Introduction:
As many know, current and past balance councilors and balance team were never elected by the community. Mostly through fake news and conspiracy theories claiming a popularity contest would lead to bad game changes they managed to circumvent democratic processes in the past to implant themselves like a cancerous oligarchy. This is of course the common premise of all dictators who know that in a fair election process, their self centeredness would never trump superior candidates’ ideas. This has become very clear over time in their "balance" patches that create new imbalances, lessen strategic diversity, ruin map designs and reduce units to obsolescence (I.e. Fire Beetle).
Unfortunately FAF nowadays is in ruins, having become increasingly stale and uninteresting, as viable strategies to create advantages and counterplay keep disappearing. I want to see the game saved from this path, the ‘S’ in RTS for FAF is almost dead but we can bring it back, bigger, better and stronger than ever before with real change that you can really believe in.

Cause and effect:
The issue is as follows: With their unlimited term in office and no stated manifesto, the current group have no reason to hurry along completing their process of "balancing the game" and consequently use their position to prevent much needed changes and improvements they either don't understand or don't see how those changes would improve things for themselves.
Nevertheless they keep making adjustments to units after playing games in which they did not like the outcome, i.e. that they lost and the blame goes to the unit used against them "obviously being OP". This leads to poor patches necessitating further "balancing" after they lose yet another game. The vicious circle never ends and while the head of the hydra has changed from time to time, at its core the balance team is still the same group of people who appease their "friends", while others get ignored when proposing improvements to the game. Balanced gameplay is not just about changing individual unit costs, HP and DPS, failing to see further implications to the changes than just one dynamic between 2 units, it is much more complex.
You may say they are good players because they have high ratings. OK, but where do these ratings come from? Is it that they can click faster, have better memorized build orders or that they have shaped the gameplay to favor their strengths and preferences? Are these factors alone really relevant to the task at hand of balancing units vs each other in a complex dynamic web or should there be a general framework based on math and analytical models that anyone can look at and scrutinize?
The issue with saying a unit 'is better balanced' and 'it is intended to do X' is that those are just claims/opinions with no supporting evidence. As an example, many maps have specific ideas behind them based on the range of T1, T2 and T3 navy units and why should map makers have to redo their maps because the balance team decided to change ranges on navy vessels' weapons? Another example were t1 bombers being sterilized for 5 years because the first bomber on 5x5 maps was "too strong" which not only affects the first bomber but also every subsequent bomber. At the same time they weakened the bomber, they also buffed the T1 mobile AA reducing T1 bombers’ utility even further.
It only reverted when a new leader of the team took over with no explanation whatsoever. Why did we have to live with that mistake for 5 years and still do with the many others?

Conclusion:
We need an alternative to this current feudal system. Like politicians, they never will admit they made an error and will keep their mistakes in place to the detriment of all of us as long as they have their say in the decision-making process.
We need a superior balancing system to the current opinions-based one. Competing candidates with their own ideas should lay out what they intend to change with fixed terms of say 6-12 months to implement them. The community can then decide to re-elect those who deliver improvements or dismiss those that do not. Most importantly, the changes to come would be known in advance through their proposals as the game in theory is a static set of data. This would also weed out those who only want the power to decide what to change for their own benefit and prevent many meaningless changes presented as balance improvements when they are not just to achieve volume.

-Evildrew

Consider it allowed....
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/46637108/214552114-c2d36dd3-c96d-4f74-826d-738ee39f1ff0.mp4

I had a chat with someone as a result of my scathing assessment of the balance team on the forums this week as a result of the most recent patch. I decided to let action follow words. In this post I outline my vision for the Navy aspect of the game. While I know that some will just disagree because they do not like me, I accept that not everyone will agree with me on each change. While some suggestions can be excluded, others cannot. Overall there are many interconnected ideas between the suggested changes and I am not able to explain every single possible aspect (not even in a spreadsheet). The perfect balance of the values is not assured as it is mostly about redesigning but anyway, this is how I would like to have navy reshaped to take FAF into the future. The goal is to stay within the parameters of what appears reasonable, logical and feasible.

The proposed changes are aim at:
*Increasing strategic optionality + diversity
*Increase unit relevancy
*Increase logic
*Create more interesting gameplay dynamics
*Increase balance without breaking it

A quick overall elaboration on the rationale of all these changes. The idea is to induce an amplified rock-paper-scissors dynamic into Naval warfare which takes it away from the current 1 dominant unit type (Destroyer at T2 stage, Battleship at T3 stage) to a much broader series of options that have their advantages and disadvantages over others. Strategic choices can influence the outcome of battle much more instead of purely superior ecoing and microing.

T1 Subs
32 range as is
While emerged visionradius 32
While submerged visionradius reduces to 16 (I.e.Watervisionradius=Visionradius)

Advantages to the game:
*Added logic
*Makes emerging not just a thing for killing mexes on the shore,

T2 units
Cruisers

UEF
2 fire modes with autotoggle and target priorities helping players prioritize.

1. 1 Missile able to track navy units only (not land units/buildings) doing 1k damage a shot, has a longer reload cycle of 10 secs (100 Dps) and Range of 90.
2. The existing bombardment without homing missiles

Advantages:
*Makes TMD on navy units that have it relevant.
*Increases optionality at the T2 navy stage.
*Enhances the relevancy of subs substantially in an indirect manner.

Cybran
It’s good as it is.

Aoen
Vision increase to 85
Gun fires only one shot doing 250 damage (well 2 shots same time 2x125),
MuzzleSalvoDelay = 0 (fires 2 shots at the same time looking as one)
Does stun damage for 2.2 seconds
Has range of 70
(Possibly does shield damage 200)
FiringRandomness = 0
MuzzleVelocity = 50
Stun radius of 3
RateOfFire = 0.28, (approx 3.57secs) Designed to mess up the firing cycle of UEF and Aoen Destroyers some but Cybran destroyers the most.

***(Ideally I would prefer a system like the normal gun firing every 3.33 seconds and every 10 seconds it would have a loaded overcharge like Stun weapon with Auto-OC like function / manual discharge dependent on the player’s preference with a 6 second stun to normalize the effectiveness vs all destroyers but I am not sure how to do this. The player could choose to fire the stun gun or shoot a regular round. However I do not have the coding skill to do this…)

Advantages:
*Act as a counter to counterintelligence boats of cybran.
*A tactical vessel able to stun high value vessels in a fight impacting their DPS or acting like a lasso when they are on the retreat.
*Makes Aoen cruiser competitive in direct combat vs Cybran cruiser but has its key strengths vs UEF and Sera cruisers.
*Seraphim can submerge destroyers, UEF can build shield boats to counter the stun gun.

Seraphim
I don’t it needs changing but it could be a 2 missiles system like suggested on the UEF cruiser tracking navy units doing 500 damage a shot, (100DPS)

Destroyers

UEF
Fires 12 torpedoes doing 50 damage each, very long reload cycle of 15 seconds, short range of 28, aim is to only counter t1 subs effectively.
Max speed 5.5 to make up for the shorter turret range of aoen and cybran destroyers.
Turret range to 65 to give a bit of advantage vs Seraphim destroyer while keeping it weaker than Cybran and Aoen destroyers and cruisers.
Range on main guns 60-->65
HP 8000-->7200
Advantages:
*The shorter range torpedoes makes the UEF destroyer a true close combat unit while maintaining the Cooper as the predominant anti-sub-unit.
*Kills 1 sub in one salvo but takes for ever to reload.
*Buff to range offsets reduction in HP and improves the imbalance for the main guns that has always existed.

Cybran
Torpedo range of 35
Advantages:
*Enhances T2 subs effectiveness vs Destroyers while T1 subs are still no match for it.

Aoen
Torpedo range of 35
Range on main guns 70-->75
Advantages:
*Enhances T2 subs effectiveness vs Destroyers while T1 subs are still no match for both.

Seraphim
Torpedo range of 42

Cooper
Longest range torpedoes of 50

T2 Subs
Cybran
Has stealth already but when submerged, stationary and not firing should cloak
Torpedo range 42

Aoen
When submerged, stationary and not firing should have stealth and cloak
Torpedo range 42

Shield boat
Is fine

Stealth boat
Is fine though the stealth field is tiny especially compared to that on the T3 Cybran Sonar…

T3 Sonar
Lower Sonarradius to 150 (passive sonar) and E to -400
Explore if it is possible to have an active sonar which would work like a wave with a range of say 300-350 when the player clicks the active sonar button it would increase E usage (Like on T3 arties) for the duration of the emitted wave, say -1000E and optically look like the suggested chrono of Deribus. Might be a good idea to make the Sonar stationary (.I.e no movement speed) for the duration of the active sonar scan. https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1354/chrono-dampener-rework?_=1675468176661

Seraphim does not get this feature because they always get the short end of the deal and can submerge their T2 sonar.

T3 nuke subs
Add the shorter range homing missile feature as mentioned for Cruisers to them and adding a secondary bombardment mode could also be introduced since UEF has 6, Cybran has 3 but I think only 2 should be used and the 3rd left for the nuke since 1 cybran missile splits 2 cybran missiles equal 8 and the damage is equivalent, Aoen has 4 missile silos +1 different looking silo for the nuke.

T3 Missile ships
Could have shorter ranged homing missiles for navy vessels to once more bring TMD on navy ships into play.

Suggested range for homing missiles: 120 range, 2x3 missiles, 100dps
As a contrast bombardment missile range is 200 (2x5 missiles)

Mobile factories
Carriers should get mobile factories to make them more than a buffed cruiser.

Atlantis
Future Battlefield pack has a version of it in which the Sams come out like seen in the original trailer but the Atlantis in that mod looks different. I believe we can do that too with the right people.

Reverting one change from the last patch
Cybran frigate range back to 28

Other recommendations to enhance gameplay further:

Torpedo bombers
HP from 720 down to 480 or 560

Advantages:
*Inities become more effective and hover flak miss them since they were changed much more than before.

Fix Sera and Aoen overshoot

Advantages:
*Sera and Aoen bombers cannot dive into a UEF shield boat and get 1 of their torpedos dropping inside the shield while UEF and Cybran can. Fixing their overshoot also fixes this issue.

Nuke subs&Nuke launchers
Nuke launchers to max range of 700 indirectly enhance Nuke subs and Sera battleships utility.

What I would need help with to implement this if desired:

1. The active sonar lua coding and optics.

2. Making Auto-Toggle as seen on Cybran cruiser work on UEF cruiser and on Aoen missileship.

3. Vision changing when submerging/emerging subs.

4. UEF Nuke subs script fixing or Lod file fixing in blender. Hatches open weirdly.

5. Lod file on Atlantis to have sams extend like in the Future Battlefield Pack without changing the entire look.

6. I took me ages even with some much needed help to get the UEF cruiser’s hatches and firing sequence to work properly many years ago, but I will need to do the same kind of script work around for the UEF destroyer it seems - someone with good lua knowledge will certainly spot how to translate it from one to the other.

7. Stopping the smoke on UEF cruisers when you cancel the firing cycle is something that would round it off even more.

The remaining changes I believe I can do myself.

I watched the Sanctuary video that was released today and from my past of having run a mod what always bothered me was when the balance team out of the blue decided to add some feature that then would be merged into my mod because they are editing the base game (victim talk I know).
Also this has affected all the other great mods that were created in the past such as BlackOps, Mayhem, etc.
So since the Sanctuary guys were talking about having a base game with base settings that isn't being touched and them having the official version of the units settings as a mod, it got me thinking and I concluded that sounds like a much better implementation that we should have too on FAF.
It is the best way to protected any contributors' work who is not creating content as part of the official FAF Teams but is creating alternative content independently.

@jip said in Mex ringing shortcut:

Can we have an option so that you have to hold Ctrl or Alt or some other button of choice?
Whenever you tell a handful of engies to go assist an upgrading mex and find another bunch of engies and want to give them to order to also assist that same upgrading mex, the game recognizes 2,3,4 assist commands on the mex and automatically assumes you want to ring it, that can get really annoying when t2 engies start t2 mass fabs while you have no storages building yet.

@blodir said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:

In order to satisfy moderation:

Some Sort of Ethos: I've played the game since 2013 and been one of the top rated players ever since. Yay!
Identify a Problem: SAMs disproportionally strong vs air to ground compared to ASF. SAMs make air outside of exps almost completely useless, but it's difficult to nerf them since they are already so weak vs ASF.
Showcase the Problem: Pick an abitrary teamgame of length >30min
Find a Solution: Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF
Justify the Solution: SAMs can be nerfed now and you can do more stuff with air to ground as a consequence

The issue why Sams are OP vs Gunships and to a lesser extent Strats but suck vs ASF is that Sams have AOE and Gunships move in clustered up together tight formation, strats are less clustered but still to some extent. Even if it doesnt look tight it is a tight formation, the different between 0 AOE and 0.1 AOE is that it is going to hit others Gunships that are far from the one being hit. ASF do not have this issue to the extent Gunships and strats have because the mass density of the area affected by the AOE of the Sam does not hit as many ASF in terms of resource value. Consequently Gunships have +/-6k HP, strats +/-4k HP to make up for the splash damage despite strats costing almost 2x what Gunships cost and having less DPS than Gunships.
The only way to achieve what you want is to increase DPS on Sams and their remove AOE. At the same time you would have to change ASF HP and DPS and the same on Gunships and Strats etc.
The following quote by you is not a solution, it is a wishlist with no clear way of how to achieve it.

Find a Solution: Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF

Well suffice it to say, it would require a more extensive rework of several unit settings to achieve your goal. Not impossible at all, I could certainly write up something workable that would achieve the aim but my opinion doesn't matter to the decision makers so, I guess we let them figure how whether to give Strats 5 or 6k HP and Gunships 10 or 12k HP and make Sams do 500 or 600 DPS...

@azraeel said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:

T3 air is so oppressive in the game. 1v1's its basically the opposite however if you get to T3 it can still get oppressive even in a 1v1. T3 Air always ins with 2 giant blobs of Air just staring at eachother.
The single point of T3 Air being so Oppressive (not OP) that it basically eliminates ground pushes late game especially if you are down in air because the enemy can cheese it so well with bombers, gunships, mercy spam (it happened before lol), etc. It's just not fun with how Air is balanced

Of course this is my opinion and experience.

T3 Air also eliminates any interesting plays late game because you locked on ground because for one T3 Omni exist (needs to be NERFED HARD IMHO but thats another topic). You can't sneak anywhere on the map because the Enemy Air will just see you instantly. Maybe we should nerf ASF Speed? No, in my opinion thats like a middle nerf. You aint actually solving the problem. You are hindering it but not fixing it. ASF should have more buildtime and T3 HQ Upgrade & Supports should cost more, the Power Adj should be nerfed too.

T3 Sams IMO is an easy fix, just revert like maybe half or third of the AoE.

You are missing the point. There is virtually no difference between DamageRadius = 0.1 and DamageRadius = 1. I tested this years ago. I think if my memory is not failing that there is something about DamageRadius not working in decimals but only in integers.

Besides that, as soon as you introduce splash damage in any amount, any overlapping hitboxes will magnify the damage dealt by Sams. Gunships have this stupid behaviour that if you tell them to attack anything they all fly in shift-G mode to the target, then once they reach the target they go into reverse gear, spread out and hover around the target while firing at it which clumps them up in one big blob with tons of overlapping. You wont achieve any meaningful improvement by only reducing splash damage alone, whether by half, 2/3 or even 3/4.

Essentially why any number 'n' of gunships suck so bad vs sams is because when attacking they take up to 'n' X 'Sam DPS' which makes it equivalent to the DPS of 1 sam spiraling up towards a variable 'n'.

Splash or no splash are the only 2 real options.

Over the past years the balance teams (past and present) have always favored increasing the cost and slowing the load speed to try and improve the balance when addressing the relative value of nukes.
In this post I will present the nature of the imbalances and explain how adjusting different values can improve the balance.

Issues:

1. The Range on SMLs is extremely high while the range on SMDs is relatively low. This leads to the relative value of SMLs scaling with map size and target dispersion on the map.
2. The Damage Radius (Inner and outer rings) is counter intuitive versus how nukes work in reality. In FAF, nukes have a large inner ring and smaller outer ring. The Inner ring doing enough damage to kill almost anything in the game while the outer ring deals very little damage to a smaller periphery around the inner ring. In reality the explosive damage by a nuke centers a high amount of damage on a smaller inner ring while the outer ring is much wider where the blast wave and radiation kills off everything living but does no explosive blast damage.
   Consequently the damage dealt by nukes is quite extensive in FAF due to the high damage radius and nukes can deal damage many fold their own cost when targeting almost any commonly observed base structures in the game. The return on investment of a landing nuke would shrink drastically with a reduced inner ring.
3. The cost of SMLs and SMDs, nuclear and counter-nuke defence missiles can only be a fixed ratio, it cannot scale up or down with map size and target dispersion.
4. Nukes can be used offensively and defensively to attack bases, or counter unit pushes. SMDs are only 1 trick ponies.

The short comings of balance team's current approach:
Increasing the cost of SMLs and load times of nukes does not address issues 1&3. It addresses to some extent issues 2&4.

Better solutions:
Option 1: Reducing the inner circle size to be 1) effective vs select structure (i.e. T3 Arty, game enders, highly clustered economy buildings), 2) be balanced vs select mid range value targets (i.e. core mexes at start position, smaller air grids, spaced out massfab-pgen clusters) 3) ineffective vs other lower value structures and units on the move due to less chance to hit them. Inner ring damage could be lessened to 50,000, outer ring to 1000 (that allows low HP buildings and most T1&T2 units to die. This addresses points 2,3&4 but fails on point 1.

Option 2: Reducing range brings Nuke Subs and Nukes on battleships into relevancy on bigger navy focused maps but this does not work for big land only maps where SMLs would need to be placed closer to the enemy base. That would definitely swing the balance towards the favor of SMDs but would still be situationally dependent. It would address issues 1&3 but not 2&4.
A range of 700-725 would appear to be approximately the correct range looking at some maps but that could vary depending on map design and probably those short coming make this option inferior to option 1.

Proposed solution:
Option 1 seems to be the best. It could be combined with Option 2 but it would need some more elaboration and calculations to determine the correct values and some gameplay to validate the expected improvements. Past costs increases of SML and nuclear missiles would also have to be scaled back to a more balanced ratio.

The Engineering upgrade on UEF is quite cheap compared to the others but the main problem is that their is no value in making the engineering upgrade on a cost to acquired BP ratio. It is simple too expensive to pay 800 mass + Energy for 40 BP compared to the relative value of building another SACU or the other options one has to gain BP. The suggested lower BP for base and higher BP for upgraded SACU seems sound. It would need a more comprehensive valuation of base SACUs to determine precisely where one should start and how much BP relative to cost and upgrade should add, but we can speculate in this post I suppose.

Regarding the GC vs 8 RAS SACUs scenario. The proposed changed will solve that but in a bad way. It does not address a multitude of other scenarios of what can and does happen in a game. I think that a GC with the speed advantage to outrun SACUs and superior range is not at the mercy of RAS SACUs at all but the outcome of engagements can be better balanced by increasing death explosion damage and having a higher damage radius on death for RAS SACUs since they carry an eco generative upgrade. So in my opinion they should have a higher damage radius and damage.
Clustering up RAS SACUs in this scenario would penalize defensive use of SACUs for eco and sim city while also lessening the Risk of moving any other SACUs in on an attack. It is always annoying to have 10 Rambos and one blows up damaging the rest of the push (no matter how scattered you try to keep them) when you usually are already massively outnumbered.

Not going to go back to earlier discussions about why RAS SACUs are OP but yeah as suggested in here too they should cost more.

I suggest to improve the balance by doing the following:

SACUs:

Deathweapon: Damage Radius: 10-->3
Deathweapon: Damage: 1000
Build power 56-->45

RAS Upgrade / RAS SACUs:
Deathweapon: Damage Radius: 10
Deathweapon: Damage: 1000-->5000

All other Engineer Upgrade:
Build power increase 40-->75

UEF Engineer upgrade:
Mass: 450
Energy: 9000

These are subtle changes that achieves the goal of weakening a RAS SACU Farm and enhances all other SACUs at the same time to promote more offensive use of them. I think trying to rework the whole thing is an inefficient use of time. Simpler solutions can solve the prevailing imbalances just as well without deviating too much from what people are used to.
As mentioned the health nerf of SACUs in general will not only weaken RAS SACUs in the scenario vs a GC but will affect the effectiveness of SACUs vs T3 land units, bombers, etc. What should be avoided is turning SACUs in Fatboys, puffed up big looking paper Tigers that crumble to a multitude of relatively weak and much cheaper units.

Are you intending for this to be a written Qs in chat only on Twitch? That would seem extremely messy and inefficient and not allow for back and forth discussion on a point being raised.

I would suggest a FAF discord voice channel.

@jip said in Redesign of the Aeon air factory:

That is a problem yes, changing textures like that. They'd blip into view at the end

Couldn’t we sell it as the lights being switched on at the end of the construction process and just leave the animation running with non player related neutral colors like black?

@jip I see yes. I guess removing one of the designs layers is what made me think they were rising. The other models still have a full circle at the base.

Hm, then I would suggest letting the pillars stay in the ground

This is what I mean by floating. The pieces are just taken from the ground and put hanging in the air.

Can we add a tower for the HQ? I think generally we could make having a tower the differentiating feature between HQ and support factories if that’s possible.

@jip said in Redesign of the Aeon land factory:

What floating parts are you referring to?

Last picture of your post. It looks like part of the platform was elevated, I.e floating.

Those floating parts just look wrong, how about making part of the pillars blue and remove the blue color from the ring on the support factories similar to what I suggested in the aoen air factories thread?

How about making the platform on which units build flat for support factories and remove the faction related blue color on the ring of the platform for the support factories and put the faction related color on the pillars? That would be visually more differentiating by having size, color and shape having distinguishing features.

I think this is just a case of a well intentioned improvement going the wrong way. I saw the pbr shader posts and all but it didn’t mean anything to me and I would not have known it would lead to this outcome like many have expressed their dissatisfaction for. Sadly we can’t judge the pudding til we taste it… The question is what should be done now? Make the pbr shaders into a mod like RKX explosions for those who like it, or force people to make a mod to undo it who don’t like it? What about ladder players who don’t have the choice to play modded games?
I think ladder players are not concerned about shadows looking nice while playing but do care if they can tell an HQ apart from other buildings without having to use yet another mod that highlights HQs…

@spikeynoob said in Should subs cloak while idle, submerged and stationary?:

@evildrew said in Should subs cloak while idle, submerged and stationary?:

@spikeynoob said in Should subs cloak while idle, submerged and stationary?:

@evildrew said in Should subs cloak while idle, submerged and stationary?:

@tagada said in Should subs cloak while idle, submerged and stationary?:

Imagine a 20x20 water map with underwater mexes. You park sub next to some mexes. Kill the mex in 5-10 sec then become idle. Wait for opponent to rebuild the mex then do it again. Your opponent has only a short window of time to realise what's going on and respond apropriately. Sounds like insane cancer to deal with.

That’s an outlier case that does not constitute a proper argument for or against…
Most maps don’t have underwater mex and the Selen on a mex spot is the same thing but even more difficult to notice

this u?

I don’t know what your point is… explain yourself

You use underwater mexes as a main part of your argument against measuring mexes when capped. Then when underwater mexes are brought up in a way you disagree with u write them off as a outlier since they are not on most maps. Are they worth considering or not?

I don’t know what to say, I feel Ike I am talking to Stephane Bancel… I have no answer for you, you seem to be missing the point completely of what is being discussed here vs in that post you snipped.