RAS help

[ConditionZero]

I need help understanding the usefulness of RAS upgrades on SACUs. I see players making dozens of them as soon as they can (usually around 30 mins into the game). The game would then last about an hour, so that is only 30min that they had that first RAS sACU working for them and less time for any of the later SACUs.

I've done some math and it would take 10 minutes just to pay off the RAS SACU, then only have maybe 20 minutes of positive production (13,200 mass). Correct me if my math is wrong or if I don't understand something.

My question is: wouldn't it be better to build more combative units, control the ground after a battle and reclaim the wreckage? With more combat units, against an even opponent, you'd have the advantage and the wreckage afterwards. A T4 wreckage is worth more than a RAS SACU for 30 minutes, correct?

So why all the RAS SACUs?

[FunkOff]

RAS SCUs are powerful because they do many useful things: 1) Produce resources, 2) Nuke resistance (because they can move out of the way) 3) Engineering (build/assist) 4) Base defense/tele defense.

No other unit in the game can do more than one of these essential functions, but RAS SCUs do all 4, and they have a lot of health and very limited death weapon, so they are not prone to chain detonations (compared to T3 pgens and mass fabs which are). They can even hide under water and be stealthed, making them extremely hard to find, attack, and kill.

[Hildegard]

ConditionZero, on behalf of the entire professional Seton's club, I hereby declare you are in no need of further understanding. What you have done is a momentous deduction indicating tremendous thinking faculties.

There is hardly any reason to build RAS SCU - it is absolutely a terrible unit mathematically for precisely the reasons you have realized. Otherwise, it is a good unit of course, for its versatile abilities laid out in the other post.

Personally I blame a few jaded veteran players who, bored with speculation and simultaneously discovering strange ameliorating qualities in meditative ecoing - soothing their agitated, FAF addicted spirits - began to play in a passive way with no clear purpose of even winning the game, but simply expanding their economy infinitely via RAS SCU production until something would finally terminate the game - usually something with comedic value. Since these players were very high rated, the rest is history. The next best, though understanding the moral degeneracy of such strategies, eagerly copied it, having momentarily grown tired themselves with chaste and serious playstyles. Then all the noobs copied those, until the whole joke was lost in the clamor and everyone held it a sacred, canonical truth that Eco *must* progress from T3 mex to a billion RAS SCU. Prior to these days of folly, it would have been unheard of to hear serious remarks (from lower rated players) such as this "I can't build Scathis yet- don't have enough eco for game ender" - from a person sitting at +600 mass income with 30 RAS SCU in the base.

If the good players play seriously against one another, whoever invests tens of thousands of mass into units that have a 10 minute payback time, will decidedly lose since they will be missing multiple battleships or t3 bots or even t4's on the actual battlefield. RAS SCU can't make up for a lost base, unless you have so many of them that they deliver similar mass (or more) as did your base - at which point the game is probably rigged, how else could you invest half a million mass into practically unusable combat units, without already having lost the entire game? It merely gives the appearance of RAS SCU being "very powerful", when you see some unnamed, top rated player getting away with spamming 50 of them and then using them to insta-build PD's, shields, static artilleries, t4's, anything and everything - it looks like an invincible utility stack. But they would never win against half a million mass of T4's. Not even close.

[codepants]

I think what Hildegard said is true, and...

If you cannot kill your opponent or get reclaim, it is always advantageous to upgrade your economy until the last possible moment, then build combat units.

For instance, consider making gun vs upgrading a mex. Assume you will live through doing both, you just have to decide which to do first. Upgrade a mex first, and you will have more eco with which to get gun. At the end you will have generated and spent more resources. Get gun first, and it will take longer since you have fewer resources available. At the end you will have generated and spent fewer resources. Again, this is assuming you do not need gun to survive until both are done. This is often possible because of the defender's advantage: it takes time for whatever your opponent built to get to you. The bigger the map, the more time you have. Once you destroy it, you get the reclaim.

RAS SACUs are the same principle. If you can kick out a RAS SACU, then build a _____ and destroy whatever your opponent built while you made the SACU, you are ahead.

Obviously you have to build combat units to win, but if you don't build eco and can't win with what you've got, you will be left behind. As the game carries on, so the cost of ecoing gets higher and the payback period gets longer. This discourages ecoing indefinitely, but it doesn't mean that stopping ecoing altogether will win the game. If you build 50 RAS SACUs and your opponent builds 3 T3 arties, you're doomed. But if you build 10 RAS SACUs, then 3 T3 arties, you're winning.

[ConditionZero]

Thank you everyone. I'm glad i wasn't going crazy.