it's an apm and attention tax. The guy with the novax doesn't have to do much to make it do damage but the other guy has to shield a lot of stuff or they ignore it and just rebuild after which is also potentially a lot of actions. Also it is really nice to have when you are trying to kill shields in an arty war and it's highly microable in that scenario. It is very expensive but not enough that you won't see it. It gives a lot of intel as well just as a bonus. The attention tax would matter a lot more at lower and average levels and it's still annoying to deal with at higher levels.
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Another reasonable suggestion imo would be to reduce the travel speed, giving players a longer grace period to react, and also a turret speed reduction, currently the turrect speed is i think above 300 which is crazy fast, reducing turret speed would increase the time it takes to change targets wich is one of the annoying aspects of the novax, being instantly able to switch targets as they become available such as downed shields and engineers ect.
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None of this matters because nothing's going to change and nobody's going to do anything about it so what's the point of talking about it. Time for me to stop reading the forums and just play the game for what it is. Have fun y'all!!
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I feel like with the amount of time you've put into this thread you could have created a mod that makes the Novax different to demonstrate your thoughts. I once modified the Novax satellite to consume power similar to a t3 artillery but I wasn't sure how to stop the beam weapon when you ran out of power. Seemed like it would be a good way to stop people stacking them easily.
