Idea to make staging facilities useful

[Kryo]

Instead of forcing airplanes to land on them to repair and refuel, give it an repair range, which could be something like t2 pd range.
All airplanes, !!LANDED!! within the range on the ground get repair and refuel, refuel is free, repair needs mass and energy repair costs.
Either deactivate landing completely or make landing on the pad repair for free or repair faster or something like that.

What do you think?

[Softly]

I think staging posts are already useful, though I'd agree that they're underused.

They really come into their own for t3 planes, t2 is a bit borderline and t1 just isn't worth it. It is however easy to use once you've built it.

Making its effect into an area though would be silly, the point is that each one only fixes planes at a certain rate. If you need more fixing build more staging areas!

[Karottenrambo]

Repairing on Staging Facilities is already super fast, however repairing on it still costs as much as to build a new unit of the same type, so there is no reason to use it if you have enough buildpower anyway.

Fuel is not really implemented in the game. Only t1 air units can possibly run out of fuel and even that is very rare, because its more likely that they destroyed before. T2 air units have enough fuel for their entire lifetime and GPG gave t3 air, as the genius gamedesigners they are, a fuel time of >15 minutes...

[Kryo]

Repairing on Staging Facilities is already super fast, however repairing on it still costs as much as to build a new unit of the same type, so there is no reason to use it if you have enough buildpower anyway.

Fuel is not really implemented in the game. Only t1 air units can possibly run out of fuel and even that is very rare, because its more likely that they destroyed before. T2 air units have enough fuel for their entire lifetime and GPG gave t3 air, as the genius gamedesigners they are, a fuel time of >15 minutes...

what if the repair would only cost 80% and we give airplanes better veterancy boni?

[Softly]

I was pretty sure it already cost less to repair than to build a new one?

[Adraius]

It would be interesting to add fuel level and staging facility balance to the list on things to tinker with in a future patch. As you said, right now it's hardly a factor; why not make it a factor? Right now there are bigger fish to fry, but something to mix up air combat in a way other than hard balance chances would be worth a look at. Planes needing forward staging platforms for extended fights on the far side of Setons, anyone? And adjusting repair cost to 50-80% of build cost (if not there already) can would go aways towards a) helping them become more useful b) adding a new factor in air battles. (although perhaps this would favor the aggressor too much, letting them repair their surviving planes?)

FYI, I don't know if there would better go here or in a balance subforum.

[Myrdral]

The mass cost for repairing aircraft at a staging facility needs to be established. I do not have the current FAF release so I hope the tests I did in my unmodded game are relevant. I repaired an interceptor from 1hp to full with an air staging facility and it took less than 5 mass. That is under 10% the cost of the plane. Do not confuse this with repair by an engineer as that costs the full unit value from what I could tell. An air staging facility costs 175 mass and 2100 energy. For the air stage to be worth the investment, it would have to pay for itself by repairing an equal mass worth of damaged air units. As the stage is so inexpensive, 10 t1 interceptors at 50% health each would be worth building the stage. Damaged air units are also more likely to give veterancy and reclaim to your opponent. It could be argued that even if the stage took more mass than the original air unit for repairs, that it is still cost effective after considering the advantages your opponent gets for each unit he destroys and reclaims. There is also a cost involved in creating and dedicating the build power to create new air units. The air stage repairs so quickly that it would take an immense amount of build power and investment to equal its efficiency in putting a mass value worth of aircraft into the air. You may also find your air units gaining veterancy and surviving more and more as they level up in comparison to green factory units. This would compound the effectiveness of the air stage as you will have more surviving damaged air units for the stage to efficently preserve.

Game settings, map, player skill, metagame and much more are also factors in the usefulness of the air stage. The largely popular 4v4 team games encourage the back player to eco and acquire a huge force of ASF as early as possible. In a different scenario, the build used by that back player would result in certain death and obviously would not be attempted. We must consider how the air stage applies to 1v1 , max unit count, and other settings.

[Myrdral]

Individual players may choose a tactic which preserves their air units. To maximize the payoff from investing in an air stage, you want to keep as many air units alive as possible. This means that you do not want to engage in a fight to the last plane standing. Make it difficult for your opponent to apply his anti-air against your aircraft in a way that would cause focused damage to individual planes or a critical amount of total damage. Use the speed of the air units to strafe a target and veer off in a safe and protected direction. Return to your stage and repeat. Each anti-air unit has a weakness or a way for you to keep it from hurting your air units too badly. Enemy air to air units can be misdirected and disctracted away from your intended targets by a smaller force. Their ground based AA can be avoided or quickly disengaged after a single pass. When attacking with air near stationary AA structures, you have all the power to decide the vector of attack and retreat to minimize damage taken. A shield of expendible t1 units can be used to shield more valuable air units from the alpha strikes of t3 SAM(not so much vs t1 t2 AA structures due to aoe and fire rate decimating low health air units).

ASF are used heavily in many games due to a number of factors which make them a good choice. Large map team games encourage the protecting of an eco player who mainly goes directly for an ASF spam with very few other combat units. The presence of ASF certainly makes it difficult for an air stage to be effective as air units will not be able to engages for very long without heavy losses. You definitely do not want to build a dozen air stages only to have no damaged ASF of your own to use them on. You may even allow your opposing ASF player to gain a numbers advantage by wasting mass on the stages. If you are going to build stages, you must be sure that you are going to make use of them. ASF damage to your own air units can be greatly mitigated in a number of ways so that your air stage may still have some air to repair after an ASF battle. You can try to spread their damage among many ships by engaging in a formation with tanky air units in front(anything which you'd rather have the enemy ASF shoot instead of your own ASF, strategic bombers etc). If you use air experimentals, the enemy may try to focus it. Supported by your own anti-air, the experimental may tank the enemy asf long enough for your own units to reduce their numbers and ability to finish off the experimental. An air stage will not fix the experimenal if it lives, however your enemy focused as much firepower against it as he could, so many of your other ships will be damaged in small amounts but still alive. Even if the experimental dies, its sacrifice may give you air superiority, the ability to reclaim after the battle, and veteran air units to go receive cost-efficent repairs. there are other ways to make ASF pay for trying to kill off all the air units you are trying so hard to keep alive. Make them chase you over SAM and send other groups of ASF in behind them. Hold some bombers or gunships in reserve to cause damage while they chase your ASF down. Send in an attack on their base with a formation including t1 in front to cause them to overkill and waste their damage. follow them up with your own ASF , bombers , gunships and transports. Your opponent will not be able to micro their ASF to not waste their attacks against t1 and your non ASF forces. You may distract them enough to allow time to damage their ground units and base or snipe their ACU with strat bombers. You may even kill off their ASF with a proper combination of meat shields and your own large ASF force(albeit smaller than their dedicated all ASF.

[Myrdral]

Apologies for the wild tangent wall of text. I wrote all that to describe how you can manipulate the situation to allow damaged air units to survive and repair at an air stage, especially against the every-so popular ASF swarm. Alternatively, your units may even run out of fuel if have repeated success. Ignoring all the things about how to keep air units alive to use the stage, air stage usefulness mostly comes down to mass and build power use/investment. If everything else I wrote seems crazy, at least consider the point about not giving your opponent mass from wrecked air units which could have entered the fight at full health and survived if an air stage had repaired them. An opponent might out-spam you with ASF if you build air stages in a hypothetical example where that is all the two players build with an equal and limited build power and eco. However, with the right tactics and diversifying your units even further, you may make them pay for only spamming ASF and eco. Consider how your tactics affects your opponents ability to micro in response. Diverse units make it extremely difficult for them to do things such as have their ASF target your own ASF efficiently. It is extremely micro intensive for them to have groups of 5-8 ASF or whatever and have each target one of your ASF at a time when you have an immense swarm of t1, tankier t3 air and experimental in the mix. Best case scenario with mixed units vs ASF if you have them all shoot at air scouts or other t1 with their alpha strike and then you return fire, suddenly they have lost some ASF and now have less than you, while all you lost were some t1 air. No player can micro well enough to have this not happen to some degree. The larger the force the harder it is for them.

This message brought to you by someone who thinks 250ASF vs 250ASF micro war is not deep in terms of strategy or optimizing.

[-_V_-]

This message brought to you by someone who thinks 250ASF vs 250ASF micro war is not deep in terms of strategy or optimizing.

. That was funny.