Feedback Space Age Asteroid Belt (SAAB)

[DeletedUser8707]

Well I think your Hover Hammer definitely qualifies as something inno might create - still damn useless By the time something with range 1 hits something, who cares what its movement is anymore?

Your shredder is probably the most innovative but would be problematic without serious AI adjustments. Reducing damage to 1 specifically means no matter how high the boost gets, you still have enough defense against an AI that won't go adjacent to you most of the time anyways (save for blast and range 1 units). So it's a problem that could span ages in the future when we get back away from gimped units again.

, that AI adjustment is something what I allways forgot. Units AI is allways poor (or we think that way) and allways units changes are more complex than we think.

There is one thing that really infuriated me about this age
I wanted the light unit to have some range, and not be a close combat unit, and it was a close combat unit, this really pissed me off.

, I think same way, but maybe "Nail Storm" pull the trick... I see that after release because I cant do any testing in BETA .

 

[qaccy]

@xivarmy My thinking for the Hammer was...well, look at what I have it boosted against! Units that actually have to move around and get up close to the enemy in order to attack them. If they're slowed down, it takes them longer to reach their targets, which is a moot point against other short-range units but means extra hits from ranged units. Perhaps more an annoyance than a serious threat, but annoyances can still lead to extra damage/unit losses in battle!

I hadn't considered the implications regarding the AI when I thought of the Shredder, either. Perhaps the simplest solution to that, though it has no precedent, would be to age-lock the ability such that it doesn't work against units from ages above it! And an adjustment such that anything within the Shredder's attack range can deal full damage, so that mirror matches don't take quite so long either. In any case, the ability was designed to be ineffective against range-1 units anyway (though unintentionally in regards to the AI), since those are the units that my Shredders would be weak against!

 

[xivarmy]

@xivarmy My thinking for the Hammer was...well, look at what I have it boosted against! Units that actually have to move around and get up close to the enemy in order to attack them. If they're slowed down, it takes them longer to reach their targets, which is a moot point against other short-range units but means extra hits from ranged units. Perhaps more an annoyance than a serious threat, but annoyances can still lead to extra damage/unit losses in battle!

You'd have to make the hover a verifiable fortress for that to be a 'good' tactic. You're virtually guaranteed to be losing that hover before your next turn having moved into range 1 (maybe not from the unit it hit - but the problem with range 1 units is everything else is able to hit them too by the time they're up there). Is merely slowing an enemy unit worth having lost a unit? It's the problem dragon drones had in AF. They had a neat ability, they even avoided retaliation because of it, but they still weren't usually good enough in a fair fight because they had to go into bad positions to do anything. This is an even less neat ability - as I said it sounds like it could be an Inno ability. Flavor-wise it may sound fine. Practicality-wise it may as well not exist (think Swarm on Gliders).

 

[101010]

Congrats on not understanding what a beta server is for.

Theres feedback and then theres complaining. For example one player posting about quitting this game multiple times because of SAAB is not really useful feedback but annoying complaining.

 

[Andi47]

I was just wondering why my population goes DOWN when I am replacing my abodes by more innovative houses on my asteroid. And then I see....

Movable abode (first buildable house) - 2*2, 80 population
Deap Seated House (more innovative) - 2*3; 50 population

¿¿¿Seriously, @InnoGames???

I'm just tearing down ALL my deap seated houses to replace them back with abodes.

 

[CrashBoom]

Movable abode (first buildable house) - 2*2, 80 population
Deap Seated House (more innovative) - 2*3; 50 population

¿¿¿Seriously, @InnoGames???

sure seriously

the one with less population gives 3 times the credits per square

I'm just tearing down ALL my deap seated houses to replace them back with abodes.

if you need/want population but the credits aren't an important factor: good decision

 

[DeletedUser5097]

Alright, here's a crazy overhaul I spent some time thinking about for the SAAB units in an attempt to make them more...appealing? Maybe not for everyone, but perhaps at least more interesting!

Hover Hammer: Bonus against heavy and light. Replace Flying with Shockwave, reducing a unit's base movement stat by 3 when it gets hit.
Shredder: Increase movement to 22. Bonus against artillery and ranged. Replace Close Quarters with Magnetic Armor, a defensive skill that reduces the damage of all ranged attacks to 1. Only adjacent attacks deal normal damage.
Drill Ranger: Bonus against heavy and artillery. Replace Contact! with Tunnel, allowing the unit to move anywhere on the battlefield on its first turn only.
B.E.L.T.: Reduce attack to 350. Bonus against fast and ranged. Replace Blast with Salvo, hitting the targeted unit and 2 different random enemy units in range for full attack damage. All hits can activate Critical Hit and Keen Eye.
Nail Storm: Bonus against fast and light. Replace stealth with Shrapnel, which deals full attack damage to all adjacent enemy units when this unit is killed by an attack that is not retaliation. This effect cannot activate Critical Hit nor Keen Eye.
Champion: Replace fast bonus with artillery to match the Shredder. No other changes.

For initiative/turn order, I'm thinking something like: Hover Hammer > Drill Ranger > Shredder > B.E.L.T. > Nail Storm. I dunno what the current values are or what these proposed values should be specifically, but in battles with nothing but SAAB units, I think this turn order works best with my ideas.

I probably overdid it in terms of trying to come up with a new skill for every new unit, but I tried to make them make sense at least! These probably aren't perfectly balanced against each other either, so if anyone responds to this try to pretend this is something Inno created. Should make it easier for you to see any flaws.

I would love to see your suggested ability tunnel. It seems to make the most sense and from design an modified rapid deployment ability. Would love to see it coming to the game as this also makes a lot of sense for this unit

 

[DeletedUser10003]

I joined the beta server today, to test the new age for myself, but i realised that i am in the bronze age, dumb idea.

 

[Dan 77]

Theres feedback and then theres complaining. For example one player posting about quitting this game multiple times because of SAAB is not really useful feedback but annoying complaining.

Who wrote like that? I haven't seen anything like that.

 

[Osserc]

Theres feedback and then theres complaining. For example one player posting about quitting this game multiple times because of SAAB is not really useful feedback but annoying complaining.

And how useful is complaining about complaining?

 

[DeletedUser8707]

And how useful is complaining about complaining?

Perpetual Free Energy... (save The World)

 

[101010]

And how useful is complaining about complaining?

as useful as your complaining about someone complaining about compalining

 

[Pafton]

Let's stay on topic please, everyone.

 

[Mrmjs]

Has there been a SAAB Gbg season yet? I'm curious how SAAB units hold up at high Attrition.

This! Anyone able to give feed back on this?

 

[Balinor]

This! Anyone able to give feed back on this?

I dont think anyone has as of yet
The devs set up 200+ test accounts just to test this new age
It seems only one is giving any feedback on forum

 

[qaccy]

@xivarmy Perhaps you're right! But hey, maybe it's fine if they're not all outright winners or having some 'Inno abilities'. My suggestions were just as much to try to shake things up as they were to make the units better (especially changing around the unit bonuses), and I think this is one example of how to possibly do that.

For the sake of discussion, what would you change about it? It's more interesting to me when the conversation is a back and forth!

 

[DeletedUser10003]

I need some help here, there are many people asking me on live servers, when this age is being released, what should i answer? i dont know.

 

[laclongquan]

Same

I need some help here, there are many people asking me on live servers, when this age is being released, what should i answer? i dont know.

 

[Pafton]

I need some help here, there are many people asking me on live servers, when this age is being released, what should i answer? i dont know.

We too don't know when it will be released on live. The best possible answer you can tell them is to wait for the official announcement.

 

[xivarmy]

@xivarmy Perhaps you're right! But hey, maybe it's fine if they're not all outright winners or having some 'Inno abilities'. My suggestions were just as much to try to shake things up as they were to make the units better (especially changing around the unit bonuses), and I think this is one example of how to possibly do that.

For the sake of discussion, what would you change about it? It's more interesting to me when the conversation is a back and forth!

Honestly - I'm not sure It's a lot harder to come up with interesting balanced units that it is to point out where they came up short. While I will grant your concepts as "interesting" from a perspective of theorycrafting, there's a high chance that when you enter the world of playing them they break down.

We can also look at your drill ranger. Tunnel: interesting... Ok so they use this to hit first against everything... They eat retaliation from the shredder and hover hammer so there can't be too many of those. And nail storms blowing up in their face is probably the intended counter. About the only thing they ARE great against is your artillery. They also have trouble combining with things since they only have one chance to lunge forward, and most other units won't be up there yet so you're creating two minifights where first you lose your drill rangers and then you lose everything else.

I'm going to shift to a more practical discussion of "interesting" units that already made it into the game:

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I really hate the range-1 in a world of range concept they've been trying so hard to make work since FE... Almost every unit they've tried it with has been a dud; potentially conceptually interesting at times, but practically useless - and yet they keep trying to force that square peg in a round hole.

I wanted to like dragon drones, scimitars, space marines as their ability is interesting - but they all turned out to be very niche seldom usable units (beyond uninteresting situations where you have wayyyy more stats than the defending army) because beyond just the matchups being forced to take a bad position because of low range is a weakness in itself.

I have no interest in liking drill rangers, hover hammers, or shredders - and they still have to go to the bad spots to do anything.

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So... the problems with range 1:
1) retaliation (especially in tough fights this means that even you're tunnel-version drill rangers against shredders they're supposed to be strong against would be in tough)
2) bad positioning making them easy to blow up
3) kiteability unless they have high movement

I think if they really want to force this along AND have the units be more than target practice, those units more than anything need more base defense. Now players themself have the ability to go out and get defense in events and maybe that's what they want... but given folks already are stacked on attack but haven't really amassed much defense yet they should really meet us half-way if that's the cue they're giving us - because it'd take hundreds of sentinel outposts on little more than faith to really start to see the strengths of high defense for a player already invested in attack (i.e. they wouldn't gain a single additional attrition via defense until their units defenses are high enough that they're occasionally not getting 2-shot at that attrition). If each of the low/no range units had say 1000-1200 defense instead (without changing attacks on anything) it'd be really bad in terms of how high attrition we could go without changing anything about our cities, but it'd open the door for slightly less defense boost to make up the gap and start becoming relevant.

When you move away from the world of kill in 2, die in 2, there's more room for 'interesting' to be usable. You move away from striking first and hit avoidance being the only determining factors in what's good and what's not. I think that's where they're trying to move us and that that's why the sentinel outpost is 4% in 1 square instead of only 1%... but we're really not getting there anytime soon. I'm not even one of the crazy attack stackers and I still need at least another 50 level 2 sentinel outposts before my defense catches up to my attack. Probably 100ish before my defense becomes relevant in my hardest attacks.