Just some ideas:
If bombers had a second larger aoe ring, e.g. doing 75 damage, they'd be able to kill all engies in at most two passes. The inner circle ring size could also be nerfed try and keep balance vs large armies. Now, if a bomber drops 4 bombs, it either gets 2-4 kills instead of 0-4. It's more consistent but not 100% predictable.

Another change, instead of increasing second ring size, is to shrink the inner aoe size and adding partial tracking to bombs, so they always hit with at least the weak aoe against engies. Bombers would be a bit worse against groups from the smaller inner ring, but hit more consistently.

One of these could also be combined with engies having larger turning circles to be worse at dodging, then maybe aoe wouldn't need to be changed to hit.

Keeping an inner damage ring with the same damage as current bombers would help to maintain current balance against larger, stationary, or unmicroed targets.

@Pearl12 think it was just for faction diversity (yep there it is again). I think at first, it was changed, as @Nari said, to be a short range mavor. It was half price, ~110k mass, and had about 8-10km range. Since no other faction had a 'cheap game ender', cybran had an uncontested win condition on 10km maps. It also overlapped with t3 arty at ~70k mass and outperformed. It was also useless on 20km maps, due to said short range, giving cybran no game ender on it.

But anyway, cybran needed a game ender different from mavor, and since scathis is a rapid fire artillery, they exaggerated what made it different to make it even more different, i.e. loads more aoe, very low accuracy, very low damage per shot (compared to mavor); this matched the style of cybrans other arties, treb and disruptor. I think the volley idea was just something someone came up with and it stuck.

I personally think it looks dumb for the canon to spin so fast. If they shot cluster projectiles instead, like how their bomber shoots 6 bombs, then it would look way less stupid and not like a modded unit. This change would even keep it's shot per volley the same. Also, it would split early unlike the aoen rapid fire.

Pros use kennels to assist fatboy on the frontline to make units.

Map gen with unrevealed terrain. I mean I want to see people play it. Do another show match or something, but a ranked que could be interesting as well.

Do we also remove 4v4 land spam maps because some 1ks (at least one every 4v4) don't build more than 2 land factories for first 5 min? What about maps where you need your acu in mid? Some 1ks (a lot) don't do this. Should 'acu in mid' maps be removed because people don't know the 'map specific bo'?

There's some real garbage I've had to play in 4v4 que like sera glaciers, sera outpost 4v4, or bloodthrone. An unbalanced game on sentons would already be 100x better than all the games I've had on those awful maps combined, my lane is at least dynamic unlike the other maps. How can anyone of you who don't want to que for sentons want to que for these? Like I don't even want to que since it's just 30 mins down the drain.

If map size is an issue then there should be map size preference while queuing. There's so many times I don't play because I don't have 40+ mins free time so would rather play something easier to time manage.

I think a tourney only elo system could help solve this. I'm also curious what rating some people would have when only including super tryhard games.

Well I'll explain my understanding of why gpg balanced them like this then.

Sera's faction theme is around sieging from firebases, they have the best arty, shields, snipers, base killing units, etc. They are, in fact, the 'invasion' faction, or 'alien' faction.

Sera's mini ras on scus offsets the lack of ras while incentivising building them for general offensive purposes. You then use them to build sera's firebases or use their combat upgrades. I think they're supposed to be the focus of a late game sera t3 army where you have lots of t3 land units based around a sera scu. It's similar to how armies focus around the acu at lower tech levels, and the fact sera has an oc upgrade makes this especially obvious that they are like expendable acus at the late t3 stage. I'm not saying this is what people do, in fact, no one does or tries to use combat scus like this, but I think it's still part of the point of how they were designed. Anyway, I digress.

This hard pushes sera into an aggressive mode with their scus, with them representing and supporting sera's forward positions. They are the only faction with an aggressive faction identity, and I think it adds a lot of character to a faction made up of designated killing machines to have their scus focused around combat. It's consistent to the lore too. Think of sera scus as spartan warriors who only know war. I feel pretty bad for the designers when it seems no one realises what they were going for with the scu design or sera's design.

Why not just give them ras anyway? Sera acu has it, but scus already have mini ras. I personally don't want it, but there's enough people already saying how it's not necessary due to fabs. It's also just lazy and boring faction design.

If they did have it, I'd want them to have some energy based ras, say 5m, 1.5ke, and 10k storage. This would help sera oc scus, or they could convert the excess at a somewhat similar efficiency to the other factions.

Yeah I have nothing better to do.
TLDR: Sera is the alien faction.

I'm on the realism side for this. It's also counter intuitive to casual players. I'd like for subs to be balanced around killing things - high alpha with long reload and higher dps for example. It gives them some stopping power against frigs snowballing. Lower sub speed could also slow down navy. A radar decrease on frigs seems reasonable. At t1 it's a bit excessive, and at t2 air scouts, static sonar, and cruisers can do the job.

Trying to diversify frigs into an intel unit and a damage unit seems like a band-aid solution from only having two units. From a spam perspective, it's like making moles and mantis different units. The gameplay is still spammy as heck. Really there should be more units, but It seems like the game's fun is back loaded after the t1 stage, but then you also get stuck at t1 due to how expensive it is. With only two units (one unit) to balance things around, there isn't much choice but to spam.

The boring t1 stage and slow start are probably the worst things about FA, and maybe all rts too. I find I tend to play other games that get into the action quicker than fa, and when I do engage with fa, I'd rather watch a stream so I can skip the boring part.

Land also has terrain, pd, and the acu, not to mention t1 navy is resistant to air. Imagine t1 land without the acu or pd on an open map? Maybe trying to balance sub groups to focus navy interactions, like how acus do, and having unscouted subs slow down enemy forces, like pds, could help give more varied unit interactions and strategies. The interaction could be like othuums and snipers, but more about water vision than range. Frig diversity in jamming and torp defence also effects navy a lot more.

Trying to have both range bots and tanks be viable front line units seems hard to balance. They are much faster giving them raiding potential. T3 uef has titans and percies, but they have a large cost difference. You could try making them more expendable and cheaper to help with micro mistakes, as well as allowing less mass donation during raids.

On the topic of paper armour, did you know the ravager has the same hp/mass as a mongoose?

I like the idea of some sort of billy nuke at navy since it can help break up static battleship lines. Also makes nuke subs less of a 'all or nothing' if they have a cheaper option.

I was actually theory crafting a while ago about dumb fire torpedoes for navy, for which, nuke subs could have some sort of billy nuke torp. I was more thinking about giving it both billy and strat nuke, but I'm not sure if it's possible for a unit to have or build two types of weapon at once though. You wouldn't have to change tmd if there was a torp option.

@ComradeStryker brings up atlantis, maybe they could have good torp defence against nuke torps to help uef's slow bs.

@maudlin27 brings up not changing unit role, if you could add rather than replace then I think this issue is avoided.

@MazorNoob he beat me to it.

On a related note to dumb fire torps, harms could actually be made a fun unit if their torps weren't homing. Destros would be particularly good at dodging and such. They'd still be great against navy blobs.

add 6 t3 transport slots to the bottom and now it's the best

Pros use kennels to assist fatboy on the frontline to make units.

The solution: torp defence on sera sonar.

Another election thread would be great.
Wouldn't mind a balance 'todo' list though, or maybe there's already one somewhere idk.

If they could inherit acu's tech they could have utill starting t2 structures at home while acu had t2 at front.
If it cost a bunch more it could be like an engie drop or proxy but without the drop part. Kinda cheesy so idk.

Wow I wouldn't have thought terrain deformation was fixable. Very cool.
And Lua continues to be a voodoo language that I refuse to touch.
Good work and all.

My first dumb thought was "if you delay t3 air too long, the air slot would be bored from having nothing to do". But nvm that.

Decreasing the amount of asf on the field would help land anti air, and also sim speed amusingly. It also helps air exps a bit I think. Sounds reasonable. Build time change seems the easiest to justify. Power adjacency is really obese too. Hq change also slows rush down.

If t3 air rush is slower, the time delay for t3 land aa is less. Having a choice to sacrifice some advantage to get quicker t3 land for maa could help land slots have more agency. Not sure what type of time delay you want between t3 air and quick t3 land. Or they can just make t1 aa, idk. Point is, t3 land isn't so bad unlike t1 aa spam since it also helps their offence with t3 tanks.

On the other hand, if land slots went into t1/t2 air more often, the problem with t3 air wouldn't be so bad. Often there isn't even another air factory other than in air base.

If the meta was for air slot to go t2/t1 air instead of t3, I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Sounds like land slots would have more chance to get in on the air action. Transports would also be much better since they aren't just flying targets like they usually are at t3 air stage. Of course, t3 air still has to be good.

@FtXCommando
Survivability depending on storage is interesting, but it breaks muh immersion. Make mex volatile too so they all blow up on crazy rush.

Alternative is t3 bomber + t2 bomber one shots mex, so you need another player to support you to make the rush work. Or t3 air player goes t2 bombers instead for their higher efficiency damage per mass.

Sounds pretty good. I like the idea of aeon being more aggressive with shield acu, then tele'ing out if shield gets too low or an exp appears. Maybe aeon could get their 40k hp shield upgrade back as a 3rd shield upgrade.

Tele + oc against fatboy sounds like a great new meme. UEF being so cheap can suicide a disposable player for max gains. Maybe it's not so bad since you get fatboy reclaim. T3 + tele + oc so you can start reclaiming it instantly for max bm. Maybe a reason to not make tele too cheap. Maybe it's fine if you just move fatboy out the way or have parashields around, which you should anyway, but you could easily lose a game if you aren't watching for a bit.

Edit:
Alternatively you could tele onto a fatboy under construction and kill the entire thing in one go.

Well I'll explain my understanding of why gpg balanced them like this then.

Sera's faction theme is around sieging from firebases, they have the best arty, shields, snipers, base killing units, etc. They are, in fact, the 'invasion' faction, or 'alien' faction.

Sera's mini ras on scus offsets the lack of ras while incentivising building them for general offensive purposes. You then use them to build sera's firebases or use their combat upgrades. I think they're supposed to be the focus of a late game sera t3 army where you have lots of t3 land units based around a sera scu. It's similar to how armies focus around the acu at lower tech levels, and the fact sera has an oc upgrade makes this especially obvious that they are like expendable acus at the late t3 stage. I'm not saying this is what people do, in fact, no one does or tries to use combat scus like this, but I think it's still part of the point of how they were designed. Anyway, I digress.

This hard pushes sera into an aggressive mode with their scus, with them representing and supporting sera's forward positions. They are the only faction with an aggressive faction identity, and I think it adds a lot of character to a faction made up of designated killing machines to have their scus focused around combat. It's consistent to the lore too. Think of sera scus as spartan warriors who only know war. I feel pretty bad for the designers when it seems no one realises what they were going for with the scu design or sera's design.

Why not just give them ras anyway? Sera acu has it, but scus already have mini ras. I personally don't want it, but there's enough people already saying how it's not necessary due to fabs. It's also just lazy and boring faction design.

If they did have it, I'd want them to have some energy based ras, say 5m, 1.5ke, and 10k storage. This would help sera oc scus, or they could convert the excess at a somewhat similar efficiency to the other factions.

Yeah I have nothing better to do.
TLDR: Sera is the alien faction.

I like the idea of some sort of billy nuke at navy since it can help break up static battleship lines. Also makes nuke subs less of a 'all or nothing' if they have a cheaper option.

I was actually theory crafting a while ago about dumb fire torpedoes for navy, for which, nuke subs could have some sort of billy nuke torp. I was more thinking about giving it both billy and strat nuke, but I'm not sure if it's possible for a unit to have or build two types of weapon at once though. You wouldn't have to change tmd if there was a torp option.

@ComradeStryker brings up atlantis, maybe they could have good torp defence against nuke torps to help uef's slow bs.

@maudlin27 brings up not changing unit role, if you could add rather than replace then I think this issue is avoided.

@MazorNoob he beat me to it.

On a related note to dumb fire torps, harms could actually be made a fun unit if their torps weren't homing. Destros would be particularly good at dodging and such. They'd still be great against navy blobs.