@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.

A sat only needs 3-4 T3 engis and 40-60m/s of assistance depending on faction T2/T3 shield to be completely countered. On paper, 2 T3 shields with shield micro can also counter 3 sats. 4 sats is 972 DPS and 144k mass, while an Aeon T3 arty with pgens is 1000 DPS, 9000 avg. energy overflow, and 86160 mass. So unless you've already lost the game due to something else previously, T3 arty/T4 arty is way better than spamming a number of sats, therefore there really shouldn't be any argument about making more than 1 sat in the current balance.

Design-wise imo an "artillery" satellite just doesn't fit in any cost region:

• At around 36k cost the shields needed to cover its attack area are overkill on HP, so they cost a bit too much. It can also come out a bit too early and bully players that are behind.
• At 72k+ cost it would just compete with T3 arty which is necessarily stronger due to inaccuracy.

The design also doesn't fit in any nerfs, the proposed nerfs to the design have basically been to remove it by making it die for cheap to SMD (which makes its weak power compete with powerful nukes, or you have to mega buff sat DPS which makes it an annoying T4 PD) or just removing its shield or structure/unit damage.

It also doesn't make sense in the current arty balance for Novax to exist anyway. UEF T3 arty is not intentionally worse than the rest and frankly it doesn't help Mavor against a well set up shield assist situation.

From my perspective, since the arty role is irredeemable, the best course of action is to give Novax a support role that doesn't deal DPS but helps other things (arty, gunships, Fatboys) to survive or deal their own DPS.

I just checked using the FAF version and BrewLAN's animation is the same as the build animation. Basically the shield just builds the upgrade under itself, it doesn't transition into the upgraded form like other upgrade animations.

@waffelzNoob said in Add the Tombstones from the 2025 April Fool's Update as a Permanent Feature:

However currently ACUs "cost" a ton of resources so I imagine a wreck would give way too much also

This is easily adjustable in wreckage parameters. Also ACUs only cost 2000 mass right now, so you could just add wrecks without changing anything.

Using "several T3 shields" sounds like heavy shielding for a Novax to nullify all damage it deals. Imo some core bases should be able to get away with T2 shields except those dense air/fab grids but that's besides the point.

If you pre-emptively shield heavily against T3 arty on every single slot it would also amount to ~80k mass (22 sera shields) or more, no? If that is true, then novax is balanced as "artillery" but is just so cheap people see it as coming out unfairly early. It's a similar idea with nuke where the nuke + missile + 2 pgens needed cost 34980 mass but an SMD + missile + minimal power costs 12680 mass so the nuke basically always pays off unless it's a map where everything is defended by 2 SMD.

I guess if we don't want to make it 2x cost 2x dps, then just like nuke it should simply have a cheap factory, no free sat, and extreme sat buildtime so it has an eternity to be scouted (way easier to scout a built structure than an unfinished one) and prepped for. The buildtime would depend on the estimate of how long it takes to shield things.

Also while the final shield cost can exceed the novax cost, you can build eco instead while the novax is building, and the equivalent mass in T3 fabs/pgens without any adjacency is 96 income or a premium Sera T3 shield every 38 seconds, while the Novax takes around 1:30 to cross the map, and then only does 57.5 mass/s of damage in a rather ideal scenario where it can kill a t3 mex every 40 seconds (2 reloads) and the mex gets rebuilt on top of its wreck. This is basically re-iterating the concept that the economic cost of the Novax isn't that bad because you can out-eco it easily, so if you go with a nerf it really has to be light on the overall cost of the unit. A nuke cost style nerf would honestly necessitate a small total mass cost reduction considering this.

@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.