Bomber double/triple drop

[ColonelSheppard]

I don't see how you can argue this tactic is risky but I'm sure you will find a way.

Bombermicro is by far the most timeconsuming micro of all. After a first bomber, you are hardly going to use it more than occationally.
see there is a reason why even me does not use it all the time during the game. Because it's requires so much attention which you gonna lack elsewhere.

For example some top player told me, that he is barely using bomber at all, because they require so much attention. And there he wasn't talking about double bomb, but only about their general use/movement. So yeah:

[Reaper Zwei]

Obviously, you can't know exactly what Chris Taylor thought. But, there are clear differences between this and aurora micro. These are pretty intuitive, which is part of why people are pointing it out may be surprised its not self-evident and not explain further.

Ok this game takes skill and calling something intuitive is redundant. just because you may know how to do something and may have known for a long time does not make it intuitive. Intuitive means that you just know. I personally don't think people just know how to kite and I certainly don't think they just know how to dodge with the aurora. All of us here in this thread may know but that doesn't make it intuitive. All of us here know to build a factory first(unless your going for first bomber or jester but besides that.) but people don't start out just knowing that. I'll grant you that some skills are easier to grasp then others. Kiting is easier than hover bombing and because of that you see it way more often but not everybody just knows how to do it without seeing it before otherwise why did Sheppard make a video about it?

[sasin]

Obviously, you can't know exactly what Chris Taylor thought. But, there are clear differences between this and aurora micro. These are pretty intuitive, which is part of why people are pointing it out may be surprised its not self-evident and not explain further.

Ok this game takes skill and calling something intuitive is redundant. just because you may know how to do something and may have known for a long time does not make it intuitive. Intuitive means that you just know. I personally don't think people just know how to kite and I certainly don't think they just know how to dodge with the aurora. All of us here in this thread may know but that doesn't make it intuitive. All of us here know to build a factory first(unless your going for first bomber or jester but besides that.) but people don't start out just knowing that. I'll grant you that some skills are easier to grasp then others. Kiting is easier than hover bombing and because of that you see it way more often but not everybody just knows how to do it without seeing it before otherwise why did Sheppard make a video about it?

Fair enough, but not everything that is intuitive is immediately grasped without learning. I think that things that are intuitive can sometimes be things that you have to learn but which make sense to you immediately upon learning. Very few people can, for example, solve a basic algebra problem with no training, but, for those who find algebra intuitive, once someone starts talking it through with you you get it, or once you see someone do it you get it, etc.

You don't start playing sup com and immediately realize you should kite your auroras, but when you tell a new player, "Hey, rocket bots outrange the other units, so try to stay out of your enemies range when you use them," that generally makes sense to them. It's intuitive in that it's easy to grasp the idea, it makes sense to people, and they can at least give it a shot. When you're new and someone kites you with rocket bots or auroras, you get what is going on and can easily start implementing the concepts in your own game. When you get bomber double dropped and you're new, if you can understand what happened at all, you still probably have no grasp of how it happened or why. This is what I mean when I say that it's more intuitive.

Even if you don't buy that, there are still several other points in that post, and there are more that I didn't mention.

[errorblankfield]

I don't see how you can argue this tactic is risky but I'm sure you will find a way.

Bombermicro is by far the most timeconsuming micro of all. After a first bomber, you are hardly going to use it more than occationally.
see there is a reason why even me does not use it all the time during the game. Because it's requires so much attention which you gonna lack elsewhere.

For example some top player told me, that he is barely using bomber at all, because they require so much attention. And there he wasn't talking about double bomb, but only about their general use/movement.

You really need to get off your smug high horse and learn some basic comprehension. Part of conversing seeing the others POV. The aim isn't to tear apart an argument because they didn't spell out every. single. point. You're suppose to look at the big picture and augure if that doesn't look right. Not if a few pixels are missing.
Aw well, I'll add in those two pixels, just for you.

Just because something takes your APM doesn't make it inherently risky.
I don't even know what more there is to say. But okay, I'll elaborate.

Just to be clear, we are talking about the act of STACK BOMBING. (What I'm calling it now for convenience.) It's micro intensive, sure. But that doesn't make it a risk in and of itself.
Using a bomber -risky. They are a frail crafts with no innate defense and rather expensive.
Dropping a bomb -again risky. You have to worry about AA and other air on both approach and recovery.
Stack bombing -little marginal risk. You are already there, might as well drop some more.

To be fair, you didn't even touch these points last time. Which is hilarious cause you keep playing this game where you don't talk about the points I bring up and instead introduce new ones without defending the old ones. But they come back in a second, so they bare repeating.

To the new 'mirco is risk' paradigm.
I have to assume you are talking about an opportunity cost risk. As instead of mircoing you could be doing X.
That's great, but that's really not a risk per say.

Great way to conceptualize it. Take an ACU and give him unlimited energy and some baddies to face. Of course, he'll be overcharging every time he can when he's off CD. Why? Because there is no risk involved. OC has risks with it, but in this situation, I removed the energy drain so it's not a matter of if, but who.
That's not to say there aren't risks in the situation. The baddies pose a very real threat to the ACU. But again, the use of OC is not risky for the ACU. It's very much the opposite.

Now if you can follow this train of logic, stack bombing is just an activate ability with different parameters. It costs APM rather than energy. Maybe it is or isn't too much in some case -either way it's a cost you have to consider ahead of time. Actually stacking bombs IS NOT RISKY. If it helps, we can say 'marginally' risky. As in, 'no riskier than using a bomber normally'.

Hopefully that clears it up -cause again, this isn't a personal opinion matter. This is very quickly veering into the risk of bombers themselves -which wasn't what was being discussed. I was talking only of the ability of stack bombing. As such, any risks that are innate of just a regular bombing run are irrelevant. Moreover, APM is just a resource. So spending it is always a risk. However, it's a sunk cost basically. You can't call everything risky because everything takes up your APM. How you spend it is the fundamental risk in this game.

And here's the kicker -if the APM cost actually becomes a risk*... stop doing it! The ultimate fail safe!
For the final time, in any case you are using a bomber -you always want to bomb stack because it has no risk. You may not always be able to, but you always want to. Why? Because the risk/rewards are heavily rewards skewed.

Now are you going to actually address me like an adult of cower behind some internet memes?**
And I totally realize there is a huge semantics side to this equation. If you would actually talk about it instead of redirecting I would have bothered exploring that angle. But this is another case of I said X, you chose to take it Y so you could get in your quips, so now I have to talk about X.XXXX just to be completely clear what was meant before. (And then magically the subject is dropped.)

*Not a stack bombing risk. Without being too meta, this would be the actualization of taking a risk of not build a PD and then being attack. Point is, anything that pulls you away from your mirco isn't a risk of the mirco.
**And if the latter, do you take requests? Cause I'm in the mood for 'Watch out, we have a badass over here.'

Lastly, still not caring if this is removed. Still only trying to keep the facts straight to allow others an unbiased chance to form their own opinion.

Obviously, you can't know exactly what Chris Taylor thought. But, there are clear differences between this and aurora micro. These are pretty intuitive, which is part of why people are pointing it out may be surprised its not self-evident and not explain further.

Ok this game takes skill and calling something intuitive is redundant. just because you may know how to do something and may have known for a long time does not make it intuitive. Intuitive means that you just know. I personally don't think people just know how to kite and I certainly don't think they just know how to dodge with the aurora. All of us here in this thread may know but that doesn't make it intuitive. All of us here know to build a factory first(unless your going for first bomber or jester but besides that.) but people don't start out just knowing that. I'll grant you that some skills are easier to grasp then others. Kiting is easier than hover bombing and because of that you see it way more often but not everybody just knows how to do it without seeing it before otherwise why did Sheppard make a video about it?

Fair enough,...

^This!
Do this!

[Wakke]

There are two things (not saying these are the only two) that make this game less welcoming for new players, and make the game less elegant/likable on the whole:
1. Convoluted, unintended, unnatural, unintuitive, obscure, un-elegant mechanics. For an example, see the thread title.
2. The fact that some community members rigorously defend these mechanics. They seem to be driven by a sense of elitism, fear of losing "their edge/advantage" in game, and conservatism.

Luckily, one of these is fixable

Note that this is not limited to this game. I would have you recall bunnyhopping in Counter Strike, and how some people defended that as well. Luckily the devs had the sense to remove that. Let's have some sense is all I'm saying.

[Coffee nut]

As someone who is just interested in this discussion in general, I would just like to post a reply to errorblankfield. Please bear in mind I'm not that good at this game, so can constitute the 'lesser skilled' section of the players.

Just to be clear, we are talking about the act of STACK BOMBING. (What I'm calling it now for convenience.) It's micro intensive, sure. But that doesn't make it a risk in and of itself.
Using a bomber -risky. They are a frail crafts with no innate defense and rather expensive.
Dropping a bomb -again risky. You have to worry about AA and other air on both approach and recovery.
Stack bombing -little marginal risk. You are already there, might as well drop some more.

I'm not sure that's quite how it works. I don't believe that just by stating your opinion it constitutes as facts. There is a reason why stack bombing is marginally more risky than dropping a bomb/ using a bomber:

- your bomber is in the same place for a longer period of time and thus is easier to counter (dropping a bomb/ building a bomber has less of this "risk"; on larger maps, without radar coverage it can be the case that bombers drop a bomb, then move onto another target far away whilst AA/ inties are moving towards the first bombing location). The same cannot be said for a hovering bomber. The fact that "you are already there" is not the problem; it's the fact that you choose to stay there after dropping the first bomb that makes it more risky than just dropping one bomb.

Onto the important point of the so called "opportunity cost":

To the new 'mirco is risk' paradigm.
I have to assume you are talking about an opportunity cost risk. As instead of mircoing you could be doing X.
That's great, but that's really not a risk per say.

Great way to conceptualize it. Take an ACU and give him unlimited energy and some baddies to face. Of course, he'll be overcharging every time he can when he's off CD. Why? Because there is no risk involved. OC has risks with it, but in this situation, I removed the energy drain so it's not a matter of if, but who.
That's not to say there aren't risks in the situation. The baddies pose a very real threat to the ACU. But again, the use of OC is not risky for the ACU. It's very much the opposite.

Now if you can follow this train of logic, stack bombing is just an activate ability with different parameters. It costs APM rather than energy. Maybe it is or isn't too much in some case -either way it's a cost you have to consider ahead of time.

Your analogy doesn't work in your favour. Actually there is a "risk" to zooming in on your ACU and clicking "overcharge" and concentrating on the battle in which the ACU is immersed. Because it could very well be the case that by concentrating on constantly overcharging the other player could be tml-ing your mexes. The time you spent constantly overcharging could have been time spent building tmds. The inherent risk is not that it requires concentration, it's that it requires extensively more concentration than other things. On a slightly larger scale, the argument that you have presented is similar to saying "building a mex has no inherent risks, because increasing your resource intake in and of itself isn't a risk. Therefore building a paragon is also not a risk, because all it does is take some resources and convert it into more. Balancing the eco is an inherent part of the game." It's not the factor in question but the intensity of its requirements that is the issue. Also the fact that building first bomber with the intention of doing triple bombing is a sunk cost merely reinforces the element of risk involved; if you can't get any returns back at all, and your eco is slightly worse than your oppponents', then of course it's a bigger gamble (therefore bigger risk) than anything that isn't a sunk cost.

As such, I'm don't think find the arguments you present that convincing.

[Szakalot]

Note that this is not limited to this game. I would have you recall bunnyhopping in Counter Strike, and how some people defended that as well. Luckily the devs had the sense to remove that. Let's have some sense is all I'm saying.

Great example. Except that there is an identical counter example.
Bunny hopping in Q3 engine games was also unintended. It is now considered a vital part of the game, and maps are build around the idea.

I think a much stronger deterrent for new players is the complexity of the game. Knowing where reclaim is on different maps, what type of strategies make sense, and what don't. Organizing your macro so that you don't have to click everytime you want a new unit, etc. These are the things that make the game less welcoming to new players, not a single glitch.

[ColonelSheppard]

errorblankfield, repeating the same stuff all the time doesn't make it more ture

See thze others here are better, they make an unproofeable/disproofable claim and are therefore relatively save - gj guys
But you are saying things that only a 1k guy that never really has microed a bomber would say.

So i ask you again: why do you think bombers aren't usually microed more than giving them a general flightpath? DO you really think it's because nobody knows about this? I bet with you that most of the better players do know about it, and how to do it, but choose that the time it requires is not worth. See i know the " you are a noob" argument is, not an agrument, it's a provocation. But your statements are just about as bad.

I've not seen any top player really having a problem with bombermicro, infact, they use bomber a lot less than the average i would asume. I only here see FunkOff, which opinion i very much respect. But then i see a lot of 1000 guys who claim to be experts about bomber, while they certainly aren't.
See i'n not a top player, i'm a noob too compared to them. But if it's about bombermicro i'm probably one of the most qualified person on how to use and counter it around here, simply because i played so many games with first bomber, in order to test it on every map with different BOs and so on.

So why don'T you get some experience, before telling me unfitting facts.

[Wakke]

Note that this is not limited to this game. I would have you recall bunnyhopping in Counter Strike, and how some people defended that as well. Luckily the devs had the sense to remove that. Let's have some sense is all I'm saying.

Great example. Except that there is an identical counter example.
Bunny hopping in Q3 engine games was also unintended. It is now considered a vital part of the game, and maps are build around the idea.

In my recollection, bunny hopping in CS was way more extreme as compared to in Q3: you could actually gain a lot of forward speed by doing that in CS. Anyways, I just wanted to illustrate how the topic at hand and bunny jumping seem similar to me.

I think a much stronger deterrent for new players is the complexity of the game. Knowing where reclaim is on different maps, what type of strategies make sense, and what don't. Organizing your macro so that you don't have to click everytime you want a new unit, etc. These are the things that make the game less welcoming to new players, not a single glitch.

I by no means meant that those two points were the only deterrents, or the biggest ones. I clarified that now in my post.

Also, some people seem to think the only relevant input on this topic is from (bomber) experts, but I disagree. Sometimes you don't need any game experience at all to give useful input, for example, when judging whether a mechanic is intuitive or not: If you show someone who has never played FA in his life a video of 'normal' bombing and 'stacked' bombing, I'm sure he will proclaim the 'normal' bombing looks better/cooler/makes him want to try the game more. And that is the core of the issue for me.

[rockoe10]

You're right, it's a game. And everything within the rules of said game are allowed.
This has already been said multiple times - what is intended and what is not intended is just not an argument. Do you think the devs intended engineer spam to be what it was, so bad that engymod was made?
Gameplay > Any logic
and to be honest, while you can say "bombers don't work that way" it's the 38th century, they can make skyscraper units in less than a few minutes. Current technology doesn't apply, at all.

I know its the future and technology has changed, you don't have to tell me that( not to mention this point has already been said). I am simply saying that what the game dev's intended most likely was not a hovering multi-dropping aircraft.

Of course none of us may know EXACTLY what Chris Taylor was thinking when he made the bomber, or is intended behavior of the aircraft but we have a pretty good idea of what it is.

It's up to PilOt now IMO because he has the ability, the guts, and the 'I don't give a flying pig's shit what you think' to just DO it and tell everyone to STFU about something.

That's one take on it...

Or we could be adults for five seconds and handle this ourselves.

At this point, it's clearly an opinion for which side of the fence you stand. Grant those for keeping the extra bombing can't seem to agree to basic facts -but end result is easy enough to decide on.

Keep the behavior or remove it.

A simple client poll would be ideal.

^^This

To keep it simple, it's not really that risky but very rewardy.

Only the fear of the hypnotoad is preventing me from raging right now.

Though i don't agree with your side Sheppard, this is still funny!

There are two things that make this game less welcoming for new players, and make the game less elegant/likable on the whole:
1. Convoluted, unintended, unnatural, unintuitive, obscure, un-elegant mechanics. For an example, see the thread title.
2. The fact that some community members rigorously defend these mechanics. They seem to be driven by a sense of elitism, fear of losing "their edge/advantage" in game, and conservatism.

Luckily, one of these is fixable

Note that this is not limited to this game. I would have you recall bunnyhopping in Counter Strike, and how some people defended that as well. Luckily the devs had the sense to remove that. Let's have some sense is all I'm saying.

Its the engie mod all over again. I agree 100% Wakke, intuitiveness is critical for bringing in new players and keeping them.

P.S. I was a bunny hopper . Had it config'ed and everything, still its good that its gone.

@Coffee Nut, i can explain why your comment is wrong (not that its facts are wrong, but that the same can be argued in reverse i.e. the interceptor can't follow behind the bomber and shoot it repeatedly, etc.) but ill leave it to errorblankfield.

Note that this is not limited to this game. I would have you recall bunnyhopping in Counter Strike, and how some people defended that as well. Luckily the devs had the sense to remove that. Let's have some sense is all I'm saying.

Great example. Except that there is an identical counter example.
Bunny hopping in Q3 engine games was also unintended. It is now considered a vital part of the game, and maps are build around the idea.

.......

We have already been in the process of this. We have balanced the game so that the double bomber is countered easier with interceptors and mobile flak, but this then makes it necessary to double bomb if you plan to get the DPS you need before the counter is que'd up by the target player. Thus, the game just about requires you to double bomb.

errorblankfield, repeating the same stuff all the time doesn't make it more ture

See thze others here are better, they make an unproofeable/disproofable claim and are therefore relatively save - gj guys
But you are saying things that only a 1k guy that never really has microed a bomber would say.

So i ask you again: why do you think bombers aren't usually microed more than giving them a general flightpath? DO you really think it's because nobody knows about this? I bet with you that most of the better players do know about it, and how to do it, but choose that the time it requires is not worth. See i know the " you are a noob" argument is, not an agrument, it's a provocation. But your statements are just about as bad.

I've not seen any top player really having a problem with bombermicro, infact, they use bomber a lot less than the average i would asume. I only here see FunkOff, which opinion i very much respect. But then i see a lot of 1000 guys who claim to be experts about bomber, while they certainly aren't.
See i'n not a top player, i'm a noob too compared to them. But if it's about bombermicro i'm probably one of the most qualified person on how to use and counter it around here, simply because i played so many games with first bomber, in order to test it on every map with different BOs and so on.

So why don'T you get some experience, before telling me unfitting facts.

This is probably true because like i said above, we have balanced the game around the double bomber. If you can double bomb, then you build a bomber and take advantage, otherwise you don't even bother building a bomber in more cases than not. Or, the bomber has enough of an advantage without being micro'ed to double bomb, and your APM can be better suited somewhere else.