Important balance issues

Hiya,
I wanted to make a thread on important yet simple balance changes that (I hope) are relatively glaring and undeniable. To be clear I intend for these balance changes to be things we can all agree on rather than opinionated viewpoints on a differing vision of the game (That's why I made Statera).

If you have any suggestions of other unarguable issues that we can all agree on, please post so I can add to this list.

T1 bombers
They are not priority targeted by AA.

Vanguards
They got hard-nerfed and are now very rarely used. Vanguards used to provide an incredibly exciting dynamic, much like boom bots do now. They need a buff.

Grenadiers
For their cost Grenadiers just lose against everything. They have aoe and arcing shots - they should be an awesome unit against walls and against groups of units. They entirely have a role they can fill, but they need to be made viable to use.

Naval
T2 naval is ok but t1 naval is underwhelming. T1 bombers decimate t1 naval and t2 bots outclass both t1 and t2 naval in the water.

Catapult
They are completely useless. They have tiny range and have absolutely no viable scenario which makes sense to use them.

Pelter
It just isn't good at anything, especially at a whopping 1500 metal. It takes a very long time just to take down a single turret, and it's useless against units. It can't siege bases, and it can't creep or defend against units. It needs a role and a stat adjustment to fulfill that role.

Holkins
It has a role of defending against groups of units with huge damage and big splash, but it is not really viable. In particular: high metal cost, very high power usage, very slow fire rate, and relatively small range compared to the size of base you are trying to protect with it.


I feel fixing these issues will really help some points in the game, and moving on from that we can see how the finer points of balance stand after some solid playtesting.

As a humble noob, my suggestions on balance changes are:

T1 bombers
Fix AA targeting priority, and wait to see how strong they feel with extended playtesting. IN AN UNRELATED POINT, they *may* be too strong but it is too hard to judge when AA units do not prioritise them over swarms of fighter decoys tanking damage for them.

Vanguards
They need a buff. Put them close to how they were and see how it plays these days. (+50-100% damage + splash buff)

Grenadiers
Whatever you change, their role needs to use their arcing shots to excel against turrets or units behind walls, and utilise their aoe to do well against groups of units. You could easily get clever and play with max range, arc height, projectile speed, splash or damage. Their current arc makes for some interesting interactions where they don't excel against walls placed on a raised plateaus (NB the plateaus on lava and desert ranked map), this makes for an interesting feature that utilises feature heights (GOOD!). One other option might be to give them more range and aoe but a high firing arc and slow fire rate, much like Supcom. This would make them essential against turrets and walls, good as a support unit in mixed armies, but entirely useless on their own.

Naval
The immediate obvious change is narwhals need good AA. This goes a long way to letting naval not be completely dominated by t1 bombers. However I propose more of a dynamic that forces mixed naval armies due to strong strengths and weaknesses in many areas. Removal narwhal torpedos, but let them have good AA and some ok ground fire support. Let orcas have good ground fire but excellent torpedos. Reduce the vision range on both so that sunfish are needed to utilise their potential.

Catapults
I think they were fine how they were. Holkins is slow firing but long range and big aoe, it excels against large groups of units. the Catapult is for high precision strike damage and is excellent at ninja sniping of commanders, taking care of buildings and base defences at range and targeting down high value t2 units. It is useless against groups of t1 units and vulnerable to air. It is perhaps an issue that they are very powerful at protecting very small planets - maybe have range be dependent on planet radius?

Pelter
If we let the catapult and grenadiers be good at taking out base defences behind walls then I think the perfect role for the pelter is a defence against groups of units. Give it a good amount of splash but a high firing randomness. Not very effective at creeping targets or precision strikes, but works great against decent-sized groups of units. This may however be an issue if it cannot effectively defend against naval.

T2 air is also in a bad place, mostly because it has low hp and low speed compared to its metal cost so it just gets smashed by t1 fighters

Very nice balance thread. I saw the title and thought "Oh now, now you too???" but you picked the right issues and didn't suggest drastic changes.

I don't usually comment on balance problems. When I'm playing a lot I can't see balance problems because I train myself to make the most of what we have. When I'm not playing a lot, I don't feel qualified to talk about balance. I think the issues you brought up have been around long enough that we can be pretty sure those things you mentioned are really problems.

Has a consensus been reached regarding the reasons for the lack of T2 in most 1v1s and indeed most high-level play?

I think I agree with @cola_colin's observation. Since it is so much cheaper to mass-produce armies early on than to expand with fabbers, you can't do anything other than a t1 game. If the economy balance were to move a little in the direction of the Expansionist mod, we might start seeing t2. I think in a 1v1 it is ok if t2 doesn't always happen, but I want it to at least be useful in some situations.

Holkins is terrible. It has an energy drain on 20 000 per second. In order to keep it fed you have to build four T2 power. Once you have it going it only fires once every 20 seconds. That's such a low rate of fire nobody will even notice it! If it actually manages to hit it does do good damage. But its range isn't that great. It has the same range as a T1 radar. To top it off it has no health at all and can be taken out by a few bombers.

I think we need two areas of tweaks to bring back t2 units. One is exactly the kinds of economy changes suggested by colin, and the other is a very slight buffing of defense structures. Probably just a slightly lower cost to t1 defenses could do it. People need to be able to make viable choices; secure an area and risk being out-expanded, or push t1 hard in hopes of overwhelming. A slight buff to defenses would make it so it took more than 10-20 units to basically end the game for someone without allowing excessive turtling. It would also give t2 units a more dedicated roll as you would either need a sizable t1 army to overwhelm or a medium t1 army with t2 interspersed to take out defenses. I know no one wants to play sim cit, but defense is in a very over nerfed state.

I probably agree, but I'm scared of changing more than one thing at a time. I think the economy changes should go in and then we need to play with that for a few weeks to really get an idea of what needs to come next.

The real reason is it is expensive and not efficient. Nothing else. The units just don't make cost.

At the moment, that choice is between bots and tanks, rather than T1 and T2 IMO. Early expansion = bots then transition to tanks to wreck defences.

Yes, I realize that, but I still feel that as it currently is it is too unfavorable to build defenses as both t1 unit classes really wreck them. The real issue is that they cost too much to be justifiable as you are almost always going to be better off building the units in metal cost. If they were a bit more spamable to be slightly more favorable, early game strats would focus more on hit-and-run and raiding and less on all out rushing, and you would need that extra punch from t2. Or you could mass up 1.5x more t1, but with actual grenadiers and infernos mixed in, who are supposed to provide the anti-defense punch.

Bots are gone. It's air, tanks and more air now.

Interestingly, the dox nerf might have made infernos better again. I will need to test this.

It's not a balance issue, but I wonder if we can agree that at minimum naval units are just WAAAAY too big for the tiny seas they are in?

personally in addition I'd like also reduced sizes of everything, but I think I made that clear by taking time to write a converter for it

I think if we had more expansion (and thus more resources) the units actually would become better in this regard as well.
Yes t2 units may use metal less effective compared to t1 units.
However, a random example from FA, a game with a somewhat working balance between tech levels:
t4 monkey lord: 4k dps main weapon, has 45000 hp. Costs 19000 metal
t1 mantis: 26.67 dps main weapon, has 270 hp. Costs 52 metal.
You can make ~366 mantis for the cost of a monkey lord. They will have a combined dps of ~9762 dps and a combined hp of 98653. That's clearly twice as good as a monkey lord. Why do people ever tech?
Because an army of 366 mantis dies to a monkey lord, pretty bad even. Why? Because the 366 mantis cannot focus that much power in a single location. The power is spread over the area of the army, which is a considerable area. Additionally the monkey lord does not lose any dps while it takes damage, but in return it kills multiple mantis per second, reducing the dps of the mantis army.
So high tech units are good because they allow huge amounts of resources to be forged into single powerful units to increase the "power per area" factor of an army.
By using this mechanic high tech units are bad as long as you have not a lot of resources, as small armies of t1 still only take a small area and outpower a few units of the next higher tier. But at some point it becomes more effective to build higher tech units because your metal income is raising hard from expanding and teching mex.

t2 units have a better "power per size" factor basically.

As a pure raiding unit it makes sense that there are only very few bots on the tiny ranked maps we have I think.
On bigger maps they may be outpowered by air without a reintroduction of aa bots though.

Yeah I do agree. But if you built a monkey lords cost in air units what happens? What's the typical reaction in faf? If I scout a player going t2 I would build air and/or booms depending on the rest of their ground forces.

But yeah on a big map it should work to orbital drop a teleporter down near the enemy commander and its most likely gg. The size maps we have now are fine for t2 if you were only able to hold off the initial push of t1 spam and then I'm sure it would be used. That's the main reason it worked before. You could rush out a couple of shellers or T2 bombers to kill the t1s.

Interesting. But, in my opinion, that is a symptom of the real problem: Fighters tank ground AA way too well. IMHO, you should be able to saturate an enemies AA defenses in order to break them with bombers, it is one of the few tactics that works well mid game to crack hard points on the map.

On the flip side of that coin - having hard points on the map makes a lot of sense if you want more map control and expansion play. Just no turtley play like gamma had - that was...ridiculous. Lol.

Sounds like a change worth trying.

The Vanguard has no real role besides a 'better inferno' right now. Until you change that role, it will either be overpowered or unused.

Preach it brotha'.
The Grenadier is one of the most interesting units to balance right now because you have so many options.

What about NAVAL being slow as hell? I thought everyone agreed that it was just too slow to cause problems for folks in the early-mid game. Thus, it is usually an air war in naval wars.
Just looking at the beta numbers, where naval was at the same speed as tanks. Why don't we bring that back, then start on the rest of the Naval issues? Narwhal AA takes priority ofc.

Orbital Invasion Defense.
Which never happens anyway because few people use T2 units in orbital invasions anymore

Agreed. The pelter is a piece of crap.

Indeed. I'm still revising my position on Economy due to some recent testing I performed. Hopefully, UBER can make some significant changes to this balance quickly.

The obvious problems are, again, OBVIOUS. These can be fixed fairly quickly (except for the grenadier one) and with as little pain as possible on Uber's part. The quicker the better

I have no idea how it is today in FAF. Last when I played FA competitive was in GPGnet balance. There once you reach t3 you need t3 air fighters asap. A common strategy on bigger maps was to rush out t3 air as fast as possible, as a single t3 bomber would be able to kill a player without t3 air, simply because most t1 and t2 aa was very very bad against t3 air because t3 air was fast enough to avoid getting hit.
At least in 1vs1 this however did not result in ground units being unimportant, because spamming mobile aa was a valid way to protect armies from air attacks and t3 air was very costly, so losing t3 air to ground aa was very bad economy wise for the air player.

They may be obvious but fixing them can have massive consequences. So PTE tests are still required.

Um....Duh?

Air is the major problem right now.

I feel if AA prioritizes bombers, then it would be OP. This is why I think fighters should be reduced in HP.

But still, there should be some kind of AA that prioritizes bombers, maybe a new kind of T1 AA.