Fanart, can't wait to watch the tournament.

Every Cybran T3 air unit has stealth, even free stealth in the case of the spy plane. The Soul Ripper is the most lackluster air experimental that doesn't really do anything interesting. I've never seen a cool play with a bug, unlike a CZAR or an Ahwassa ctrl+k. Giving it stealth, for free or at a constant energy cost, would give it more of a niche without really buffing it all that much. Thoughts?

@hendrix

Race science and shitty balance takes, this post has it all.

The Scathis, Mavor, and Salvation are pretty unique but they all need to have very long range to be useable at all (due to their buildtime, cost, and low hp).

Asking to make a game ender arty short range for faction diversity is like asking for one faction to have slower ASF. It will make the unit useless.

T1 land doesn't need any more new units. Save your effort for T1 naval.

@fiercelv

Yes, I made the artwork for Javi I'm recently part of the FAF news team

Aeon quite simply adds more complexity to any ladder match. Both the Aeon player and their opponent have to use more of the systems of the game to stay competitive. The Aeon player has to use radar and intel effectively. The opponent is pressured to participate more in the air game because bombers are one of Aurora's counters. The Aeon player almost always has to use his commander in combat to fill the gaps in Aeon army composition or during tech transition, so they have to multitask more. The opponent has to remember to keep their commander safe from a mercy snipe that could strike at any minute, etc.

More complexity means more opportunity for fun when you succeed, but more salt when you fail.

Veterancy costs very little to compute and it’s an important game mechanic that rewards skill. Don’t change it.

Tech 1 PT boats for all factions that are cheap, low hp, maneuverable and fast. The LABs of the sea. They have high alpha strike with their torpedoes but lengthy reload. Torpedo defense will make them much less effective. Microed well they can counter frigates but are countered themselves by subs, who have torpedoes that can lock onto them.

I'm pretty sure Cybran not being able to have tech and gun at the same time is very much an intentional design decision and would really affect balance.

Also I like having gun and laser on different arms that way I can have more range on telemaser snipes.

Sounds like a perfect mod for my No Rush No Nuke No Arty No Tele 12 the Pass games B)

@arma473 said in The function of automatically building mass storage around the miners.:

@jip @uveso

I just tested it. Replay IDs #15507408 and #15507454

The Cybran Siren-class cruiser can assist the construction of buildings. I tested it with underwater mex upgrades and also with the construction of a T3 pgen on land (obviously, right at the water's edge).

It has 1 BP, exactly 1/5 of what a t1 engineer has. For a mex upgrading to t2, it spends 1 mass/second and 6 e/second, which is exactly 20% of what a T1 engie spends (5 mass and 30 e). Similarly, to assist a mex upgrading to t3, the engie uses 8 mass/second, and the siren uses 1.6. so, exactly 20%

The assistance does, as expected, increase the rate at which the upgrades complete

I think this is a bug, there's no in-game or lore reason why Sirens should have this ability.

I wondered if this might be because Sirens have air staging. So I tested other units/structures with air staging to see if they have the same bug (all t3 aircraft carriers, Atlantis, Czar, Fatboy, and the air staging structures). I was not able to replicate this bug with those other units. So there is something else going on with the Siren.

I wonder if the existence of a guard radius ("GuardReturnRadius = 130") makes a difference. Or perhaps it is the targeting laser weapon. Just a couple wild guesses. If I wasn't so lazy I could mod the game to remove the guard radius to test if that's what's causing it.

Top secret Cybran military intel here

This data is very old, and the balance has changed massively since then. In 2017 everyone thought Seraphim was pretty lackluster as a faction.

@ftxcommando

"because the argument that Aeon is strong yet unpopular makes no sense."

But weak or strong is a false dichotomy. I would say that overall each of the four factions is roughly equal strength. However, it is more complicated to use the full strength of the Aeon faction compared to say, Thaam and Zthuee spam into Illshavoh spam rallied to wherever the enemy is.

Seraphim having the same play rate as Aeon seems odd to me but idk I don't have the analytics. Also I'm about 900 ladder so maybe that skews it.

@ftxcommando

I think you overrate the impact of aesthetics a bit. It can have some effect but since they are subjective it's hard to quantify the contribution they make to what factions people play.

When you say Seraphim and Aeon have "near identical play rates" are you talking about team games or ladder? Because in my experience Seraphim is way more common on ladder than Aeon.

Also nobody ever said Aeon is unpopular because it is bad. It is unpopular because it has a higher skill floor. (Harder to play=/= bad). Yet I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, nor would I make any faction more generic to chase some arbitrary 25%/25%/25%/25% play rate distribution.

Auroras almost always miss their first volley for some reason in my experience, which can be very bad because getting the first alpha strike is important for Aeon. Could we make Auroras more accurate while slightly lowering their DPS?

Weather is cool and not much of an issue as you can see the icons through the cloud cover anyways. What are some good maps with nice looking weather?

T1 land doesn't need any more new units. Save your effort for T1 naval.

Agree, plus UEF (and Cybran) T3 bombers are already getting slight AOE nerfs to their bombs anyways

Tech 1 PT boats for all factions that are cheap, low hp, maneuverable and fast. The LABs of the sea. They have high alpha strike with their torpedoes but lengthy reload. Torpedo defense will make them much less effective. Microed well they can counter frigates but are countered themselves by subs, who have torpedoes that can lock onto them.

None of the factions have equal nuke launch animation speeds iirc, the UEF is fastest, then Cybran is a second or so slower, forget where Seraphim is, but I know Aeon has far and away the slowest launch animation it takes about a full 8 seconds to launch...