Let's not forget TheDuelist https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDDNS1XW0-o1FRPvaR9-pKA who has been putting out tons of good content lately, not just casts but interesting analysis and gameplay videos as well. There's also Whizzey McWhiz https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9cRw1-cPBu2XYQTDvO_HPg who has been streaming FAF recently and consistently.

Also, would it be possible to move this thread to General and pin it? I feel it would make more sense there than in the job openings page, and it may give these people more traffic.

@moses_the_red said in Points of Imbalance.:

What's most hilarious about all this, is I hunted down the discussion thread for that patch, and there was very little relevant discussion about these nerfs. People didn't realize how massive those changes were, and seemed not to consider the impact such changes would have on T3/T4 balance.

I think its clear it was a sloppy patch. They may have "fixed" T2/T3 balance, but they drastically reduced the effectiveness of T3 land versus both T4 and static structures in order to do it.

You can hear Petric talk in the video about the changes in relation to T3. GC lost the ability to trigger its claws as fast. Monkey got a cost increase in addition to bt nerf. Other units like T3 mobile arty and sniper bots were nerfed after they were found to be a bit too strong vs T3 bots. Ythotha got a cost increase and had its dps shifted so if can't one shot Percies/Bricks. That's not to say these changes put them back in line with old balance, that wasn't the point. T4 IS stronger now once it gets up, that's intentional. T4s are no longer a cheese strategy but a proper unit. The video explains it better, but to say it was a sloppy patch and that there wasn't any concern or that people didn't notice changes for T3/T4 balance is just wrong.

Even with the changes, T3 land still beats T4 mass for mass with a good formation, especially with shields. And that's not considering that while your opponent makes T4 you can win much of the map with T3, if not kill his whole base. Even when the T4 gets out it's an uphill battle to retake the map since you only have one experimental that can only be in one place. T3 is also helped by ACU (which is the main thing early T3 has to contend with) being nerfed in some upgrades and having Overcharge made more expensive in power and storage. Also The build time increase is not trivial and has a direct cost in how long it takes to get up an experimental. You can't spread out an exp, you can't drop it (T3 drops have actually been made stronger with the ASF/scout nerf). And so on.

And people don't generally talk about post nerf units vs pre-nerf units because the two will never meet.

Probably best to discuss that in PMs since we don't want people to think profit is being made off of the IP.

That is some absolutely amazing models though. Lots of detail everywhere from the stuts of the legs to the canon of the monkeylord. I'm noticing a lot of cool and interesting things that I didn't notice about the units even though I've played with them a fair bit in game, like the difference in pattern on the top of the ythotha's arms, or the little handle-bar like things on the side of the monkeylord's turret.

Could we get a photo of all of them together?

I have been having a lot of fun on Rainmakers as single-player, it is quite a challenge! I have to set the settings low and then turn the speed down, there's just so much to do. Absolutely my favorite survival map. Also great to see the cinematics mod, I'll try it out soon.

The Aeon shield has a long animation delay which results in being unable to rebuild it for a long time after it is destroyed. UEF and Cybran shields are rebuildable almost instantly after being built, Seraphim takes ~1 second, while Aeon shields take ~7 seconds (roughly). This is admittedly not much time, but can be a game-changing difference in certain situations.

Example:

To be fair, the Aeon shield is otherwise really good, it's got a low cost in it's mass/energy/buildtime as well as a lower cost to run relative to other shields, while still providing the second highest shield health at 1800.

quick comparison

Although I personally think this is balanced out by the lack of other lategame shielding options (bubble com/sacu, upgradeable shield that refreshes health, t3 mobile shield) as well as no engineering stations to rapidly rebuild shields that are lost. In any case it just feels a little jarring and slow, especially if the damage was enough to vaporize the reclaim wreckage but the animation still plays. The animation is weird 3 stage process; first, an explosion occurs in the air above the shield, then the top part hovers in the air while the bottom part explodes, then finally the top part falls to the ground, then after a short delay the wreckage appears and the space is freed up.

Thoughts on changing the duration of the animation? Perhaps having the above-mentioned stages of the animation occur at the same time. it would reduce the delay to something like 3 seconds and preserve some of the disadvantage, while not feeling like an eternity in tense moments.

@ThomasHiatt said in 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 have seen countless games that could have been interesting be prematurely ended because of shift-g surrounding an ACU after it was out of position for 1 second. Despite this, you guys still make the argument that shift-g only enhances the skill of the game and makes it better?

If the game was ended by a shift-g then did it really have the potential to be interesting? Shift-g only works against someone not paying attention, who overextended way too far, with no OC or t1 arty to kill clumps, ect.

How about being clever and hiding some stuff in a part of the map that normally wouldn't get scouted? That won't work anymore because your opponent will just make 10 scouts and give a split move to scout the entire map and find your stuff on accident, might as well remove fog of war.
Split move also gives you quite good automatic micro for many units. Just spam a bunch of move orders and hit a key and they will move around in unpredictable directions dodging everything.

We already have a select next air scout hotkey that did pretty much the same thing and in the same number of clicks, just with rapidly pressing the hotkey at the same time.

I agree that split move for random dodging can be pretty useful, but it also messes with unit formation pretty bad often you wind up with clumped up units or with some units out of range and not shooting, its good for stuff like destroyer micro but is in no way required.

Wouldn't it take a bit more skill to have manually microd all of the units to block the ACU, so it took some effort and APM to get the win instead of a single key combo? Combine this with target priorities and it is even more busted.

It would take even more skill if you had to move the units one by one to exactly where they needed to be. As people like Tagada have mentioned the benefit is not that it adds more skill but that it gives more control. You can do things that would otherwise be unreasonable even if you had really high APM and it helps with mitigating part of the massive defender's advantage this game has, or at least with pushing the opponent back. You can control other things on the map more and not have the game be decided by one battle on one part of the map. Before ATP was out lots of people complained about units shooting at the wrong target and costing games. ATP makes it a lot easier to push without building up such an overwhelming advantage.

I'd be interested in seeing a rework of how attacking/defending could play out. Perhaps game balance would be tweaked to reduce defenders advantage and favour attackers more, but there would also be a sort of 'supply lines' mechanic, where the aggressor would have to support his units as they press further. Ideally this would balance offense vs defence and give losing players more of a chance to come back through raiding/hindering supply lines, while still keeping FA's mechanics.

The stuff you mentioned about radar/intel sounds cool as well. Perhaps certain units would be able to evade detection for a certain period of time, or be untargetable after leaving radar (imagine not being able to lock a transport from the other side of the map).

Signing up
global 1762 ladder 1654

The simplest option is to just nerf the mass/power output or increase the upgrade cost and buildtime. Maybe a combination of both.

I don't think Ras SACUs are a bad concept, they help with managing buildpower and eco, while saving space and unit cap. They're just too strong and prevalent in larger games because they have zero risk and they are guranteed to at least pay back their mass investment. At the very least they should take much longer to pay back their cost

I think it would be cool to have a "select next unit in transport" button that cycles through individual units in a transport and allows you to make individual drops more easily. Currently, you have to click on one or a few of the unit icons to select them, drop them where you want to, and repeat. Could have it so that pressing the hotkey multiple times selects a few units in a row so you aren't limited to one unit at a time.

Even if it's the lower rated player getting sniped, and the better player gets his stuff, it's still often a good idea if you can do it without huge losses. Losing an acu is often devastating, usually either it's at the front where it was guarding something that can now be attacked, or it's in the base, and when it explodes it takes all of the buildpower with it. It also loses any mass and energy in storage, of course you can manually give it away before dying but a lot of players do not.

All in snipes on a weaker player are bad
Logical snipes on a weaker player are good

After an enemy ACU dies you have to take advantage of it before the opponent can stabilize. Full share increases the skill ceiling of snipes because you don't just have to plan the ACU snipe, you have to plan and be ready for the aftermath.

I have been having a lot of fun on Rainmakers as single-player, it is quite a challenge! I have to set the settings low and then turn the speed down, there's just so much to do. Absolutely my favorite survival map. Also great to see the cinematics mod, I'll try it out soon.

T1 Mass Extractors are pretty cheap, it's ok to lose a few as long as you get it back quickly, and trying to protect them all in the first few minutes is near impossible. Try and figure out what expansions you need to prioritize, and protect the engis there, while the rest of your units attack and raid them, as FTX said.

I'm always willing to help test new mods/maps, if you see me in FAF you can always reach out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL-9hulw_Ro by Willow's Duality was just released, a long and surprisingly interesting low level ladder game on Vya-3.

Not knowledgeable on making coop games, but as an easy alternative, the simplest option would probably be to install mods like 'nothing but time' or 'resources x2' which will give you a massive edge over any ai. Then while you're at it you may as well install mods like blackops or total mayhem which give more giant robots and unit types to play with.

I think people will assume that no one is searching anyway if they can't get a game. That is what I used to see in aeolus where people new to ladder would have trouble getting games, they just assumed ladder had 0 people searching. I think it's better overall for the system to let players be informed. If people see 1 or 2 others in queue, they'll know that if they ready up, then there's a good chance of one or two others searching so the queue will jump up to 4.

I think one of the knowledge issues that new players encounter arises with not knowing how to host games. Knowing how to host your own games is incredibly important both for enjoying the game and improving as a player. Without knowledge of how to host, fitting maps, how to balance a game, and what the settings affect, players will either be forced into whatever the regular hosts want, or wade through on their own and hope the settings are alright. As others have mentioned, some of the people who commonly host are unreasonable or instantly kick new players. And often, new players will find that the only maps in custom lobbies are turtle maps, even though there are plenty of lower rated people who want to play better games.

More information on what players should expect would also be nice. I see new players join a half full game and instantly hit the ready button, and it just gives me the impression that they are staring at the screen worrying that if they look away for a minute they will be kicked. Which can be exhausting to do game after game.

Helping people with playing the game is important, but I think helping new players get used to the client and lobby also has a place in any player retention plans.

Signing up
global 1762 ladder 1654

Was fun to play, had a game with beta balance, and then did some testing. I like a lot of the changes such as splitting the shield upgrades on the uef scu and the bp reduction.

will be interesting to see how the sera regen field affects t3 naval combat, the sera BS gets 90 regen per scu, and all the while the scu is knocking a chunk off of it's cost with the +3 mass.

I think that removing sacrifice gets rid of a very interesting feature and that keeping it in would allow for some cool plays in scu combat. More than just a late game cheese option for tele-gc or tele-paragon, sacrifice preset has a ton of versatility and can be used in many situations. For example if opposing scus are winning a fight but they get too close, you can quickly sacrifice into a T3 massfab for an epic kamikaze doing massive aoe damage to groups of units (or a t3 pgen for slightly more damage but less aoe). You can support the rest of the army and squishy units like sniper bots by quickly sacrificing into a T3 shield. Or many other things really, there are tons of possibilities with it. It would probably need to be rebalanced, maybe a cost increase.

Also Chrono doesn't seem too strong, I think it could be useful against shielded rambo coms if you have absolvers, or groups of units, but the stun itself isn't very strong and does not last very long. It'll get focused down pretty quickly, you can upgrade the cheap first shield in 32 seconds if using the chrono support preset at least.