For 100 (non consecutive) days I have decided to commit to improving ladder skill by playing regularly and reflecting on my games. Inspired by someone doing the same a long time ago, I have decided to post this to hold myself accountable and to share insights from my journey.

I have been stuck at 1600-ish ladder for a long time, and become quite rusty, mainly due to not wanting to put in the time and effort into playing and getting better (and not laddering). My current goal is to get to 1800, but I first have to be able to play at a 1600 level again and improve.

I hope that this journey motivates other players to improve and enjoy FAF as much as I do.

Day 1 (April 26th): Well this went about as well as I expected. Played 2 games and lost both, but will not be discouraged. I made some bad trades, underbuilt build power, had poor radar coverage, and sent my units to the wrong spots. My ACU went into the middle of the map where there was nothing, instead of holding down an expansion, and I let small raiding groups pull large amounts of my tanks out of position.

Right now I am focusing on what units I build and where I send them. I'm including a bit more t1 arty in the mix, as well as a few more land scouts. This increase has to come from somewhere, and means slightly less tanks, but I think this will be worth it. Also building more engineers and making sure they are being useful. A benefit of not having played in a while is that my old habits feel slightly easier to change.

Hi guys, sorry about the increasing gaps between posts. This was a big commitment but I still intend to live up to it. I've put laddering mostly on hold while I search for a job. I'll try to play and post when I can so I don't lose my progress.

Hello, I am Evan_. I mostly play mid level (1600-2000) teamgames, and occasionally ladder games. The goal of this balance patch is to make the T3 air game more interesting by making gunships viable in more situations again. This post is primarily focused on team-games, as I do not feel the changes proposed are enough to significantly shift the T3 air-game in 1v1 (that is up for discussion though).

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T3 gunships were nerfed in balance patch 3709 without a justification attached, (while it could exist somewhere else, there should be at least a reason given for such a large change). Both their mass cost and energy cost increasing substantially:

Mass cost: 1260 → 1500 (1680 on FAF unit database)
Energy cost: 42000 → 65000

The strength of T3 gunships at the time (in team-games) was that they could be rushed on T2 power generators while opposing air players were getting a T3 power-generator for ASFs. Additionally, T3 gunships are effective against Flak as they attack as a few mass-dense units rather than a lot of cheap units, reducing the impact of AOE damage.

This led to a brief window where the T3 gunship player had time to do damage in exchange for reduced air control in the future, creating an interesting imbalance. T3 gunships and a swarm of Inties could hold and even win against the first few ASF, However, the T3 gunship player had to play intelligently and not let his inties fly over flak while doing as much damage as he could. This led to an interesting imbalance as one team creates an advantage on land while the other team creates an advantage in the air.

After the nerf however, this risky strategy is now much harder to pull off in a way that benefits the team in the long run. This makes the T3 air game on 10x10 maps more static as players go straight for ASF rather than trying to create an imbalance.

Additionally, in the late-game, there is little reason to build T3 gunships over Strat Bombers if you have air control. Strats will take little to no damage from Flak and have AOE to hit many targets. T3 gunships are also a lot slower than Strats, both to deal damage (Alpha damage on Strats vs DoT on gunships) and to move around the map. Strats actually have some use if air is even, as you can drop a bomb and then retreat to Sams if you catch your opponent's air on the other side of the map. This has become more viable in spread out maps with the decrease to asf speed. T3 gunships however, will be slow to move in, to deal damage, and to move away. There are still a few cases where you build them, but opponents mostly only need to be wary of Strat bombers and not T3 gunships.

I propose to revert or reduce the cost nerf to T3 gunships while reducing speed slightly. This makes them more efficient to use and cheaper to get out without making them too dominant, and giving players more reaction time to prevent a snipe. This plays into the idea of them being slow and bulky.

Here are my proposed changes. The speed nerf is not meant to offset the cost decrease. These changes are meant to be an overall buff as I feel that the previous nerf was too harsh. The numbers themselves can be finetuned of course.

Mass cost: 1260 → 1500/1680 → 1260  
Energy cost: 42000 → 65000 → 48000 
Max air speed: 8 → 8 → 7.5

@woippa said in Someone's cheating on the coop leaderboard:

someone cares about that leaderboard?
anyone can just lower the gamespeed by using external programs or manipulated game rules and streaming fake replays should also work

Yes, enough people care about the amount of skill and planning that goes into finding the fastest way to progress through a co-op mission. That's why beating the previous top time by over 2 minutes is something big and why several people have already checked the replay and seen what they can do about it.

Lowering gamespeed wouldn't really help much as co-op is more dependent on coordination and strategy as opposed to clicking a little faster. Also any small gains in efficiency have to be weighed against being able to make fewer attempts. As for manipulated game rules and fake replays, those should not (in theory) get past the replay system.

@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.

Thanks for your support everyone! And yes, I accidentally said February instead of April, will fix that.

Day 2 (April 27th): Less one sided today, with one win and one loss. Admittedly my win was due to my opponent forgetting to build power on a mass-heavy map. My second game was on eye of the storm. I have seen people play but severely underestimated how much power is needed for that map, leading me to lose my air advantage and get sniped.

I have realised something important about myself and it is my obsession with eco-balance. I always strive to be floating in both mass and power, this is in-theory good but sometimes leads me to building the wrong stuff for fear of a stall. There were several times during the past few days where I thought 'I should build gun because I have a lot of power' rather than 'I should build gun because I need gun.' Trying to maintain perfect eco balance is also taking apm away from more important macro stuff. I'll still make sure to stay relatively baloanced, but a bit of e-overflow is alright to have, at least at my level.

In this post I argue that the ACU Gun upgrades are overpowered, and that they hurt game diversity at the late t1/early T2 stage. I will also list the drawbacks of getting the gun-upgrade and why I feel that these drawbacks are too easily circumvented. This post is primarily intended towards affecting larger team-games without making the gun upgrade too weak in ladder/2v2, as I feel it is in a good spot there.

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The ACU gun upgrades are arguably the most mass efficient choice in the entire game. On many maps you are at a serious disadvantage if your opponent goes for it but you do not. the upgrade enables one unit to hold points with ease while ecoing or using units elsewhere, and at an early point in the game it can easily snowball with veterancy and future upgrades.

Some people may say that nerfing gun upgrades will make the game more turtly, however it is my opinion that in many cases, the ACU gun upgrade itself is what limits aggression. In an ACU vs ACU fight, one side having far more units can often still be unable to gain enough of an advantage to push, and this is even moreso the case with the Gun-upgrade. Units are virtually unable to contribute in some cases, as they just become vet before getting into range, and the fight becomes a game of who can bring T2 pd or mobile shields to support their Gun ACU faster.

It's my opinion that the gun upgrade is strong enough to limit strategic options, such as pushing with an unupgraded Acu and an early T2 Army, or getting nano/regen field without gun, et cetera. With that, my hope is that the Gun upgrade will be nerfed so that there is more of a choice of which to get first within the first several minutes of the game.

Gun upgrade does have some drawbacks that in theory, work to prevent it from being overpowered:

• The Gun upgrade has a relatively large energy cost
• You can not move or control the ACU while upgrading (though you can queue up orders)
• Opponents are aware you are upgrading due to the lighting effects on the ACU, and can see what arm is upgrading.
• You can not get other upgrades on the same arm (affects some factions more than others).

However, in many cases, I feel that these drawbacks are not enough to hold Gun back from being overpowered, and that they are often even nullified:

• The energy cost is appears high but is often negligible. Most of the time when going for it, you'll have an energy surplus and e storage for overcharge anyway. By building 1-2 e-storages while walking your ACU to a front/expansion you are essentially pseudo-building the upgrade, as by the time you get there you can click the upgrade button and use all your stored energy without having to unbalance your economy. Even just having 9000 energy in storage makes the upgrade very easy to get.
• Furthermore, in teamgames, players often gift energy to allow gun upgrades to finish super quickly. This does in theory put the gifter at a disadvantage, but in 4v4's and up there's usually at least someone with energy to spare.
• It's true that you can't use or move the ACU while upgrading, however the upgrade finishes so quickly that usually no loss is felt. Sometimes, you can even start upgrading in the middle of battle if your opponent doesn't have too much t1 arty, letting your acu still shoot and tank for your units.
• Your opponent can see that you are upgrading, but cannot see how close you are to construction. It could be just started or almost complete, and attacking an upgrading ACU with an unupgraded ACU is very risky, especially with the fast build-times and the ability to gift energy.

In conclusion, I believe that the drawbacks to getting the gun upgrade are too easily nullified in teamgames.

I do understand that certain units (such as Aurora) may become a lot stronger if Gun Upgrade is nerfed too much, so it makes sense to be careful and strike a balance. Furthermore, I the Gun Upgrades are decently balanced in combat outside of their cost. For that reason, I suggest changes to the price of the upgrade:

• Increase the build-time of the gun upgrade so an ACU can't just walk to the front while e-storage builds, and upgrade within half a minute or so.
• Increase the mass cost of the upgrade. This way, gun upgrades will cost something even with a ton of energy either gifted or in storage. I believe trying to increase the energy costs would have a negligible effect in teamgames while making Gun underpowered in 1v1.

My idea for the numbers is as follows, they are of course not set in stone:

UEF, Cybran, and Seraphim:
Build time: 800 → 1200
Mass cost: 800 → 1200

Aeon (both upgrades):
Build time: 500 → 720
Mass cost: 500 → 720

Day 5 (April 30th): Another two games, another two defeats. Another two learning opportunities.

My first game (replay #16923479) started out really well, taking down multiple engies with Labs, however I lost an incredible amount of stuff to bombers. I kept thinking I had everything under control with a bit of aa, however it was never in the right spot and in enough quantity. To make things worse, I had built power far outside of my base as that was where I had engies at the time, so I couldn't protect it. I should have made an air factory a lot earlier.

My second game took place on fields of ISIS (replay #16923681). Not used to maps like these and it shows. Better that I learn now than have to later I guess. Bombers were an issue again here. I got air up to deal with them, however it delayed my expansion and I lost interceptors to him, and never regained air control. This came from building my second air and third land at the same time, in different places, which delayed both, which came from me not wanting one of the engis to spend the travel time to move to the other.

Both ACU's went to one of the reclaim fields. I made a serious mistake here which is to reclaim everything immediately, much faster than I could spend it. I knowingly did this, and I think this comes from me instinctually expecting a fight for early mid reclaim. However my opponent was at the other field, ingrained from games on other maps. I should have instead have waited until I had spent the mass. I made further mistakes in the game getting my ACU caught by an opposing guncom and lost a lot of units and territory to save it, which eventually snowballed into defeat (I also accidentally upgraded 2 mexes to T3).

My main takeaway here is that I'm trying to rush things out of urgency instead of doing them correctly. Building stuff right next to where one of my engis is, rather than where it should be, was a serious problem in both games. Reclaiming before I could use it was also an example. This habit is going to be tough to kick but I am aware of it now. I also need to get more practice with maps like Isis and Regor, where the ACU's go to different spots and do not directly fight each other.

Overall this was a pretty constructive day. I like that I can still learn interesting things about the game and how I play.

Day 8 (May 5th): Finally some success again, admittedly against someone lower rated than me. I played two games today. Both were technically victories although the first one was because my opponent ctrl-k'ed really early due to getting his ACU stuck.

In the second game (Replay 16963727) it was a much tougher fight. The map was twin rivers. We both raided each other with labs, delaying eachother's start. Until recently I forgot Mantis now have the square icon so I was a bit alarmed at first. We also bombed each other, with my scorcher probably being the only reason I didn't lose by taking out 4 pgens and 2 engis. Most of the battles took place on my side of the map afterwards. This time I was able to stay much more calm and deal with the raids, as well as rebuild after.

I think my build order could use some work. I didn't queue up much with my ACU at the start, which meant I had to spend more apm and time with it later. I also sent my ACU to what I think is the wrong spot, and had to spend time pulling it back. I will watch some better players and see what they do on this map.

Another issue I had was trying to launch attacks that wouldn't work. I have been trying to be a lot more aggressive and take the initiative but I launched multiple incursions that just wasted units. Strikers are never really going to be able to raid against Mantis unless there are a lot more, I'm not blaming my difficulties on faction choice, but it is something I need to keep in mind. If I had just been a bit less hotheaded I would have seen that I had a noticeable lead in eco and that all the wrecks were on my side of the map. My opponent delayed his expansion and mex upgrades to get more attacking units. Having not scuted I assumed he had the eco that I had but with a unit lead, and so I tried to make risky attacks that didn't pay off. This led to my opponent destroying much more of my tanks than I did his, keeping him in the game.

Getting reclaim was once again an issue for me as I constantly found myself losing my own engis. Forget the natural reclaim, I couldn't even get the wrecks most of the time. I had engineers, but many were in the wrong spot, and I issued orders to assist a nearby factory rather than having them take the time to wander over and reclaim. I atleast managed to get one island and contest the other, although it was very late for both of us.

In the end my opponent suicided his Gun ACU into My Gun ACU and units. I'm not sure what would have happened if he had not, as I was just beginning to stabilize at T2 and get the reclaim, but my opponent still had a large lead in land and air units and had almost caught up on eco, as well as having more map control.

How have you guys been finding these reports? Does anyone relate to the issues I am trying to fix with my playstyle? Anyone feel inspired to try and get better with me?

Day 12 (May 14): Well it has been a couple days now hasn't it? A few days ago I trained with Tagada, and he showed me some problems I had been overlooking (as well as some problems I hadn't been working to fix hard enough).

It is hard to summarize everything in a short post, and I am sure @Tagada can weigh in if I missed anything, but the few of the main points are as follows:

• My rally points are inneficient, often leading units to the wrong parts of the map or even suiciding them into enemy tanks. Tagada mentioned that rally points should typically be just behind the front lines (where your map control ends). This seems obvious in hindsight but I suppose I had been manually correcting where each unit goes all along, wasting precious time and apm.

• My unit queues have also been suboptimal, as I have found myself not removing labs and t1 transports. In most of my factories I have been building a mix of tanks, engineers, etc which can be somewhat difficult to manage. Tagada suggested having some factories for only tanks and scouts, and some producing engineers. I have tried this, and found it quite a bit more convenient. He suggested having factories assist other factories to copy the unit mixes and rally points. This saves time and allows me to change the mix and rally points for all of them at once.

• I react very slowly to things: Quite often when watching replays I see myself stalling for minutes on end without correcting it, or allowing my opponent to take out my expanding engies for free.. There isn't any magic solution to this other than to try and plan out things to be more effective ahead of time. I have been trying to have more game awareness for a while and will update you guys on the results.

• Eco management and decision making needs some work. Often I find my mistakes and bad decisions compounding on each other. For example, making less build power than I need will cause me to spend less mass than I should, building up a large bar of unneeded resources. With nothing else to put it into I absentmindedly put the mass into mex upgrades when I need tanks. Another basic thing Tagada had to explain to me was how to tech transition. T2 units are generally more efficient than t1 and so once you upgrade you generally want to scale back t1. In my games I found myself upgrading to T2 land while also building new t1 factories to spam tanks. This is a somewhat unfocused and conflicted plan. Tagada explained that I should either push for T2 and not make any new t1 spam factories or I should stay on T1 for slightly longer and try to gain an advantage there before heading to T2.

There are many other points he touched on, which will hopefully be displayed in video format soon. As for today's games, I tried to apply the lessons, however they were somewhat anticlimactic. In game 1, (replay 17038956), my opponent raided me and then after a brief fight overextended with his ACU. I made more of an attempt to catch stalls/overflows (I'm also starting to learn when I stall the most and why). I tried to make more of an effort to protect my engis although I still lost 2 of them to a single selen, which is not exactly optimal, but oh well.

In game 2 (replay 17040925) I pretty much doomed myself from the start. It was on a large 20x20 water mapgen. I went for a first transport which was promptly scouted, locked, and shot down. I got 4 engis off and quickly laid down a factory, however, building a mex first combined with a bad powerstall prevented me from completing it in time, and although I tried to spread out my engis, evidently it was not enough as I stll lost them all in one pass, right before the factory was completed. Combined with losing air the game was lost as long as my opponent didn't make a major blunder. I somehow took the main central island back and won a ton of reclaim, but even with that there was pretty much nothing I could do, and in the end I ctrl-k'ed.

I've decided to dedicate some time to practicing and learning some basic build-orders, as well as doing some sandboxing to figure out where and when I make decisions that lead to stalls or overflows. Fortunately there is tons of new interesting content from various other players, so I have a lot of resources to help me. I'll update you guys on how it goes.

Evan_ 1466

@Sainse said in AEONS are GARBAGE!:

@Evan_ said in AEONS are GARBAGE!:

In fact if you use up the hp on your shield it will recharge to 8k hp in 75 seconds which is over 100 hp per second. That is much more effective hp and regen than Seraphim's nano, which by the way is more expensive.

It’s incorrect approach. You may get 100 hp/s while recharging, but you don’t get it while not recharging. Meanwhile regen upgrade works all the time. You cannot compare them this way.

Yes this is a good point, and while it is strong when recharge does happen, you are right that they can't be compared that way. In fact another disadvantage is that being hit temporarily stops shield regen, which I did not mention.

I still believe shield is a viable and affordable upgrade, cheaper and more upfront hp than nano, that allows Aeon ACUs a good degree of survival when pushing. And stacking the extra range on top makes Aeon combat ACU very effective.

@AYAHUASCA_Dest said in AEONS are GARBAGE!:

@Evan_ U You need a lot of energy to upgrade everything and finally use it in combat. Meanwhile, your enemy has already built GUN, T2, and some PDT2 to protect the area.

You don't need every upgrade to use it though, Aeon first stage range and speed gun has the same functionality as other factions gun upgrade but is 3k energy cheaper and you can stagger the cost. Other factions ACUs get just gun and walk towards their opponent all the time often. Getting T2, gun, and some T2 pd is quite expensive early on, and certainly not something you can do while under fire from an opposing gun ACU. At the very least they will have to get it on their side of the map rather than in the center where they can lock down resources.

Aeon does indeed have weaknesses, I don't find them to be stronger than other factions, but they certainly aren't bad, and I see them regularly enough in 1v1, 3v3, and casts to say that players aren't abandoning them as you say.

Evan_ 1471 signing up!

@AYAHUASCA_Dest said in AEONS are GARBAGE!:

obsolete faction for combat. This is mainly because they can't have T2 upgrades on their combat ACU, they're useless in terms of frontline construction power, and they take an eternity to regenerate their HP.

I have to disagree here as Aeon combat ACUs are really good and situationally even the best. Aeon have the longest range gun ACU (which is huge), their upgrades are spread out which helps with storing energy to buy them, and the vision upgrade is very good for situational awareness. Yes the lack of hp regen is a weakness but Aeon can make up for it by taking less damage, and with their 8k shield which is quite affordable.

In fact if you use up the hp on your shield it will recharge to 8k hp in 75 seconds which is over 100 hp per second. That is much more effective hp and regen than Seraphim's nano, which by the way is more expensive. Granted you can't always get this effect, and shield doesn't benefit from vet, and draws power, but it is still quite strong and affordable. Add in Aeon's mobile shields which are very good, and a skilled Aeon player is extremely difficult to kill with normal units.

IMO the main weakness of Aeon ACUs is that you can't have ARAS and a high hp upgrade at the same time, the most you will get is T3 or chrono for a measly +2k hp. Also they don't have much in the way of tele-shenanigans. But I wouldn't call these glaring weaknesses.

Evan_ 1515 signing up!

Evan_ 1535

Ah ok, thanks that is nice to hear.

I have noticed numerous times that someone in a lobby or in a game will not show up when I search their name in chat. They are connected to FAF but not in Aeolus. I myself have sometimes tabbed back in to find I am not in Aeolus and have to reconnect. Occasionally even when starting the client.

Reconnecting to aeolus is easy and pretty much instant. However, if I don't manually check and find out I am disconnected then I won't rejoin. Usually I am open to joining games on good maps if someone pings me, Stuff like that can't happen without being in chat. Additionally it now looks like there are fewer people on FAF than there reallly is if you go by the number of people in chat. This can be demoralising if you see fewer people online including your friends, even if they are clearly playing games.

Earlier tonight at the end of a game someone really new to the game expressed sadness about not playing well. I was going to message him to join the discord so Grimplex or some other boss can help him ascend. Maybe he would try it or maybe he wouldn't, who knows. But this couldn't happen since he wasn't in chat, and I knew he was online because he joined another lobby. Anyways if anyone happens to see ReginaldVonCluck you can let him know that he doesn't have to dig his way out of -200 rating on his own.

I think a conversation on some measures to automatically connect people to aeolus is worthwhile. Maybe a few people are off of chat on purpose but there I do not believe that can be more than a tiny fraction. Of course if there is some other factor at play then I would appreciate learning about that as well.

I imagine the reason most people play is that it's comfortable. People don't like their plans disrupted, and having to adjust on the fly. DG has very little you can do in the way of raiding or bombing to stop people from getting their builds up. Even if you aren't doing well there is 5+ other people on the team and territorial gains/losses in mid often don't amount to much.

Other maps have much more excitement and fun but there is also the potential to get stomped quickly if you make a mistake. And games there often don't go up to the big T4/Arty fights that people like. A match doesn't have to have T4, T3, or even T2 to be exciting and have a lot of depth. However, there is just something fun about slowly growing your economy until you can build a nuke or arty, even if no one could have even tried to stop you from getting it.

My personal opinion is that TML should at least have a very low HP, so that you need to shield it or it can be taken out by bombers. In fact make it volatile as well.