Forged Alliance Forever

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-29T13:09:12+02:00

MrTBSC wrote:
so i say rather go with fairly priced "navalesque" orbital units that can´t shift .. and weither they are strong is simply determined by how you ballance them within their layer .. orbital vs orbital f.e. could have low HP and rather low dps but still be ballanced vs each other were ground AA defenses with additional antiorbital capability however could be strong against them or you have dedicated stationary ground antiorbital defenses depending on how complex you imagine this modidea to be ...

Yeah, i got you. Still can you help me constructing a template for Orbital units?

For Example, the current Air unit template is
*ASF:
+Fast moving
+Strong A-2-A
-have weakness of only being able to attack enemies from an angle
-generally less durable of all air units in the same tech tier.
-Lack A2G weapon

*Gunship
+Medium speed
+medium A-2-G weapon
-are more expensive than ASF of the same tech tier
+but is the easiest to maneuver.
+Have the highest amount of Health among air units of the same tech tier
+Have both A2G and A2A weapons but A2G is more powerful.

*Bomber
+speed is in-between Gunship and ASF
+Very high Burst damage
-Very hard to maneuver.
-Very expensive compare to air unit of the same tech tier
+Have Health in-between ASF and Gunship
-Lack A2A weapon

These are the Template for the key air units. I don't mention Aeon AA Gunship, Transport, Bomber/Fighter and Torpedo Bomber because they are more like specialised units.

With that template as the Standard what do you think orbit units should be like?

Statistics: Posted by salemdestroyer — 29 Oct 2019, 13:09

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-27T14:54:20+02:00

AdmiralZeech wrote:
Well, the point was, you can use tactics and micro to win fights on the ground, even when strategically disadvantaged.

But air combat in SupCom is extremely automated and there's only a limited amount of things you can do to win a fight with a given set of units.

So I wanted to try to add ways to win air fights via tactics, and not just having more aircraft than your opponent / having a better initial approach angle.

But anyways, I won't derail your thread further, carry on

If air is unavailable, you can always cover the ground with AA defense. One ASF in enemy possession means less unit to deal with your army in other layers.

If you litter your base with AA defense, even in lesser number your ASFs will have homeland advantage. There are a lot more ways to deal with Air superiority than proposing more micro into the game and generally, more micro = bad.

Statistics: Posted by salemdestroyer — 27 Oct 2019, 14:54

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-27T14:15:38+02:00

Well, the point was, you can use tactics and micro to win fights on the ground, even when strategically disadvantaged.

But air combat in SupCom is extremely automated and there's only a limited amount of things you can do to win a fight with a given set of units.

So I wanted to try to add ways to win air fights via tactics, and not just having more aircraft than your opponent / having a better initial approach angle.

But anyways, I won't derail your thread further, carry on

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 27 Oct 2019, 14:15

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-26T21:11:03+02:00

AdmiralZeech wrote:
A while ago (years?) I posted an idea, instead of Fuel, aircraft have a bar called "Kinetic", abstracting the concept of kinetic energy in fighter plane dogfights. I can't remember the details but I will reimagine the idea from scratch:

- Remove fuel as a concept, and use the fuel bar for a new thing called "Kinetic"

- We have a high altitude layer and a low altitude layer, and buttons to go to high altitude and low altitude.

- Altitude does not affect whether you can be targeted by weapons. (ie. any altitude can be fired upon by any anti-air weapon.)

- Going from low alt to high will cost a chunk of kinetic.

- Firing weapons will cost kinetic.

- You can do both of the above even if you don't have enough kinetic - it will just cap at zero.

- Going from high alt to low will give a kinetic boost.

- Flying at high alt will generate kinetic slowly over time.

- High kinetic increases the damage of the unit's weapons.

- Units at high alt take more damage from SAMs and Air-to-Air weapons. But less damage from Flak.

--------------------

The point of the idea was to give some more tactics and micro around air-air combat. Building up your kinetic at high altitude and the diving down to attack will do the most damage. Or climbing up when empty of kinetic and then diving again to get a small boost.

Similarly, bombers can be microed to become more effective, by building kinetic when cruising at high altitude, then diving before they attack. It makes continuous bomber attacks a bit more complex, as you have to choose whether to spend more time at high alt away from the target to build up kinetic again, or just do another attack run at low alt and low kinetic.

Finally, it also gives some more differences between flak and SAMs, as they do different damage to different layers.

yeeaaaa ... not liking this idea for the additional airmicro ... also your idea is already too complex ..
basicaly need an extra "energy"gauge purely for the need to micro airunits as well as determining their dps efficiency ..... just no ...
especialy with having to be aware on stuff that happens on the ground ...

Statistics: Posted by MrTBSC — 26 Oct 2019, 21:11

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-26T21:14:13+02:00

Well, that kinetic thing is highly contrast to my idea for Orbit.

As a layer, Orbit is both a tactical and strategic frontline. My vision is to offer more strategic elements into the game in a macro scale not micromanagement level. Kinetic is something I don’t really want to happen. SupCom is at large a strategy game, I don’t want players to be distracted by some more tedious micromanagement.

Statistics: Posted by salemdestroyer — 26 Oct 2019, 17:59

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-26T17:17:01+02:00

A while ago (years?) I posted an idea, instead of Fuel, aircraft have a bar called "Kinetic", abstracting the concept of kinetic energy in fighter plane dogfights. I can't remember the details but I will reimagine the idea from scratch:

- Remove fuel as a concept, and use the fuel bar for a new thing called "Kinetic"

- We have a high altitude layer and a low altitude layer, and buttons to go to high altitude and low altitude.

- Altitude does not affect whether you can be targeted by weapons. (ie. any altitude can be fired upon by any anti-air weapon.)

- Going from low alt to high will cost a chunk of kinetic.

- Firing weapons will cost kinetic.

- You can do both of the above even if you don't have enough kinetic - it will just cap at zero.

- Going from high alt to low will give a kinetic boost.

- Flying at high alt will generate kinetic slowly over time.

- High kinetic increases the damage of the unit's weapons.

- Units at high alt take more damage from SAMs and Air-to-Air weapons. But less damage from Flak.

--------------------

The point of the idea was to give some more tactics and micro around air-air combat. Building up your kinetic at high altitude and the diving down to attack will do the most damage. Or climbing up when empty of kinetic and then diving again to get a small boost.

Similarly, bombers can be microed to become more effective, by building kinetic when cruising at high altitude, then diving before they attack. It makes continuous bomber attacks a bit more complex, as you have to choose whether to spend more time at high alt away from the target to build up kinetic again, or just do another attack run at low alt and low kinetic.

Finally, it also gives some more differences between flak and SAMs, as they do different damage to different layers.

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 26 Oct 2019, 17:17

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-23T19:22:05+02:00

salemdestroyer wrote:
I am unsure. I think if we treat it as an overlapped layer with air, it will be better and allow more connection between layers. Orbital-2-ground is a privilege only for Novax, i think this is ok.

This topic is very vague and hard to discuss because we have yet defined a parameter as to which to discuss about so i will take this chance to try and make one.
Primarily, i think a strong orbital units should not have the power to attack ground.

Weaker units like the Novax is ok to have orbit-2-ground weapon.

Unit that can travel between layer is better off not having orbit-2-ground capacity.

Fast moving Orbital units should has weakness to compensate.

I got to say the original 4 layers are very dynamic. Adding a 5th one like i am suggesting is extremely difficult.
Seabed occupy the same space as the sea layer.
While sea and ground occupy the same space as Air.

This make very interesting combination of weaponry and unit property. As the orbit is the same as air but is higher than air, treating it the same as air is the correct choice but it risk making duplication of layers and no innovation in gameplay.

Got to say even i don't know how to express myself in a comprehensible manner.

the layers are not the same .. you merely have a number of units that interact between layers

for instance seafloor, seasurface and submarine all interact with each other using torpedoes or torpedodefese .. they are not the same still ...

you could say that air and orbital are technically the same cause of high floating units but the difference is in which of the units in each layer interact with another layer ... weither that is air with ground, orbital with ground, air with air or orbital with orbital ...

airunits like bombers for example interact with ground and sea seasurface ... now if you allow bombers to shift between air and orbital that would mean that at least mobile AA units might not be able to shoot/interact with bombers in the orbital layer .. making low tier mobile AA basicaly useless because the player who shift his bombers can just cyrcumvent the mobile AA and get into an attackarea of his chosing ... and the player who normaly uses mobile AA would have to shift his own air to orbit to take down surfacethreads ...
that´s not intresting that´s rather unneccassary busywork you rather should avoid ..

if however you go and let any AA also target orbital, then frankly there isn´t much point in having such oribitalshifting units ..

so i say rather go with fairly priced "navalesque" orbital units that can´t shift .. and weither they are strong is simply determined by how you ballance them within their layer .. orbital vs orbital f.e. could have low HP and rather low dps but still be ballanced vs each other were ground AA defenses with additional antiorbital capability however could be strong against them or you have dedicated stationary ground antiorbital defenses depending on how complex you imagine this modidea to be ...

Statistics: Posted by MrTBSC — 23 Oct 2019, 19:22

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-23T17:19:46+02:00

I am unsure. I think if we treat it as an overlapped layer with air, it will be better and allow more connection between layers. Orbital-2-ground is a privilege only for Novax, i think this is ok.

This topic is very vague and hard to discuss because we have yet defined a parameter as to which to discuss about so i will take this chance to try and make one.
Primarily, i think a strong orbital units should not have the power to attack ground.

Weaker units like the Novax is ok to have orbit-2-ground weapon.

Unit that can travel between layer is better off not having orbit-2-ground capacity.

Fast moving Orbital units should has weakness to compensate.

I got to say the original 4 layers are very dynamic. Adding a 5th one like i am suggesting is extremely difficult.
Seabed occupy the same space as the sea layer.
While sea and ground occupy the same space as Air.

This make very interesting combination of weaponry and unit property. As the orbit is the same as air but is higher than air, treating it the same as air is the correct choice but it risk making duplication of layers and no innovation in gameplay.

Got to say even i don't know how to express myself in a comprehensible manner.

Statistics: Posted by salemdestroyer — 23 Oct 2019, 17:19

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-18T15:46:45+02:00

salemdestroyer wrote:
@MrTBSC I am not sure about giving stronger units into space. I has yet to brainstorm a connection between stronger orbit units and other layers.

how should i explain that best ..
they don´t have to be "stronger" in that sense ... as i was saying the orbital layer should better not be filled up with many units as is the case for air f.e. .. mobile orbital units imo should be similar to navy were you have on avarage fewer units however these should be strong in that particular layer .... it shouldn´t be populated so much (neither should offer a too strong set) that it takes too much attention away from what is going on on the surface ... the orbital layer should be primarily support your advancmeants on the surface ... it should not be the layer your primary military power comes from .. doesn´t mean it can´t have static or mobile orbital units with offensive capability torwards the surface ..

this is why i´m against air units being able to shift between air and orbital ..

Statistics: Posted by MrTBSC — 18 Oct 2019, 15:46

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-18T13:36:44+02:00

i saw my fair share of space mods, most of them are good looking but nowhere near balanced. Many units become so obsolete you just skip them entirely.

@tatsu

Yeah, i feel you. So may be Orbital layer allow Air units to move faster?

I do have some ideas like a refueling station in space for Space Building that can be toggled between Mobile mode and Station mode. Station has some weak O-2-O weapons and a repair + refuel ability with greater capacity (12 ASF slots) than the T2 Air Stagnant facility (4 ASF slots) but for balanced reason, i have yet to explore into that.

@MrTBSC I am not sure about giving stronger units into space. I has yet to brainstorm a connection between stronger orbit units and other layers.

Statistics: Posted by salemdestroyer — 18 Oct 2019, 13:36

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-15T22:58:11+02:00

vongratz wrote:
Several orbital units are being developed in a new mod version. https://www.moddb.com/mods/fbp-future-b ... n#imagebox

..... ...... ummm did you take inspiration from PA by chance? ....

at topic:
orbital definetively needs to not be just swarmed with units .. ... i´m honestly thinking that adding cheap orbital AO units might not be a good idea ... rather something like frigates or destroyeresque but only very few orbital units to attack surface ..

Statistics: Posted by MrTBSC — 15 Oct 2019, 22:58

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-15T08:30:19+02:00

interesting. problem with most orbital mods though is that they aim for "the rule of cool" over balance. I think the idea here isn't to have a bazillion orbital units, it's to use the space layer in a balanced manner.

if you just want "space mods" there's :

- Xtreme Wars (hosted on FAF featured)
- Black Ops
- Orbital Wars

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 15 Oct 2019, 08:30

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-15T05:16:06+02:00

Several orbital units are being developed in a new mod version. https://www.moddb.com/mods/fbp-future-b ... n#imagebox

Statistics: Posted by vongratz — 15 Oct 2019, 05:16

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-14T23:14:21+02:00

great ideas.

I support changing things up and using the space layer more.

I like most of your suggestions but the speed nerf on space layer makes absolutely no sense to me.

yeah yeah it makes no sense from a lore point of view but have you considered that it also makes no sense from a balance and gameplay point of view?

if the units that can go there are fighters and bombers but bombers can only bomb on air layer... then why does any unit ever enter the orbital layer at all?

oh you might say "to avoid anti air fire from everything else" but technically speaking, by volume of incoming fire (if counted by DPS, but I think counting by projectiles works as well) the crushing majority comes from other air units.

so you move your bombers up a layer... great!... now they're a sitting duck even more so then they were in the air layer : ASF swarms are more efficient against bombers at lower speeds.

You also say that sams should target the orbital layer.

okay the orbital layer as described sounds like a world of suck no unit would ever want to go to.

If you only make one small alteration to your proposed model : instead of nerfing the speed in orbital you buff it, then all of the sudden an interesting dynamic develops :

now there is motive, however minor, to go to the orbital layer for your bombers : a better chance at catching the opponent off guard.

If, via the space layer, you gain some time on your snipe run, it naturally follows that this could be a net benefit risk to take.

ASFs must follow suit in order to counter them. better yet, as a preventive measure you might choose to split your asf swathe between the two layers. their positioning might also be entirely different based on the layer. the reduced anti-air fire in this higher altitude means you can place them further into enemy territory and this would be to your advantage as that is where the enemy bombers are likely to ascend.

On and on it goes.

and yeah you get the added bonus of this matching with the "lore"/science : to get into orbit you have to be going faster.

but I only see all of this "matching logic" as a biproduct of this game being a simulation... in simulations, things start to work better from a gameplay perspective when you make them more realistic.

I digress,

anyways there's loads of ways to pick at this mechanic and enhance it into something really gameplay worthy :

the idea of no available ground to space weaponry being available at all could be one interesting dynamic, or there being a separate set of structures/units dedicated to only this could also make for something interesting.

I personally think the most interesting way to do this would be the following :

no ground to space solutions
obviously your idea of the bombing run alignment having to be done entirely in the air layer stays. (with the current balance for bombers this should assure the current air defense dynamic stays entirely the same.)
air units cost stats stay the same
ALL air units start out space-capable by default, much bulkier with particularly SLOWER speeds and with WIDER turn radii. They have these extra bits that are the thrusters that are both responsible for getting them into space and space-capable. These can either be set to decouple right out the factory (via a attack priority set on the factory ...this priority could also be the default so as to set back the "space "age") or be decoupled manually at a time of the user's choosing via a unit action. Once in space their turn radius remains the same nerfed radius but their speed is superior to even their decoupled versions in the air layer. Re-entering orbit ALWAYS decouples them. the decoupled thrusters ALWAYS disintegrate and do not collide or leave any wreaks. Once decoupled they regain current turn radii and speed but they can no longer enter space for the rest of their life unless they dock at a refueling station set to the "add thrusters mode". (To sum up : two action buttons are added to the air unit : - "ascend to space" and - a "decouple/descend to air layer" button. while in the air layer both are available, if the decouple button is pressed, both buttons disappear and the rockets decouple, if instead you click the ascend button, it disappears and the craft ascends to space (overall behaves like a submarine except the action button is split into two). while in the space layer you only have the descend/decouple button left and that button does both those things, and then disappears.)
refueling stations of all sorts (static, cybran cruiser, fatboy, atlantis, carriers, donut) all get an extra switchable mode for setting whether they rebuild the space thrusters of any docking aircraft. It is set to off by default. If turned on, the refueling and repair will be followed by re-adding these thrusters which I'm eyeballing at 400milliseconds for build time and 5mass 1000power. I dunno the idea is it should be penalizing that you got rid of them either for air-layer speed or re-entry reuse of the same unit, but not too much because you are taking the time and micro to re-fit them. (an alternate version of this balance is without the option of adding the thrusters back on at all so as to punish ditching them even harder)
while T4 air can ascend and descend once, their ascent thrusters are lost PERMANENTLY and CANNOT be rebuilt

As you can probably deduce from these rules, now the trip up and down is no longer a full freedom, but a minor investment and sort-of one-way.

obviously then the dynamic becomes multiplied :

do I stomach the poorer overall air units in order to keep my space options fully open?

do I forgo space for now by setting the factory to ditch all thrusters because I desperately need air control right now?

do I build half and half and send the suited ones straight to space and minimize my interchanging of layers in a effort to save resources and apm instead of time?

do I build more refueling solutions and utilize them to make the might of my death swarm felt as I send a greater force up and down both layers?

this is all spit-balling, feel free to improve upon this.

all this being said , one idea that I do not like is messing with the novax. if fighters in the space layer can't target it that's fine, but if they can there will be no way to buff the novax in a way that makes it worthwhile anymore. like not even if you give it a bazillion health points. you have no idea the kinda air swarms people can and will produce.

so let's just say it's in a "much higher orbit " and call it a day, this way it's dynamic continues to function.

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 14 Oct 2019, 23:14

Re: [Discussion] High Altitude the 5th Front

2019-10-14T16:27:33+02:00

You will need to have new units for the new layer. Making existing units access the layer without any units will just make things more complicated without a real benefit. You already need to introduce new weapons to interact on the new layer. Just go the full way and mount them on new units. Then this could develop into an interesting mod that adds to the gameplay without disturbing the current unit roles too much.

Statistics: Posted by BlackYps — 14 Oct 2019, 16:27