Chrono Boost on Solar Forge

Co-op Missions Discussion
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What if chrono boosting solar forge also increased SoA cooldown speed.

Chrono boost mastery would have more synergy with all strategies, including static defense-based builds/openings, as the solar lance & purifier beam cooldown speed could make for more aggressive play and/or more global presence more often. (Imagine using solar lance 50% more often.) Would burn through energy quicker, but solar lance would be nearly as flexible as nova airstrike.

Not only would this make the chrono boost mastery more competitive, it would also make chrono wave much stronger, and by extension, the chrono wave energy regen mastery. With quicker cooldown, you’ll be able to take advantage of the additional energy regen from chrono wave more often, and open up new windows where chrono wave can have a big impact.

For example, the ramp-up time for research-based units (AKA all of karax’s/ units) would be a bit quicker, as you’d be able to chrono wave once to saturate you’re nat, and a 2nd time to boost your first carrier or thermal lance or reconstruction.

Something like this would eliminate the need for Karax to make more than 1 robo or stargate with properly timed chrono waves + the extra chrono on the robo.

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If I recall, it used to do that, or at least, something similar in that putting Chronoboost on it sped up the rate it generated solar energy, but the devs considered it a ‘bug’ and then patched it while simultaneously boosting the default solar energy charge rate to more than make up the difference.

I think it would be cool to give that back to him in a modified form, like you suggested, to make actively Chronoboosting the Solar Forge a real choice that one could make.

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With Chrono Mastery you can get 4 immortals out of a Robotics Facility within a Chrono Wave window. Its not that much. In the case of Carriers you can’t even get two out.

Potentially completely mistaken math

If the Chrono Boost speeds up Chrono Wave cooldown by being in the Solar Forge, you would get that Chrono Wave every 96 seconds, instead of 240 seconds. (Chrono Field’s 15% and Chrono Boost’s 52.5% combined contribute to a total of 59.7% speed, not 67.5% speed, because they stack multiplying).

Within 96 seconds, you can get 4 Immortals as well with just Chrono Boost+Field, and you will be half way done for a 5th. If you got a third nexus and chrono boosted 2 robotics facilities, plus Solar Forge, you wouldn’t have resources for the army and it would be wasted.

I always play with Chrono Mastery and in my experience two Robotics Facilities with the Chrono Boost produce Immortals just right, there is barely any resource left for anything else.

If anything, the benefit would be in Purifier Beam and Solar Lance, which would be respectively 181s and 48s, which would be absolutely broken insane.

The idea is interesting and all, but I think there might be other ways to buff Chrono Mastery.

If Chrono Field and Chrono Boost stacked as 67.5% for example, that already would make a reasonable difference.

Increasing the amount of synergies would also make a huge difference, by allowing Chrono Boost speed up more things, creating a more “support-centric” build. Perhaps even speed up units? Who knows.

Edit:
Or speeding up buildings as they are warping in, which honestly, for Karax who can have issues with getting his tech tree early enough… It would be absolutely fantastic.

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Not quite. You took 59.7% off of the cooldown of chrono wave, rather than increasing the tick rate by 59.7%. So the actual time would be 150 seconds. Still, that’s a lot of chrono surges.

My concern is that it would become practically mandatory to perma chrono your solar forge.

I was going to do the math on how many buildings have to use the chrono surge for it to be better to just chrono the solar forge, but it got complicated, so I’ll have to add that later.

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Wait, it just increases it like that? But probes are produced almost 3 times faster with the Chrono Boost Mastery and all… Maybe I’m insane.
If that’s the case then my whole post is wrong, ignore it.

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Given how slow and sucky Karax is… The Chrono Field/Boost on Solar Forge is fair enough in my opinion.

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It would absolutely buff the commander, no doubt. And it wouldn’t be as insane of a buff as I thought. Its funny how even something that sounds insane at first still doesn’t make Karax broken.
You need to put effort to break karax, that’s how undertuned he is.

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Ok, so first, I think I allowed myself to get confused here. I’m almost certain that the various chrono effects are cumulative, not multiplicative.

When using chrono surge to hammer out a carrier, the carrier build time lines up almost perfectly, and if you had a second carrier queued up, you get almost no progress on that carrier by the end of the chrono surge. Using cumulative, this would make sense; chrono surge is 600% for 20 seconds, thus totaling 120 seconds, which is the build time of a carrier, and the cumulative effect of the 15% chrono field is negligable in comparison.

Likewise, with chrono boost + chrono surge + chrono field, assuming multiplicative you would expect the second carrier to be almost 2/3s done by the end, but as I recall that’s not what happens in practice.

Anyways, as for the math behind chrono boost on solar forge for more surges vs. chrono on buildings directly, well…

100x/(140/1.15) + 0.525 + 0.15x = 100x/(140/1.675) + 0.15x
167.5x/140 - 115x/140 = 0.525
52.5x = 140(0.525)
x = 1.4

So I assumed that chrono boosts are cumulative, and that chrono surge will also reduce the cooldown of abilities, including itself. Here, ‘x’ is the number of buildings making use of the chrono surge, ignoring any upgrades performed by the solar forge itself. I also performed it assuming full chrono mastery but that value cancels itself out.

The result is that at only 1.4 buildings working in the chrono surge, you are break even with chronoing the solar forge for extra surges rather than the buildings themselves. If we assume the surge does not reduce the cooldown of itself, then you need 2.4 buildings working.

That’s not really unreasonable, considering that your regular forge or cybernetics core willlikrly be doing upgrades during this time, not to mention one offs like twighlight or fleet beacon upgrades. And of course, standard is 2 production structures, excluding gates.

So basically, if chrono boost reduces the cooldown of chrono surge, it will almost always be better to chrono boost the solar forge than to chrono boost the buildings you want boosted.

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Hehe.

Yeah I think the two should be kept separate.

I would rather have Chrono Wave, Chrono Surge, Chrono Boost be unique to their own. If one always optimally applies to another, then we might as well just increase the latter and remove the former (whatever it may be, in this case Boost versus Surge.)

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I believe it is 500% instead.

These abilities are really strange to figure out. I always thought Chrono Wave and Chrono Boost multiplied each other somehow.

I believe, given how dramatic of a speed up it is to use both combined instead of just Chrono Wave, it probably works like this:

Chrono Boost + Chrono Field would yield a +59.7% tick rate (with full mastery), multiplying the default 1 tick rate giving 1.597. Lets round it to 1.6.

This 1.6 is then multiplied by Chrono Wave, which would be 5x, giving a total of 8x.

If Chrono Wave and Chrono Boost just sum to each other, that would mean a 5.6x instead of 8x. I don’t think that is how it works in reality. The 8 is much more likely to be the case.

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500% increase, 600% of base speed, if memory serves.

As for actual testing on a stargate like my theory, I’m in the mountains using LTE for everything right now, so you’ll have to run the actual testing.

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Just ran a test.

So I made two Stargates, and queued 2 carriers on each. One Stargate had a Chrono Boost previously, the other nothing. Then Chrono Waved as soon as possible.

Results:

  • Stargate without Chrono Boost had 4s of progress when Chrono Wave started, had one Carrier at 117s in the end, none finished.
  • Stargate with Chrono Boost had 7s of progress when Chrono Wave started, finished one Carrier and had one with 59s of progress at the end.

If Chrono Wave does 600% (with base, like you correctly explained), it should have finished one Carrier at least in the Stargate without Chrono Boost, but instead it missed 7 seconds.

It may be that Chrono Wave does not add +5 to base tick rate, but actually multiplies after all. The reason why the Carrier almost finishes in the Stargate without the Chrono Boost might be the Chrono Field effect of +15%.

If it multiplies the default tick rate by 1.15, then we are talking about Chrono Wave multiplying 1.15 by 5, instead of 1 by 5, resulting in 5.75x, which would explain why the Carrier does not finish in a single Chrono Wave, but almost gets there.

In 20s of Chrono Wave, with 5.75x, it would progress 115s, so it is close enough to explain, although still not the exact result.

Now for the Chrono Boosted stargate, the result was a finished Carrier and 59s worth of progress on the second. It is highly likely that it follows similar logic to the previous case.

If the 52.5% boost multiplies the basic tick rate, with Chrono Field, it would be 59.7%, or 1.597 base tick rate. This multiplied by 5 of Chrono Wave results in 7.985x, which throughout a Chrono Wave window, would result in 159.7 seconds.

1st Carrier (120s) + 2nd Carrier (59s) - 159.7s = 19.3s

We are missing 20s here, so this doesn’t explain it correctly.

IF it were 8.985x instead (adding that 100% of the base tick), suddenly it gives 179,7 exactly, which explains the progress.

So what, Chrono Boost is adding an extra 100% of the base on the calculation? Maybe this is an overlook of the dev team on the formula when both effects are combined? :scream:

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Maybe the chrono field was applied on the boosted 400% from the chrono surge, but not on the base 100%?

Either way, the moral is, always make sure you have chrono on a building during surge, because it will work massively faster.

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