Air combat

[AdmiralZeech]

Hmm, just a bit of a musing post, but I was recently curious about how Wargame: European Escalation was going. Looking at their promo for their expansion, I saw this:
http://www.wargame-ab.com/?rub=aircraft

I was particularly interested in how the organised air combat. I've mentioned before that I didn't like the air blob combat in SupCom.
I wanted to introduce "terrain" to air combat (in the form of powerful SAMs that can deny airspace), and also units such as a very slow air unit with powerful long range anti-air missiles, that would need to be destroyed from the ground.

I guess the air unit behaviour of SupCom might not be the best for such things, as you helplessly watch your fleet of T3 fighters automatically zoom over enemy SAMs to their deaths and stuff.

But anyways, back to Wargame : ALB.

It was interesting to see how they differentiated the interceptor vs. the air superiority fighter. This is something that might have worked in SupCom if the tiers were flatter.
You have a fast unit with powerful poorly tracking projectiles, that can take out armoured bombers, transports etc, and then you have another unit that has accurate but weaker weapons to take out interceptors and other fighters.

I guess one way to do it is to move gunships and fighter/bombers to T1, and make them quite weak. They are the general purpose fodder you can spam, just like T1 land. Although the existence of an air-air aircraft for only some factions might be a problem, so maybe only move gunships, dunno. Or give gunships some light air-air capability.

Then we move "interceptors" to T2, and make them powerful enough to be able to take down T3 Bombers and even T4 air in large numbers. But give them direct-fire projectiles that often miss on fast moving aircraft. And finally "Air Sup" fighters in T3, with weaker tracking missiles that can easily hit fast aircraft. Make the HP and costs of T2 vs. T3 a bit flatter.

But anyways, not a suggestion for FAF, just thoughts on air combat in RTS I guess.

[Eukanuba]

This is a very good idea, not for FA necessarily but you should get over to the Planetary Annihilation forums and post it immediately.

If "interceptors" can take out anything in the sky (bar ASFs), but "ASFs" can easily take out interceptors (and nothing much else), then you have a dynamic air game that would not degenerate into spamming the best unit, because there would be no best unit.

This is the best idea I've ever heard for sorting out air and I hope that PA does something like this. If you don't intend to post it on their forum let me know and I'll do it (credited of course).

I could see this working if "interceptors" had very low HP and very high damage, and "ASFs" had very high HP and very low damage.

[AdmiralZeech]

Feel free to post on PA, I'm not in the forums there atm.

I guess the key is to try to have complex unit and terrain interactions in the air, just like on land.

Fast harassing units. Slow powerful ones. Units for a specific purpose with broad weaknesses (eg. bombers/transports.) "Air Point Defense" that deny area. Maybe even anti-missile turrets or gunships, that provide a form of "terrain that blocks projectiles".

Accuracy vs. power. AOE attacks that discourage large numbers of weak units. Front loaded attacks that discourage small numbers of powerful units.


The ideal would be that you could have a match on a lava or cloud planet, with no land/sea, only air, and yet still have match that is as complex, deep, and tactical as a land-only match.

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Hmm, we're missing a point on the triangle up there....

ASF > Interceptors > Bombers/Transports.

But what is the counter to ASFs? More ASFs? Then we're back to the old game of whoever has the most ASFs get to rule the skies and use bombers.

I suppose if we want the classic RPS model then maybe a slow moving, heavily armoured, "Flying Missile Platform" or something. It has long range missiles that can kill ASFs, and heavy armour that makes it hard to kill by ASFs. But interceptors, with their slow but powerful projectiles, can kill FMPs efficiently. So ASF > Int > FMP > ASF. The tricky part is how to make interceptors not get easily killed by the FMP's missiles. (after all, ASFs also have missiles...) Maybe there is some balance of damage/armour/speed for all three units that can result in the RPS relationship, dunno.

[HEAVY]

Interesting.. isn't your flying missile platform the czar?

[Eukanuba]

So what we would need in this situation would be something that is devastatingly effective against ASF but weak against interceptors.

For the sake of argument, let's say the stats are like this:

Int: 100 health, 500 DPS, projectiles too slow to hit ASF (or ASF has a flare system that defeats it)

ASF: 2500 health, 100 DPS, projectiles always hit their target

Assume cost scales with health, so one ASF costs 25 ints but can take out a literally infinite amount.

The obvious solution would be a massively front-loaded weapon that can take out an ASF in one shot, but takes several seconds to reload and has no splash damage. It would be utterly useless against ints but devastating to ASFs.

Of course you've got the old mobility problems and this is far from a perfect solution, but perhaps there's something in there?

[The_PC_Snob]

You guys do realize that what you're proposing is something similar to the rock-paper-scissors balancing they do in other strategy titles, right?

I'm not against it, it works, but Supreme Commander is more about "organic" unit relations than just "this counters that". There are some exceptions, like flak vs gunships, but those arose via the emergent mechanics more than hard mechanics. This style is just not Supreme Commander's style. It's okay to like it, just don't expect a game that follows a different philosophy to follow it as well.

After all, the only reason the RTS genre is stagnant right now and was stagnant for the early 2000s was because everyone is trying to copy everyone else and there was no unique flavor anywhere. Right now no publisher will touch an RTS unless they say they're going to be "Starcraft, but with a twist!", and developers are too aware of how well that goes to really try.

[stalewee]

Rock, paper, scissors balance sucks.

There are two counters to ASF:
1. More ASF
2. Kill him before he can get an overwhelming mass of ASF plus a whole lot of bombers.

If your opponent can match you on land while building overwhelming ASF and bombers, then he's better than you and you should lose.

[Poch]

It's not about that, but about blob fights.

Let say you're worse than your opponents, you're both equal but you produced only 2/3 of the inties he has. If your opponent split his ASF in two equal forces to protect 2 different targets, then you are able to wipe out one of the group, and still have enough ASFs after the fight to go kill the other group.

By then, you can achieve air superiority for ever, because you will have so much ASF. If they stay in a blob formation, you can kill ennemy ASF before he has enough to have a chance to do any real damage. He cant possibly put T3 AA + shields on everything he has, so even if he secures its own production by doing this, you will gain land control with bombers/gunships before he can produce enough to defeat you.

Anyway, SAMs are very bad against ASFs and are waste of mass, so when you are forced to build them to only be able to produce ASF, game is already lost. Even if you have a massive amount of T2 AA, it won't hurt ASF blobs much. When t1 land units in large number are still able to defeat T4 units, T1 and T2 (and even ground T3) cannot do anything mass-efficient about ASFs.

I think organic "FA" > rock-paper-scissors > "blob". When a unit is countered only by more of the same units, it is not really strategy anymore. ASF and air superiority is the only part of the game where counter are inexistant.

[Eukanuba]

I was very aware of the rock-paper-scissor nature of what I suggested and whilst I agree that FA should be about organic interactions (as should any other games in this style), I think that everyone agrees that ASFs in team games continue to be a game-damaging problem.

Raising ASF costs doesn't work, it's better now than it was in 3599 but the same still problem exists, it's just less extreme.

I think that the best place to look for a solution is in something that is technically organic, but which has the effect of a virtually hard-counter. I confess I don't have the answer, perhaps there isn't one as this problem has existed since TA, but I hope there is.

[Zock]

I'm not sure if i like your solution, but i agree that the t3 air is a problem. It's not even clear what exactly the problem is though (only 1 unit type? or do ASF blobs only exist because of the uncounterable stratbombers?).