Reverse T1 Bomber nerf Immediaty! And some game analysis!

[Lieutenant Lich]

Please .... people discussing to much. In gpg it was not possible to get a bomber early because it costed much more e. It helped less experienced players not to be destroyed by a single early bomber and therefor was a protecting mechanism for beginners. "Nobody" complained about it when it was changed that suddenly with faf bombers became 3-5min gameenders. The time is proceeding and i accepted that bombers can be built earlier. Balance will go on in future and more changes will appear. or be reverted. Once the balance changes will stop, no matter for good or bad, the game will die.

Thanks for this nice patch and the new game experience.

"nice" is a curious expression you are using. Sarcastic, Iszh?

[angus000]

Ok guys, will do some gaming tonight for testing T1 bombers but I also took the time at work to analyse a bit more this T1 Bomber thing:

So what I think has happened is the following:

Balance people thought that with the 8 sec instead of 13 sec turn rate for 2nd pass that dps increased from roughly 24DPS to 37DPS and therefore increased both the time and mass to build a T1 Bomber.

Now what is not considered is the following. T1 bomber now takes 15 secs longer to build and in exchange has 5 sec shorter turn and drop rate, that means it takes until the 4th pass for the total damage dealt to be equal looking only at time. So how many times have we seen a t1 bomber on a team game get 4 passes? I dont remember either...

The problem here is that DPS is not the full story, DPS does not consider the build time. It is like looking at the margins a business is generating without looking at how long it takes to generate them to evaluate the investment.

Let me show with an example using nodes to illustrate the probabilities of getting 4 passes with some reasonable figures to illustrate.
(the first line marks the probability that a t1 bomber strikes a target before being shot down, and so on until 4th pass)

Start
1st Pass
1. Success (90%) Fail (10%)
2nd Pass
2. Success (30%) Fail (70%)
3rd Pass
3. Success (10%) Fail (90%)
4th Pass
4. Success (1%) Fail (99%)

So using this logic the probability of getting 4 passes and equaling the damage dealt between the previous bomber and the new one (diesregarding the additional mass cost but focusing mainly on time) is 0,9*0,3*0,1*0,01=0,027%
Getting 3 passes has a probability of 2,7%


So what is clear is that higher DPS does not justify the higher cost.

You are assuming the bomber will attack the same target 4 times in a row. In reality, bombers are used the most against engies, and against them, they don't need to do a full turn. If you try to attack 4 different engies, you will find it extremely effective with the new turn ratio.

Also, bombers indeed die quite fast againts inties, but that's only when you don't have air control, when you do, they are pretty strong.

The last time I saw a bomber do 4 passes in a team game? My bombers do it quite often, specially when the enemy neglects to make inties and then blames the air player who didn't react on time. Again, you just need to attack 4 different targets or have air control.

[Evildrew]

Angus000, I am not assuming a bomber gets 4 passes, I am saying that in terms of the 15 second longer build time and 5 second shorter turn time it takes 4 passes for them to do the same amount of damange (that equates them for damage done). The point is DPS is not the correct measure to look at.
Also having air control is expensive and difficult to get if you also do t1 bombers when facing equally skilled players. Engies can make AA and factories mobile AA so even air control is not sufficient to ensure you get enough passes. Bombers are not that strong so having air control implies a later stage in the game when there are already quite a few engies around that will make the AA.

[Iszh]

No Lichking it was not sarcastic. I like the changes. I ve been killed by t1 bombers several times very very early. The top is the jokes was a bomber which was standing over my base minute 2-3 first bomber and it was simply standing and dropping 7 bombs without flying away. It killed all 4 pgens and 4 engis i had. My base was goen and ressources except my damaged factory. "Good" Game ..... not sure but a good game looks different. It is no fun if the game is decided in 50% by the first air battle.

Zock wanted to buff the bomber for normal usage and reduce the lame part of it. While removing radar and changing air physics he removed the lame part. Because air physics make hover bomb more difficult and second thing removing radar is increasing the difficulty for this bomber to attack in begin of game. In later game you can always get fast scout and do shift attacks over the map which works very very nice now and much better than before with new turn rate. Take 2 bombers and make "long line" attacks. Only attack targets you can kill with 1 pass with those 2 bombers and then make a long row of targets so they dont have to turn 180°. T1 bombers are used until lategame, so i think they will be better now for normal usage with scout and radar and the gameender position is gone. Those are bombers and not meant like gunships for attacking a single target 10 times until aa guns will appear. In my opinion t1 mobile aa guns buff was needed.

I like all the other changes as well. It brings fresh wind in this game and is not destructing it. 3 out of 4 factions can still do rambo acus and it costs simply 2k mass more but is 200% stronger. Cybran was anyways never able to do rambo acu. They have enough of sneaky other stuff. Maybe it will reduce even the number of 6-8 min suicides of t2 acus which think they are god and run into fire.

[Lieutenant Lich]

They made hoverbombing harder, that's the good part of the patch. They made 1st bomber more expensive and blind, that's the bad part.