Bomber buff/maa nerf

[Evan_]

This has been on my mind for a while, but I think now's a good time to take look at this.

My opinion's mainly formed from other's arguments. The t1 maa buff is commonly brought up by players whenever they take issue with balance. It's certainly an area talked about a lot, I'll just take a few quotes that I searched on the forums.

I know i'm 1 year late with this, but...

Can we make t1 maa rape bombers less hard?

Right now you can just go first second third fourth land fac on most maps while making 1 t1 maa to rape all incoming air. The couple of 2v2 games i played with bhedit made me realise i actually have to make second air to prevent air rape. Which meant that from the start there was a constant air supremacy battle going on combined with the usual land battles.

t1 bombers already got nerfed hard, but combined with the t1 maa buff it made early air harassment a lot harder (compared to how easy land harassment is). I'm not saying to revert it back to what it previously was. Just make it atleast a bit more viable for more air action in the early game.

T1 Mobile AA
HP: Nerf UEF and Seraphim HP to 260

I agree, that t1 maa with 360 hp is far too powerful. Although im not sure about the amount yet.

Things like the bomber change. Why is it different? First what was changed: bomber was made much more expensive and slower to build, it's automatic behavior was improved while hover bombing was made much harder making it a strategy with the risk/reward ratio very high.

This produces several detrimental results:
1. Micro is made unrewarding. Absolute most of the time even the best players go for simple targetting instead of attempting hover bombing because the bomber behavior is so unstable and automatic one is consistent enough. This lowers available strategies, this lowers skill gap, this lowers interesting gameplay opportunities.
2. For the second result we have to go and look into the reasoning that was put behind this change. And the main reasoning was that first bobmer was deemed "too strong" for new players to deal with. This indeed caused some ruckus amongst people, some liked it some didnt and it wasn't a mechanic contoversial exclusively to low level players. But what a change like this did is catering to "lazy" players and shallow gameplay. Players who do not want to learn how to split their engineers and react properly, players who do not want to learn how to micro a bomber themselves. If the first bomber was too strong the reaction should have been to nerf it, not completely change and flatten the mechanic. So what is the second result of the bomber change? The opening strategies have become way more static and boring. First bomber is only seldom used on it's best maps like White Fire and never on "normal maps". Realistically I can only imagine myself losing to first bomber on a normal map because I simply don't expect anyone to build it anymore. But it doesn't end there. Air openings were affected all along. Second air has become a much more hard opening to use and more and more I see static openings of building countless land factories before air which eliminates early air raids, eliminates early gameplay variety, makes all games predictable and boring. There is a reason I fell in love with Forged Alliance and it's sure as hell not because it was casual or shallow.

Now my personal, and hopefully still valid opinion:

Honestly I don't really know much about hoverbombing. I was stuck in thermo and astro craters with -100 rating when they made changes to the turn rate or something to remove it.

But the nerfs seem overly harsh to me. When I played in the BHedit tourney, second air was very common, but it didn't at all feel overpowered or out of place. It was more fun, I didn't have to worry about getting spammed to death because I made the wrong type of factory.

And in ladder, the further up I get the less I see early air openings at all. Most opponents seem to be dodging bombs consistently, reacting quickly with maa, and raiding constantly to punish lack of tanks. So second air or even third air feels pretty unviable to me, because I'm not even that high up (you can search my name on the leaderboards to find my current rating) and people already seem skilled enough at dealing with them.

As for the actual changes I think should be made: I'd personally prefer to see a decrease in cost and buildtime, combined with a dps nerf for t1 maa. But I think I'll wait and see what you guys have to say.

[JoonasTo]

T1 Mobile AA
HP: Nerf UEF and Seraphim HP to 260

I agree, that t1 maa with 360 hp is far too powerful. Although im not sure about the amount yet.

This actually has nothing to do with bombers but rather with gunships and commanders.

[Evan_]

my bad

[JaggedAppliance]

In my eyes most comments on these changes are exaggerated. People are making good use of bombers in the early game which you can see from many casts I've done recently. Second air first bomber is certainly less common now but bombers are more useful than before in many midgame scenarios. Players also delay the bomber slightly to make sure it can be protected. There is also a lot of micro potential with t1 bombers early on as you can actually dodge maa shots and turn and escape out of range quicker.

For maa, everyone should recall just how useless this unit was, it couldn't fulfill it's role at all basically. Now it is twice as expensive so it is not trivial to get multiple of these across the map early on so avoiding them with your bombers is very possible. That being said I think the maa can do with some refinement and there will be a change to it in the next balance patch.