My two cents on the ASF stack

[pittlebelge]

So here is my line of thought on the ASF situation (on Seton's obviously but this should transpose)

On most Seton's game from minute 15 at the latest to the end of the game, massive stack of ASFs will be formed by the two team. This causes lag. Lag is bad.

So why do people build ASFs?

To get air supremacy at least over their landmass and hopefully over the ocean. Why get air supremacy? To be able to inflict damage using T3 bomber/gunship/torpedo bomber and to be able to prevent such damage.

So, in my opinion, if you want to reduce the number of ASF you have to tinker with the ultimate motive that justify their uses (air supremacy).

I don't want to change anything with the way T3 air works, in my opinion it is expensive and rightfully so because it is effective. but the only counters to it are ASFs and T3 Sams. and here is the problem.

I would change the way T2 flak works. T2 flack projectiles usualy dont connect with T3 air, at least not with the first plane that flies over it, simply because T2 flak projectile are too slow. So the first change I propose is to increase the projectile speed of T2 flak so that it hits T3 air reliably.

How will this affect the rest of the game?

T1 air : already crushed by T2 flak, but T2 flak will become more dangerous over a larger radius.
T2 air : Gunship will get obliterated the way they always have been. Fighter bomber/Swiftwinds/torp will become mutch more vulnerable but they are already pretty screwed agains T2 flak and T1 AA is still effective in number agains them.
T3 air : Hand full of T2 flak should be able to defend against single T3 bomber and T3 torp the same way a hand full of T2 PD repel single brick or pericival. In large numbers unless they are tightly packed, T3 bomber will have the same number of casualties (planes in front of the formation will die insead of the last)

So, on land, everybody is fine, now on the high seas :

Aeon and Sera have T2 floating flak so they will be fine.
UEF : they have shield and pretty good cruisers so they will be ok.
Cybran : they are ****.

Fixing the machines :

On T2, exept buffing the cybran cruisers, I don't see any solution, but I don't want to mess with it.
My favorite option is to make the cybran's SCU nanite missile able to be launched from underwater.

I have actually never seen it in action, but to be effective, it should have the same weapon stats as 2 T3 Sams (same projectile speed, same AOE, double DPS).


So here are my two cents on this ASF shananigan.

[RoundTabler]

I think don't think thats treating the motive tho (the fact that t3 anti ground is so awesome). T3 aa does its job so well that the player who flies over flak loses the air fight. T2 flak does just fine when a large body of asfs stay over it for ~3 secs. When they fly right past t2 flak, they don't hit that many planes.

There are several things you could do:
nerf cost of t3 aa (so people would build it more);
make aa upgradeable (so they wouldn't have to bring a t3 engy everywhere);
nerf asfs so they die to t2 flak.
add t3 mobile aa;
nerf t3 anti ground;

but none of these ideas are very good.

[Zock]

Overall a quite accurate description of a big part of the ASF stacking (there are still other things that effect it, like the all or nothing fights), but one thing is not true:

T2 air : Gunship will get obliterated the way they always have been. Fighter bomber/Swiftwinds/torp will become mutch more vulnerable but they are already pretty screwed agains T2 flak and T1 AA is still effective in number agains them.

In low numbers, Flak isn't exactly that great vs gunships. It does the job, but there would be a difference if you buff the projectile speed.
And t2 bombers are almost a counter to flak, as it is easy to snipe it. Increased projectile speed would make a big change here.

This applies mostly to 1v1 where all this units are used in lower number and in combination with other units, but is not irrelevant on larger maps either.

Increasing flak speed might still be a good idea, but only in conserative values, and theese won't solve the problem alone. It may or may not be a part of other solutions though.

This should be in the patch forum.

[Axeleration]

Zock,
What happened to your suggestion of implementing t3 mobile sams?

I think that this is a great idea to counter collecting of ASF and should at least be tried to see if it balances the air play or not.

[prodromos]

"On most Seton's game from minute 15 at the latest to the end of the game, massive stack of ASFs will be formed by the two team. This causes lag. Lag is bad."

There were times, that simply playing setons would lead to terrible lag, whether you were amassing asfs or not; the computers were simply not fast enough. Now they are faster but not enough to accomodate the huge numbers of fast asfs setons accomodates.
Although temporary "solutions" to this fact are not condemnable, they ultimately corrupt the character and scale of the game. It was the same with the flowfield in supcom2. Everyone was amazed at the perfofmance improvements it achieved, until they saw the unnatural movement of land units, moving as if on ice or water. From another point of view, better lag on slow hardware because this is a way for companies and gamers alike to move more often to more powerful hardware.Without demanding software, hardware stagnates.

[Zock]

Zock,
What happened to your suggestion of implementing t3 mobile sams?

I think that this is a great idea to counter collecting of ASF and should at least be tried to see if it balances the air play or not.

I don't know if zep allow it, and even if, it will be tried after other things. Addings new units to solve issues shouldn't be the first solution.

But if zep allows it, and everything else fails, i'd still give it a try.

[RoLa]

There is an easy solution to reduce number of ASF:

reduce production costs - increase maintainance costs
maintainance cost increase could be realized with direct energy/mass drain or indirectly through the need for hangars/carriers which drain resources for maintaince refuel and repair. The aa capabilities of air experimentals should be nerfed then too. a normal setons game should have air forces with not more than 60 T3 Air units per player with a decent economy.

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