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.

I have published the SACU Rebalance mod. Afaik there are no bugs and its very playable: the balance is theoretical number crunching with very light T3/T4 land/navy combat testing, and all the game/visual design is implemented at a basic level (so you can look in UI for stats). Please host it/play it/sandbox it.

There's a github page with the working environment and commit history: https://github.com/lL1l1/SACU-Balance-Mod/tree/main

From the github:

FAF SACU Rebalance

This is a mod for Forged Alliance Forever.

Implements changes for the SACU rebalance proposed by balance team: cheaper SACUs, stronger adjacency/gateways, new army support enhancements.
Rambo SACUs are independently reworked with new weapons and upgrades to fill gaps in faction rosters.

General Changes

• Cheaper SACUs: Buildtime and energy costs are significantly reduced across the board.
  • RAS is more energy expensive due to decreased base SACU mass cost. RAS also increases death volatility of SACUs.
  • Weaker base SACUs: Unupgraded SACUs have less HP and/or DPS.
• Stronger gateways: Gateways consume 32-44 mass/s building SACU and have 160 buildpower, while costing 2550 mass, down from 3000.
• Stronger adjacency: Mass fab and pgen adjacency for gateways is un-nerfed and made equivalent to land factory adjacency.
• Engineering upgrade buff: Engineering upgrades are made much cheaper, especially on buildpower and energy, so that they can come close to engineering stations in power.

Faction specific changes (Rambos and support enhancements)

• UEF SACUs are highly armored with good firepower. They have powerful support enhancements and combat enhancements designed to engage T4 units.
  

• Cybran SACUs are lightly armoured and slow, but are highly upgradeable with enhancements designed to engage enemy T3, SACU, naval, or air units.
  

• Aeon SACUs are agile and have a powerful sensor suite (to counter underwater cloak) but are lightly armored. They have cheap combat enhancements designed to engage enemy T3 units.
  Aeon SACU nano is removed since nano does not fit the faction.
  

• Seraphim SACUs are highly armored with increased Regeneration rate but reduced firepower without combat enhancements. They have unique utility/support enhancements and powerful combat enhancements designed to engage enemy T3 units.
  Seraphim SACU shield is removed since personal shields do not fit the faction.
  

Fix here: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/6884

This is a repost of a post made by @Jip on Discord:

It goes without saying that when an ACU is destroyed that it should explode. This discussion is not about the 'typical' way that an ACU ends up exploding. Instead, this discussion about what should happen when a player disconnects. There's some interest of adjusting this behavior, see for example:

• https://feedback.userreport.com/354e2fbd-fdb7-4282-ae57-df75bf625431/#idea/448833

And with thanks to @Nomander we now have a technical solution:

• https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5971

We just have to enable it. At the moment it is disabled. We can make the behavior work like any of the other share conditions. And we can also introduce a new behavior: the ACU recalls individually.

The question that remains is how this feature should work in practice. A few relevant facts:

• A) It is difficult, if not impossible to determine whether a player left the game on purpose or because of technical reasons. We'll refer to this as the player 'leaving' regardless of what the cause is.
• B) It is possible to make it configurable, in the same way that the victory conditions and the share conditions are configurable.

And the primary questions for this topic?

• 1. Should we adjust the behavior of the ACU when a player leaves the game?
• 2. Should we make the behavior customizable (through the lobby options)?
• 3. The new (individual) recall behavior, how should that work exactly? Are there conditions, and if so - what are they?

I'd like to add some more details based on what's possible with the current implementation too:

• Aside from recalling the ACU individually, we can share the ACU for a limited time or permanently.
• The share condition for units can be changed based on if a player disconnects, and whatever anti-abuse measures are used (ex: use fullshare for disconnects unless we detect abuse, then use no-share just like for normal deaths).
  • Some ideas for anti-abuse measures are checking current ACU HP, if the ACU was damaged recently, or letting the ACU live (and possibly sharing it) and calling it abuse if it dies too quickly.

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.

Good post. If you want you can take a look at/contribute to 4z0t's rings for all mod, it's set up to display range rings on top of units and currently there's no capture preview iirc.

As for interrupt pathfinding, it can get a bit out of the original scope with certain commands (attack move causing long range reclaim, load into transport from long range, capture from long range). We already filter the order to engineers only, but we could go further and filter by command type too, so it only works on what we want for good gameplay. Alternatively we should implement interrupt on assist/capture/auto ranged reclaim into the game going by the (poorly enforced) policy of integrating important mods into the game.

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.

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).

Allow queuing Aeon shield upgrades before it is built #6916

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.

Game version 3822 (19th of May 2025)

This patch summary will be focused on balance and gameplay changes. The full patchnotes can be found here. The hotfixes 3823 and 3824 are also included.

If you wish to discuss changes with the balance team you can respond in this topic, make a topic on this forum, make a thread on the Discord balance suggestions forum, or discuss it in the Discord balance discussion channel.

The balance team is open to new members, please see the membership page for the variety of ways you can contribute (it is not only high-level game knowledge!) and the application process.

Summary:

• Balance:
  • Land:
    • Othuum Buff
    • Aeon ACU Sensors Nerf
    • Aeon Sniper Buff/Fix
  • Navy:
    • UEF Cooper and Valiant Buff
    • Cybran Cruiser TMD Buff
    • Solace Nerf/Buff/Fix
    • Tempest retargeting Fix
  • Other:
    • Seraphim transports landing on plateaus Fix
    • T3 artillery balance (relative to Aeon)
    • Teleport minimum time Nerf
    • TML and TMD Changes: Seraphim/UEF nerf, TMD Fix
    • Minor gameplay changes:
      • Mass fabricators can now use overflow
      • Increased Paragon update rate; can OC using Paragon energy
      • Air staging detaches aircraft on death.
      • Transfer of units in factories
• Features:
  • Decapitation Rated Victory Condition
  • Disconnect Share Options Preparation
  • Drawing

Balance Changes

The changes are focused on making units more viable or fixing a few long-standing issues.

Land:

• (#6728) Improve Othuum's ranged capabilities and pathfinding so that it can better compete with higher range units, particularly Harbingers. Some DPS is shifted from the short ranged weapons to the long range weapon. The muzzle velocity is slightly reduced to encourage occasional dodging. To improve pathfinding the Othuums hitbox is made shorter, this reduces how often Othuums in larger formations bump into the rear of the Othuum in front of them.

  Othuum: T3 Siege Tank (XSL0303):

  • Thau Cannon:
    • Reload time: 4.0 -> 3.4 seconds (DPS 156 -> 184)
    • Muzzle velocity: 40 -> 36
  • Aire-au Bolters (x2):
    • Damage: 64 -> 57 (DPS 256 -> 228)
  • Collision Size Z: 2.3 -> 2.0
  • Collision offset Z: 0 -> 0.2

• (#6745) Reduce the Aeon ACU sensor upgrade's omni radius to make fire beetles a more viable option against Aeon, and to allow more counterplay for cloaked units in general.

  Aeon ACU (UAL0001) Sensor System:

  • Omni radius: 80 -> 36

• (#6771) Fix the Aeon sniper missing when walking towards/away from the target due to insufficient turret pitch speed to compensate the walk animation.

  Sprite Striker: T3 Sniper Bot (XAL0305)

  • Turret pitch speed: 30 -> 50

Navy:

• (#6690) The UEF T2 navy stage has been rather weak with their destroyer often losing to other destroyers. To address this, the DPS, speed, and turn rate are increased at the cost of HP. The speed and turn rate should allow the destroyer to take better fights, and the increased damage with reduced HP should encourage more proactive usage while also making shield boats more synergistic.

  UEF Destroyer "Valiant" (UES0201):

  • Max speed, acceleration, and braking: 5.0 -> 5.5
  • Turn rate: 50 -> 55
  • Gauss cannon damage: 275 -> 305 (DPS 275 -> 305)
  • HP: 8000 -> 7200

• (#6414) Adjust the Cooper's stats to compensate for previous changes to its hitbox, which allowed torpedoes to hit it more reliably. This also serves as an additional buff to the Cooper, as it was one of the primary reasons UEF navy underperformed. UEF naval gameplay now relies less on building as few Coopers as you can get away with, and overbuilding them is less punishing. The Cooper is made slightly larger to prevent it from becoming too effective against Exodus in the early Tech 2 naval stage. Its SonarRadius was smaller than its WaterVisionRadius, rendering this stat pointless, the sonar radius is increased so the Cooper can now spot other naval units more effectively.

  Cooper: T2 Torpedo Boat (XES0102):

  • Angler Torpedo

    • Reload Time: 3.3 seconds -> 3.2 seconds (DPS 97 -> 100)

  • Economy

    • Energy Cost: 6480 --> 6000
    • Mass Cost: 810 --> 750
    • Build Time: 3240 --> 3000

  • Intel

    • Sonar Radius: 36 --> 72

  • Hitbox size:

    • Size X (Width): 0.75 --> 0.8
    • Size Y (Height): 0.925 --> 1.0
    • Size Z (Length): 2.0 --> 2.2

• (#6744) Cybran navy's missile deflector TMD has been underperforming. The buff enables it to defend against missile cruisers of other factions. Since deflectors ignore missile HP, they are given less fire rate and range than the gun TMD of UEF and Seraphim.

  Cybran cruiser (URS0202) and carrier (URS0303) Missile Deflectors:

  • Reload time: 4/2.5 seconds -> 1.9 seconds
  • Range: 20/26 -> 44
  • Max target height: 8/10 -> infinite

• (#6522, #6785) In #5725 the number of child projectiles for the Solace was accidentally increased from 2 to 3 resulting in massively increased total damage. This change is reversed only partially as the Solace was underused with the lower damage. In addition, the damage is now properly split from the main projectile to the child projectile, which comes into play when the main projectile falls on top of an enemy.

  Solace: T3 Torpedo Bomber (XAA0306):

  • Damage per volley: 6000 -> 5000
    • Number of child projectiles per torpedo: 3 -> 2
    • Main projectile damage: 400 -> 1000
    • Child projectile damage: 400 -> 500

• (#6790) The Aeon Tempest: Experimental Battleship (UAS0401) can now be retargeted while its cannon is charging without triggering a full 12.5 second reload.

Other:

• (#6755) Fix seraphim t1 and t2 transports being unable to drop units on small plateaus.

• (#6481, #6482) Rebalance cost, damage, reload, and accuracy stats of T3 static artillery to make them more equal against heavily shielded targets.

  Costs are now spread evenly across 70-79k mass to fit the varied DPS amounts of different artilleries. Overall they're more expensive, aside from Cybran.
  Accuracy and DPS are adjusted so that artilleries have similar performance for their new costs against heavily shielded late-game targets.
  Damage is adjusted to even out performance against different T3 shields and give UEF some diversity from Seraphim.

  Aeon Emissary (UAB2302):

  • Mass cost: 73200 -> 79000 (+7.9%)
  • Energy cost: 1372500 -> 1481000 (+7.9%)
  • Build time: 120000 -> 129500 (+7.9%)
  • Firing Randomness: 0.35
  • DPS with 4 T3 pgens: 1000

  UEF Duke (UEB2302):

  • Mass cost: 72000 -> 76000 (+5.6%)
  • Energy cost: 1350000 -> 1424000 (+5.5%)
  • Build time: 115000 -> 121400 (+5.6%)
  • Firing Randomness: 0.525 -> 0.467
  • DPS with 4 T3 pgens: 917 -> 980 (+6.9%)
    • Damage: 5500 -> 7840
    • Base Reload: 10s -> 13.3s

  Seraphim Hovatham (XSB2302):

  • Mass cost: 70800 -> 73000 (+3.1%)
  • Energy cost: 1327500 -> 1369000 (+3.1%)
  • Build time: 110000 -> 113400 (+3.1%)
  • Firing Randomness: 0.675 -> 0.560
  • DPS with 4 T3 pgens: 833 -> 935 (+12.3%)
    • Damage: 5000 -> 5800
    • Base Reload: 10s -> 10.4s

  Cybran Disruptor (URB2302):

  • Mass cost: 69600 -> 70000 (+0.6%)
  • Energy cost: 1305000 -> 1313000 (+0.6%)
  • Build time: 105000 -> 105600 (+0.6%)
  • Firing Randomness: 0.75 -> 0.646
  • DPS with 4 T3 pgens: 804 -> 844 (+5.0%)
    • Damage: 3700 -> 3800
    • Base Reload: 7.7s -> 7.5s
    • The DPS isn't increased as much as other artillery due to the large accuracy buff and the large splash.

• (#6623) While the introduction of variable teleport speeds and costs was an overall positive change for the balance of the game, shorter-ranged jumps have become too powerful as a result. The previous minimum teleport time was set at 15 seconds, which was quite short and did not allow much leeway for counterplay. The changes aims to remedy this issue without nerfing the mechanic excessively. The minimum teleport time and minimum energy usage are both increased, alongside the introduction of a new formula for the distance-based variable teleport time and energy usage calculations.

  All ACUs, as well as Aeon and Seraphim SACUs

  • Personal Teleporter
    • TeleportDelay: 15 --> 20
    • TeleportFlatEnergyCost: 75000 --> 100000
  • Introduce a new formula for teleport time and energy usage.
    • The energy usage per second is similar to before, and the teleport time at longer ranges is also similar to before.

• (#6738) Various adjustments to TMLs and TMDs to improve their functionality and make it less likely that TML will fly over TMD without being shot down.

  Tactical Missile Launchers (TMLs)

  • The hitboxes of all tactical missiles are increased slightly, to prevent TMDs from missing them by overshooting.
  • Seraphim and UEF TMLs fly lower.
  • The max speed of the Seraphim TML is reduced because it was too fast compared to other TMLs; for example, it was able to reach its target over 10s faster at longer ranges. Additionally, the terminal speed of the missile as it nears its target is also reduced, so that it serves as a more legitimate balancing factor.
  • Nerf the Seraphim ACU TML's oppressive close range combat potential by reducing its speed.

  Tactical Missile Defenses (TMDs)

  • Cybran and UEF TMDs no longer run out of beamlength/lifetime, which could previously cause their projectiles to expire before reaching their target. This change should also ensure compatibility with mods that introduce missiles flying at very high altitudes.
  • Unify the MuzzleVelocity stats of all UEF TMDs.
  • Remove unnecessary firing tolerance stats, which theoretically could have caused TMDs to miss.

Minor gameplay changes:

• (#6660) Fix mass fabricators not always using overflowed energy.

• (#6671) Increase the rate at which the Paragon updates its resource production from every 5 ticks to every 1 tick.

  This makes the Paragon react faster to high drain, reducing how often resources stall, are overflowed, or completely missed. For example, the Paragon can now refill energy used by overcharge.

• (#6665, #6743) Air staging now detaches aircraft when killed or ctrl-k'd (to work around an engine bug where aircraft get stuck inside air staging).

• (#6784) When factories are shared after death or manually, the unbuilt unit inside is rebuilt in the transferred factory.

Features:

• (#6667) Add a new ranked victory condition: Decapitation

  Unlike Assassination, you do not lose control of your Army when your ACU is destroyed. Instead, you remain in control of your army until all ACUs on your team are destroyed.
  This makes ACU snipes less impactful: while you lose a strong unit, you still get to keep playing.

  With thanks to Sheikah for the original Decapitation mod, and thanks to Phong for suggesting its integration on the forums and on Github.

• (#5971, #6802) Implement options for separate share conditions when a player disconnects and sharing ACUs when a player disconnects. Currently the feature is disabled so that there can be a discussion on how the sharing of ACUs should be implemented and which options for share conditions/ACU sharing should be available. There are discussion posts on the forum and on Discord.

• (#6726) Introduce the ability to paint on the map (See the original patchnotes for details).

@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.

@Cyborg16 said in T4 mobile anti-air:

A simpler alternative would be to buff T3 MAA, but I think this has more downsides.

Make flak instead of T3 MAA for dealing with gunships. You will need a lot because gunships cost 1500 mass while flak costs 160. T3 MAA should be reserved for kiting T4 air/killing strats since it's weaker than flak.

Only Ahwassa can truly shut down land pushes with AA but it's the most expensive air T4, can still be partially dodged, damaged by T3 MAA, and it has relatively poor efficiency vs spread out units and land T4s.

The PR implementing it has been merged and it will soon be available on FAF develop and then the live game on May 15th.

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

I agree it's a problem, there should be an announcement for how many ACUs are left or at least when you are the last living player on the team.
I wrote an issue on github.
https://github.com/FAForever/fa/issues/6815

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