Best posts made by moses_the_red

So, when FA was released, I think experimentals were intended to occupy a different role than they currently do.

When FA was closing in on a release, the devs had a serious problem...

They had T3 land, which was complex and diverse, and they didn't want experimentals to just outright replace T3 land on high mass maps.

However... they needed experimentals to be scary units. They needed them to be impactful, both for sales reasons and to justify their existence in the game. If their role wasn't to be some kind of hyper end game replacement for T3 land, then what should their role be?

And I think that what they came up with, was that experimentals should be a sucker punch.

Their niche was providing a means of avoiding steep production costs in engineers and factories (factories were much more expensive back then, so this was probably a major factor) you could always take a risk and go for an experimental... and going for an experimental was always a very risky proposition...

The upsides were:

• Fast to produce

• Required next to no infrastructure

The downsides were:

• Significantly less effective on a per mass basis than T3 land spam

Experimentals were always a major risk to build, because they were under-powered by design. If your experimental was delayed and your opponent gained enough production to match it, then it would die to significantly fewer units than it cost to build in the first place, and your opponent would get its mass as reclaim. They weren't units that you built on a whim, there was real risk in building them.

This gave T4 units a role that didn't step on the role of T3 land. They served two major roles that were related. First, they could be used as a sucker punch against opponents that weren't scouting effectively. Secondly, in the event of a significant influx of reclaim mass after a battle, they were an effective way to quickly put that reclaim to good use.

That is, I believe how experimental units were intended to work by the devs at launch. That was their top level design philosophy. They were risky units that could be built to give a player a large but temporary force advantage at the price of poor mass efficiency.

This thread takes the position that by veering away from this original vision for T4, we've inadvertently broken some aspects of the game...

So if that's how T3/experimentals used to work, if that's how the game used to define the role for experimentals, how are experimentals used today?

Today, Experimentals are much closer to being "T4" units.

I've avoided using the term "T4" thus far in this thread, because I want to separate them from being part of a tier system. They aren't really tier 4 units, they're experimentals, but we've moved them pretty far from their original roles.

Now their design philosphies justifying the existence of Experimentals more or less match the philosophies justifiying untis at other tiers.

• They are more powerful

• They have significant advantages over units at lower tiers

• They have a mass efficiency that is close to in line with that of other tiers.

• They require significant production and time to produce like units in other tiers.

And because they function more like T4 units than they used to, I think they are replacing T3 land in very late game engagements.

And I don't think that's really what we want. I don't think we want Experimentals to step on the role played by diverse late game T3 unit formations.

How did we get here?

So I admit that I don't really know how we got here, and that this is just a guess, but I bet its more or less correct.

The old system included the "sucker punch". That was the role of Experimentals. They were tough, but for the mass less tough than most other options. The thing that made Experimentals something that you feared was really the speed with which you could push them out rather than their innate combat effectiveness.

And that led to people losing games to units that they didn't scout.

And that led to people complaining about it without really understanding why Experimentals worked the way they did. They didn't understand why Experimentals had to be sucker punch units. They didn't get that this role was chosen for them to avoid having them step on the role of T3 land.

Over time this complaining became consensus. Its not just complaining, the build times really ARE too short. Its not a design choice that's working as intended to avoid stepping on the role of T3 land units, its a "bug" that needs to be fixed.

And so we fixed it, over and over again we fixed that "bug"...

And as we fixed that bug over and over again, we didn't notice that T4 units were starting to step on the role of T3 land.

And I wouldn't suggest that we just move Experimentals back to their release state. Perhaps the sucker punch really was too strong, perhaps they were too quick to build.

But I think that at some point, we've pushed these units too far away from their original role.

And I think that is having an impact on gameplay that is detrimental to the game and the community.

Ask yourself, is T3 land what you plan on fighting with in late game engagements, do you see it as the default late game force, or is it a stepping stone to keep you alive long enough to get out a Monkeylord or Chicken? Are experimentals T4 units, or are they niche units designed for very particular circumstances, either to surprise your opponent or capitalize on a reclaim field?

And if it really is a stepping stone, why the hell is that the way we think it should function? Are we really sure that we've made the right choices?

@Mod_Councillor

You clearly don't know what makes a good map, because you have some kind of elitist bias that prevents you from learning anything from maps that have become wildly popular.

It is blatant unveiled narcissism that allows you to claim that maps that have been enjoyed by thousands, a map which currently occupies the #2 and #4 slots on the "most played" page, is a bad map.

If this belief happens to be held by a large number of ladder players, that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

I kind of figured this would be an issue. No objective criteria can ever be instituted because any such criteria would have to accept the obvious truth that popular maps... maps that thousands enjoy playing, maps that people pass over carefully crafted very pretty 1v1 style supposedly "good" maps in order to play... are good maps...

This absurd group think mindset runs so deeply that even the most played maps of all time, hell - particularly the most played maps of all time - are somehow considered bad.

At the end of the day, you have this notion that your opinion is superior to that of others, that no amount of "votes" by players means anything at all. You are the one that determines map quality, not the playerbase.

And that is both laughable and sad.

Any map which no one plays unless they're forced to play it by a matchmaking system is a failed map. If you think otherwise its because you are using a broken system for determining map value. Sitting around with a bunch of buddies and picking out maps might be fun for you, but good luck getting people to give a shit about your opinion and play those maps willingly.

If the map making community spent more time learning why some maps are so heavily selected by the playerbase, and applying those lessons to their maps rather than bitching about how those maps aren't any good, maybe people would rotate off of some of these "bad" maps once in a while.

I definitely find them useful as units for deterring a com push, although I worry that usefulness is probably mitigated by priority targeting mods.

If they were just a little faster, they'd be a good counter to T4. Not saying that we SHOULD do that, but... I wouldn't complain...

I think firebeetles have a limited role as eco damage drop units, although this isn't particularly sexy as T1 arty for other factions does it better.

Its not a terrible option though, as they don't leave reclaimable wreckage usually, so if you get a mex, the mex is gone and they don't even get the wreckage of your beetles to help rebuild with.

If Cybran transport capacity wasn't so low they might be seen as slightly less useless.

I think they're no longer in the "completely useless for any particular purpose" category, and are now in the "needs reasonable minor tweaks to really shine" category.

Dropping them to say 160 mass might be enough to change people's perceptions of them. I don't think they need anything like a major rework at this point.

In Leage of Legends, the devs have figured out a neat trick...

When they deploy a new character, the character is always moderately OP. This is to get people to take notice of them.

I think the firebeetle needs that. They need a moment where they're OP enough that people acknowledge that they exist and serve a purpose.

After that you can nerf them back into a reasonable position, and people remember how good they were and see how they can be useful and everyone will be happy.

@Mod_Councillor

You already read my other post, but for the sake of anyone that comes through this thread I'll say this.

At a very low level, team maps are mostly about providing safety. Players want a safe map.

As you get into higher and higher ranked games, it becomes more than that. Players want a "good game". They want a game between 20 and 45 minutes long. They don't want to sit in lobby for 30-45 minutes waiting for a match only to have it either end, or become overly one sided before the first 10 minutes is up.

Good team maps provide this. They ensure that the game doesn't immediately end. They are relatively forgiving of fuck ups like commander over-extension. They don't provide lots of contestable expansions that advertise that your team is behind.

If I designed a map for high rated players, or just tried to host one, I imagine it wouldn't fill. There aren't enough top 100 ladder players to justify many maps that cater to that crowd. Maybe a group of 8 2000 ranked ladder players could have close spawn positions, complex opening strategies, wide open spaces and not see a com death in the first 20 minutes... I have never seen such a thing so I'm skeptical that its the case, but I wouldn't be blown away surprised if its the case either.

But there just isn't a large enough pool of that kind of player for anyone to bother building maps around that.

So you target guys 1000-1800 on the upper range for team maps, because that's your player-base. That's the range where the maps will actually fill if the map is decent. If you target above that good luck getting a game.

Don't ignore the impact of the lobby simulator on map design.

So tell me why a 1000 rated astro or dual gap player will want to play a 1k+ 2v2.

Uh... they do?

Hell, why would he want to play a wonder game.

Wonder is a popular choke-point map, I consider it to be in the class of maps that I'm talking about here. Its a team map, pretty easy to tell which mexes are yours, opening isn't overly complicated. There are central contested mexes, but they're so contested that taking them means little and isn't game determining. Players generally make it to the middle game.

If they didn't, no one would play it.

@BlackYps I am not certain the the devs intended Experimentals to work as they did at launch, all I know for certain is that they did work that way at launch, and I think that because they didn't step on the role of T3 land, this was a design choice that was intentional. There were significant advantages to having it work the way it did, and so I think it wasn't just random chance that caused them to function as they did at launch.

I played the game in the era of the sucker punch, and I remember frantically begging team members to scout because I was terrified that someone had a ML or GC building out there. Experimentals were scary units then. I also remember times when I had 4-5 bricks out and a teammate would start panicing because he scouted one and I could just tell them to calm down, we have enough production to deal with it.

Experimentals at that time built faster, but they were also far weaker relative to T3 units, so they were scary, but you could deal with them. If we just took experimetnals in their current state and cut their build times we'd break the game, but if they got nerfed in accordance with the buffs to their build times, they'd be impressive terrifying units but they'd be manageable as well.

As for gameplay, I recall an old tactic that people used during the "Sucker punch" era that doesn't really exist anymore. You'd pretend to build an experimental. You'd see a scout coming and would start building a ML so that the scout sees it. you'd then reclaim it. This was a useful tactic - I wasn't the only one using it at that time - because of the panic the sight of a building experimental would cause in the other team. They'd start major investments in PD, gunships etc to have a chance at dealing with the ML they they thought would arrive in a few short minutes. You could then choose to continue to eco, or build a nuke. Just threatening to build one would have an impact on the other team.

I suppose that good players would perform a double check, to see if they were really serious about building it or if they were just trying to get you to make poor investment choices.

But that's really not the major issue with gameplay, and I explained this issue already in my original post.

Having T4 step on the role of T3 land disincentives T3 land and T3 production. You replace large armies filled with an array of different units each serving different roles - and their production facilities - with a ML or GC escorted by AA. THAT is bad for gameplay.

And maybe you aren't comfortable with scouting or knowing the build timings of T4 and you don't like the idea of getting sucker punched with them from time to time, but you have to see that replacing a lot of the late game unit diversity with Chickens and Galactic Colossus is bad from a gameplay perspective.

@Morax said in M&M Map Vault Plans for Fall 2020 and On:

Popular does not equal good, Moses. Sorry.

Yeah... in retrospect it looks like this was not the smartest thing to post. I didn't know that such a firestrm might be created by my posting here, but the elitism is comical.

And the people leading the charge against the popular maps are the ones that don't know why popular maps are actually popular until its explained to them in detail.

@Mod_Councillor Yeah, if you could spawn a current strength ML with very short build times, sure... it would be crazy.

But T4 is stronger now relative to T3. If we nerfed T4 concordant with the buffs we give to their build times, they'd be manageable, have a niche, and not step on T3 land.

Also yes, appeals to authority suck. The buildtime nerf has not made the game into something unrecognizable to a player from base FA.

The change doesn't need to make the game unrecognizeable to be a bad change.

I noticed that this is happening. I play Cybran, Bricks used to be terrifying units, and against most things they still are, but against T4 they're pitiful.

Defending against T4 with T3 land is a poor strategy nowadays, and that is different than how things used to work, but more importantly it makes late game engagements less interesting than they used to be.

Nowadays, you micro your Monkeylord rather than your 20 unit T3 formation made out of Bricks, Loyalists, Decievers, Trebuchets, Bouncers, T2 flak and firebeetles. You do this because there is little to gain in investing in T3 production to the point where you can spend a significant portion of your mass on bricks. Why go the diverse formation route when a ML is better faster and requires less investment?

So is the game "unrecognizeable"? No, it isn't, but it has lost something that I think had value from a gameplay perspective. It lost something and I'm not even sure we ever really had a conversation about the fact that we were losing it, was it even a conscious choice to replace T3 formations with Experimentals or were we just fixing the "bug" of Experimental build times and OP T3 land?

I acknowledge that there is an argument for keeping things as they are, saying that the current system is superior. I get that, but I disagree with it, and I think this conversation really needs to happen.

If we're going to replace T3 land with experimentals, lets at least do so with eyes wide open.

I think you'll enjoy this post: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/171/i-think-the-relationship-between-t3-land-and-experimentals-should-be-re-examined/5

Which says a lot of the same things you're saying.

T3 land is suffering against assault experimental unless you're UEF. Experimental units are no longer surprise assault units. For many factions there's little reason to invest heavily in late game T3 production when you can just go T4.

Anyway, they're working on SCU changes that might go a long way towards fixing the problem...

@Jip said in Hives Need a Nerf vol. III:

You can't balance for all maps.

Sure you can.

Map choices certainly changes the game, but its very much still FAF.

It mostly just emphasizes a different stage of the game. Turtle maps tend to emphasize the late game. Large open maps, the early game.

A problem on a turtle map is likely to also be a problem in the very late game stages of 1v1 games.

If you stealth nerfed T3 static arty for all factions but one, the first people to notice would be your Gap/Isis players.

If you nerfed the mantis, gap players might never notice... but the ladder crowd would lose their minds.

The notion that they're somehow completely different games is just wrong.

Striving to balance all maps is effectively the same as trying to balance all stages of the game. You're going to wind up with a more balanced game if you take all maps into account.

Think of turtle maps as "canaries in the coal mine". If those players spot an imbalance, that imbalance may eventually show itself on ladder. You just have to have games played so evenly that they routinely make it to the extreme late game before you notice.

Will the hives imbalance that the OP is claiming exists appear in ladder 2-5 years from now? Maybe... As players get better and games become more even... maybe exploitation of hives will eventually show itself as a significant balance issue in the ladder scene.

Of course its going to appear on turtle maps first, every game on those maps is focused on the late game.

NOTE: Again I'm not trying to take sides on whether Hives are actually OP, just trying to provide perspective.

@herzer99 said in Points of Imbalance.:

Not some weird chokepoint teammaps

Interesting way to describe the maps people actually play.

@FtXCommando said in Points of Imbalance.:

The problem Blodir mentioned is as old as time in teamgames.

From Blodir:

i just wanna say that ever since loya nerf years ago I only think of t3 land as a defensive tool because any attack is super risky

I mean.... it sounds to me like he's also referencing T3 unit nerfs.

@FtXCommando 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:

These things are binary, either it's integrated into base game as a command or it's kept out of the game.

Yeah, I agree, and I think you should integrate it.

Would be one of the most exciting additions to the game in years.

@Jip said in Hives Need a Nerf vol. III:

@moses_the_red come on - you're taking it out of context. You're free to make a mod, ask FtXCommando (or whoever has authority over that) to have it ranked, etc. The same has been done for RksExplosions - it is therefore possible. Problem solved for that single map. And that is what it should be - a solution for a single rather unique map.

I'm not stepping into the question of whether or not Hives should actually be changed or whether they're even OP. I don't know, haven't thought deeply about it, haven't watched the replay at the beginning of this thread. I know its a complex topic, and I'm not going to wade into that unless I have a position that I feel makes sense and is strong. I don't, so I'm not commenting on that. I'm commenting on the notion that we don't need to balance turtle maps because there are a TON of good turtle maps, and they tend to be the dominant type of map in team play.

Gap (and Astro) is a unique type of map where all the players are heavily concentrated along with 8x mass / player and therefore:

• Raiding is impossible when both teams are decent
• Expanding is not actually required because you start with 8x mass

This is fundamentally different to even Isis:

• There is reclaim in the center that you have to go for
• There is enough space for raiding and / or drops because the mass is not 100% concentrated
• Because there are (relative to gap) many options one has to take them into account and that costs resources / skill

I've played a lot of gap and Isis. Those are some of my favorite maps.

You can drop on either. There is reclaim in the center on both that you need.

I do consider Gap to be more turtley than Isis, but its a difference of degree, not kind. They're both turtle maps.

Most importantly, I assume the tactic described in the original post will work on any turtley map. I don't imagine that there is some feature that only Gap and Astro have that Isis or Four Corners would somehow lack.

And with regard to your argument about 'me and my friends all think that' - the same can be applied to you, me and my neighbor.

Except that I'm claiming we should try to balance around all popular maps to the extent possible. I'm not saying "Fuck 1v1 maps", I'm saying we can balance both.

Without being disrespectful to anyone, that is generally a good description of how a community works with the assumption that you consider the people in the community to be your friends.

And I'd really like to end with the casual vs competitive type of players. But, we've been there and we didn't agree on that so I won't.

Dude, you act like I somehow made all that up, but its a common thought stopping cliché in here to say "We don't balance around Gap". This isn't me coming in and starting trouble for no reason. This is me coming in here and pointing out the absurdity of the notion that we don't have to care about how the game plays on the maps that are most played.

People act like I'm somehow the cause of the "casual versus competitive" player thing, but I'm not. I'm just pointing out that the community here has become so toxic that disregarding the class of maps that casual players play is now taken as sage-like wisdom.

"Balance is messy and as far as I can tell it is currently done by a couple of the top players having a discussion about their intuition of what is op and what is not."

Yeah, I think that's how we wound up in the current situation regarding T3 land. Assault Experimentals used to be in a place where they were niche units that complemented T3 land, but their utility dropped off in higher skilled games.

So they changed that, and now assault experimental units stomp on the role of T3 land formations, effectively replacing a large part of the game on some maps for some factions.

People that understood the complexities of balancing a game set up a system, and when the hand off to the FAF team happened, the intentions and understanding of how things were supposed to work were not conveyed. The FAF team then made a change that on the surface seemed very reasonable, but which had unintended consequences.

This is further exacerbated by the differences between the kinds of maps you find in ladder versus the type preferred in team games, where map control is often less of an issue. Maps like Isis which were once dominated by T3 formations are now dominated by T4 assault experimentals (unless the game goes late and the map closes completely), and replacing large diverse formations of many different units with a single unit is clearly not good for gameplay.

The point is that there is more to balance than just knowing what is OP and what isn't. There is vision, and If you lose vision, its easy to mistake the role of a unit and make choices that have far reaching unforeseen consequences.

How do you keep Assault Experimentals from stepping on the role of T3 land? You make them weak for their cost, but fast to build, so they can be used to take advantage of a large reclaim field quickly, or be rushed in a surprise attack. That's how you do it. It doesn't mean that they're underpowered.

If you don't understand that this was the vision behind them, and then make changes, you wind up undercutting a lot of other units and reducing unit diversity in the late game.

@Khada_Jhin said in Points of Imbalance.:

So all in all the units and balance is fine. And victory comes to the person who have chosen the better place and time to fight?
Seems about right lol.

Originally, it was 10-12 bricks to kill a Monkeylord.

By making the Monkeylord mass efficient versus bricks, the balance team has severely degraded the usefulness of large T3 land formations. I posted about this in this thread, which does a decent job of explaining the argument.

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/171/i-think-the-relationship-between-t3-land-and-experimentals-should-be-re-examined/5

For assault experimentals to not step on the role of T3 land, they have to be something other than "powerful mass efficient land unit". Originally they were sucker punch units, and T3 land always had a role because it was able to reliably kill assault experimentals in a mass efficient way.

When you look at the disadvantages of amassing significant bricks, it becomes clear that they should be more mass efficient than assault experimentals. Assault experimentals require next to no infrastructure. No extra factories, They're easy to produce.

Pushing out bricks requires a significant investment in factories. The HQ system has mitigated this to a large extent, but it still requires a ton of infrastructure to pump mass into T3 units at the same rate that you can dump mass into an assault experimental.

And I don't want to even change that, I want T3 land to have its own advantage, in mass efficiency.

In terms of mass efficiency, bricks should kill T4 with a significant bonus. That makes up for the production investment in Bricks.

I feel like this system was more or less working well at launch, and it was changed via the T3 nerf (which I think made sense as T2 was pretty damn irrelevant).

There are a couple of ways to fix this as I see it:

• SACUs enhancing the functionality of T3 formations sounds great provided that the buffs are large enough to actually give T3 formations decent mass efficiency versus assault experimentals. Keep in mind that in addition to T3 production, you have to invest in SACU production... it will have to be a significant buff to T3.

• Moderate nerfs to assault experimentals across the board, perhaps with corresponding build time buffs.

I don't really care how this is handled, and I trust the balance team to figure out the details. I just think it should be addressed.

If people remember one thing about anything I'm saying in all these posts on this topic, I hope its this: Assault Experimentals must serve a role that is distinct from the role of T3 land formations. Originally they were sucker punch units, I think that's a good tried and true role for them, but try not to be myopic about it. Whatever they are in the future, I think they need to be further distinguished from T3 units because its hurting unit diversity in some situations.

Thinking more on this, lots of things weren't adjusted at all.

T3 land is also more vulnerable to PD of all kinds, T2 static artillery.

It was an indirect buff to ravagers, shields...

We changed T3 land by a country mile and adjusted nothing else as if nothing else might need adjusting. Its more vulnerable to everything.

I'm watching a replay from May right now between Tagada, Blodir, Nexus and Turbo on Frozen Isis. No one is making T3 units in significant numbers. No one is investing in production.

They literally finish T3 static arty before bothering to build more than 5 T3 assault units.

Its no wonder why. Its weak as hell relative to everything except T2.

It seems that at the pro level, its just not worth making AT ALL unless you have 30 mex points spread across everywhere to defend.

Is that really where we want it? Is this really the best we can do?

Replay for anyone that's interested: https://replay.faforever.com/11847829

@HoujouSatoko said in Points of Imbalance.:

the goal is to balance the game towards an expansion heavy playstyle, while keeping it from drowning in midless yolo (T1) spam and ideally at high strategic diversity, while keeping an eye on teamgames on (somewhat) competetive maps.
gap/2gap/astro/pass is not one of them.

This is a cop out. The changes being proposed are not gong to break games on an expansion heavy map.

It seems the balance team just doesn't want to bother fixing what it broke.

@Tagada said in Points of Imbalance.:

I did some more tests: spoiler T4 lose vs t3! what a surprise
Bricks vs Chicken -> Bricks win
Bricks vs GC -> Bricks win
Bricks vs Mega -> Bricks win
replay: #13098578

I don' think I need to add that if I would use percivals they would crush even harder vs Chicken and GC and probably do around the same vs Mega.
Can we know finish the discussion of omg T3 was nerfed and now I am sure they get raped by T4.
I also think that it's fine leaving ML as it is since it gets countered by everything else easily compared to other T4's so allowing it to be efficient vs T3 formations given very good micro is fine by me.

If T3 land is really in a good place, why aren't you making it?

Replay: #12924870

You make some, but you're spending more mass by far in T4, and you're probably spending more mass in T1 than T3 land as well.

In real game situations, you are yourself devoting very little of your total mass to T3 unit production - favoring T4, T3 static arty, nukes and even T1 over it on a per mass basis.

Doesn't make much sense if its in a good place does it?

@Psions said in Points of Imbalance.:

@Fletching People don't have the forethought to realise that by increasing BP on T4 it also increases the earliest time a T4 might be up, meaning there is a greater window to eco before building relevant defensive structures.

They just think ooh Ras spam hive spam insta monkey.

The reason why T3 is stale, is because T3 mobile arty do not break the main base, they a gimped units and a successful viper spam would simply work better. T2 artillery at t3 stage is just too devestating for t3 maa.

So what you have nwo at t3 is 3 useful units

Long range, Mid range and raid units.

Aeon v Aeon t3 is much more interesting because of shield disruptors.

I have to keep repeating this, because I don't think people have really accepted this yet, but the 3696 nerf was a massive nerf, which reduced the combat effectiveness of T3 units by around 50%.

Have two current bricks fight one pre-3696 brick, and they're going to come out a bit even, with the pre-3696 brick perhaps killing both with a small amount of health left. Assuming you allow the pre-3696 brick to kite until the current brick catches it. I could be slightly off here, but I imagine it would be close.

Certain nerfs are multiplicative meaning that they stack in such a way that they drastically change unit balance.

Seemingly small changes to health and damage, when combined with other changes to say range can together significantly cripple a unit.

So if T3 seems weak, perhaps we should acknowledge that its weak because of patch 3696.

When you nerf a unit at a low tier, you have to then nerf all units at higher tiers, or the unit will be underpowered in comparison to units at higher tiers. The balance team did not do that for one reason or another.

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.

@biass said in Points of Imbalance.:

Straight up, if you think the t3 land nerf was bad for the health of the game you're probably not informed enough to be able to contribute to a reasonable discussion. I cannot reasonably beliieve that anyone would want to go back to pre nerf, that's insane. Wanting to go back to every single game being a t3 rush and watching a single harbinger or two smoke hundreds of t1 and t2 tanks with hardly any effort because of "i like t3 stage" is not a heatlhy state of mind.

@Arran said in Points of Imbalance.:

These changes add a lot of meaningful diversity to how you use LABs.
Now onto my main point --> Aeon tanks are the slowest and now they have the slowest LAB too. Perhaps swap the speeds of UEF and Aeon LABS and adjust their costs accordingly? This proposed change is to prevent Aeon lacking map control in the early game owing to insufficient unit speed across the board.

I don't see how 0.2 speed is going to "cripple" your raid ability outside of the largest of 10km maps. It's a bit of a waste of breath trying to instantly ask for changes on a patch without replays or etc.

Also, as most people have said: You need to come to the reality that factions (especially yours, because I know you main aeon) are not supposed to be good at every aspect of the game. Aeon have a defensive early t1 and then threaten to crush the entire game out unless enemy can make a reasonable counter, why should aeon crush both early AND late?

Don't know why I bother with you, you're happy to make bad faith arguments that misrepresent a position... however...

No one is arguing that we roll back 3696, the argument is whether assault experimentals should be nerfed to "finish the job" that the 3696 patch began.

We nerfed T3 assault bots primarily to fix them in relation to T2 bots - which you can see if you go back and look at discussions of that patch - but we never bothered to apply the correction to the next higher tier.

And that's why it was a sloppy patch. I don't necessarily disagree with the changes, its just that if you're gong to make such changes you have to finish the job. Nerfing T3 bots as hard as that patch did while leaving T4 unchanged aside from build timers and the world's most negligible mass increase just doesn't fix the problem.

Its not like people weren't building T4 assault bots like mad before the 2018 patch, to just nerf to T3 and ignore its relationship to T4 was negligent.