Hello everyone

Check out my new mod "Calibers Balance Mod" although it has very little to do with balance at all, its more about exploring unit design and changing small things like projectiles, sounds and abilities of the units.

Here are some examples of these changes.

Turning the tac missile defense of the summit into a short range gatling gun to deal with pesky frigates who get into your personal space.

Changing the Corsair projectile from rockets to a unique emp bomb that can stun those stubborn T2 UEF turtle bases.

Turning the Absolver into a rather expensive but OP EMP tank that fires a cloud burst projectile that stuns enemy units for 4 seconds, giving Aeon a much needed buff in the t3 phase.

Creating a cybran SACU shield disrupter preset, taking that perk from the Aeon as in my opinion it suits the cybrans alternative aproach to gaining an advantage on the battlefield.

Speaking of SACU's the seraphim now have a regen aura preset, stolen from the commander, aswell as an ARAS preset.

Giving the Aeon T3 arty the ability to hover, as it suits the unit and has no visible tracks as the original movement type seems to suggest.

One of the largest changes I have made is to T1 and T2 navy, as all submarines are now T2, there was no real dynamic to T1 subs. These new T2 subs have very low Hp but very high DPS, designed to kill frigates, cruisers and battleships with ease but get wrecked by destroyers.

Here is an example of a projectile change. the cybran t3 gunship only fires a single shot dispite having a double muzzle and that projectile isnt very interesting. So I utilized the double muzzle funtion as it now fires two shots at once with a more interesting projectile.

A small change made was to the UEF and Sera T1 PD, all T1 PD are essentialy the same, theres nothing interesting that seperates them, until now, I noticed that the UEF PD sound effect cant quite keep up with the high fire rate so slowing the fire rate and increasing the DPS helped with that issue, unless you pay very close attention most wont notice the sera T1 pd has a double muzzle but fires in a way that doesnt show, so I doubled up the shot by adding a delay that makes it more interesting and seperates it from the other PDs adding a little bit to the faction diversity.

These are just a few of many changes I have made alongside some visual and sound changes. aswell as swaping projectiles that I think suit some of the units better.

If you have any suggestions for new abilities or things you think might fit other units let me know and we can have a look.

Can we have more map gen please?

On the topic of this thread i have thrown together a mod that gives navy a strategic missile defense ability, it's simple but effective.

but if your interested its called " Naval Anti Nuke"

I have basically created a clone of the Missile subs and sera battleship but removed the nuke attack and given nuke defense, all other aspects of the units remain the same.

The nuke defense subs have shorter range from static defense from 90 down to 70 and the seraphim battleship is 60

and they are surface fire only!

the submarine storage is 3 and the seraphim battleship is 1

the battleship is different as people make a whole load more battleships than missile subs.

I made the mod quite quickly so i am aware of somethings that need improvement but if you use the mod please feel free to leave me any feedback.

Loving the new higher rate of getting map gen maps by the way

So i have a suggestion that i hope could save quite a lot of fustration with frequent updates.

Currently there are links to information on changes to other sources in various places that i think from speaking to other players are poorly understood how to even check for updates and understand why when where those changes are being made.

Most people who are not invested into contributing to faf do not go the extra few clicks to find extra info

Speaking to other players after the most recent updates, most people did not realise that the mobile factories have now changed and are fustrated that they could not build from them any more as they didnt realise the changes that have been made, also the most recent change to ringing structures has confused a large amount of the players i speak to who have resorted going back to using the old templates to ring mexes as they dont understand the changes that have been made or understand why.

my solution to prevent the confusion is to place this info onto the newsfeed of the opening page of faf (not just a link) so that this can be very easily seen and understand what is changing, why its changing and when its changing.

Or Even place all this information about changes that is on the forum but in another tab in the client.

Allow a dead team mate acu to respawn from quantum gateway.

inspired by comradestryker i made this little mod to the Ravager that now fires the projectile from the TMD without stoping for reloading giving it non stop fire power!, imo it does look more realistic though the only issue now is finding a sound that fits, however in testing there seems to be very little down time from the sound effect re playing so it seems to be up to the task for now.

3039 vs 978 is not a match in any humans mind, I would rather not have a game at all than have games like this.

Does the matchmaker not pair up equal opponents? at least on rating.

This idea worked out better than I thought it would.

I wanted to create a unit that filled the function of a direct fire exp for the uef as the fatty is less than useful in this role.

So I came up with this.

The UEF ACU is a highly detailed unit and looks great at a larger scale and reminds me of gypsy danger from pacific rim.

The unit has 45k health with 40k shield twin blasters that shoot larger percy projectiles, its also armed with a sub nuke that launches from its backpack.

It costs the same as a GC and has very similar dps but overall loses in a 1v1 with a GC as it has a recharging shield and can launch nukes.

Unbalanced maps in matchmaker

My 5 cents

Absolver - yes its really good at what it does but is role is very niche - ironically its best used against its own faction, due to harbingers having shields, usefull against seraphim with t3 mobile shields, limited against uef and absolutely pointless against cybran, making absolver emp would make the unit more versatile against all factions and units, but if not done reservedly could easily become op, I always thought that shield breaker would suit cybran better as they dont use mobile shields.

Czar - best used against asf as mentioned above, but rubbish as air to ground despite having big laser, a small speed buff would make it better to use in both situations but something that big moving quickly could look strange, so hp buff would be prefered as it takes only 25 or less asf to kill it

Spearhead is annoying as hell, most of the annoying units in faf belong to UEF, lower hp would be nice, also consider to prevent fire when moving.

Novax - obviously

Othuum - speed buff would be nice to counter short range, another point for seraphim would be to match mobile shield speed with othuums, come to think of it all of the t2 shields move at different speeds to the main fighting units wich has always bugged me.

Stealth - is brutally effective but rather than changing stealth costs consider making t1 scouts cheaper, not the build time just mass and energy, navy stealth is far more jarring as distances are much greater

I have no thoughts about the mercy its very rarely used, however I have seen it used to devestating effect but I have also seen it acheive absolutely nothing so meh.

same with the paragon very rarely seen maybe 1-100 games and ive also seen people with para get stomped, so if you can get away with making one without being punshed then you probably deserve to win at that point anyway.

Didnt the soul ripper already have a dps buff not to long ago, I feel its fine as is.

It is infinitely better to keep the bomber alive, one bomb is 11000 damage, crash damage is 8000.

to purposefully kill the bomber after spending Energy = 1920000, Mass = 48000, and do only 8000 damage is so wastful.

Using the beetle as an example of a death weapon unit, the beetle does 1100 damage for 190 mass

thats 5.8 Damage per mass if you round it

scaling that up to the chicken storm at 240,000 max damage thats 41,379 mass cost for the storm alone

Chicken is 26.5k mass

So when i say the storm is free damage thats what I mean

If you added the mass value of the storm at current balance the chicken would cost 67,879 mass

If that doesnt work for you try this instead.

create mod folder like this

your mod name
--mod info.lua
--units
--projectiles

place "UEB2305" unit bp and script into units folder
place "TIFMissileNuke01" projectile bp and script into projectiles folder

modify unit UEB2305 like this = ProjectileId = "/mods/yourmodname/projectiles/TIFMissileNuke01/TIFMissileNuke01_proj.bp",
modify projectile as you wish.

100% works

you may have to adjust mesh if you dont include those files aswell

@hotcheeseinrear before the update to the storm that changed the target priority of the storm it was fairly balanced, due to the fact that the storm was a neutral entity and didn't favour one army over the other.

This serves as a strong buff depending on the situation, however the build costs were not changed to reflect the chicken storms new effectiveness.

But rather than build costs as the costs of the chicken are fair what's should have happened imo is that when they changed the storm it effectively became x2 more powerful against your opponent by not prioritising freindly units, so the storm should have also had a -50% dps reduction.

You need to edit the projectile bp

Another idea that turned out better than I expected is the energy tether, Its purpose was to make novax spam less viable.

@zartan I'm shure it has been very easy do defend against in the last 2000 games of astro you have played.

@maudlin27 you should check out the mod novax manual fire 2.0

I think it addressess the issue you mention in that it takes more apm do defend against than to use, in making the unit manual fire only you cant que up orders and have to spend time to micro the satellite and make shure its actually attacking things.

thats why its my favourite mod for the novax, because it doesnt really nerf the unit but makes it harder to get the most out of it.