T3 AA buff

[Plasma_Wolf]

actually 8 times because the ASF doesn't have guns on its rear).

1 ASF can cover the entire map. 1 SAM can only cover a small area. Which is better?

The point I'm trying to make is that there are enough advantages for the SAM to make up for the ASFs advantage of being mobile and that it therefore is not necessary to buff SAMs compared to the power of ASFs.

Additionally, I'm not so foolish to trust only in static AA. Even if I can pull it off and win without ASFs, it's going to take me three hours to cover a full 20x20 map, but claiming that SAMs are not efficient enough (IE have to be buffed) like the OP did, no.

[FunkOff]

Yeah, SAMs are pretty well balanced. ASFs should be a lot more expensive, however.

[-_V_-]

Yeah like they're not crazy expensive already ?

I wonder why people are spamming t3 pgens like crazy now, probably for the fun of it

3599 :
t1<<<<<<<<t2<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<t3

FAF "balance"
t1<<<<<<<<<<<<<<t2<<<<<<<<<<<<<t3

[pip]

I really don't see much problem with T3 air now that it requires so much energy. Of course, air units fly, it's a huge advantage, but you can defend your base against air threats with ground units pretty well now. SAMs are cheap and very sturdy, flaks are great against blobs. Sure, ASF can help with gaining map control, but it's normal, it's the same when you win navy : it's normal to get a real advantage when you dominate an area and you made an investment precisely to reach that goal.

[Pavese]

All the t3 pgen does is delay T3 Air spam by one or two minutes. It didn't stopped them from being the most OP units in the game.

[-_V_-]

Sorry but that's just plain wrong! If you can't defend against t3 air as it is now, then you're doing something wrong. That's it.
One must be completely blind to miss how hard it is now to efficiently hurt the opponent even with some certain air superiority.

AA overall have been buffed in FAF, and the t3 completely nerfed. At some point you need to stop the psychose.

You can still play no air games if you want.

[Myrdral]

Fighters are extremely good at accomplishing their single purpose in killing enemy aircraft. This is balanced because you cannot directly win games with fighters unless you shoot down a transporting ACU. Any unit with the ability to attack land units can actually win the game. Fighters can certainly kill all other air, but all other air has the potential to assault an ACU or economy(aside from spy planes). Even torpedo bombers can attack an enemy's Naval build power. Fighters could possibly kill an engineer transport to hurt economic growth, but it is hard to accomplish this at the early stage in the game when people are moving engineers from their few starting factories.

Even if your opponent has 20 ASF and you have no air units, you may be able to build other air units behind defenses or outside of their intel. Those units can be cleverly deployed to avoid enemy ASF or to strike a high value target while they themselves will almost certainly wreck.

As V said, defending against air is easy as you can simply build all ASF while they must build at least some non-ASF to hurt any of your economy or ACUs. Players win air dominance not because ASF are OP, but because they have better economy, micro, strategy, patience or another advantage. Equally matched players could constantly pitch equal numbers of ASF at each other and over many games come out relatively even. There is even a chance that the ASF will essentially cancel each other out with very few surviving on either side. ASF are not terribly OP if it all. If they were, a lesser skilled player could win consistently against a more highly skilled player simply by choosing to focus more on ASF. The better player will find a way to cost efficiently win the fight by building slightly less ASF and spending the resources on something to give them an edge. Cost efficient ground based AA comes to mind. At a certain point, it becomes extremely cost efficient to build some ability to deal area damage to enemy air. An example of this is how even CZAR(which has approximately less than half of its economic value dedicated to AA dps) can become optimal when ASF numbers reach a certain number. There are quite few other units with very good AOE vs air. Some are not very good at tracking fast moving t3, but they can still be used especially on a blob of targets which are turning around for another pass.

SAM are not guaranteed to win you an ASF war against most experienced opponents, nor is it intended to. It is also not supposed to guarantee the safety from air of even a single small base completely spammed by SAM in the late game. Enough strat bombers will always break through. Whether SAM can contribute to victory is entirely up to how it is utilized. It is hard to imagine SAM winning a game. Perhaps it could be the MVP if you placed it in range of your enemy's only t3 air factory to force them to halt production. There are easier ways to stop their ability to mass produce t3 air as this is probably not SAM's optimal purpose in most cases. I could certainly imagine being unable to breach a heavily defended base to destroy their factory, yet still being able to get SAM within range and protect it as your opponent has invested heavily in static defense to protect his factory. Cybran can even stealth in close to start placing SAM near their factory.

In short, I think SAM is balanced to be a good option to deal with a small number of t3/t4 air. If your opponent overbuilds all ASF, you can assault the factory on land or sea directly, or get SAM / other non air based AA in range of their factory to stop production of units which can hurt your army/navy.

I have a question about shields over an air factory. Will all air units produced from the factory be forced to leave the shield as they depart the factory? The idea of getting AA in range of a factory to destroy their follow up air-to-ground units to their ASF dominance would only work if those newly produced units were forced to fly out of a t3 shield and become vulnerable one at a time. A CZAR of course could still produce air within its hangar.

[CocoaMoko]

I'm not sure how reasonable it is to argue that since ASF only shoot air that they're balanced. If they shoot only AIR, and kill everything in the air, then all they have to do is now build units in the air that attack ground.

I suppose the thing is, whoever has the most ASF wins. Why? Because their counter is ASF. If one player loses an air battle, the only way for them to gain air again is to somehow attain more ASF then the enemy. But it's simple unrealistic, because usually the enemy has the same build power and eco, if not more. So for every ASF you make to counter his, he makes another, in addition however many surviving ones there are.

I think the complaints with ASFs come simple from the fact that ASFs are pretty much the only self-countering. I mean other units self-counter obviously, but ASFs are the only one where that is the sole option.

I can't say whether or not they're really balanced or imbalanced, perhaps someone has more information in response or rebuttal to what I've just brought out that can help put things in perspective.


As far as SAMs go, I think the real thing that might make them not so effective is that their DPS can be wasted easily. If you fly one ASF or spy plane over a base, every single SAM will shoot their payload at it before the missiles connect and it dies. That principle. It's not as much of a problem with ground, since ground projectiles still will pass through or do AOE damage. But all X-to-air homing projectiles disappear when their target dies. Oh what a world!

[Myrdral]

For combat units, ASF with a mix of other units is the best counter to all ASF. Ground, naval or experimental air based aoe AA will become more cost efficient than continuing to produce ASF once a certain number of enemy ASF are in the air. SAM is not aoe so it is only cost efficient for dealing with ASF if the SAM get to shoot at the opposing ASF before they engage your own ASF. As the player with the diverse force, you can keep your non-ASF cost efficient AA in between your lesser ASF force and theirs. If they wish to engage your ASF they will have to take fire for a few seconds without returning any. If they do not engage, your other troops can push into their side of the map with ASF cover and start hurting their economy or ACU. My point is, if you wish to compete for t3 air dominance but not build as much ASF as your opponent, you need to force them to fly over your other AA as much as possible.

You can also completely not even race them for ASF production and attack their economy with lower tier units. I think the best counters for ASF are early raids. Even in team games, you can focus more on gaining air dominance at tier 1 and 2, then drop in the most appropriate allied land units or engineers. ASF takes such a huge economic investment that doesn't pay off until 10+ minutes, that you have a window where you can have a huge air force advantage. Eco/ASF is a fast teching strategy and as such is most vulnerable to raids. While they are upgrading their mexes and building t2/3 pgens, you simply spam units and try not to expose too much of your force.

Anyway this is all mostly off topic even though somewhat related. I think this thread only needed a one line response of," t3 SAM does not need a buff, it was never meant to combat large numbers of aircraft super efficiently, that is flak's role." OP if anything, I would argue for upgradable t2 flak to allow it to better combat large swarms of t3. I would be interested to hear what frequent ASF players fear the most in terms of aoe AA.

[Pavese]

depending on how much you "T3 air micro". The more you do, the more the ASFs get clumped up and the slower they turn. If the AAs shoot the right target (the ones in front of the pack) the shots iwll hit the entire pack. If you just let them fly over it they will not be hit..