Map: Canis 4v4 Spezial Edition, slots 3 and 4.
Balance Suggestion: Make ACUs TA style; mass-effectively counterable in the early game by units other than themselves, but much more useful as builders. 33% HP nerf, 1.5x build speed buff.
WTF you're crazy!
Yes, yes I am, but that's another topic.
FA is a game with perhaps the largest number of strategic and tactical options available to you. For every unit and unit combination, there are several different ways to efficiently kill it, and several ways to efficiently kill those counters. And so on and so forth. This works really well for the vast majority of the game; it's relatively balanced, with few true "I win" button units or tactics.
The exception to this rule is the ACU. There is no cost-efficient counter to an ACU other than another ACU. In my opinion, this is a flawed design - the ACU is, in chess terms, both your king and queen for the large majority of most 1v1s. On smaller and even midsized maps, sending your ACU into combat is such a dominant strategy that it is almost mandatory. This is partially evidenced by the dearth of submissions to the "do not use your ACU offensively on a 5x5km map" challenge.
I propose modifying the ACU's purpose to maintain offensive ACU use as a viable tactic, but one that can now be countered by other tactics. This will greatly increase strategic diversity, ultimately providing more interesting and varied gameplay.
33% HP reduction. This means that ACUs will now have 7,000-8,000 HP, instead of the current 11,000-12,000. This applies to all upgrades as well; eg, level two Nano upgrade on the Seraphim ACU will only grant ~40k HP, instead of ~60k.
The purpose of this change is to make the ACU easier to counter by other, non-ACU units. Currently, a stock ACU can take on ~20 t1 tanks, or approximately 1,000 mass in units. This increases even more when factoring in Overcharge, and the fact that poor pathfinding usually means that the group of tanks are clumping together, both making themselves easy targets for 3+ tanks to be killed with one OC *and* reducing the army's overall effectiveness due to being out of range and not firing on the target when they otherwise should be.
Lastly, ACU upgrades provide significantly more "bang for your buck" than other potential investments, especially the gun upgrade, and to a slightly lesser extent, shield and nano regeneration. For one example, ~800 mass for the gun upgrade forces your enemy to either invest in gun themselves to tie up the ACU, or invest 800 mass into T2 and then significantly more into additional T2 units before you can build up a large enough army to match the single ACU. There is no cost-effective counter for gun upgrade; you can only match it with an equal investment in your own gun upgrade, and that's it. This is a one-dimensional strategy, which IMO, is the biggest reason why most 1v1 games are decided almost entirely by ACU use.
By removing health from the ACU, countering it with other units and strategies will be much more viable.
1.5x build speed buff.
This allows the ACU to fulfill a more integral part in structure building, both on and off the battlefield. Quickly throwing down T1 PDs to secure map control might become an interesting offensive tactic, but staying at home and focusing purely on units will be viable on some maps now. This means that the game is more likely to go into the mid and lategame stages, where the true Supreme Commander experience is seen - micro and macro among every type of unit on an epic scale.
[edit]: Changed from 2x build speed to 1.5x build speed after some discussions and concern that it would make reclaim too strong.
At the moment, nearly every 1v1 game begins and ends the same way - immediately send ACU to the front lines, where it will live or die. With these changes, it is now becomes a strategic choice - either play aggressively with the still considerable might of the ACU, or play defensively and attempt to win through superior macro.
Statistics: Posted by uberge3k — 30 Nov 2012, 17:20
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