T3 AA buff

[Pavese]

Compared to ASF, the rest of t3 air feels good.


It's just sort of funny that t2 air is more expensive then ASFs. Or that a T2 pd is more expensive, or that you get 0,2 cruisers for one ASF.

"Hurr duur T3 pgen hurr durr" doesn't stop ASF from being cheap as f***.

[FunkOff]

If mobile SAMs existed, cost 800 mass, and ASF cost 800 mass, it'd be balanced imo.

[Icy]

Mobile SAMS DO exist...they just cost 10k mass and are Cybran exclusive.

[Pavese]

You forgot that imba Monkeylord SAM!

[Iszh]

what i was talking about is, for example a t3 mex costs 6336 mass all inclusive. 4 bombers will delete it. means to get 4 bombers just to kill 1 mex is worth it. it cannot be true that the value of the target is the same mass or more than the number of bombers needed to kill it. to destroy something in ship and land unit mass cost would mean to spent several times more mass to kill something than the value is of this thing. to make it fair i would suggest a price like 6k mass for 1 t3 bomber! that would solve the problem better than to mess arround with asf cost. asf ARENT interesting at all since thats only the counter. THE WEAPON IS THE IMBA THING WHICH CANNOT BE STOPPED BY SAM! and the weapons in air are the t3 bombers and not the asf.

[-_V_-]

Iszh. Play air, do just that , and win the game. Seems so easy. I wanna see that replay

[Myrdral]

This is basically 5 posts in one. ~~~seperate each post for easy reference if you decide to skip the huge math post and/or any of the others.

what i was talking about is, for example a t3 mex costs 6336 mass all inclusive. 4 bombers will delete it. means to get 4 bombers just to kill 1 mex is worth it. it cannot be true that the value of the target is the same mass or more than the number of bombers needed to kill it. to destroy something in ship and land unit mass cost would mean to spent several times more mass to kill something than the value is of this thing. to make it fair i would suggest a price like 6k mass for 1 t3 bomber! that would solve the problem better than to mess arround with asf cost. asf ARENT interesting at all since thats only the counter. THE WEAPON IS THE IMBA THING WHICH CANNOT BE STOPPED BY SAM! and the weapons in air are the t3 bombers and not the asf.

SAM is not intended to destroy all bombers before they can make a single pass. If anything, they are supposed to prevent perhaps a few of them from dropping on the first pass and most of them from a second pass. SAM is not the best counter to strat bombers because it is cost efficient yet still allows the bombers to accomplish their objective. ASF is the best counter to strat bombers in general.

~~~

If you A) let your opponent invest between 10,000 mass (5 bombers) and 30,000 mass (15 bombers) and B) don't have 25 ASF (10,000 mass) on the field for the easiest counter in the world OR C) Have not already won when your opponent starting dumping all his mass into the easily countered strat bombers, you need to re-evaluate your game play.

I agree. The large amount of strat bombers required to kill a heavily shielded/upgraded/veteran ACU in a single or few passes allows the defending player to build plenty of ASF to counter even if they are behind on ASF when the opponent starts building their large strat bomber force.

~~~

This means if there is no water for your acu the game is ended with maximum 60k mass in bombers. no air defense or any other ground facility has the slightest chance to stop this.

60k mass worth of ASF could kill the strat bombers before they reach the ACU if you have appropriate t3 radar for this point in game, average human response time and are holding those ASF between the ACU and your strat bombers. Even an average experienced player will be able to see you planning a 30 strat bomber raid on their ACU and do all of these things with ease to allow their ASF to prevent the strat bombers from dropping a single bomb.



Most of the rest of this post concerns your claim that any amount of ground defenses cannot protect from 60k mass worth of strat bombers.

Let's do a comparison of 30 strat bombers( this number set by your 60k mass in bombers) vs an equal mass of t3 shields and t3 SAM. This is a calculation to determine if you can cost effectively build defenses to protect an ACU from an equal economy amount of strat bombers( if they spend much more on strat bombers you will simply be able to spam ASF to easily counter even if you lost the ASF war up to this point by a reasonably small defecit).

30 strat bombers for UEF cost 63,000 mass, 3,150,000 energy and 252,000 build time. Their alpha strike deals 90,000 damage and they have up to 18,000 dps(will not factor turning for repeat attack runs-this will possibly make strat bombers seem better than they are if they survive to make more than 1 pass).

UEF t3 shields have 15,000 shield health. 6 shields are needed to counter the 90,000 damage alpha strike of the 30 strat bombers. 6 shields and 1 t3 pgen to pay maintenance for them cost 21,240 mass, 357,600 energy(t3 pgen with 4 sides adjacent to 1 side of each of 4 different of the 6 t3 shields would reduce maintenance from 2400/s to 2100/s with 400 egergy/s leftover) 27,900 build time. More shields would be needed if the strat bombers get to attack more than once.

At this point, 30 strat bombers are unable to alpha strike kill an ACU under 6 t3 shields with a t3 pgen providing maintenance and adjacency with a 400 e/s surplus. The shield setup costed immensely less than the t3 strat bombers 41,760 less mass, 2,792,400 less energy and 224,100 less build time(also this is build time from full engineer build power, not from build power assisting a t3 air factory at 1/4 rate, the t3 shield builders may have to move some but not much as all the buildings are adjacent to each other or close to it-for the remainder of this example I will not calculate build time as it is far too complicated with too many variables based on player choice- I do believe build time will heavily favor the structural defenses as they are at full build rate instead of 1/4 for assist).

Now let's calculate what we can build to kill the t3 strat bombers before their second pass( and hopefully within their 5 second reload time of their initial bomb drop). All of these AA examples will be using the leftover resources, meaning you still have 6 t3 shields and the t3 pgen to run more than enough maintenance for them.

Option 1:
We could build 52 t3 SAM for nearly all of our leftover mass(160 mass left). 416,000 of our 2,792,400 leftover energy is used for the 52 SAM. 2,376,400 energy is leftover. Build time for the t3 SAM is done sightly less than 4x as fast as a practical engineer assisted t3 air factory. We could build much more AA or shields overall if we first converted this leftover energy and build power into more mass at even a poor exchange rate like 150-300 energy per mass from a t2/t3 fabricator. With a t3 fabricator ignoring adjacency to any pgens etc(unlikely that you would have no adjacency at all here), we can calculate an energy-> mass conversion after subtracting the cost of the fabricator from our leftover energy and converted mass. The fabricator costs 65,000 energy. Our leftover energy is now 2,311,400. Energy is converted to mass through a t3 fabricator by multiplying input energy by 12mass/3500 energy. This calculation yields 7925 mass. Subtracting 10% of the fabricator cost(assuming reclaim for this example as we are just using it to burn a fixed amount of energy afterwards reclaiming is appropriate to factor) leaves 7625 mass from the energy which we saved compared to the strat bombers. Now we have all mass so we would have to not convert all of it through the fabricator. Depending on the energy/mass ratio of what we intend to build, we would have to stop and save a certain amount of energy while fabricating. Assuming we want to build more t3 SAM , we need 10 energy for each mass. We would want to fabricate 7200 mass leaving 211,400 leftover After building 9 additional SAM for a total of 61 SAM, 6 t3 shields, 1t3 pgen vs 30 strat bombers, we still have approximately 160 mass and 131,400 energy leftover along with a large amount of build power.

I also believe that due to the 1/4 build rate for assisting a factory's producion in comparison to building new structures, that the static defenses would have a very large amount of extra build power leftover in most typical scenarios - large t1 engineer force assisting a single t3 air factory or single t3 engi/ACU assisted by a large t1 engineer force for the strcutural defense side.

Sadly, this only covers the economics side of things. As far as the actual combat goes, things become far more unpredictable. The main question for the combat is: Will the defenses be able to destroy the strategic bombers before they destroy all 6 shields and the ACU hiding underneath? 6 shields will protect the ACU from the first strat bomber pass. The question then becomes: Will the SAM kill enough of the strat bombers before they get to make a second pass for the ACU to survive? This will vary from game to game based on player micro and positioning. There will also be quite a few factors which are largely uncontrollable by the players due to micro limitations and coded variables. The ideal situation where 2 SAM would fire on each of the 30 bombers will not occur without unrealistic levels of micro. Each SAM is able to kill 1 strat bomber in just over 10 seconds. Considering that you have 2x the SAM as they do strat bombers, it is possible with perfect micro to kill all of the strat bombers before a single one makes a second pass. In practical terms, you will probably have a few strat bombers making a second pass, but not enough to kill the ACU.

In conlusion, SAM and shields by themselves by no means guarantee protection against strat bombers even in one specific location on the map area such as protecting an ACU. SAM is not intended to be the optimal AA against a force as large as 30 strat bombers. SAM is best used against singular large air units or smaller groups of small air units. Overlapping of SAMs on a single target is their major downfall. No player in their right mind will try to counter 30 strat bombers with 61 SAM, 6 t3 shields and a t3 pgen while trying to manage a t3 mass fabricator until they should reclaim it at the perfect moment.

Option 2:
The player attempting to defend their ACU against 30 strat bombers is best off killing the strat bombers with ASF as they are produced and never letting the number reach 3, let alone 30. If you make the terrible mistake of allowing them to build 30 strat bombers without engaging with your ASF spam, you can still intercept them on their way to the ACU and kill all the strat bombers without them firing a shot.. If you somehow did neither of these things to counter the strat bombers and have no ASF at all, then the problem is in your gathering and application of intelligence. It is NOT a result of strat bombers being overpowered. The original post concerned the balance of t3 SAM and other t3 AA. I believe all of the t3 AA options are cost effective for their intended purpose, which can only be properly evaluated in combination with all AA options as a whole from all tiers and platforms be they land, naval, air, static or mobile. ASF and SAM are not always the optimal blanket AA for any AA purpose. FAF is way more complicated than build all ASF or all SAM to counter all air.

Option 3+: To be completed at a later date.

~~~

This model only is for showing the balanced air combat model in practical FAF gameplay. To summarize air balance like this is much too simplified but:

ASF >

spy planes, strat bombers, gunships, transports and t4 air(situational, some t4 air may cost efficiently equal or defeat ASF see CZAR purpose thread posts by ICY) >

ACU, economic units/structures and land/navy without dedicated AA capabilities >

land/naval dedicated AA(cruisers, SAM, flak, mobile AA, etc) >

ASF = (ASF)

Exceptions definitely apply to this model. You may notice the model states that economic structures are greater than cruisers. Note that neither is an air unit. This model is designed only to relate things to air units not any of land to land or land to naval or naval to naval. Although you could argue that economy does counter cruisers in a way by letting you build subs or destroyers by the time that the cruisers threaten the economy. Economy is included into the model to illustrate that non-ASF air units actually can attack economy where ASF cannot. As non-ASF are often built solely for the purpose of attacking your opponents acu and economy, I felt it necessary to include them in the model. I believe this model for air combat is a core part of FAF balance. Please reply if you see any major flaws in the model.

~~~~~~~~~~

Finally, to relate most of the previous statements to the concerns of the original post and all the other posts concerning mainly SAMl, ASF and Strat bomber balance:

t3 SAM - best vs single, high health, short range, slow moving air units within their radius. SAM becomes less effective as any of these factors reaches their opposite pole. The most important factors for SAM is its attack radius, potential for overkill especially when considering multiple SAM firing on the same target(as a result of their lower health than the damage the SAMs have launched and will be wasted) and range of the enemy air unit(strat bombers are intended to be able to launch on their target before SAM hits them so that both may fire). As a t3 dedicated AA, SAM in general has advantage over lower tier AA in its ability to hit faster, longer range air units as well as survive their attacks if the SAM itself is targetted. (Clusters of flak are extremely vulnerable to even small numbers of strat bombers). SAM placement is crucial as it will determine its ability to engage the highest health air units or any units at all. The best placement for SAM is probably directly in the path of an air experimental just before it enters the range of the newly built SAM and also before it enters its own firing range against your builders. This is not difficult to do against a unit such as a CZAR as it has little direct fire range and slow movement speed/turn rate. SAM intended to shoot at non-experimentals should be spread out as much as possible while still covering its intended area. This will minimize overkill and wasted damage. SAM placement usually cannot do much to influence a range deficit between itself and an air unit. The air units have the advantage of choosing when and where their range will intersect with the SAM and/or its range. SAM placed in range of enemy air staging facilities or their highest tech air factories is the best way to influence a range advantage over the mobile aircraft. They are mobile but their factory/stage is not. At the very least, you may force the air player to build new structures elsewhere, which depending on their investment in the facilities of that local area can effectively be a major economic victory even though you did not scratch the structures only disabled their use by air units, rendering them useless except to produce engineers in the case of the factory.

t3 ASF - best all around AA as intended due to its speed/mobility, cost effective dps and weapons which tend towards little overkill. ASF have a few disadvantages with two of the main ones being their low health per unit(aoe AA(flak from units bearing its name and cruisers/experimentals etc as well) is more effective against these than it is against higher health AA air units(experimentals/restorers) or SAM) and most importantly their inability to attack ground units. A cost effective way to force enemy ASF into a bad situation is to produce appropriate land/naval based AA, then very small amounts of gunships/strat bombers/transports. For example, if you have all ASF and I have 1 gunship along with the difference in mass worth of mixed land/naval AA optimized in ratio to most effectively damage the ASF force you have(size of the ASF force will change the optimal mix of land/naval AA units), then i can push against your economy or ACU with the gunship while you have no ability to attack ANY of my units or structures except that one gunship. If you send enough of a force to actually kill the gunship, you will take a larger mass worth of damage to your ASF. ASF and AA in general main disadvantage is then that they have no ability to attack the economy or ACU of your opponent. Spam all the ASF and AA you want, they will never win a game unless your opponent lets you shoot down their ACU in a transport and that should never happen. Obviously the thing to do for the air player is to build non-ASF at this point. However, the player prioritizing land>naval>air will be able to counter those units by switching their priority from flak to ASF and SAM etc.

t3 - strat bombers not cost efficent vs SAM or ASF even if you are only attempting to snipe an ACU. I think you have better chances killing a shielded ACU with something else. I would not even attempt to send 30 bombers after a 6-t3-shielded ACU if my opponent has an equivalent economic value ASF. You would have to divert the opposing ASF or distract the player to give your bombers a chance to fire more than one volley and penetrate the shields. A strategy which depends on your opponent's mistakes usually will not work consistently in the long term of many games. I could definitely see baiting enemy ASF with an air experimental or your own ACU in a transport(and hopefully unload him before they destroy it) while yu send 30+ bombers after their shielded ACU. I would call this a gambit strategy to be used in desperate situations. Most ACU snipe attempts are gambits when players are of equal skill. They can either win or lose you the game.

[Varaxis]

The T3 SAMs need faster weapon muzzle velocity(100-120) and a very small AoE (area dmg radius of 1 would be enough) IMO.

T2 AA needs more of a buff, IMO. No reason to build if instead of flak, except in emergencies when you don't have a T2 land fac and a swarm of gunships are coming and you're already shielded. Would be better than spamming T1 AA then in only that case really. T1 AA is surprising efficient for how cheap and quick it builds.

[Icy]

T2 AA IS flak. Mobile flak may be more cost effective, but the stationary ones do work if you build them.

[noobymcnoobcake]

I think T3 aa is fine. It does not stop snipes because a bomber is always going to get a single drop in. ASFs are for stopping bombers, not SAMS. SAMS make attacking a base with aircraft rather costly. They can pay for themselves very quickly when enemy ASF are overhead. However I often prefer flack because about 20 mobile flack over your base as they will shred all aircraft very quickly. It can be uses to stop the enemy achieving complete air supremacy as while your are rebuilding your airforce they cant just fly over and kill all your planes without giving air supremacy back