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.

To me, getting rid of the large power drain removes depth. As it is now you can build it to take advantage of overflow, you can throttle it when power is more important, and you can decide between saving e costs, and saving/earning more mass. T3 Fab farms are more efficient than SCUs, we don't need to change something to make Mass Fabs compete better than them (even though this idea makes them slightly worse). As for ease and accessibility, I think templates make things easy enough to not need changing as well.

The balance team (I don't speak for them) generally avoids adding new units where possible to keep FAF resemblant of base FA. There were only a few exceptions such as the T3 MAA and even those were controversial.

I understand you want it balanced for lower-rated players, but I think it is best to balance around how units are played at the top level. Lower rated players and even ones at my level really struggle with some basic concepts, so it is hard to say if it is due to it being harder to fight at a lower level, or just less experience in the matchup:

If an Aeon player plays 30 ladder games, and we say for the sake of argument that all factions are picked evenly, then he will gain experience against 'normal tank' factions 75% of the time. On the flip-side, a UEF player will face a 'range tank' faction (aeon) only 25% of the time. So when you're a new player with only 30 or so ladder games, it's quite often that an aeon player of the same skill level will have double the experience in a matchup. This is part of what I think contributes to new players having trouble against Aeon.

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.

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).

This can lead to a problem though, because sometimes you really are not sure if you are about to draw your opponent. Your opponent could be about to vet, or have a mobile shield on the way, or enough units coming to block your attack.

Is there perhaps some workaround that can be done by modifying the ACU's death weapon? Replace it in lua code with something that adds a flag to the replay file that the server can see when determining who won the game? I'm not very knowledgeable about FAF's inner workings but I know that as long as the server's able to see something that indicates a draw, then it can award the correct points instead of counting it as a win.

I think the Mods are doing a pretty good job.

The balance team (I don't speak for them) generally avoids adding new units where possible to keep FAF resemblant of base FA. There were only a few exceptions such as the T3 MAA and even those were controversial.

I understand you want it balanced for lower-rated players, but I think it is best to balance around how units are played at the top level. Lower rated players and even ones at my level really struggle with some basic concepts, so it is hard to say if it is due to it being harder to fight at a lower level, or just less experience in the matchup:

If an Aeon player plays 30 ladder games, and we say for the sake of argument that all factions are picked evenly, then he will gain experience against 'normal tank' factions 75% of the time. On the flip-side, a UEF player will face a 'range tank' faction (aeon) only 25% of the time. So when you're a new player with only 30 or so ladder games, it's quite often that an aeon player of the same skill level will have double the experience in a matchup. This is part of what I think contributes to new players having trouble against Aeon.

Aeon Auroras require a bit more thought to use than simply right-clicking, but once you get enough of them they start snowballing quite hard in the early game. There are a lot of counters (gun-com, t2 land, bombers) but these can be tough to get under pressure without losing much of the map. As Arma mentioned, there's also the Aeon double guncom, which has more range for a small cost increase, and you can buy and use it in increments (start with just the range/rof upgrade, use it, then get the other one shortly after).

The downside is that Auroras are slow, which makes attacking/raiding harder early on, and if you get careless with them you can lose them against other tanks. New players also sometimes forego land scouts, which really hinders them until you get radar up. New players sometimes also seem to have an aversion to air units, letting their opponents get control for free and just bombing them.

They can feel unfun because slowly grinding down your opponent with a range advantage (whether its auroras, guncom, or destroyers) can be unfun and feels a little mean. But using 3 Auroras to beat 5 Strikers/Mantis/Thaams is a good feeling.

@zukko said in Make it obvious that a game is rated or not:

I had recently played a custom 2v2 and i played like my life depended on it, but after winning we found that the host had set the victory condition to sandbox, as you can imagine this was very disappointing.

Doesn't change the fact that you had a good game and won! No need to feel disappointed.

I play unrated games often vs other players. What I would recommend you do is in the lobby, activate the 'hide default options' checkmark, that will let you see anything out of the ordinary easily, like the game being set to sandbox.

To me, getting rid of the large power drain removes depth. As it is now you can build it to take advantage of overflow, you can throttle it when power is more important, and you can decide between saving e costs, and saving/earning more mass. T3 Fab farms are more efficient than SCUs, we don't need to change something to make Mass Fabs compete better than them (even though this idea makes them slightly worse). As for ease and accessibility, I think templates make things easy enough to not need changing as well.

T3 Fabs and pgens surrounding a nuke launcher are also good although you have to shield it and watch for tele-SCUs.

To be honest, removing their power cost and adding part of the cost of a T3 pgen in it to compensate will make it worse in some situations. This is because you're adding a 3/5th of the cost of a T3 pgen when the actual in-game power cost is less due to adjacency (you yourself show a template that does this).

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.