T3 Air

[FunkOff]

I'm with you, but so far nobody has been able to come up with anything close to a solution to the blob problem

I resent that: I have come up with two solutions. Making ASF more expensive and/or changing their firing cycle to make them worse vs T1 ints.

The simple fact is this: As long as ASF are the only unit you have to build to establish air superiority, people are going to spam them to establish air superiority. THAT'S IT.



Therefore, to eliminate ASFs blobs, we need something that can beat asf blobs:
Ideas I've so far proposed:
-Ints can beat ASFs tactically (through more expensive ASFs)
-Ints can beat ASFs tactically (ASFs with modified firing cycles or projectile behaviors)

Other ideas:
-Fighter-bomber fires anti-ASF missile/proj or has low-rof hig damage weapon that 1-shots ASFs
-SAM fires expensive TML-esque homing missile with high AOE, high damage, low RoW, costs money to shoot
-T3 strat bomber fires air-to-air AOE cruise missle

If you don't like the idea of ints beating ASFs in stand-up fights, pick something else to beat ASFs and have ints beat THAT. Not hard, people.

[errorblankfield]

Since we aren't adding new units (fun limits are fun), making T2 the deciated AoE stage is an idea.

So giving all T2 air-AA flak or some sort will help in blob reduction for the sheer fact that swarms of T2 would had an advantage over a swarm of ASFs. Yea, the T2 die in one hit, but they inflict more than their value in damage on hit. Times a bunch of them and ASF clouds become risky as they are so slow are chewing through a group of units.

This solves out spiraling out of control issue rather nicely I think. If you lose air, you can amass t2 (quickly as well) to kill off their ASF swarm. ASFs are still needed for bombers and such as they are the only things fast enough. This is also the limit that forces T2 to be defensive and not your primary massed unit. Role them into a base and T2 air will kill you. (Mobile will kill you before that though...)
Just have to make sure the muzzle velocity is rather high and the AoE rather large and the damage rather average.

Not sure how big of a problem this will be in the T2 phase... Air is so easily dealt with in this phase due to flak. Rushing T2 wouldn't be any more useful (compared to now) and a reactionary T2 upgrade is completely viable (planes may die but AoE ensures they hurt more for the aggressor).

[Mycen]

I'm with you, but so far nobody has been able to come up with anything close to a solution to the blob problem short of an entire Air rebalance to Vanilla game theory (Which I am supporting more and more by the day...)

Complete nonsense. The very next thing you said after the above quote was a "solution to the blob problem" that is short of a total rebalance. I'm just not seeing how we're getting to a point where we have this attitude, I think incremental changes are the way to go. It might be slow, tedious, and annoying, but when gpgnet finally went down and I found faf, one of the first things I noticed was what it says when you start a game: "You'll feel right at home!" Not only will making small changes allow us to really refine what we're doing, it will prevent this from suffering the same fate as TA, where it's just a mess of fan units and addons, and I don't even recognize the game if I come back after a few years. I'm not interested in Blackops, thank you.

I'm with you, but so far nobody has been able to come up with anything close to a solution to the blob problem

changing their firing cycle to make them worse vs T1 ints.

And I think that change has worked very well. I can actually fight off ASF hordes with ints now, that was never possible before. I think it's an avenue worth continuing down. The SAM changes I also think have been good, and are worth exploring further. I also think ideas we've seen with static flak being more useful against T3 air are good.

Speaking of which, here's something I've been thinking about for a while: We have been talking about making static flak more useful, right? So what if we tweak the damage and HP values (and muzzle velocity, in the case of static flak) of the various aircraft and AA in such a way that flak can be used against ASF as we've discussed, but it's not also powerful enough to severely restrict T3 bomber movement without a very high density of flak turrets? As in, the heavy bombers can force their way through the flak fire to make it to their target, but their escorts would be shredded, allowing defending ASFs and other planes to intercept even with inferior numbers. It would help prevent this situation:

I dislike the way that once ASFs are massed for one player, they give that player strike-anywhere ability with impunity,

because players could still force a T3 bomber attack where there isn't a heavy SAM presence, but they would not be able to effectively escort them. Since T2 flak are much cheaper, easier, and quicker to access than SAMs, a player can begin controlling their airspace before the game even reaches T3, allowing them to set up 'safe zones' for their own aircraft without having to beat the other players in a no-holds-barred techup race. We've already sort of started doing this, let's keep refining it.

[errorblankfield]

Tangent topic:

What do we think about allowing ASFs to fire in all directions (like most units)?

This kills the mirco advantage to that of any other unit quite nicely. It's not illogical. I can't think of a situation this a dramatically 'bad' thing. Instead of fights being positioning based, they would be relative distance based -like every other unit in the game.

Grant it's a low priority issue in lower techs, but it's stupid. All other things equal, one plane will always win -without a scratch- if it starts the fight behind the other guy. I can recall a few replays with few heroic ints that basically killed 5/8 others by themselves as the other guy wasn't committed to the air enough to pay attention nor skilled enough to counter or outnumber them. This only works with mirco of course, but it does allow for inferior number to beat superior numbers.

Back to our ASF problem, this solution scales nicely. Yes, the first volley of fire will be awarded to the guy coming from the rear as the defender had to orient his weapons -but that's fair based off many ground battles with the same behavior. Afterwards, everything is mostly fair again. So long as the ASF clouds are together, you can't gain the upper hand by moving a certain way (just like on land). Nor does retreating mean you lose every fighter without doing anything to the opposition (just like land). Nor does it mean one early tech unit can swat lower tiers by dancing around them and OHKOing them without taking hits itself (just like land).

Simple and works in my head. Tear it apart.

[FunkOff]

Simple and works in my head. Tear it apart.

Your idea doesn't solve the problem of the snow-balling effect of ASF swarms. Even if asfs could shoot in all directions, 100 would still beat 50, and probably have 75 left. (Try it with T1 tanks... they can shoot in all direction too)

Also, here's an idea... why are we treating ASFs as all the same? Why not make them different?
-UEF: Keep DPS the same, make it fire single, high-damage shots (2000 apiece)
-Aeon: Keep the DPS the same, make it fire single, high-damage homing missiles, up to 90 degrees off the nose (3000 damage apiece)
-Cybran: Same everything, but it can shoot in all directions (180 degrees off the nose)
-Seraphim: +20% more health (because seraphim always get the shaft by tradition)
-All: increase cost back to 400 mass

With these changes, I'd expect UEF to be the best vs other ASFs, Aeon to be the best against T3/T4 gunships/bombers, cybran would be the best at killing T1, and seraphim would be a generalist the worst at nothing.

[IceDreamer]

All right then Mycen, I'll bite... So your concept seems solid at first. You want to make T2 AA capable of countering ASFs, you want to make it so the more ASFs there are the better it counters them, and you want it to leave T3 Bombers alone such that one needs either SAMs or ASFs to stop them? OK...

T2 Mobile Flack - Leave this alone. Role: Counters T2 Gunships, T1 Bombers, Interceptors, T3 Gunships
T2 Fighter Bombers - Leave these alone. Role: Ground attack. Countered by Interceptors, other T2 Fighter Bombers, ASFs
T2 Static Flack - Begin with the current balance patch changes. Global buff (10% to DPS, +1AOE). Role: Counters all T1, T2 Gunships, T3 Gunships, severely damages large swarms of ASFs (Or T2 Fighter Bombers but these are seldom swarmed), leaves small numbers of ASFs less damaged (T2 Fighter Bombers too). Unable to counter T3 Bombers or T3 Scouts.
T3 Bombers - Flack which hits ASFs can hit these too. Drastically raise T3 Bomber HP. It doesn't matter how high we put it, ASFs (Their counter unit) and SAMs (The other counter) will always rip them to shreds.
T3 Scouts - These are now the only unit too fast to be hit by Flack. Countered by ASFs and SAMs.
SAMs - Role: Stopping continuous T3 Bomber bombardment and T3 Scouting, but not preventing it. Severely damaging ASFs, but doing minor damage to large swarms when compared to T2 Static Flack.


OK, I like it. Let's do it.

[SomeoneAUS]

Make SAMs rape air but need to build missiles... hold 12 missiles... 1 missile kills one plane excluding exp....

Huge energy cost to build missiles... if you lose air chances are you still have a good power capacity so you have a chance to hurt their air with static defense... means its not lose air > immediate > strats gg...

Still needs to be hard to come back once you lose air but also make flying intys into enemy SAM actually be worth it from a power perspective... you feed them mass but the power draw on their SAMs hurts production cost enough to make it worth while... at least in the short term...

Figures would need to be looked at idea tested if people think it could be viable but 1 SAM requires 1 T3 Pgen to keep fully active seems like a good starting point... defense with SAM indefinitely becomes too expensive but with a few power storage you can hold off for a while...

SAMs would go back to enabling you to have basically NO FLY ZONE but only for as long as you can support the power requirement. While you are supporting the power requirement you cant effectively build planes due to the power draw.

[FunkOff]

SAMs would go back to enabling you to have basically NO FLY ZONE but only for as long as you can support the power requirement. While you are supporting the power requirement you cant effectively build planes due to the power draw.

Lol, and what power draw would that be? What kind of energy consumption would make it so that you cannot make planes and have special missiles at the same time?

[RoLa]

If we change asfs to be more costly to operate, then analogous changes should be applied to antiair(static and mobile) and shields.
You want to make asfs harder to maintain? ... Because, otherwise, it's not realistic? Tanks not having to refuel ever is not realistic.
Because it makes the game lag? Large blobs of tanks and ships cause the same effect.
Is it good hoarding all of them but for asfs it is bad? If you seriously consider changing asfs this way, you might as well consider allowing no air or no rush in the ladder, because it really makes no difference.

- Large blobs of tanks can be countered and get obsolet. So they are not used in big team games.
- Tanks not having to refuel for a day or two is realistic, but fighters must refuel every 2-3 hours at least.
- Large ships cause the same effect. Yes but thats another aspect and has nothing to do with t3 air.
- i am seriously considering changing asf and other t3 air to cost a bit less to build and a bit more to maintain. I think air should be used more often but not in high numbers.

I think building mobile units that just sit and wait in the base, while getting more and more is what make asf different from other units. The maintainance cost wouldn't make them used less but more often in lower numbers.

[errorblankfield]

Simple and works in my head. Tear it apart.

Your idea doesn't solve the problem of the snow-balling effect of ASF swarms. Even if asfs could shoot in all directions, 100 would still beat 50, and probably have 75 left. (Try it with T1 tanks... they can shoot in all direction too)

Also, here's an idea... why are we treating ASFs as all the same? Why not make them different?
-UEF: Keep DPS the same, make it fire single, high-damage shots (2000 apiece)
-Aeon: Keep the DPS the same, make it fire single, high-damage homing missiles, up to 90 degrees off the nose (3000 damage apiece)
-Cybran: Same everything, but it can shoot in all directions (180 degrees off the nose)
-Seraphim: +20% more health (because seraphim always get the shaft by tradition)
-All: increase cost back to 400 mass

With these changes, I'd expect UEF to be the best vs other ASFs, Aeon to be the best against T3/T4 gunships/bombers, cybran would be the best at killing T1, and seraphim would be a generalist the worst at nothing.

Wasn't aiming to solve snowballing. I've though of giving AoE to T2 for that, but that's a separate tangent.

The firing all directions was meant to remove the very high mirco advantage. Where 100 can beat 120 without thought. More if you are pushing it, but the point is the same.
Also removes the BS lower teir 'can't hit me' intis that kill a lot more than their fair share.

And your separate ideas:

UEF- OHKOing but no tracking means you basically have a sniper. ASFs are nice and agile so the chance for missing and having a plummeted DPS is rather high. Unless we make muzzle velocity really high but okay. Slow RoF to maintain DPS
Aeon - Stealing cybran tech with the tracking (boo!), OHKO + 50% overkill. Fires even slower but tracking. Tracking snipers?
Cybran - Shooting in all directions Yay! And by comparison highest rate of fire, tracking, can't be mirco'ed against, stealth...
Sera- Extra health helps vs UEF's new alpha strikes. Huge improvement as it takes two long reloads for a kill, but otherwise not a big deal.

So UEF and Aeon lose all the time to Cybran. Sera is viable if going against UEF but again, Cybran can do it all at this point.
o.0