As if it wasn't already bad enough for the winner to call gg, my opponent topped that by calling gg while I was still trying to micro the ACU. Bad form, hashbrownies.
But well played for taking advantage of the chaos caused by my allies attempting to OC a monkeylord with BOTH their ACUs. (I'll admit, they did succeed in killing the ML at least. No idea why they allowed their opponent to hold so much territory for so long in a 2v1 position either.)
@Nomander said in T4 mobile anti-air:
Make flak instead of T3 MAA for dealing with gunships. You will need a lot because gunships cost 1500 mass while flak costs 160. T3 MAA should be reserved for kiting T4 air/killing strats since it's weaker than flak.
I guess this is the meta I was missing; thanks. There's definitely still a gap for MAA which is decently survivable at the T4 stage and can deal with both gunships and T4 air though.
In the T1/T2/T3 stage, air serves a number of useful purposes: scouting, transportation, bombing weakly defended targets, high-mobility gunships able to chase down raiders. And interceptors.
In the late T3/T4 stage, one team tends to build a huge ball of ASF able to shut down the opponent's air, even over the opponent's mobile land armies. Worse, if one team gets air supremacy and 20+ T3 gunships or a T4 gunship, they can shut down most land pushes.
This changes the game to the point that land pushes are hard, turning the game into a T4 arty war.
Suggestion: add a T4 mobile land AA unit to each faction, somewhere around the cost of a spider or GC. Make it strong enough to beat all T4 air and able to kill massed gunships quickly using AOE weapons.
This should make multiple-T4-pushes more effective and reduce the incentive to make 100+ ASF.
A simpler alternative would be to buff T3 MAA, but I think this has more downsides.
Sometimes when clicking to launch the billy nuke it doesn't fire. This may be when the ACU is building.
What I expect:
What seems to happen:
That sucks brutally, ACUs don’t need to be nerfed in t3 stage.
Right. I wonder about adding a second level range upgrade? But it's still a nerf vs T2 PD.
I'm with Ftx in that ACUs in team games kill a lot of early action and in that auto-OC is worth keeping.
But I don't think auto-OC is too powerful, at the early T2 stage when there isn't a huge amount of power. If you think it is, send a few T1 units ahead of the T2 to use up that stored E.
Ultimately I don't see a solution to the strong-ACUs-in-teamgames problem other than paper-thin armour on ACUs. Or maybe making snipes more balanced (yes, that Mercy vs T2 bombers for snipes balance issue).
What if T1 subs have cloak but no stealth and no sonar; also T1 scout planes have no sonar? Makes subs vs mexes & engies strong without affecting subs vs navy. Also means moving sub loses to lurking sub every time (if they engage at all).
It would likely skew ratings, e.g. someone might only play 5x5. This would make it harder to compare people by looking at their ladder ratings.
@thomashiatt said in Smol ACU Adjustment:
Auto OC is some stupid ability FAF added, so it's much easier to argue for it's removal than things in the game from the start. It has horrible anti-synergy with the new variable energy overcharge system (which I still think is the worst thing ever done to the game).
Give me the ability to OC while still following the last move order and I won't complain about removing auto-OC. As is, it is useful for retreats.
IMO frequent lack of T2 usage comes down to dynamics that have very little to do with the T2 units themselves:
T2 land is not useless, but mex upgrades and map size are the real reasons T2 land has little use.
So, nerf mass-storage adjacency bonus for more T2 tanks?
The other option is to look at energy cost for OC. OCing an Ilshovah already requires more than one Estor.
Cobalt Valley. It has a good number of raiding paths with mostly open centre (but would be better without those four pillars IMO) and is a good size for T1, sometimes T2 fights. And the playable area has a "natural" edge (cliffs) instead of the edge of the map square.
"The Hunting Ground" is also interesting: tree groups allow double-factory start, one expansion plus a few lone resource points, several possible attack paths (though the middle is a weird dead area). May have a bit too much small reclaim.
Just ban maps where you build bases right at the map-edge. Simple.
(Yes, quite a lot of popular maps need fixing! Arguably, it's already broken having a completely arbitrary wall limiting base expansion and air fights.)
@veteranashe said in About the veterancy system:
I like ta's vet system, just says it's a veteran and has a bonus to accuracy.
TA's vet system was 100% useless to nearly every unit, yet OP for Long Range Plasma Cannons. Please do not bring that back.
@thomashiatt said in About the veterancy system:
Everyone arguing for the removal of veterancy either excluded the ACU from this, or said balance adjustments would have to be made to compensate.
Yes, ACUs feel like the use-case for veterency. Yet it still feels jarring when you realise you are already at Vet5 and have no more free HP boosts.
Alternative: ACUs have a nano-reclamation weapon code-name Vampire that regens HP based on the damage done.
@ftxcommando said in About the veterancy system:
Definitely doesn’t matter in a 50 v 50 tank fight. It does matter for ACU, first t3 units, first t4s.
Yes, vet matters for early T4s (thankfully not as much as it used to with the old kill-based vet system).
IMO the potential reward for winning should be the option to repair your units. But in this game vet and air staging gives free HP but every other repair takes stupid amounts of build power (about the only thing ever repaired by engineers it a transport).
Note: after paying 3k mass for a large factory to build an SACU, most players don't want to leave the factory idle.
Possible fix: let the factory build T1-T3 land units (possibly with increased build power, possibly requiring a land HQ).
Or: just let land factories build SACUs (possibly via a T4 HQ upgrade).
If veterency were removed, then an alternative is needed, e.g. cheaper repairing. Regen is OP IMO, especially regen from vet. An alternative might be regen-on-what-you-kill (remember the "vampire" mod in some shooters like UT2004?).
Anyway the current vet system is fine, though I do dislike the way vet lets an ACU get back to full HP quite quickly at no cost.
SACU balance should consider the cost of the quantum gate: sometimes having a couple of SACUs is useful (e.g. as combat engineers, kinda a T4 sparky but without the insane speed), but this is not cost effective when you have to pay for the Q gate too.
Possible alternative: "T4" land factory HQ upgrade which only does two things: (1) add SACUs to the build menu and (2) increases build power.
Alternative: allow the quantum gate to build all T1-T3 land units (possibly only by assisting a land factory).
In both cases you can build 1-2 SACUs without wasting 3k mass on a factory you don't want, but only if you commit to the T3 land stage.
Interesting... I would at least suggest moving a few items around.
So for UEF: move TPS to back, engineering to RCH, targetting uplink to LCH?
RAS / QRS offering subsidised building is a weird one, but nice idea that the SACU must be building to get the (full) benefit.
@thomashiatt said in Do you think Sanctuary will replace FAF?:
There's not a single thing I would like to see in FAF that involves changing the source code
Really? There are loads of things (balance and taste dependent) which could potentially be better:
The concern I have is that several quite different units have the same icon and mostly the same appearance. Is it possible to use a different icon for each upgrade path?
Heck, you could remove the base SACU and all upgrade options and just make the various "upgrade paths" completely different units (without upgrades). It would likely be simpler to use and I think wouldn't lose much (does anybody ever convert a rambo boy into an engineer boy on the front line, or similar)?
Surface-to-air balance in the game is just weird IMO:
The problem is that T3 air play is too often about getting an ASF lead and keeping it. Since T1 and T2 AA is so weak vs most T3 air, SAMs are the main counter. But SAMs are expensive, high-damage systems not anti-swarm systems.
Fix: make SAMs much cheaper and weaker. Maybe also move to T2. Maybe also remove AOE, giving flak a role vs gunships even at T3 (will take more tweaks to balance).
Additional note: there is no good T2 AA vs T2 bombers; this is also in part why a strat rush can be strong. Having a T2 SAM would help balance both.