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    Arran

    Arran

    @Arran

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    Best posts made by Arran

    RE: All the reasons Aeon sucks - T1 worst of all

    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.

    1. Aurora dying to air is a weakness but their counteracting strength is their hover. This principle also holds true for Zthuee's as they hover and die to bombers in one shot. In regards to the Aurora speed, being slow is necessary otherwise (assuming perfect micro and unit control) the Aurora will kill all T1 + ACU without ever taking damage. I said all T1 full knowing T1 mobile artillery outranges the Aurora. Typically by microing forwards and backwards at the edge of the T1 mobile artillery range you can avoid their shots. I however understand as players performing that level of micro is hard and we often lose many Aurora to a few T1 mobile artillery. Each T1 mobile artillery has at minimum 45 damage per shot (Zthuee). Zthuee fires 5 shots. 3 hits will reduce Aurora to 135 hp. 4 shots will kill the Aurora with 40 overkill. Increasing Aurora HP by 15 will not solve the "problem". Medusa does 200 damage per shot. Aurora HP would need to be >200 to survive. I am mostly sure this level of HP increase is imbalanced.
    2. Fervor is great at killing point defence or other structures and terrible against units. This is by design. Aeon are the best at doing one job, but try and make their units do anything other than that one job and they become the worst. Fervor has 22.4 more damage per second than the next most damaging T1 mobile artillery and this reflects the Aeon design philosophy nicely.
    3. The Beacon frigate. I'm still analysing that unit so I'll forgo commenting on it except to say it has a very complex role in the Aeon navy as it is distinctly different from the other faction's frigates.
    4. The shard. Currently has 45 muzzle velocity, the same as the Thistle and 15 greater than frigate anti air. Thinking simply, the shard is an overpriced water travelling Thistle that moves quicker. Both the Thistle and Shard are inferior (vastly) to air interceptors. If required I can post statistical proof later. If you want air cover, build interceptors as the other T1 alternatives can't compete. However if you are desperate you can build ground or naval anti air. Next is where it gets complicated. afe67396-3200-4a1e-9988-8e9d7631e3a3-image.png Assuming you are still reading at this point you may notice several things. Down the bottom is an example naval fleet consisting of 5 Beacon Class frigates, 2 Shards and 6 Thunderhead class frigates. The Aeon fleet is almost equal to the UEF fleet but has 1870 less HP but 5 anti-torpedo launchers. Is this balanced? Is having one less frigate worth 5 anti-torpedoes? You decide. Is the Shard balanced as part of navy? Yes. Is it useful? No. Should it hit more often? Yes because there are less of them compared to frigates and quality is required to counteract quantity.
    5. Shimmer stun time is a point of potential imbalance. I shall now point out a myriad of different factors to consider when deciding if the Shimmer is indeed imbalanced. Shimmer stuns for 2 seconds. Medusa stuns for 3.5 seconds. These values were measured in-game not taken from the unit database. With stun duration, we have to factor in stun frequency and stun area. Medusa has 2 radius while Shimmer has 4. Medusa hits target every 6 seconds while Shimmer without micro (meaning without hover bomb) hits every 10 seconds. The Shimmer in the unit data has a fire cycle of 5 seconds but a flight path of 10 seconds, resulting in a 10 second fire cycle. Compounding this data the Medusa stuns for 1.75x longer, fires 1.67x faster and hits 0.25x more area (<-simple geometry). Assuming simple multiplication can deduce effectiveness, the Medusa is 0.73x more effective than the Shimmer at stunning if units can't die. But units die, thus reducing their effectiveness. HP per mass the Medusa is 2x more efficient, has 0.683x more HP and T1 interceptors deal 1.8x the damage of T1 tanks for 0.935x the mass cost on average. Additionally the Medusa costs 0.34x more mass and 0.0735x more energy. To calculate an adjusted effectiveness rating the standard effectiveness should be multiplied by survivability (HP ratio) and divided by cost (using mass ratio for simplicity's sake). This yields the formula: 1.75 x 1.67 x 0.25 x 0.683 / 0.34 = 1.467. At this point I expect the reader is drowning in values and simple calculations if they are still reading at all! To summarise, the Medusa is 1.467 times stronger at stunning stuff than the Shimmer. Perhaps the balance team could consider increasing the 2 second Shimmer stun too 2 x 1.467. Or 2.5 seconds!
    6. Transports are a factional thing that are designed to give the faction uniqueness and compensate for general imbalance due to factional gimmicks.
    7. The Aeon T3 bomber is imbalanced (weak). Here are the facts explaining why. Currently the ratio between damage and payload radius is: Damage = 4500-(Radius*250). I shall assume this ratio has been tested to be “balanced”. Each T3 bomber follows this rule except Aeon, why? Subsequent question. Why are the AA ‘goodies’ on the UEF T3 bomber stronger than the Cybran T3 bomber? If the answer is because Cybran has stealth, why don’t Aeon or Seraphim have AA? What ‘buff’ counteracts this imbalance? Next topic. Each T3 bomber has a different set of stats which makes them more or less suited to fulfilling a particular role. First a table indicating the relationship between Mass Extractors and T3 bombers. 10760322-7508-4b8f-980a-5ec4754ffc74-image.png Next the radius for each bomber. Cybran=7, UEF=6, Seraphim=5, Aeon=4. The Aeon bomber is just as good at killing Mass Extractors as the Seraphim Bomber yet has 1 less radius. Imbalance. You may say “the Aeon bomber has more damage to compensate for this” and this is wrong. The Aeon bomber only has 200 not 250 extra damage over the Seraphim bomber and doesn’t follow the “balanced” ratio! Imbalance. Solution is to add 50 damage to the Aeon Bomber. Just do it.
      Now onto the goodies (T3 bomber anti-air). Seraphim and Aeon don’t have goodies like UEF (their anti-air) or Cybran (anti-air + Stealth). Aeon is the closest to Cybran with only 100 more hp. Does having 100 more HP justify no anti-air or Stealth? No. People may say “but Aeon deals a whopping 700 more damage” but they also forgot that it has 3 less radius. Remember we are assuming the ratio for radius too damage is correct, so clearly the Aeon bomber is underpowered (provided the ratio is balanced). Now for Seraphim. They have 200 more HP than Cybran and 100 less than UEF and STILL don’t have anti-air! How can you justify giving the UEF T3 bomber AA and not the Seraphim bomber! UEF favouritism I see… However if the Aeon T3 bomber was to get tracking on their bomb, I would expect the bomber price to increase drastically, or the tracking to be negligible/non-existent.
    8. Ah, the Aeon T2 Shield Generator. I'll start by putting forth the premise that the most efficient/best shield will have the best shield density per mass ratio. To save my readers brain cells I'll just tell you what these ratios are, but you can work them out yourself. Side note: Shields are a factional distinction, just like building HP. I've also included the HP of the Shield structure into my calculations as technically it counts as damage absorption, which is the purpose of a shield. 0d3980ad-66eb-4d01-a242-56ea1f2cae13-image.png Best T2: Cybran > Aeon > UEF > Seraphim.
      Best T3: Aeon > Cybran > UEF > Seraphim.
      Additional side note: UEF T3 Shield Generator recharge time is faster than everything except Cybran ED1: T2 Shield Generator. Also the Seraphim have the largest+strongest shield, but least efficient.
    9. Galactic Colossus. A reasonable unit with a software error in it's tractor claws. The Galactic Colossus tractor arm in-game only activates once per 12ish seconds when tested (GC idle against Percival’s moving towards it). In the unit data (https://github.com/FAForever/fa/blob/develop/units/UAL0401/UAL0401_unit.bp), each of the two claws is supposed to have a fire rate of 0.15shots/second which is about 6.6 seconds per activation per claw. Why the major discrepancy between what actually happens and what is supposed to happen? Conclusion, a software error. Can this please be fixed to make the Galactic Colossus more consistent?
    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Balance Thread Guidelines

    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

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: UEF sucks - Beefy structures don't offset severe weaknesses

    @FunkOff I systematically disagree with almost every single point you made in your original post.

    1. T1 UEF tank. Highest HP, lowest DPS, slightly below average speed, highest cost, 1 rank vet adds extra acu shot to kill, etc... Lots of differences between the T1 tanks. However when used the sum total of their differences balance out resulting in no faction having a distinct advantage. E.g. yes the striker may be very very very slightly inferior to other t1 tanks, but UEF T1 factory has 500+ more hp for no additional cost making t1 arty take longer to kill it. Little things like this make the T1 phase balanced.
    2. T1 UEF bomber has a different play style to a basic bomber (like the Sinnve). Just use it in a way that capitalises on it's AOE plus high damage. If units dodge it reliably, rejoice because you know the enemy is burning APM which you aren't.
    3. T2 UEF static arty is the second cheapest, not most expensive. T2 UEF PD is most expensive but the best all rounder, with highest HP, second lowest DPS, tied best AOE, good high fire arc and quick fire cycle. This makes it the best all rounder T2 PD in the game. If you desire a more specialised PD, play another faction. Aeon for alpha damage + slow fire cycle, cybran for cheap fast lazers and seraphim for... honestly not sure.
    4. Rhino never kill mongoose if mongoose are microed. They have too much range and speed. Pillars cost 68% of the mass of a Rhino so they obviously lose 1v1. FtXCommando also illustrated what advantages Pillars have over Rhino.
    5. Janus may not be fantastic at sniping eco structures like other factions fighter/bombers but that doesn't mean they suck. Like the UEF T1 bomber it is about using them for the right job. E.g. Abuse their AOE and high DPS to swathe large chunks out of your opponents land army for instance.
    6. T3 UEF land is almost a timebomb and possibly the strongest lategame. Percival is borderline OP and a fantastic unit! Titans are shielded raid lords of destruction. T3 UEF air is the same as all the others. T3 air (excluding Shocker) is about as perfectly balanced as possible.
    7. Sure the T1 UEF frigate might not be the best (like cybran) but it has jamming. T2 UEF destroyer might not be the best (like aeon) but you have the shield boat. T3 UEF navy more than makes up for any inefficiency in the earlier stages and is very powerful.

    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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Why so gay thing exist?

    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?

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Reclaim balance suggestion

    @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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: A Topic of Dumb Ideas!

    Dumb idea: Paragon adjacent to artillery gives 2x fire rate increase. Paragon adjacent to shields decreases shield recharge time.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    @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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •

    Latest posts made by Arran

    RE: Proposal: T3 Arty & Movement

    @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.

    • Build T2 arty and/or t2 shields to fight off or protect your army, reclaiming useless/out-of-position structures as you go.
    • Use terrain to shield units. It will protect your T3 arty while allowing your direct fire units to get in close. (This assumes you are playing on a decent map.)
    • Accept you are screwed and build static defences and a Megalith while you lament your bad gameplay for allowing a critical mass of snipers.
    • Wait for April fools day so you can build Salem's out of your T3 land factory.
    • Build the Soul Ripper and after it is instantly killed by ASF use it's crash damage to kill the snipers.

    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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Balance Thread Guidelines

    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

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    The debate over Experimental balance has continued nowhere for ages and is clogging up this thread. Please bring some progress to the discussion.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    TY @keyser. My information was outdated and I was wrong 🙂

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Points of Imbalance.

    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%.

    posted in Balance Discussion •
    RE: Very long post about spread attack, UI mods and why improving player's controls and UI is apparently and wrongly considered a bad thing in FAF, also balance

    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.

    posted in Balance Discussion •