ASF Balance

[KD7BCH]

I'm no expert player by any means, but watching a lot of games gas given me a few observations.

In the tech 1 phase, it's still worthwhile building T1 bombers when your opponent has air control with T1 interceptors. You might pick off an engineer or a radar or some other valuable unit and then the bomber is worthwhile. Sure, chances are it dies immediately, but you've still gotten value. Furthermore, you can use the bomber far away from where those interceptors are parked, or send two in different directions, and your opponent has to either chase down one at a time or split his air and leave himself vulnerable to an air fight.

This doesn't seem to play out the same way at the T3 stage. I think this is primarily due to the speed which ASF fly at. You can easily cross most of the map in a moment, and their damage is so high, which makes it relatively easy to defend with ASF, even against multiple air threats. Perhaps ASF simply fly too fast?


Another difference between T1 and T3 air is that interceptors are limited by fuel, whereas ASF kinda just aren't. Interceptors have 5 minutes of fuel, and recharge in 10 minutes. ASF have 16 minutes, 40 seconds of fuel, and recharge in 11:06. This means that interceptors have a sort of 'life expectancy' that limits how long they'll remain effective combat units but ASF don't really have any such concern.

I have heard talk that fuel is simply an un-fun limitation, and hence it could be that interceptors only get away with having it because they become obsolete anyway after a few minutes once flack and ASF hit the field.


So I guess my points are:
- What would be the impact on transports/defence/gunships if ASF were globally slowed?
- Could we use fuel as a limiting factor, or is that boring?

And an off-the-wall suggestion: How about retweaking fuel so that it's more of an 'afterburners' sort of thing. Give air units a very small amount of fuel, but make the penalty for being out of fuel also pretty minor. Something like a 10%-15% slow with no penalty to turn speed. This would let them cross the map in one direction, but not get back again immediately.

Good points, fuel is a limiter in T1 but you pay for less micromanagement with higher costs in T3. You also don't want to really ask the air players to manage a bunch of re-fueling because ground doesn't have to manage that, Even so refueling can be got around by building a few air bases for refuel.

For the vast majority of ASF utility we need to leave it in place as a counter to all other air but most importantly against STRAT bombers and AIR EXPs. I think your speed adjustment idea of fast from launch and medium after running out of speed instead of slow is an interesting change, however we'd have to test that before making judgement as to if it is a good idea.

Slowing ASFs has the effect of maintaining their lethality when they get into range, but allowing a slower moving vehicle to move more distance after it has been detected by the player controlling their ASFs. If you drop the speed of ASFs to 24 or 23 from 25 they still have a huge advantage on any other air threat, so they will get a smaller % of shots in on a target before it reaches its destination in theory. However transports moving at stock speed still don't go fast enough to overcome this, so we wanted to increase their speed a bit too, they still are slower than bombers and ASFs just a little faster than interceptors and faster than gunships if I recall correctly where we have them placed.

To your question about using fuel as a limiter, it is an interesting solution but to a different set of problems than we have. I think because you can instantly refuel all air vehicles using fuel to try to limit ASF effectiveness won't work because they are so lethal. The counter problem is that we need them to remain lethal because of Air EXPs

[nakeddave]

I honestly don't think these goals are achievable. You want the ASF to be the best thing in the air against any threat, but for people to somehow not build too many of them.

Increasing the mass cost is just a giant buff to air exps while doing nothing to negate how vital ASF are. It will still be the case in team games that at least one player should devote 100% of their eco to a single unit, because it's a do-everything super fighter.

The ASF needs a weakness. On land when you tech up you get stronger units but they're also slower, more vulnerable to overcharge, cover less ground etc. ASF are just better in every single way than their predecessors, and until we experiment with changing their role, they'll always have issues.

For example - what if ASF fuel was heavily nerfed (and intie fuel buffed, since by the time they start losing fuel there's flak everywhere anyway)? Make ASF even stronger, but give them a limited range to work with. You can still protect yourself from aerial attack near your own territory where you have staging/production, but you can't have an omnipresent doom butt all over the map any more. They're still all-powerful but there's no longer a reason to make 100000 of them.

[Valki]

So you don't think the fact that nobody builds T2 FBs instead of Strats for more than 5 minutes is a problem, or that their flying speed is so much slower than ASFs that this is an issue,
Or the fact that only ASFs can only effectively be countered by ASFs,
Or that players rush single strats early instead of FBs because a handful of FBs are wasted by even a single, double or triple ASF.
Or that players don't do drops in T3 because they have about a 10% rate of getting to a landing zone and you can spend 20k mass and loose 18k of it with only 2k of it making it to a target because of ASF superiority?

[...]

Transports should not be a complete waste of mass ever, they should be effective, they are effective before ASF show up and they should continue to be effective just not as effective. If it costs you more than it costs the enemy in lost assets then you should not use the method, however it should be viable. With enough transports you can get a survival rate which makes sense. However it should not be 2-5X the cost of the same number of ASFs. Please note we are talking about sending air fighters with ASFs with transports not just transports on their own, they still die in much greater quantity with ASFs as powerful as they are without ever making a drop.

If drop play viability is the problem then why not buff T3 drops, really buff them?

• Buff UEF Continental Shield
• Give Cybran a T3 transport with Stealth and Cloak
• Give Aeon a fast T3 transport that teleports the units to the ground without landing or stopping
• Give Seraphim a T3 drop-transport where the units aboard survive if the transport crashes.

[KD7BCH]

I honestly don't think these goals are achievable. You want the ASF to be the best thing in the air against any threat, but for people to somehow not build too many of them.

Increasing the mass cost is just a giant buff to air exps while doing nothing to negate how vital ASF are. It will still be the case in team games that at least one player should devote 100% of their eco to a single unit, because it's a do-everything super fighter.

The ASF needs a weakness. On land when you tech up you get stronger units but they're also slower, more vulnerable to overcharge, cover less ground etc. ASF are just better in every single way than their predecessors, and until we experiment with changing their role, they'll always have issues.

For example - what if ASF fuel was heavily nerfed (and intie fuel buffed, since by the time they start losing fuel there's flak everywhere anyway)? Make ASF even stronger, but give them a limited range to work with. You can still protect yourself from aerial attack near your own territory where you have staging/production, but you can't have an omnipresent doom butt all over the map any more. They're still all-powerful but there's no longer a reason to make 100000 of them.

This could be an interesting change. Only thing is how do you counter Air EXPs then, since T1 Interceptors can't catch them and don't have the DPS necessary to shoot them down?

[KD7BCH]

So you don't think the fact that nobody builds T2 FBs instead of Strats for more than 5 minutes is a problem, or that their flying speed is so much slower than ASFs that this is an issue,
Or the fact that only ASFs can only effectively be countered by ASFs,
Or that players rush single strats early instead of FBs because a handful of FBs are wasted by even a single, double or triple ASF.
Or that players don't do drops in T3 because they have about a 10% rate of getting to a landing zone and you can spend 20k mass and loose 18k of it with only 2k of it making it to a target because of ASF superiority?

[...]

Transports should not be a complete waste of mass ever, they should be effective, they are effective before ASF show up and they should continue to be effective just not as effective. If it costs you more than it costs the enemy in lost assets then you should not use the method, however it should be viable. With enough transports you can get a survival rate which makes sense. However it should not be 2-5X the cost of the same number of ASFs. Please note we are talking about sending air fighters with ASFs with transports not just transports on their own, they still die in much greater quantity with ASFs as powerful as they are without ever making a drop.

If drop play viability is the problem then why not buff T3 drops, really buff them?

• Buff UEF Continental Shield
• Give Cybran a T3 transport with Stealth and Cloak
• Give Aeon a fast T3 transport that teleports the units to the ground without landing or stopping
• Give Seraphim a T3 drop-transport where the units aboard survive if the transport crashes.

NOW THIS IS A REALLY GREAT IDEA! ATTENTION KORBAH CAN YOU MOD THIS IN SO WE CAN SEE WHAT THIS WOULD LOOK LIKE? CAN YOU DO THAT TODAY?

[Ionic]

The majority of players don't want the air player dropping t1 artl all over the map, instead of building ASF.

[KD7BCH]

I dont disagree however I would think late game transports would be loaded up with something better than T1 arty but if not, then you will have to defend against that possibility. Which adds strategic depth, and tactical methods that don't exist right now.

[nakeddave]

For example - what if ASF fuel was heavily nerfed (and intie fuel buffed, since by the time they start losing fuel there's flak everywhere anyway)? Make ASF even stronger, but give them a limited range to work with. You can still protect yourself from aerial attack near your own territory where you have staging/production, but you can't have an omnipresent doom cloud all over the map any more. They're still all-powerful but there's no longer a reason to make 100000 of them.

This could be an interesting change. Only thing is how do you counter Air EXPs then, since T1 Interceptors can't catch them and don't have the DPS necessary to shoot them down?

ASF still, but it's dependent on the disposition of your units. Air exps won't be able to get past your air staging/carriers without being shot down, so they'll have to find a gap in your defences or create one with a land push. OR, given how staging works, you could just scramble ASF anyway and send them out of their supported range, hoping to kill the exp before you all run out of fuel and get mopped up by flak and t1 ints. Which sounds pretty boss to me.

The more I think about this the more I like it. At the moment, the map is essentially blank as far as air units are concerned, right? If staging is crucial then you suddenly have safe areas and risky ones. And aircraft carriers would be important too!

[yeager]

air support should be crucial, but drops should be viable in t3, right now it barely matters I you have air control, the mass you Los when they take out a transport is worth it for them. I'd like if fbs were faster, it asf were more expensive but also better (so we don't get huge clouds of asf) and if there were t3 transports with high cost but enough hp to actually be viable

[KD7BCH]

It adds nothing. If you don't have air control you shouldn't be able to drop units from the air onto a team that does. Do you even make sense to yourself?

You can't control the whole map's air at all times, and there by prevent a drop everywhere anymore you can prevent a nuke from landing in every possible location so while you are entitled to your opinion it doesn't mean ASF's aren't over powered in the other respects in which they are or that every game with air doesn't see swarms of ASFs, which it does.