FAF need more TA units... Let's improve FA...

[Destructor]

I played TOTAL ANNIHILATION for many years, and i wanna suggest some things for FA.
First, congratulations for all modifications of the game, they are really great, i preffer OC like total annihilation, but is in another post.

My suggests, FA is focused and land units all time... Few things for air.... Few things for naval.
The result is obvious... 95% of maps are just for LAND.

NEW NAVAL UNITS:

T2 Engennering Boats... They can be fast... Very very low reclaim, and and low repair power... Large range to build and reclaim things... Medium build power, maybe 75% of a T2 eng, 650HP.

Naval Walls, Naval stealh mines, air repair facility

Tidal And Wind Generators to make them on water, but a bit more large than land generators (+25)
Submarine Power generators (+30) T1... T2 = 600 .........T3 = 3000;;; OF course they spent more mass to build them.

Some kind of PDT1 and PDT2 for water, the reason is obvious... it's trully hard to take any advantage back when someone kill your engs at your naval factories.
T1 torpedoes are very very slow...
just 2 or 3 t1 frigates can kill dozens of engs easily, even with a t1 torpedo near them, we need a way to protect naval places better.

T2 NAVAL REPAIR STATIONS FIELDS... They should work spenting maybe -350E and -2M for each ship that was repairing, 3 regen/second

T2 Naval missile lauchers... Another defense building, they should work like an normal tatical missile laucher, with some modifications... half range or less... Need 2 tatical missile defenses hits to down him, large muzzle velocity, medium damage area, and can persuit a boat that in a small area that when he was launched and locked. 1800-2500 Damage, 1 fire each 7 seconds.

T3 NAVAL AEON CHRONNO DAMPER BOAT, A boat that produces a CHRONNO DAMPER field each 8 seconds, spenting -700E while is charging, that freeze enemy boats for 2 seconds.

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And a T2 air Engeener for all factions

Thx for the attentions.

[Nepty]

Sounds great and all, but people are losing thier s*** over building HP currently. I don't see anything magical happening for FAF anytime soon. (Except the beta patch)

I'm still amazed Tech 3 mobile Anti-Air was added... That was like 2 years ago? Ha.

[Masyaka]

mines? ppl will rather build mine walls instead of walls

[Hawkei]

mines? ppl will rather build mine walls instead of walls

Cybran should have a mine-layer submarine, which can deploy cloaked anti-shipping mines.

[Masyaka]

mines? ppl will rather build mine walls instead of walls

Cybran should have a mine-layer submarine, which can deploy cloaked anti-shipping mines.

truly?

[NapSpan]

air repair facility

Maybe you want to say "air staging facility", but that already exist, also for naval, we got Atlantis and carriers also Cybran has that cruiser with 1 air slot.
I like the idea of Cybrans deploying mines instead walls, not all ideas I readed are good, but that is the spirit, after all adding some good units for every faction, as long as we keep balance, is a good idea.

[PhilipJFry]

T2 Engennering Boats...

Engis are really good at reclaiming, you can spam them and get them fast to the reclaim field if you use a support command on the factory/farry command with transports.

Naval Walls

Navy units have enough pathfinding issues already adding walls will just make it worse.

Some kind of PDT1 and PDT2 for water

If you lose your bp to 2-3 frigs you should have made more navy. Adding a defensive structure that wipes out t1 navy fast will only discourage raiding and since all you can raid with frigs are buildings that are really close to the shore and build power...

T2 NAVAL REPAIR STATIONS FIELDS...

Regen for navy sounds nice but 3hp/s is basically nothing and having it stationary slows down the fight even more (maybe we make a t3 sera sonar with the same sonar range as t2 and some nice regen field that can move?).

T2 Naval missile lauchers...

sounds like you really wanna creep with defensive structures

And a T2 air Engeener for all factions

You can make transports and load them with engis. That way you can get your build power to remote places very fast.

[Destructor]

Naval maps are usually huge, commom engies are very slow and spent soo much time running...
The main idea for Naval engie boat is to reclaim large areas, but with a low reclaim power and build naval resources...
And engies are sooo weak, low hp, we need a unit that can move in front of battle too.
On Total Annihilation was a very usefull unit.

Islands maps we need to build everything on land... it's crap because just some factions have support commanders that have ressource allocator.

[vongratz]

Some mods already implemented nearly all what you sugested.

Except the interesting "T3 NAVAL AEON CHRONNO DAMPER BOAT" and the sea walls. But the last ,IMHO, is a bad idea, along the patch troubles, it also depends of the high of the sea in FA maps., that,au contraire of the TA not have only one level ingame map.

Naval enginners , as existed in some mods are dedicated to mining affairs (the Seraphim submarine constructor) and area defense and base (UEF warship engineer) being a kind of destroyer.

Naval artillery exists in two mods, and T3 sea capable advanced air staging facility too, with a lot of defences.

Naval economy in T1 and T2 levels are already implemented in two mods, one of them with very creative and animated models.

Mines, naval and land ones, were implemented in two mods, and one of them have a VERY creative mine launcher for SERAPHIM.

[JMorten]

Hey another guy here who played some online TA.

I was thinking about writing a similar post, but with the emphasis to compare TA and FAF gameplay/design. I think it is interesting to comapre both games and maybe there is something we want to transfer from TA or learn from its mistakes.

As for the naval game as it is now in FAF, I believe the suggestions made aren't really necessary. You can airlift engies to reclaim spots on water, and you can already build TMD and T3 AA on water, to encircle an opponents land base and control huge areas of the map.

I certainly liked the fact that you could play TA on maps that were entirely made up of water. A problem that was already mentioned is that pathfinding would get worse if you would build eco on sea, and I have a lot of memories of having a cluster of TA aircraft carriers stuck in a harbor. For those that don't know, aircraft carriers were the most effective energy source on water maps in TA. And they were also huge, hard to maneuver and very volatile.

From what I experienced, the pros only played v3.1, and all balance mods etc. didn't live up to be popular enough.

To be good at v3.1 meant to learn all the nasty tricks, exploits and use of bugged units to the max . I'm talking about line bombing, which allowed you to wreak havoc on a base with a swarm of bombers and some micro. Or the amphibious Pelican kbot, which had the design flaw that its hitbox was below the water surface, and units would miss it most of the time, unless you told them to ground fire. An exploit that was commonly used was to get your moho metal maker online during construction by firing a missile on it. The list goes on and on.

All these things were seen as gameplay features by most of the players, and wether or not they liked it, they had to go with it or not get any games going.

In that respect, I believe it is a good thing that FAF still receives balance patches, so that the game is still developing, regardless if every change is for the better.

And I also want to point out that FAF isn't broken by a single imba unit, bug or exploit like TA was in manifold ways, which has to be accredited to the balance team.

Also, TA had a hell lot of units that weren't used in competitive games because of poor balance or bug. In FAF you only have a handful of units that fit in this category.

Still, when is it a question of skill or use of an exploit. From a video of speed2 I learned to deny TMD by starting to construct a T2 shield. What is the right question to ask now. Was it intended to work like this by the game designers? Is it the presentation of skills to pull of such a block in a live game? Does it give you an unfair advantage over an opponent who isn't aware of this feature/exploit?

Use of such tactics in TA surely made the game more complex to learn, more fast-paced and unforgiving. Once you had an idea of how to apply such "tactics", you had a major advantage over a newbie apart from the obvious reasons. For me this also relates to the upcoming change in the T1 bomber.

There are so many things when thinking about TA and FAF, that I will let it be for now, but I am excited to discuss more about this topic.