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.

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

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).

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.

Vault has v1.0 because v1.1 was removed for some reason, but you can still download it from the original forum post: https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=17047

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).

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.

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.

@Caliber said in Another Novax conversation:

Energy costs just makes sense, radar and omni both have energy drain so why is the novax the exception?

From a gameplay perspective radar/omni only have an energy drain because they can skip tech tiers through upgrades. Putting the mass cost of the radar into the form of energy upkeep encourages teching up to appropriate pgen efficiency levels before being able to build a high-tech radar independently of engineer tech at the front.
There is also an additional point that expendable units with an energy upkeep are expensive to build but cheap to replace. Radars/omnis are killed rather often for a structure, especially T1 and T2 radars.

Novax does not fit into either design idea because it is not upgradeable from anything and never gets destroyed since it is artillery. The only thing upkeep would do for a Novax is punish energy stalls (not like this game gives many opportunities for an enemy to do that), increase its effective mass cost, and make it slightly harder to defend since there is another pgen somewhere on the map.

I will concede that thematically it may make sense, but balance-wise if you add energy upkeep to Novax it would simply get a cost reduction. I say "may make sense" because on one side there's arty and intel energy drain, but on the other hand mobile units don't have intel (but not counterintel) or weapon energy upkeep.

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).

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.

@kdrafa91 You can just compress the Notifications mod folder and send only the mod. The mod folder for Notifications is called "reminder".

Noshake got integrated as a game setting.
Notifications v5.2 was hidden in the vault due to having version naming in the title. You will have to send the mod to your friend manually.

@RakeAnomander Mantis lost its bot icon shape for the tank icon shape a while back, but aside from that I don't think there are many such things because most types of units ("what they are") correctly corresponds to what it's good against. UEF destroyer is just an outlier because it has really weak torpedoes due to the existence of the cooper. In theory it can be confusing but people never faction mix coopers + other faction destros.

An icon change we can draw parallels to was Brick/Percy getting the "x" symbol instead of the directfire "+" symbol to differentiate from Loyalist/Titan (12 years ago). Nobody would disagree with this change, and having separate cooper/valiant icons is a similar case.

the icon means it is good against submerged targets
valiant doesn't have it but cooper does

I really don't see the problem this is solving at a high level of play.
T3 engineers consume 18-20m/s for T4s/nukes/arty, and 24-25m/s (30m/s Scathis) for game enders. So a huge spending of 800m/s requires around 32 engineers in one place to build something meaningful. I don't think 32 engineers is so difficult to manage that we need engineering stations, especially for a one-time thing like an artillery/nuke/game ender rush.

That covers large projects, so now we can look at smaller projects:

• Economic structures:
  • Mexes build super fast, so no pathfinding issues there.
  • T3 Pgen/Fab grids are a great option if you have to spend lots of mass (as opposed to T2 fabs), and they average out to 20m/s per engi, which is plenty enough for the time when you will be building them: when you are just building up your eco past T3 mex. And late game when you have a huge eco yet still want to expand it the fab grids you can split into just two or three groups. It'll be safer and is easy to do. Also since eco takes up so much space, you'll need an unbalanced amount of buildrange to make the engi stations good here.
• PD/Defenses: These things are already very strong and fast to build, removing pathfinding will just make that easy to do on a large scale, which is not a good thing since it buffs a boring and already decent strategy.
  • This also nerfs artillery a massive amount because you can pretty much always near-instantly build a shield anywhere in your base as long as an engineer is nearby. I think artillery is already quite weak and easily countered by proper shielding, so this nerf is unnecessary.
• Factory assistance: This is one thing where engis can be problematic, because units require a ton of buildpower and engis slowly get into a formation around the factory. It's resolved by the "interrupt pathfinding" hotkey, and you can write a UI mod to run that hotkey when giving an assist order (GAF did this)/the engi comes into range. I personally spam the hotkey all the time when assisting/building so I am biased against engi pathfinding issues ("32 engineers is not hard to manage").

I'll also agree with what FTX said on Discord which is that it makes the game into an all-or-nothing situation because there is no way to run the buildpower away to save it (a nuke would be devastating), but it is also much harder to attack buildpower.

As for engine limitations, yes it isn't possible to filter nukes/SMD, and I don't think you can make it so you can only reclaim allied units.

There is a hotkey to copy the queue of an engineer you're mousing over ("Copy orders of the unit the mouse is on top of"), and I often use the the ctrl + right click game option version of the feature that ("Assist to copy command queue"). Can queue with 1 engi and then add new engis without the assist behavior slowing things down. Can also remove the original engi to do something else while another engi continues the queue.
It's not exactly keybinds but it's still an essential way to control units (for me).

It's fixable, in AirUnit.lua you have to disable the vision and unit intel when the unit is killed instead of on impact. You also have to disable vision in Unit.lua for navy. It already disables radar/sonar on death.
Whether or not it's desirable for balance I'm not sure, people often use dead scouts for vision into bases through SAM walls or to counteract Cybran stealth more effectively. Your idea for slowing the scout down as if its experiencing air drag seems like a decent way to make dead scouts decent vs armies (slower t1 scouts) but worse vs bases (faster t3 scouts).