T3 Air

[Zock]

This thread is to discuss everything regarding T3 air. Please make sure to read the overview and rules first: viewtopic.php?f=58&t=5681

In specific, but not exclusive:

ASF
T3 air speed
T3 gunships of UEF/Cyb
Restorer
t2 and t3 AA
cybran lategame AA on water

[Exotic_Retard]

well... since there's a discussion about it, here's my contribution to start it off:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14x3xoxbQhnHTa981OTSLL0Q9i_EbigLE6It0OF8T6mQ/edit?usp=sharing
here I've outlined (kinda) everything i think that concerns ASF and their role in the game

if there's anything wrong or missing, feel free to tell me and I'll update as needed

the tl;dr is at the bottom for those who cannot scroll

[FunkOff]

yeah I'm not reading that. You got a tl;dr there?

[Ato0theJ]

There is a TLDR, I think there are are 3 options, make a land based t3 mobile AA like stated, increase the muzzle velocity of the t2 flak while decreasing the damage or finally adding a tiny splash damage to interceptors so that you can use them against swafms of ASF if you can overcome the lower speed and fuel. This would play into the talks of an anti air triangle that was discussed long ago. The splash would be very small, only enough to punish a swarm, maybe like the damage radius on a fervor.

[IceDreamer]

Honestly I think the best place to begin here is with SAMs again. Talk to Domino (I think it's his code) and see if it's possible to implement Overkill Control code into the SAM code. It would take flying ASFs over a T3 base from perfectly OK (2012) to a tiny bit risky (Now) to absolute fucking suicide (OKC Mod causes SAMs to rip ASFs to tiny bits with insane efficiency combined with AOE).

If that doesn't work too well, the next port of call has just got to be Fuel and Movespeed. I'm not saying make it like an Interceptor, but flying at that speed everywhere must burn it up fast, so lowering the time to, say, 10 minutes (From 16:40) along with an AirSpeed drop of 2 might just get us somewhere.

Oh, and quadruple the Czar and Soulripper AA while you're at it to make them REALLY punish ASFs. SAMs will still take them down just as easily as before

[SC-Account]

Not ASF are the problem, what follows is and ASF are the only thing that can defeat what would follow if you don't have them and more ASF in the other players hands is what makes it still work. Hence ASF get spammed.

A Sam change will not change that, the issue is not camping ASF over SAM - it IS suicide already. It does not need to get any worse.

If you don't have air dominance you will lose whatever is not defended by heavy AA: Expansions, navy, raiding forces, assault forces or in team games you will lose allies and their units. A fuel change combined with an air staging buff can really fix the whole issue, since it requires ground/navy support in order to dominate air in an area. Apparently people do not want to try that out for whatever reason, though.

Of course you can push the cost of anti air down and its effectiveness up again and again and eventually archive a state where ASF won't get spammed due to T3 air being basically pointless.

[Zock]

Not ASF are the problem, what follows is and ASF are the only thing that can defeat what would follow if you don't have them and more ASF in the other players hands is what makes it still work. Hence ASF get spammed.

A Sam change will not change that, the issue is not camping ASF over SAM - it IS suicide already. It does not need to get any worse.

If you don't have air dominance you will lose whatever is not defended by heavy AA: Expansions, navy, raiding forces, assault forces or in team games you will lose allies and their units. A fuel change combined with an air staging buff can really fix the whole issue, since it requires ground/navy support in order to dominate air in an area. Apparently people do not want to try that out for whatever reason, though.

Of course you can push the cost of anti air down and its effectiveness up again and again and eventually archive a state where ASF won't get spammed due to T3 air being basically pointless.

I concur. A sam buff won't help. The overkill mod aside, but it seems like it is not done.

How would your fuel change look like?

I belive it is not possible to implement an interesting fuel system with the way air works in supcom (no homebases to that air automaticly returns) without it leading into a terrible amount of babysitting after your airunits/fuelstate and micromanagement work to split fueled/not fueled units, then check if all are refueled, etc.

T1 and occasionally T2 air runs out of fuel sometimes. People don't bother to refuel, they just build new units, because it would be so much annoying work to manage the refueling. (at least my reason)

It would be interesting for a mod where planes without fuel automaticly aim to refuel themselfs, so no extra work is included, but i don't know if thats possible, or if its good (planes would fly over enemy AA by chance)

[IceDreamer]

You never used Air Staging?

Seriously, if you build a half dozen Air Staging thingies around your base (DON'T clump them in one spot!) they work BRILLIANTLY. Air on a patrol loop, idle air refuel automatically at 25% fuel remaining or something. As for separating them out, that's also easy. Select blob, go to unit count tab, click the out of fuel icon, hit refuel button.

Air staging range is big enough that on 10K and most 20K maps there isn't even a range problem, but if you want, you could just increase it even further.

Bottom line is that IMO Air Staging code actually already works well enough to enable some fiddling about with fuel without extreme babysitting and irritation being the result.

[pip]

The main problem with the fuel approach is that it won't solve the issue that ASF will be kept and stacked in a base until used. And maybe players will be even more careful about them, and stack them even more.

The positive aspect however is that careless players who don't use air staging will have very vulnerable ASF (slow) after some time, which will lead to a gradual renewal of the ASF hord, the same way it happens with interceptors. This can lessen the number of ASF present at the same time in games, but I doubt it would be enough to solve the problem.

Other problem: since ASF are very fast, fuel would need to be significantly low to make a difference, and then it might really be annoying for gameplay in the eyes of many players, for the reasons Zock stated.

[IceDreamer]

I'm just going to stick to my guns and keep recommending a roll-off time for Air Factories as part of any solution to 'Fix' air. Nobody has even bothered testing this yet (To my knowledge), and by my reckoning it would kill a bunch of birds with one stone.