The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance
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Games in FAF end because (1) someone gives up (2) an ACU dies or (3) because the battlefield gets more and more dangerous over time.
Factor (1) is going to be based on (2) and (3) anyway (people give up because they would lose for other reasons) so it's not worth looking at.
Factor (2), ACU death - basically ACUs die due to snipes or due to overwhelming military force and they can't escape. Both of those are good mechanics that promote fun gameplay.
Factor (3), that the game gets more dangerous: what I mean is, at minute 4, you're not worried about a corsair snipe. At minute 10, you don't need to worry that a T3 heavy arty across the map is going to blow up your base unless you put in lots of shielding. As the game goes on, more and more dangerous stuff comes in, like nuke launchers, long-range artillery, the possibility of 20 strat bombers or an experimental showing up. And this makes it harder and harder, as the game goes on, to keep your stuff safe, and by stuff, I mean everything: your armies, your raiding units, your air force, your bases, your mexes, your ACU.
RAS SACUs mess with this because they provide mobile economy and are hard to kill. They are very survivable when everything else is in big trouble. They provide a kind of loophole from what is otherwise a consistent theme.
In StarCraft, the same thing doesn't really exist. In that game, the primary game-ending mechanics are either your base gets completely overrun, or you run out of minerals and you can't mine more. (Or: you realize that such a fate is inevitable, so you give up.) If someone added a RAS SACU unit to StarCraft, let's say there is a "Prince of Zerg" unit that can spawn new mineral patches, it would completely ruin the game. RAS SACUs are, in a small way, ruining FAF. So let's get rid of them.
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Hmm... If someone added ACU in StarCraft, let's say there is a "King if Zerg" unit that appears on the start, can be get any other way, and if opponent kill it - you lose, and it would completely ruin the game. ACU in small way ruining FAF. So let's get rid of it.
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@Tex Yes, but then people also don't calculate the payback time properly either.
The delay isn't merely 10 minutes for payback, it is also the accumulation time.
So it takes time to accumulate the 6500 mass, then it takes time for the unit to pay back that 6500 mass. The total of that time, is how much mass is otherwise lost.
This is why 400 income is optimal for para.
Its very easy to punish ras sacu spam, and people spam them too much. The only reason people prefer ras to Fabs, is that ras sacu are harder to kill and require less management to build as they provide both power and mass. They also take up less space.
Sacu at the moment are in a very good balance spot, and the people complaining about them don't understand how to do excel tables properly, and instead see 2 opponents getting into a ras spam war. The problem is never the ras spam itself, the problem is eco wars , in that on low risk maps you can build lots of eco, and to build units to kill this eco they are inherently at a high risk. This is more of a discussion regarding turtling, and volatility of units. Ras sacu as "OP" are a symptom not the cause.
A pay back time of 10 minutes is exortionately high, and if you put it 3x as some suggested it would be pointless building them. People would just go back to fab spamming.
Maybe what you need and maybe the only change that is needed is for Ras SACu specifically to have an increase of their death explosion damage to 4000, so that like with t3 fabs if one or two die this will chain react and kill the other sacu near it.
They do not promote "toxic gameplay" either, and such a suggestion is spitting on Chris Taylors idea. this is Supreme Commander, not FtxCommander.
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@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
Is that really appropriate in a balance discussion thread?
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@Psions said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
Is that really appropriate in a balance discussion thread?
@Psions said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
They do not promote "toxic gameplay" either, and such a suggestion is spitting on Chris Taylors idea. this is Supreme Commander, not FtxCommander.
Is that really appropriate in a balance discussion thread?
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@biass Suggesting, that a unit fundamental to the design by Chris Taylor is toxic, is spitting on his ideas. Are you suggesting we should start removing Vanilla units, because of someone's idea on balance?
Posting random meme's is really not productive here, nor is blatant bias among COS members.
Please have a rethink biass.
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@Psions said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
that a unit fundamental to the design by Chris Taylor is toxic, is spitting on his ideas
RAS preset SACU's were never a part of the original game design nor "Chris taylors vision"
FAF added them as a QoL change, please have a rethink about your hero worship.
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@biass We're not discussing presets here. No, one is complaining about the fact you can get a mass cost deduction with fabs surrounding, This discussion is about the balance of the unit itself.
Ftx was commenting how the "unit" was toxic because of its inherent capabilities, not the way in which it is constructed.
So now you're pulling at straws and making a strawman out of me.
I'm trying to have a productive discussion here with other people, and you both are derailing this thread. It really is not appropriate, and it gives a bad light on both of you and your roles. Please for the sake of the community act a bit more mature.
In that light I propose all posts from that meme onwards get purged.
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What? Dude the preset IS the unit. People are not wanting to remove making a stock SACU out of a gate and then upgrading RAS, they're wanting to remove being able to make the RAS SACU right out of the gate, that's something we added to FAF and thus it's not spitting on CT's "vIsiOn" if we remove it. you're buggin dude
As for actually removing them, I don't hold as strong a feeling either way, but i'm not sure if I want to go play fab farm instead of making SACUS. I would probably still use SACUS if they're nerfed.
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@Psions said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
@Tex Yes, but then people also don't calculate the payback time properly either.
The delay isn't merely 10 minutes for payback, it is also the accumulation time.
So it takes time to accumulate the 6500 mass, then it takes time for the unit to pay back that 6500 mass. The total of that time, is how much mass is otherwise lost.
You can just as easily say it takes time to accumulate mass for mexes or for any other unit. The mass that you accumulate to build something and the mass that it has to pay back is the same mass. You even say yourself that it pays itself back in 10 minutes later on in the same post.
Maybe what you need and maybe the only change that is needed is for Ras SACu specifically to have an increase of their death explosion damage to 4000, so that like with t3 fabs if one or two die this will chain react and kill the other sacu near it.
This has been suggested several times in the thread but SACUs are really easy to keep alive. They have high health and regen and can build shields, and you can move them around. Adding a couple thousand points of explosion damage won't change anything.
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@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
They aren't "OP" in the sense of being a dominant strategy but they promote inherently toxic gameplay. The only thing that should combine mass + e + flexible BP is the ACU itself. When other units do it, you open up the ability to do things like protecting infinite eco in a single, condensed area. Lategame eco should be about factoring in the risk/reward of additional eco adjacency efficiency and additional risk of exploding mass fabs. Not make boys and forget.
They should just be nerfed into irrelevancy or even removed just for the sake of promoting a healthier game.
@Biass how is this discussing a preset and not the unit itself?
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because the unit IS the "ras sacu preset"?
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I think his complaint would still be the case if you build a normal sacu then upgrade ras on it.
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@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
@Tex Yes, but then people also don't calculate the payback time properly either.
@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
and the people complaining about them don't understand how to do excel tables properly,
@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
6500/11 = 640
The irony is off the charts
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For once I have to agree with thau. Math in its simplest form has finally defeated psions.
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@Psions said in [The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
6500/11 = 640
The irony is off the charts
And +1k energy which equals 10 mass in fabricators.
So payback time is actually halved, 5.3 minutes is not that long to pay for itself. -
Hey guys we've been getting quite a few reports from this thread. Play nice and stay on topic
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@FtXCommando said in The Last Thread about RAS SACU Balance:
They aren't "OP" in the sense of being a dominant strategy but they promote inherently toxic gameplay. The only thing that should combine mass + e + flexible BP is the ACU itself. When other units do it, you open up the ability to do things like protecting infinite eco in a single, condensed area. Lategame eco should be about factoring in the risk/reward of additional eco adjacency efficiency and additional risk of exploding mass fabs. Not make boys and forget.
They should just be nerfed into irrelevancy or even removed just for the sake of promoting a healthier game.
100% Agreed.
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What about the suggestion about incorporating diminishing returns? Did I miss a response to that suggestion?
Seems like that would be easy to tune by the balance team and keeping RAS SCUs useful.
