T1 pgens aren't essential for T2 arty, it's a 4% reload discount which ends up being a 1.19x effectiveness for fully capped arty, coming to a profit of only 62 mass which is a negligible 2.8% of the total 2200 mass cost of the setup (unitdb).
This marginal adjacency is eclipsed by the idea that sparkies shouldn't build any eco structures so that there is no chance of them not being a combat unit.

As Deribus mentioned, I think reducing the size without changing the stats would make it too powerful in firebases, since you can basically stack 4+ instead of 3 shields to defend a T2 PD and they are high HP and low cost compared to UEF/Cybran.

Here's the overlap possible for a PD with the current shields:

I don't think being unable to upgrade the shield is a huge drawback, it just requires you to ctrl-k the shield and reclaim the small wreck before building the very cheap T3 shield. It requires some APM but definitely isn't impossible if you're defending something important that requires your attention with shields.

For the size complaint, I'm not sure what you want to shield. It can shield adjacent structures pretty well. Not entirely but almost everything:

For this pgen specific case I'd rather opt for a tiny increase in shield size instead of making the structure smaller.

I've been testing your size idea with the "Create entities" dialog (its in the hotkeys, you use the hotkey while a unit is selected and you can change its blueprint values. Spawn a new copy of the unit to make sure you get all the changes. Requires cheats):
4x4 size is just way too OP, since you get ~8 overlapping shields instead of 3:

5x5 size is enough to cover a pgen but its still a small shield so its not reaching towards diagonals:

It also still increases the coverage from 3 to 4-6 shields:

Decreasing the size even by 1 seems to bring more problems than solutions.

All in all, I understand why you dislike the shield but I think its strengths in HP and cost make it above average for firebases and protecting most directly adjacent things like T3 shields, pgens, factories, or engineers. The T3 shield is also very strong because it's super cheap and the 2nd most powerful, while giving sufficient radius imo: I've seen Aeon T3 shields easily protect air grids, artillery, or game enders from artillery barrages when a sufficient number are built (and number of shields is the most mass-efficient way of defending, so having a cheap shield helps a huge amount - natural regen is nearly worthless while recharge from 0 is extremely strong).

SMD missing and having to fire a second time is unacceptable. In that game the SMD firing twice actually lost the game.

Maudlin is correct that assistance costs vary by shield, since it is based off of regen rate, repair cost, and RegenAssistMult.
Documentation on github repo:

--- How much buildpower is required to provide 1x of the shield's regen rate.
--- The cost of assisting a shield is repairCostRate / RegenAssistMult,
--- where repairCostRate is determined by Unit:UpdateConsumptionValues
---@field RegenAssistMult? number

These are the buildpower and mass efficiencies considering that repair cost is 0.75x the unit cost and RegenAssistMult is 60 for all shields.

Considering that defending a T3 Aeon artillery costs at least 165 mass/s, and a Mavor at least 550 mass/s, it is well worth economically to spam out multiple shields (they cost around 3.4k mass each) instead of assisting one, although it is riskier because the enemy can retarget the artillery, let all your shields get up, and then come down all together in the next few artillery shots as the overspill and splash damage take effect. Good for game enders that you need to protect at all costs but also need income to build.

2 Aeon T3 artillery one shot a shield and it is impossible to assist to prevent that currently.

Assisting works at full speed if you're stalling but that's a hard to fix engine bug/performance heavy Lua fix.

[Does assisting] speed up getting a collapsed shield back up?

No it does not. That is determined by the shield recharge time which will be added to the UI soon.

Aeon used to have t2 shields that couldn't be upgraded (unless my memory fails me) but that was patched as a balance decision.

The balance team does approve of letting them be upgradeable but there is simply no animation for doing so.

The cost of the TML isn't just 800 mass:

• mass cost: TML (800 mass) + missile (250) + some way to kill tmd, let's say 4 (easily countered) T1 bombers (360) = 1410 mass (unitdb) which affords 5 TMD.
• You need to get an extremely valuable central map position to be able to force out 6 TMD per enemy base. You then have to get T2 engineers to that position. Taking all that time + having to get the engis there (early HQ instead of eco) gets your opponent a T2 mex.
• You also have to build a TML instead of a T2 mex which gives your opponent extra mass to build TMD while you load the TML.

Decapitation was added as a rated victory condition server-side and has an implementation in the game lua awaiting in this PR: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/6667
It would make ACU snipes still have a place in stopping ACU usage or ending the game fully but it wouldn't put people out of games as a "cheap" win by destroying a team's apm (or give an unfair loss by giving enemy 2k bases). I hope you can host and enjoy the victory condition when it comes out.

Balance-wise, my opinion is that 7 min T2 air snipe is incredibly greedy and has an unreliable outcome unless its explicitly to snipe some T1 + ACU pushing guy. It would be easily countered with a playstyle (I won't use "meta" here because imo higher level players do actually do these things, at minimum in response to scouting snipes) that has heavier emphasis on scouting, inties, raiding, and early T2 land tech.

I already worked this out, among other options, see: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5971
In summary it adds 2 new lobby settings: disconnection share conditions and disconnection ACU share conditions.

• Disconnection share sets the share condition for a player after they disconnect. I would expect it to be the same as the share condition or fullshare, but all the other share conditions are available too.
  • To prevent abuse, when the disconnect share condition is applied depends on how the ACU is shared in Assassination.
    In non-assassination, it defaults to fullshare because I find it very unlikely that people can disconnect to avoid death in other victory conditions.
• ACU sharing determines what happens to an ACU after the player disconnects:
  • Explode: Like normal, the ACU explodes 10 seconds after the player disconnects.
    • It is an instantaneous condition, so if the ACU took damage in the last 2 minutes (to prevent abuse) the disconnect share condition is not applied (no abusing disconnect to fullshare a base in a normally noshare game).
  • Recall: Similar to Explode with the 2 minute timer, but the ACU recalls and doesn't damage anything.
  • Delayed Recall: Disconnected ACUs are shared to allies for 2 minutes or until 5 minutes pass in the game. The DC share condition is applied when the ACU recalls or dies.
    This is the competitive option in my opinion, which gives some time to stabilize and use the ACU, but limits the use time since there were concerns about having two ACUs being OP.
  • Permanent share: Disconnected ACUs are shared to allies permanently, and the DC share condition is applied when the ACU dies. This is prone to double gun ACU abuse or just easily saving the ACU for way later tele/com bomb, but it is the option that maintains the current game state the best, so if people don't find multi-ACU oppressive they can use this option.

Satellite isn't unbalanced, it's just annoying to play against. If you simply target T3 mexes with it it basically does less damage in mass/s than the equivalent production in mass fabs (if the t3 mex are rebuilt eventually), and it eventually falls off as things become shielded, until an entire T3 arty has to be built to give it opportunities to hit stuff again (not guaranteed).

@Caliber said in Another Novax conversation:

Arty has an energy cost to fire.

Give Novax a large energy cost to fire weapon?

That way spamming lots of them can cripple your E reserves and stall.

This is a mere (hidden) cost increase to the satellite, since satellites practically never get rebuilt, so they cannot re-use the energy for the old dead satellite.

@Blade_Walker said in Another Novax conversation:

So what if your nukes (not SMD) had a toggle to detonate in proximity to a novax ( could even work for any air Experimental?) Double the build cost and maybe time for a replacement Satellite.

I like this idea in terms of economic costs: 16.5k launcher + 12k missile + at least 6280 mass in pgens (34.78k total) vs 36k novax + at least 10k per rebuilt satellite
This is way better than the SMD idea where sats basically die for free (7.5k smd + 3.6k missile + 2k pgen = 13.1k total)

In terms of gameplay design it is a bit of an awkward solution with the targeting but at least both sides get something useful out of their investment if the nuke isn't used to intercept the sat so there's never useless mass wasted. Also balancewise imo it would be a poor, unsatisfying decision to make a nuke and use it on a sat that will kill its mass in 5 minutes instead of using the nuke to kill some poor player without smd (way faster mass killed/time).

I like @Deribus's solution of vet also giving HP proportional to the personal shield HP.

It's a simple, mildly consistent solution that avoids the issues of how to deal with shield recharge/shield regen and you can even ignore (S)ACU shield upgrades since they don't come with the unit by default and are already balanced with vet HP.

It was only reduced from 10000 to 8000 compared to the Steam version. On top of that, shields can reduce crash damage by 20% of their own max HP (basically this means Czars/Ahwassas crashes can only kill 3600 HP SMD through shields).
@Kilatamoro is correct in that it's like a normal AoE that gets absorbed by shields. I did write some code where crash splash damage ignores shields, since it is reduced by shield max HP already, but the issue is that if the unit crashes right outside a shield it deals 8000 damage straight through the shield, which isn't fixable.

@Printer said in Another Novax conversation:

But a powerful counter is a simple one. Simple isn't bad. Having a simple APM counter, to a simple APM unit; is elegant.
I also didnt mean an SMD-shootdown would = the sat dead and Novax center useless.
My suggestion hinged also on making the SAT re-build-able at the Novax center. Also, since an SMD missle costs 3.6k mass (and the launcher is 7.5k mass) so, the SAT might need to get a lower mass cost to compensate.

Besides, the player doesn't have to shoot it down. Just has the choice to or not.

Sat is already rebuildable. This is because it can block nukes (intentional) or get RNG hit by artillery (consequence of the simulation). The problem with SMD shooting down sats is that it begins to compete with nuke in terms of what its defense is, and you might as well have a nuke instead of a sat if you must avoid SMD.
Ok so make it super cheap to rebuild: now it blocks nukes easily and drains SMD quickly
Ok so make it build slowly but cheap, it's basically an SMD missile: how are you ever going to get 36k mass killed - 3.6k per sat downed with this unit that takes forever to even rebuild. You can't even assist your own arty because every enemy target will have an SMD.

Your commands are written incorrectly because of the + with nothing after it, and the engine crashes with certain incorrect commands.

Here's the definition when you input the command without any arguments:

UI_SelectByCategory [+add] [+nearest] [+idle] [+goto] categoryExpression
Select a set of units with the following parameters....
+add : add to current selection
+nearest : select only nearest unit matching category
+idle : select only idle units
+inview: select only units in the current view
+goto: goto the unit if it's already selected
categoryExpression uses the format CAT1 CAT2, CAT3 CAT4 where a space means intersection and a comma means union

+excludeengineers is also a valid modifier

Basically just remove the + that has nothing after it.

UserKeyActions = {
    ['Select Nearest Air Scout'] = {
	order = 1,
	action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +nearest AIR INTELLIGENCE',
	category = 'Custom Keys'
   },
   ['Select Artillery Units On Screen'] = {
      order = 1,
      action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +inview ARTILLERY',
      category = 'Custom Keys'
  },
  ['Select Direct Fire Units On Screen'] = {
      order = 1,
      action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +inview DIRECTFIRE',
      category = 'Custom Keys'
  },
  ['Select Indirect Fire Units On Screen'] = {
      order = 1,
      action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +inview INDIRECTFIRE',
      category = 'Custom Keys'
  },
  ['Select Antiair Fire Units On Screen'] = {
      order = 1,
      action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +inview ANTIAIR',
      category = 'Custom Keys'
  },
  ['Select Defense Units On Screen'] = {
      order = 1,
      action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +inview DEFENSE',
      category = 'Custom Keys'
  },
  ['Select Shield Units On Screen'] = {
      order = 1,
      action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +inview SHIELD',
      category = 'Custom Keys'
  },
}

The clipping on the T2 shield bottom petals is a bit much. My idea was that they could pivot in the same place where they're attached for the T3 shield to raise the T2 shield as it upgrades. But that would make the T2 shield look quite busy, so hiding them underground and then creating a small Aeon build effect (fun fact it's called a mercury pool) for the petals to come out of would be better.

@Printer said in Another Novax conversation:

And that's why I really think they need a counter. Best of which, in my opinion is a:

normally "disabled" player toggle
on the smd to target the sats.

This is such a powerful counter it's basically removing sats from the game. Every suggestion for the laser sat has been to remove it, that's why I recommend coming up with an actual rework so that Novax isn't a 36k mass artillery piece. Balance team agrees on that direction afaik, so it isn't unrealistic to rework it.
My favorite idea so far is making it have a powerful stun beam for buildings/T4s + less powerful AoE stun for T3/air when the main beam finishes. It would complement fatty, UEF T3 gunship spam, UEF lategame air fights (like how air T4s can help force air fights), Percies, navy, and maybe even UEF artillery since it can stun buildpower or shields idk.

I've identified the issue, there will be a fix.

@phong

Do multiple stacked shields survive?

On paper, 2 shields survives because it's 10k + 3k overspill damage + 2.25k remainder damage = 15.25k total vs 20k HP.

In reality, the engine handles the AoE damage and shield entities with difficulty (or we have a shield bug, hopefully not), so 12k dmg gets blocked completely by every single shield in AoE range despite the shield being behind another shield, so all shields touching the 12k dmg range get disabled. Afterwards, 250 outer damage hits everything, even the shields that blocked 12k dmg by stacking up together, and these shields only have 400 HP. T2 shields have only 100/150 HP.

There is a point where you can spam enough shields to block all the damage fully, but it requires more researching how shields work.

@phong Yeah I considered some dynamic flight characteristics and what came to mind to me was slowing the projectile down as it approached, like Seraphim missiles, which was a bit unintuitive so I discarded the idea. Making the Billy fly higher and and take a long time to go downwards is a better idea.

I would have thought it to be a more radical suggestion since it's very counter-intuitive that an upgrade to the tml have shorter range

Imo it is not an "upgrade" to TML but more like an evolution. It isn't an unusual game design to have the next step of something have a similar design with different purpose. This is already reflected in Billy's missile cost: you can no longer use it to kill T2 mex efficiently (and T3 mex are good targets by a small margin).

and since it impacts billy's performance against static targets which I didn't think was the problem.

With how many great targets Billy has, I don't think losing out on Billy-ing bases because it has TML range is something people will miss out on. Also it is much more exciting to transport/teleport in range of a base to Billy it, so maybe it would be a positive change for the gameplay vs static targets.

If you did go for the range reduction, would you let players still fire regular TMLs after upgrading to billy?

It is not necessary to be an option because Billy can always get a use, even in a static late game with tele (which you conveniently have the power for when maximizing Billy load speed), so people will never feel like they lost out on significant power from upgrading to Billy.

When I last looked at it the panels at the top just needed to be duplicated in the T2 shield to become the T3 shield, and some panels needed to somehow appear at the bottom of the T2 shield to create the base of the T3 shield. Anyway, I look forward to it.

@phong The reason I said it might become useless is because lower velocity is not a stat that changes with equal effect on higher and lower levels of gameplay, because the effectiveness of the change is related to the player's ability to counter billy in the first place. It would make people who play well against billy play even better, but have little effect on people who don't play well against billy. Like your example with hitting armies at range relies on the army having scouts and regularly paying attention to dodge the billy (every 30s as long as the army is alive). Lower velocity would help people who do that but have little effect on people who don't.

I don't like straight up buffing the cost in response to a velocity nerf because a cost change has a very different effect across skill levels compared to the velocity in my mind, not because I think that a lower velocity + cheaper cost doesn't compensate each other at high level.

Should you decide to be a bit more charitable though, I would rather you imagine a changed billy being effective and cost-efficient at ~2x gun range against skilled opponents and falling off gradually beyond that, to the point where getting your army hit at max range is cause for ridicule.

In a similar idea, I think reducing the max range is a good direction. Billy currently has TML range, but that doesn't make sense for two reasons:

1. TML pressures eco by targeting single targets in the backline, while Billy's targets are frontline armies.
2. TML is static and fragile, while ACUs are mobile (especially with transports or even tele) and durable.
   Reducing the max range would make the ACU more vulnerable to land/air, make it easier to scout/keep intel over, would make the ACU's target more obvious, and would limit its power on smaller maps (TML covers an entire 10km map edge to edge but not corner to corner).
   

As for velocity accomplishing the balance you describe, I find that the effect would vary. Lower velocity would certainly make predicting army movement harder for the billy user at longer range, but for the billy victim I think whether or not the billy is fired at long range relies too heavily on intel to be able to spot the billy that far away. Basically if everyone uses T1 scouts flying into sams, it doesn't matter how far behind the sams the ACU is for the army, since they'll see the billy with the same warning time every time.

Should you agree that it's cheaper at lower skill and in larger games and consider it a problem, shifting its cost towards mass and away from energy might address that more directly.

I don't have experience abusing massive energy overflow like 10k e/s from the air player like Caliber is talking about. Nevertheless, my intuition says that Billy will take an equal amount of time because low level air players can overflow energy but land players can also float tons of mass, and in the end people will complain about Billy's damage either way.
Also an overflowing air player typically isn't thinking that they need to keep the overflow up so that their team can use it, so in the end the Billy user will want their own pgens and storages.

SACU are quite good vs Billy with their HP, regen, and BP. Billy deals 12k/30s or 400 DPS maximum, so an SACU can be a good investment to defend the Billy without being super snipeable. The SACU is also useful in other situations like detecting Cybran armies, building reclaim factories/SAMs/TMLs, or dealing with small amounts of units with their AoE damage. They're particularly good at lower level because they avoid the issues of your T2 BP dying and having to very quickly replaced or else you gain 0 ground vs the Billy.

I see @phong's perspective in that it requires specific knowledge/different army composition and a higher level of apm, but nerfing things because of such ideas that are basically skill issues might lead to situations like we have with the strat where it's 99% unusable just so that it isn't extra strong at low levels. As for the lower cost/slower velocity suggestion, that might make billy even stronger at a low level where they likely aren't setting up the scouting you recommend and don't really have the apm to split their army a lot.