Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-31T19:20:03+02:00

yeah. that's the takeway here, this game is both beautiful and flawed and despite it's flaws still a shitload of fun.

And devs and balance team keep their ears peeled for good ideas that could keep chipping away at the flaws.

it's no easy task though. pulling one lever might have huge ripple effects. and you need to weight in the expertise of the fewer more knowledgeable pro players as well as the ill-founded but genuinely experienced beliefs the much much more numerous noobie players hold.

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 31 Oct 2019, 19:20

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-31T18:33:35+02:00

It was a turtle game, with the back guys spamming SCUs. Not a normal game, I guess. Don't get me wrong - i LOVE the preset SCUs. That was frigging genius. I didn't actually know they had presets from the start until last night (I'm new to FAF, played supcom since beta, but havent played in nearly a decade).

The ease of making them with RAS (absence of micro) makes it better. I thought all those damned things were microed into RAS...that idea bothered me!

I'm seeing that things are still the same. My memory of this game is all positive, but after playing, I see that I was remembering it through rose colored glasses - the stuff that used to piss me off is pissing me off again! Big turtley maps end up as nuke/arty fests, which used to annoy me. The game is better, but the endgame is still similar.

i think it all boils down to the fact that I want to win using ground or naval units, air drops and coordinated attacks - but SOME times, it's the guy who can micro his shields the best wins. In the end, its still way more fun than it ever was!

Statistics: Posted by Pluto77189 — 31 Oct 2019, 18:33

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-31T00:16:14+02:00

Pluto77189 wrote:
Now it's all tiny high hp scus.

that's actually an incredibly underused strat.

the whole reason we added the possibility to build SACUs with upgrades already added was because of how direly underused and underappreciated these units used to be

they're definitely nowhere close to needing a nerf.

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 31 Oct 2019, 00:16

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-29T22:09:49+02:00

Pluto77189 wrote:
Finally played a long game... I think the biggest problem now is actually support commanders and Ras. I should be space limited for economy, and economy should be vulnerable. Chain reactions, Shields going down, etc from a good strike. Now it's all tiny high hp scus. That kinda sucks. I think limiting# of scus is an easy fix. I forget, are you able to set limits? Or just allow/disallow?

you can turn off units ... but well it´s a bit less likely people gonna play with you ...

Statistics: Posted by MrTBSC — 29 Oct 2019, 22:09

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-29T21:39:20+02:00

Finally played a long game... I think the biggest problem now is actually support commanders and Ras. I should be space limited for economy, and economy should be vulnerable. Chain reactions, Shields going down, etc from a good strike. Now it's all tiny high hp scus. That kinda sucks. I think limiting# of scus is an easy fix. I forget, are you able to set limits? Or just allow/disallow?

Statistics: Posted by Pluto77189 — 29 Oct 2019, 21:39

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-29T19:57:19+02:00

Pluto77189 wrote:
I always felt that transports and strat bombers must retain long range. it's fighters and gunships that need to have a short range. The "problem" was that maps which are simply a swarm of T3 air vs another swarm of T3 air are boring, and lack depth. I hate how hard it is to counter air. If each fighter/t2 bomber/gunship had only a brief engagement time, it would force use of support structures/carriers. A group of gunships might take out a few cruisers, but only if they have a carrier nearby. Similarly, your fighters above YOUR carriers are supplied and refueled - the enemy just sent theirs across the map; they'll be out of fuel within seconds of engagement. This makes carriers huge strategic assets/targets. Take out the carriers, and you have shifted the balance in your favor. I think it would make a different style of game play, slower paced in that air cannot strike alone. But it will make for more fun engagements.

to make aircraft have only brief engagemeants would mean they are ammo dependant (like the afforementioned C&C games)
i may have mentioned this in another thread but what COULD be done is to make aircraft be powerdependand similar to artilery ..
have a bit of a total supply of power for A or multilpe short bursts to then continue fighting at a lower output if not fully powered up
and airpads would rearm planes quicker than they would on their own in exchange for removing fuel dependency ...

inties/ASFs and gunships f.e. could have a greater max powersupply and faster selfrearmrate on power than bombers for longer engagemeants .. meaning you could "technically" do a bit more with a small group of gunships were if you want greater bombardmeant you would need more bombers (specifically stratbombs and maybe t2 fighter/bombers)or else your bombers would have to rearm more often between bombingruns .. makes sense? ..

however in case of AAplanes and gunships that could mean more micro for when a player particulary may focus on keeping his airunits at their most effective putting taking themm into and out of a fight...
and it definetively will be more micro with bombers to send them to airstaging more often ..

Statistics: Posted by MrTBSC — 29 Oct 2019, 19:57

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-29T13:36:53+02:00

I think making Air units much more expensive in term of "mass" can force players to choose a different approach.

The newly added Land T3 mobile AA are kind of strong but they have fatal flaws.
-They are more than twice as expensive as ASF
-They are terrible against swarm of T3 air. They are more suitable to deal with Ex Air units then that
-Being Ground, there are area they can not travel through
-Their speed are not slow but only barely above average for ground units
-Their effective damage (an unit with high effective damage means that units are less likely to overkill + they have high dps) are lower than ASF

They are a novel idea for ground force to deal with High-end air army but they will only win the fight if the Air army is trying to have a fight against them. Air army will usually ignore them or avoid them and there is nothing they can do. Amassing T3 Mobile AA is not the way to deal with Air. With all of their weakness they are no better than T3 SAM launch, maybe even worse due to low health.

I know Air units got a nerf at their resource cost compare to original FA but they are still the only way to fight air. T3 Mobile AA is still strictly base defense if people bother making them.

I think we need to increase the effectiveness of Ground and Naval units in combating against air.

Saying that my suggestion is not without problem. Nerfing air units will in turn making Arti, Nukes and Experimental units much more powerful because normally Air is the solution against Arti, Nukes and Experimental.

Seeing enemies have a Duke or Mavor or Salvation. Go build T3 Strat Bombers.
Seeing Paragon, Nukes, Ex Nuke? Strat bombers or may be a shit load of Gunships.
Seeing Chicken, GC, FatBoy, Crab. Strat or Gunship spam.

Almost everything involve air.
Assassin ACU? Fast and High Burst damage like Bombers are the way.
Scouting the are. Spy Plane is the way.
ACU will escape if we don't have ASF to kill Transport. Go for ASF now.
The Map is so big. Air is the fastest and the best go for air.

If we even want to escape the madness of every game is about air. We need to boost the efficiency of other units. Otherwise, it will be the same. The Mechanic of Air Fuel Penalty is not enough to make people look away. We need to think of something else.

May be Out of fuel = Weapon attack 50% slower?

Statistics: Posted by salemdestroyer — 29 Oct 2019, 13:36

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-29T02:20:44+02:00

I always felt that transports and strat bombers must retain long range. it's fighters and gunships that need to have a short range. The "problem" was that maps which are simply a swarm of T3 air vs another swarm of T3 air are boring, and lack depth. I hate how hard it is to counter air. If each fighter/t2 bomber/gunship had only a brief engagement time, it would force use of support structures/carriers. A group of gunships might take out a few cruisers, but only if they have a carrier nearby. Similarly, your fighters above YOUR carriers are supplied and refueled - the enemy just sent theirs across the map; they'll be out of fuel within seconds of engagement. This makes carriers huge strategic assets/targets. Take out the carriers, and you have shifted the balance in your favor. I think it would make a different style of game play, slower paced in that air cannot strike alone. But it will make for more fun engagements.

Statistics: Posted by Pluto77189 — 29 Oct 2019, 02:20

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-28T10:58:08+02:00

In large map, to move ground units quickly, you need air transport so yeah, big map even favor air more than normal.

The problem with ground units getting nerfed and not as resilient as original campaign is just contribute to the problem.

Statistics: Posted by salemdestroyer — 28 Oct 2019, 10:58

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-27T11:54:22+02:00

I have idea for some airfeul mode, but it will change gameplay so none will play it and it not worth of effort so...

Lower fuel time drastically for like 30 sec
change effect of no fuel to -> lower speed by 20% lower rof by 30%
add huge active radius on-air staging, where will automatically refuel planes if in area.

that will mean air will need stuck in a concrete area. units with air staging will be much more important. Bombers will not be that much affected.

Statistics: Posted by Ithilis_Quo — 27 Oct 2019, 11:54

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-26T17:19:24+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:

http://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.p ... 33#p179233

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 26 Oct 2019, 17:19

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-25T19:24:54+02:00

fuel for aircraft in planetary annihilation does not exist (neither the need for ammosuply like the command and conquer games) but it has the same problem that imo supcom aswell suffers from .. airunits, specifically AA planes quickly become too numerous in those games .. and many times it feels less worth to go for mobile ground AA than to simply try and dominate Air with AAplanes .. .. ... like how many matches are there were air is not EVER be used?

sooo what could be done is to increase the cost of Air so airplanes might be not as much swarming the map but trying to ballance their efficency vs other aircraft .. as well as maybe decreasing airspeed in general ..
the more drastic thing to do, something you can already do is to play matches without AAplanes (and fighterbombers) and see if that is more enjoyable to you ... ... maybe even more drastic .. restrict air to t2 and t3 if you want to delay the timing air comes into effect in a match ...

large maps however will still be an issue cause of longer traveltimes for any groundunit, that´s simply their nature, so you may have to deal with more AG planestrikes and your slower groundarmy being more bombarded unless accompanied by sufficient AA ..

Lape wrote:
how would nerfing air make big maps anything but nuke and arty fest?

depending on the map and gamelength this is what the game ultimately turns into with shieldspam ..
lategame bases become too resilient to be attacked with mobile units to be taken down quickly enough, especialy with ever more growing eco through massfarms and ecosubcomms ..

Statistics: Posted by MrTBSC — 25 Oct 2019, 19:24

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-25T15:07:01+02:00

I am not against the change but i dont get that point,how would nerfing air make big maps anything but nuke and arty fest?The change you propose imo would be more interesting on the smaller maps especially ,on 20 by 20 it could have a nice effect on navy and landgame.Smaller maps -not really an issue after people get used to it. I'm not against the other ,fuel removal either,tho some rant of mine comes to mind from another topic about why optimize the game for lazy people ,but the intie fuel stuff is indeed quite canc..unenjoyable.

Statistics: Posted by Lape — 25 Oct 2019, 15:07

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-25T10:24:51+02:00

Sprouto wrote:
Now, on 20k maps and less, it's not really much of a concern

Sadly for your project, 20km and less are the only maps that get played => are relevant.

Statistics: Posted by Rikai — 25 Oct 2019, 10:24

Re: Air fuel restrictions

2019-10-25T05:59:41+02:00

That's what I'm talking about. I used to like the big maps - 40 and occasional 80km maps. They become air centered nuke fests. I felt air with much less fuel would shift the game so that it required more planning, more strategy, especially in using air. Now it's point and click, watch target die. If you had to fuel the things in between takeoff and target, you will have to consider that.

Statistics: Posted by Pluto77189 — 25 Oct 2019, 05:59