Cybran aa broken

[keyser]

in reference to blaster :
get a brain and you won't do bad trolling anymore.


Shai--Hulud
you should understand that not every aa are good against all type of planes.. aa are good against inte, gunship, fighter bomber already.
you don't build inte because you have put restriction "no air" ?
if you say that other T1 aa are good against scout, maybe cybran should be good too. But we can argue that cybran navy aa is already too strong, and this can be a way to balance. anyways i play cybran. And i don't feel cybran is somehow weaker than other faction because of this.

[---]

Just take it easy o.0
Seems you still missed a point: it's not only t1 aa that misses but also t2 aa.

[pza]

the point is not that t2 misses it, because imo it should (they're meant against gunships, inties and for "stationary" fights over it). the point is, that until sams you have no ground to air counters to scouts.

also, not all maps have navy and strengthes of the cybran navy shouldnt be compensated by stuff that affects maps without water. otherwise we'd have balance problems for those maps.

[Exotic_Retard]

you should understand that not every aa are good against all type of planes.. aa are good against inte, gunship, fighter bomber already.

i don't think that's too good an approach. ill be focusing mostly on t1aa here but t2 aa is not too good either atm.

you would expect t1 pd to handle t1 tanks, after all its stationary while the tanks are not. it can even handle t2 to some extent.
likewise, t2 pd can kill t1 and handle t2.

meanwhile cyb t1 aa cant hit scouts consistently
and saying flak shouldn't be able to hit scouts either sounds like clutching at straws to keep minimal changes rather than having an actual reason to me.

Spoiler: show

i would be happy to discuss the implications of having t1 aa being able to kill t1 scouts or not, however to me it sounds not too much of a topic:
scouting is good for the game
t1aa being able to hit scouts is also good for the game, for consistency reasons,ect
these 2 points conflict
however, being able to stop scouting by investing mass into aa should be an option, as scouting is mobile and not hard to do anyway, meaning you need to invest quite a lot quite early to deny scouting properly.
t1 aa being able to deny scouting doesn't actually impact the game too much - its not op because its less convenient to set up and less flexible than using ints for the same role
therefore it being able to deny scouts is better than it not being able to do so, because consistency is more important than the small impact to gameplay this holds.

the problem here inst what its supposed to or not supposed to handle. but rather how inconsistently it behaves.
bricks beat t1 pd because they have so much hp+dps and outrange the pd, not because the pd misses them a lot.

also i was under the impression that its well known that cyb t1 aa cant hit much except t1 bombers, while other faction aa can do it quite well : \
i even made a nice sandbox since i bet you would have not believed me otherwise :3
content.faforever.com/faf/vault/replay_vault/replay.php?id=3759900

Spoiler: show

enjoy! i tested t1 scouts here, but i could test other things also if you're that lazy, the real stuff starts at ~6:30, but i observed some interesting but irrelevant effects before then, so you might want to look at it all.
just watching on +10 should work though

not too sure why this is even being discussed in the first place, but oh well.

suggested fix(es):
increase the range at which cyb t1aa starts tracking its target (for got exact name of this sorry)
increase muzzle vel for cyb (all?) t1 aa
dubious but not too crazy if you consider it: make cyb t1aa projectiles tracking

hope this helps!

EDIT:

Spoiler: show

in reference to blaster :
get a brain and you won't do bad trolling anymore.

that's mean!
but still he does have a point:
t1 scout costs 40 mass, still scouts after it dies, and can fly around if needed. t1 aa costs 150, and t2 aa costs 400, and only defends one spot. in shalais screen, we see that 600 mass couldn't stop 40 mass worth of air unit? how is that sensible? with that mass ratio i could win with cyb t1maa vs t1 tanks. (that's 7 vs 195 for you)

[keyser]

t1 scout costs 40 mass, still scouts after it dies, and can fly around if needed. t1 aa costs 150, and t2 aa costs 400, and only defends one spot. in shalais screen, we see that 600 mass couldn't stop 40 mass worth of air unit? how is that sensible? with that mass ratio i could win with cyb t1maa vs t1 tanks. (that's 7 vs 195 for you)

mass cost is irrelevent. it's like you are saying othuums cost 840 and take forever to kill a frigate that cost 250 mass. if it's not the job, then obviously you can't compare. to me static aa job isn't to cancel scouting but to defend (against mercy and gunship/bomber mainly).

inte does fit the job of canceling scouting way better, because it's part of its job. if you want to make T1 aa kill scout more easily, then ok; but it won't really mater because if you play properly you should have inte to cancel scouting anyways. And i don't understand why you paople keep talking about T2 flak, it's even less suited than T1 aa for killing flak, because once more it's not its job at all.

i'm pretty sure T1 cyb aa does great against inte, bomber, gunship.

[JaggedAppliance]

I don't see why cybran t1 aa shouldn't kill scouts if other factions' can. It doesn't seem like an interesting difference. Flak isn't meant to kill scouts so no reason to complain there.

[Zoram]

t1 scout costs 40 mass, still scouts after it dies, and can fly around if needed. t1 aa costs 150, and t2 aa costs 400, and only defends one spot. in shalais screen, we see that 600 mass couldn't stop 40 mass worth of air unit? how is that sensible? with that mass ratio i could win with cyb t1maa vs t1 tanks. (that's 7 vs 195 for you)

mass cost is irrelevent. it's like you are saying othuums cost 840 and take forever to kill a frigate that cost 250 mass. if it's not the job, then obviously you can't compare. to me static aa job isn't to cancel scouting but to defend (against mercy and gunship/bomber mainly).

inte does fit the job of canceling scouting way better, because it's part of its job. if you want to make T1 aa kill scout more easily, then ok; but it won't really mater because if you play properly you should have inte to cancel scouting anyways. And i don't understand why you paople keep talking about T2 flak, it's even less suited than T1 aa for killing flak, because once more it's not its job at all.

i'm pretty sure T1 cyb aa does great against inte, bomber, gunship.

you can spam scouts non stop at very little cost, you would need a swarm to kill scouts and they still would have done their jobs. it seems reasonable that scout don't instantly die upon flying over on t1 AA, but they should be hit and not be able to patrol over a base endlessly.

[Exotic_Retard]

if you want to make T1 aa kill scout more easily, then ok; but it won't really matter because if you play properly you should have inte to cancel scouting anyways.

yes, that's an argument for fixing cyb t1 aa. not sure why you mentioned like that (also i outlined it anyway so this statement is a bit redundant :/ )

mass cost is irrelevant. it's like you are saying othuums cost 840 and take forever to kill a frigate that cost 250 mass.

Spoiler: show

... you missed the point.
allow me to explain:
in supcom units which counter other units do not work the same way as in other rts, where you use armor types to change the amount of damage inflicted.
here, base stats are used instead. for example: the only reason t1 arty counters pd is because of the range, not some magic rule.
what's more, here you get the freedom of using units creatively, and not all counters are hard, like in traditional rts - like you can use torps vs cruisers and t2 bombers vs mobile flak, cybran navy has aa, and so on.
to summarize, nothing in here is a black-and-white counter, its all on a scale of softness to hardness. this means that with enough mass investment, you can kill things with something that's not really useful against it. just think of one flak trying to kill 10 gunships. this happens often in games, you see that you can kill their aa and do so.

same here. even if (for some yet unknown reason) you think that scouts should just fly over aa, you would think that if i invest 15 times the mass into aa, it should handle the scout pretty easily. that was the point i was making - that atm cyb aa is nearly useless vs scouts even with a huge mass advantage. essentially i was highlighting just how bad it is at stopping scouting.

and you got all caught up on that :3
(also if you want to be so picky, your example has a 3.36x mass advantage to othuums, while mine has a 14.8x mass advantage to the aa : D )

if it's not the job, then obviously you can't compare. to me static aa job isn't to cancel scouting but to defend (against mercy and gunship/bomber mainly).

inte does fit the job of canceling scouting way better, because it's part of its job.

And i don't understand why you people keep talking about T2 flak, it's even less suited than T1 aa for killing flak scouts, because once more it's not its job at all.

i bundled these up together because they are pretty much the same thing. (btw i love this argument : D )
essentially its this:
"you are right, but it doesn't matter because that's how its supposed to be"
very subjective all around > not giving an actual explanation, just stating your opinion > doesn't amount to more than "i disagree"


i.e. saying things like "its not its job" get this nowhere. please never use that phrase again. "i disagree" is shorter.

Spoiler: show

but if you want to argue on this level then ok :3 "to me it would make more sense if anti air was effective against air units and not just t1 bombers/mercies. if you want that then change its name to anti-bomber defense"

Spoiler: show

this is 90% nonsense btw. enjoy.

i can't read your thoughts but it would make more sense to think in terms of change and not whats supposed to be or not.
i.e. you think that it's not aa's job to cancel scouts.
yet you say that if it does do that effectively there would not be much change.
and you gain the benefit of the system being sane. (remember 1800+ = top 100, less than 1% of faf, balance should cater for more people than that)
this is kinda repeating my previous post but we have honestly moved almost nowhere.

but anyway, thinking in terms of change rather than .. what you are doing .. you can just compare the 2 different situations, and use the difference to work out which one abides by your principles more - for example if t1 aa insta killed scouts (by never missing), then actually it still wouldn't be so bad (cos reasons, cba to write) meanwhile it would behave more consistently

small drawback vs larger benefit(s) = good change

here the only thing you can question are my principles, and my logic of what implications the change will have, not whether you think "thats what its job is"

i'm pretty sure T1 cyb aa does great against inte, bomber, gunship.

that's not very relevant, we are talking about aa vs scouts

Spoiler: show

but since you asked for it....
3760474 - notice how all the other inties are in the red, while the cyb ones are in the yellow?
this only tests inties, vs bombers its hard to test as they all die, you need to see when they die to make sense of it. unbelievably, this pattern applies to cyb t1 aa for all aircraft with the speed of an intie or faster - it has more problems hitting them than other t1 aa does. again, i would think that you should have known about this for years
tbh I'm getting a little lazy of doing tests for you. i hope you wont make any more claims like this.

finally, this whole argument is a little silly. this tiny "bug" only applies to 1/4 factions, and you argue for it like its the basis of all balance : /
i really don't get why this hasn't been fixed yet tbh. its just a small quality of life change, which helps preserve sanity while not affecting much else

hope this helps!

[Shai--Hulud]

@keyser

Reading your comments is a bit annoying. Your talk about "Real players know that intis are made for the jobs. Play the way I tell you because that's how it is done - because I say so." is not very productive at all and in fact misses the point of this thread. If you like intis - great. Build tons of them. However, there is an issue if one faction can't use t1 aa to prevent scouting at all. Forget about intis - this thread is all about t1 aa.

[pza]

I don't see why cybran t1 aa shouldn't kill scouts if other factions' can. It doesn't seem like an interesting difference. Flak isn't meant to kill scouts so no reason to complain there.

this is enough of a reason for fixing cyb t1 aa.