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I mainly play Aeon and build spreadsheets to analyse the fairness across units/factions. My opinions are only that, opinions, yet I shall when relevant or possible attempt to corroborate them with facts or figures. Now for my thoughts about your post @FunkOff . By the way, thank you for numbering your points.
Showcase the Problem, Part D. biass and Dragun101 created a thread on how to make a sim mod to showcase your solution in a real game. https://forum.faforever.com/topic/739/guide-creating-a-basic-balance-mod-with-a-merge-blueprint
@FunkOff I systematically disagree with almost every single point you made in your original post.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to how you use the pieces of the UEF army. Each unit can be viewed as a tool designed for a specific job. Use it for the wrong job and it's effectiveness drops.
Here are my thoughts on the discussion at hand, and some suggestions. To assess something you need to analyse facts, not opinions. Calculate the correct mass cost for the HP of the unit by comparing to 'balanced' units of similar function. Assess the worth of omni + radar as a numerical mass value while factoring in the radius of the intel provided. Apply comparative analysis between DPS of unit to be assessed with counterpart equivalent. Etc... I'd do this myself by I can't be bothered. Some feedback on some of the main participants of the discussion: myEmperor. You started off the discussion by quoting facts. Good start. However your arguments could have been stronger by applying constraints to what should be considered. This would have mitigated a portion of the misinterpretations and deviations from the issue of "is this unit priced correctly?". Pearl12. Nice impartial arguments. Low use of emotive language was good to see. FtXCommando. There was a fixation on the idea of "OP" which is different from imbalance. Additionally, you failed to set clear criteria for what would be necessary to prove if something was OP or not. Lastly, individual replays should not be used for assessment. Instead use metadata pertaining to aspects which are not assessable via the unit database. Khada_Jhin. Excessive use of emotive language. This polarises the argument and provokes unnecessarily charged responses. In the future can you please explain how you obtained the facts which you quote?
@Archsimkat I support your proposed reduction of reclaim rate. I however do not know to what degree of reduction would be appropriate. @Keene your suggestion too keep the rate at which an engineer can reclaim hostile units is good and I support this notion.
Dumb idea: Paragon adjacent to artillery gives 2x fire rate increase. Paragon adjacent to shields decreases shield recharge time.
@moses_the_red. Please give the balance team more time and leeway. They are hard working (I hear :P) and very busy. I think there is room for improvement in T3 land especially after such a large change last patch. However, every large change will require small tweaks and this is unsurprising. There is nothing overly OP or UP that I have found so far. The largest discrepancies I've already commented on in the original post. While there is always room for improvement, the smaller the discrepancy, the longer it will take to make changes. The best we can do is politely ask them to consider our points and concerns then hope they take our suggestions on board.
@IceDreamer I agree with literally everything you said except the damage multipliers. Damage numbers should remain flat otherwise the game will become a rock paper scissors matchup. A range change to T3 arty would be nice. The values IceDreamer suggested sound reasonable but might make the Fatboy a little too strong. Perhaps a marginal (e.g. 0.1 or less) speed decrease on Fatboy to balance out the +10 range increase to maintain the Fatboy VS Direct Fire experimental matchup. The point about accepting some factions are unbeatable in certain areas in certain stages of the game is true yet people often forget that. I would like to add a few other suggestions to make Cybran suffer less without actually addressing the problem.
Joking aside, I'd suggest building one T2 shield behind terrain and lobbing arty shells over onto the snipers. If the map does not allow for that you had better accept Cybran can't win that fight and invest in T3 air while building a few static defences to hold the snipers at bay.
I agree 0.2 speed is unlikely to matter 'much', however a slow lab is just a bad tank, thus my concerns. Only time will tell if this is really an issue but forum threads are places to potentially catch problems before they become problems.
With the 3718 patch labs got a major change up. My impression for each faction's labs are as follows: UEF; cheap + speedy + low hp Cybran; Moderate speed, HP and cost but lowest DPS Aeon; Expensive, slow, high DPS, high HP Seraphim; Still halfway between a LAB and scout, slow, low HP, low cost, long range, turret can fire 360 now! These changes add a lot of meaningful diversity to how you use LABs. Now onto my main point --> Aeon tanks are the slowest and now they have the slowest LAB too. Perhaps swap the speeds of UEF and Aeon LABS and adjust their costs accordingly? This proposed change is to prevent Aeon lacking map control in the early game owing to insufficient unit speed across the board.
The debate over Experimental balance has continued nowhere for ages and is clogging up this thread. Please bring some progress to the discussion.
GC Claw activation time. I think it could activate it's claws faster, perhaps 1.5x faster. Currently the claws feel more like goodies than an actual weapon. Another way to make the claws feel more dangerous would be to have them both trigger before the face laser, resulting in some fake alpha damage.
TY @keyser. My information was outdated and I was wrong
He's out of the picture. I'm interested in people who actively work on the game, not some guy who's involvement in the current game is ~0%. Another point of imbalance. The Percival is now the only T3 land unit to target the ACU over T1/T2 land units. https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3072 https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3054 Consider making this standard to ALL factions or remove this change.
Currently my impression from the community is that T3 land is uninteresting/boring for a plethora of reasons. @advena suggested this is because of support factories but @Azraeel suggested this is because of reclaim being too high for T3. Perhaps support factories could be buffed, but I have no clue. What I am curious about is the Reclaim values. Why was it decided that Land unit reclaim is about ~81% of the original mass construction cost? Why not be 80% or 50% or 90%, etc... How would the game be impacted if the "percentage of original mass left over as reclaim" was reduced by some arbitrary amount? Would this solve some of the inadequacies of T3 land? I am very curious to know the reasoning behind setting the wreck mass percentage to ~81%.
I agree with the points made by @Mach & @Tagada and disagree with @FtXCommando and @biass. FAF is an amazing game to me because I can control my units as I see fit without being restricted by the game designer’s limited imagination. If the game developers start restricting the player’s ability to control units their own way, I’ll leave the community and I’m sure others will too. Be warned.
Ability to control units vs APM is a stupid argument. Adding new ways to control units won’t decrease your APM, RSI will. New control methods will only shift where your APM is used. Admittedly if you have nowhere to shift your APM then that’s a bad thing for a game but FAF is sufficiently complex and epic in scale that this won’t (probably) become a problem.
Radical point. Pro FAF players (mostly old codgers who are dogmatically set in their ways, while blindsided by their fear of change) want split-move removed from the game because they screwed up their ACU positioning and got punished for it (similar logic for the removal of snipe-acu-mode). Why not just get good and not position your ACU like an idiot, or better yet, have an army with your ACU! If that still doesn’t give you enough survivability, before engaging add an ACU upgrade that gives you survivability when facing off against a huge T1 army swarm!
@RelaxBro made the point that the majority of FAF players are casuals. I hope the balance team takes that to heart when thinking about interfering with UI mods. If the mod doesn’t add AI elements to units, leave it alone.
I suggest adding a visible counter to mods which tracks how many players have downloaded it.
I second the nomination of adding @Tagada to the balance team (if he isn't already). He makes well though out points, rationally considers other people's opinions and explains his reasoning.