@Sainse
And that is one of the two very specific cases that I described in my original post where I see the upside of Snoop. But I rarely see unguarded radars just sit around, without any tanks, PDs or bombers nearby, which means that this is an advantage that the UEF player will rarely be able to put to good use.

@waffelzNoob
Snoop cannot finish off engineers effectivly. The weakest T1 engineer has HP pool of 120 (Aeon) and Snoop has 2DPS. In order for 1 snoop to destroy 1 engineer, we divide target HP by the DPS:

120/2=60 sec.

A snoop has to fire at a single engineer for 60 consecutive seconds, a whole minute, before the engineer dies.

One T1 engineer of any nation needs 50 seconds to build 1 T1 point defense, which instantly kills the Snoop.

That means that the player with the engineer has 10 seconds of reaction time to protect his engineer at least in this way. That is the best case scenario. Now we add into concideration that the engineer can just drive up to the Snoop and reclaim it, or simply drive away, or enemy T1 tanks or bots will arive and destroy Snoop, or T1 bomber arrives and destroys Snoop.

So no, Snoops cannot kill enemy engineers effectivly. Having 1 T1 bot with around 20DPS is much better for these kinds of tasks.

I have also never seen enemy radars just sitting in plain field without any defense, so I think that this is also rare.

And like I said, Snoop just doesn't have the speed to catch up to the enemy scouts to finish them off. Snoop has speed of 4.5, whereas Mole has 4.8 and Spirit has 4.6. Additionaly, radar range of Mole and Spirit is 44 and 48 respectivly. Firing range of Snoop is 26. Enemy sees the Snoop long before it can open fire and can just turn around and run away. Also, Spirit has firing range of 33, meaning, that with proper micromanagment, Spirit should in theory never lose to a Snoop, always kiting and dealing damage to the Snoop without fear of retaliation.

Edit №1: grammar.

@Sainse
Which is not bad? Having a one-way information flow sounds like a pretty significant advantage, no?

@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Yeah, which is fan-made and not an official source. Plus it covers the original game, not the modded FAF client which has done a ton of rebalancing, including some of the complaints you had.

Is this also fan made or official? And if it's official, then why does it have "turtling" faction in its description? Is it intentionally misleading?
Link: https://wiki.faforever.com/en/Play/Learning-SupCom/Faction-Information

@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

They're also the only faction with dedicated shield boats, torpedo boats, a battlecruiser, and a submersible aircraft carrier. Would that make them naval focused as well?

How did you completely ignore my argument about Cybran having superior navy? If Cybran does have superior navy, then no, UEF would not be naval focused because there is a nation that is better at naval, rendering UEF less naval focused in comparison. On the contrary, other nations don't have the same variety and quality of land units like UEF do: UEF has only land-based T3 mobile missile platform Spearhead, the already mentioned T3 transport Continental and T2 gunship Stinger with carrying capacity for example. Other nations can't match the UEF ability in land expansion, in theory at least. As for the shield boats, torpedo boats, battlecruisers and submersible aircraft carriers, that's all good, but for example Aeon and Seraphim can supplement the lack of shield boats by just having the hovering mobile shield generators hover next to the ships. Torpedo boats are fantastic at their strict task of being a torpedo monster while being hard to deal damage to in return by torpedoes. But a Cybran, Aeon or Seraphim doesn't even have to worry about building a specialized unit to establish underwater presence. They just build destroyers, like they usually would, which have both effective artillery and effective torpedoes. UEF T2 destroyer Valiant has poor torpedoes like every other UEF naval unit except for the torpedoboats Coopers and experimental aircraft carrier Atlantis. Battlecruisers are good, but they are a niche unit of naval dominance against T1 and T2 naval units. Other nations fill this role by just simply building battleships or more destroyers/submarines, depending on the composition of the enemy fleet.

@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

They provide very little intel when cloaked, aren't much of a threat, take a while to cloak, and can't move. If a Selen cloaks you still know exactly where it is. If you really need to you can ground fire it or send an attack move engineer to reclaim it. ACUs also have omni so if it gets into ACU range it's just dead.

What if you don't know beforehand where the enemy player left his cloaked and stealthed Selens?

@Deribus said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Because your entire stealthed army becomes irrelevant with a single air scout. Shield generators provide value no matter what.

If your army contains mobile anti air units, the spotting by the scout will be time limited. But after the scout is destroyed, enemy will lose the vision again, making the stealthed units untouchable. Or is the opponent of Cybran supposed to make an infinite column of air scouts and waste resources just to be able to affort constant visual on the stealthed units?

@Sainse
What if you put a Selen somewhere aside, somewhere where the enemy probably won't send their engineers?
Also, I checked the stats: Spirit has 48 radar range, Snoop and Mole have 44 radar range and Selen has 40. Yes, Selen has the weakest radar, but is 4 range difference that big of a deal?

@Sainse said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

They can be countered at T1 stage with any unit. Alt move engineer, ground fire with any unit (tank, artillery, t1 bomber).

That is only the case if the enemy of the Seraphim player knows before hand where exactly the Selen scouts were left stealthed and cloaked. If the map is somewhat big but still mostly land, Seraphim commander can leave them in unexpected spots where enemy engineers won't patrol and won't attack-move. T1 bombers and T1 artillery don't know where to fire automatically, because there is no valid spotted target to shoot at and the player doesn't know where to groundfire if he did not see the Selen scouts come to the position beforehand.

Hope I could clarify and elaborate on all comments and points of interest!

@waffelzNoob said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

You're nitpicking about 4 mass for a gun that can kill radars and has contributed in engineer/lab/radar kills frequently enough to justify that 4 mass. It can also chase away spirits and moles from scouting you. The selen has piss poor radar range, that is its weakness.

I am not nitpicky about 4 mass, I am taking the whole set of advantages and disadvantages and it seems to me just not to be fair to UEF nation. Spirits can be very useful because they can go both on land and on water, Moles can scout in aerias where enemy doesn't have radar coverage indefinitely and block mass points, Selens are good in combat (for T1 scout of course) and have both stealth and cloak, which is in my opinion very strong for T1 technology. Snoop, while winning in a direct fight against Moles and Spirits, will not be able to finish them off, because no sane player for Cybran or Aeon will let their T1 scouts fight an UEF scout head on, they will just run away, because they're faster.

@waffelzNoob said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Titan is a good unit you are likely just using it wrong. It's dominant against everything that isn't a harbinger, othuum, percival, brick, an acu, or t4. The shield regen is more impactful than you think.

Maybe, but I don't see Titans being used by other players either. From T3 stage, it's usually just a Percival spam from then on. No one bothers to make Titans when Percivals exist.

@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

They have some advantages to the others. While you dismiss their extra DPS, it means they can kill enemy land scouts and radar much faster. Personally I prefer them to selens because they have better radar range (which is why I build land scouts) and are much cheaper. Spirit's by far my favourite scout though.

What I critisized is how much UEF land scouts must sacrifice to gain what they do. Cybran Mole and Aeon Spirit seem to be much more usable in the cases, where their strenghts come into play. Having land and water mixed terrain makes Spirits especially appealing. Having cloak on a scout means it can be useful to block mass points or provide spotting where the enemy didn't bother or didn't notice to put a radar. Snoop, while better in direct combat, still takes time to kill other scouts, which can just run away from it because they're just faster.

@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Compared to the other factions' tanks the pillar has more health per mass cost so you can still argue it fits with the UEF doctrine (i.e. a UEF T2 tank army will have more health than a mass equivalent tank army from another faction).

I guess? But then it's going to be more of a sacrificial nation, like Aeon with their Mercies or Cybran with their Firebeetles.

@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

If UEF's slight faction identity is units that are generally 'tankier', Aeons is its focus on shields (shield instead of nano for its ACU, shielded T2+T3 tanks, T2+T3 shield generators that focus on health over size), so it's reasonable to me that the 'shield' faction has a stronger shield.

From my perspective, I got an impression that, whereas UEF focuses more on shield domes, because their shields are generally speaking pretty big compared to others, Aeon seems to be more focused on personal shields. Take their units and compare them: UEF T3 transport Continental has a shield that not only protects the Continental itself, but also the units that it carries. UEF experimental Fatboy has a shield dome that not only protects the Fatboy itself, but also the units that it produces and the aircraft that land on it for refueling and repair. They have T2 shield boat Bulwark with a massive shield radius. It's kind of as if the UEF nation says "don't worry, soldier! Federation has your back, you're safe here! We won't let our fellows die!". Aeon, on the other hand, have a lot more personal shields: T2 tank Obsidian, T3 bot Harbinger Mk. IV, experimental CZAR and their shield domes are smaller in radius. Wouldn't it maybe make sense to put Aeon emphasis on personal shields and make them stronger but shield domes weaker, and let UEF have stronger shield domes but weaker personal shields? I think this would be an interesting dynamic, although I will admit, I am going very deep into speculation and lore interpretation here, so it is only my opinion.

@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

It's relevant for longer in the game than a monkeylord which is usually good as an early experimental and/or to try and surprise the enemy. If you can protect it from air and TML snipes then it ends up being quite a good value over time unit, and can force the enemy to either retreat to T2 arti, or push in (so provided you have enough percies supporting your fatboy that can be good for you). It's not that strong, but it still has a use.

I guess this is correct.

@maudlin27 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Seraphim costs the most but yeah generally Seraphim has the best shield, and then the other factions have different focus (UEF on size, Aeon on strength, Cybran has the worst shields but at least have a very cheap t2 shield which also has use)

So, Aeon focuses on strenght but is still not the strongest while also sacrificing radius and not being able to upgrade their shields from T2 to T3? Again, kind of weird. Why does Seraphim have it all? It does cost more to operate, yes, but still.

@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Playing vs AI is OK, but it will get you into bad habits when it comes to playing vs people.

Dip your toe in the water and play vs players and see how you get on with UEF and any other faction you fancy trying.

Maybe I expressed myself unclearly, but I didn't mean to say that I play against bots for the sake of it. I meant to say that I did test runs against bots to try some different things out.

@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Fatboy has the longest range of all mobile land experimentals. That can count for a lot. Kiting is the way to go when they would be killed if they stood still or advanced.
They are mobile factories, which is a nice to have feature. 4 or 5 of them with an army adds up to critical mass in most situations.

They do have great range, but it is equal to that or shorter than the range of stationary T2 artillery. Additionally, they are very slow and big. I don't know whether the word "kiting" is fair to use here. It's more like "slowly dragging your fat body perpendicularly to the enemy while firing at him".

@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

Titans are great for wiping out T1 spam and pretty good vs T2. Percies are great vs T3 and T4.
In 1v1 battles about 8 Percies with a mixed T1 and T2 army are normally sufficient to push for the victory and win the game. Critical mass.

Maybe, but I haven't seen that happen a lot. Again, noob opinion.

@Lin960 said in Thoughts on UEF doctrine and balance from a noob:

And then there's the Tac Nuke on the commander. As well as the massively under-used bubble SACU's.

I didn't critisize these two things. They're fantastic when used correctly, so I have no real complains against these.

Other than that I agree with your statements.