Aircraft afterburners

[Evildrew]

Hi,

So I was reading a post about how T2 fighter bombers are not so versatile and dont fit in with tactics in the later game as they are inefficient etc and the idea were to change cost, speed, etc to find a balance that makes them more useable as they have the same speed as T1 inties and are inefficient to trade vs them based on mass values.

I also made a post about aircraft carriers and one of the conclusions was that they are not needed as aircraft carriers since planes die too soon, lower tech air becomes obsolete when they are out of fuel, T3 air have long lasting fuel...

So I came up with this idea of having afterburners for all fighter related aircraft>

T1 Inties
T2 fighterbombers and swiftwinds
T3 ASF

***currently there are 2 types of every aircraft, the normal speedy version and the super slow one when its fuel is 0.

The idea about after burners is that it uses up your fuel quicker, lets say an ASF 15mins+ of fuel when it is built and a speed of 25 in current play.
If we introduce a new cruise speed of say 22 with 15mins fuel and an afterburn button that increases the speed to 25 but changes the fuel level to last 5 mins under this option we get a rebirth of refueling pads and aircraft carriers being used for what they are supposed to be there for. Afterburners should also only work lets say 4/5mins for realism reasons, no pilot will burn his fuel until is empty, they will always leave some for the way home (except the japanese)

The table would look something like this (the values may not be optimal as there is no testing done yet)

Cruise Afterburner
T1 Inties 15 17
T2 fighterbombers 15 17
T2 swiftwinds 16 18
T3 ASF 22 25


How would it look like and work>
There would be an afterburn button which changes the speed of the unit. I dont know how the submarine submersing button works in the coding but if the sub can change depth and Cybran T3 can stealth so can a button change the speed and fuel usage.

Benefits:

Lazy and bad air players are penalized for not managing their aircraft well.
Players can send T2 F/Bombers at the enemies base with afterburner and pass patrolling inties of a passive player. Currently inties will tail and shoot down t2 fighter bombers.
Skilled players will be able to still track the enemy T2 F/Bomber by switch on the afterburners.
T2 F/Bombers launched from carrier using afterburners for launch are surprising and can strike quicker.


Other occurrences and Risks:

T1 Inties and t1 bombers have an expanding max speed gap which makes t1 bombers more vulnerable.
T3 strats with a speed of 17 can be tailed by inties, maybe this is good maybe not... I dont know... Some might say inties would be OP vs strats, maybe strats should keep 1 speed point more, however if we consider inties burning through their fuel fast, we can conclude that they wont hunt the strat for too long (I like strats being able too outfly inties).
T3 strats with a speed of 17 can be tailed by T2 figher/&fighter-bombers, maybe this is good maybe not... I dont know
ASF will be slower, therefore they will tail behind enemy aircraft longer before passing making their dps go up
Turnrates of T2 air with afterburners should be inferior to that of inties while using afterburners meaning, i think this might be good.

Other considerations:

I thought about having the damage and fuel level impact the speed planes can fly, however it is hard to fly in any formation with 1 almost dead planes holding up the healthy one. I however thought about highly damange planes losing their afterburn ability but in my opinion this just gets too complex to manage.

Conclusion:
**Afterburners would give the player more optionality and could make fighter bombers take a more meaningful role in the game.
**A simple afterburn button is all it takes to make the gap between the different tech levels of the airforce a little narrower as the people talking about balancing seem to desire.

Let me know what you think, maybe one or 2 points here are useful.

Evildrew

[Evildrew]

Hi Briang,

Indeed it is a bit more micro to push 1 button, but just also think of the options it also brings. In ASF battles you can leave it switched off and micro around and if you have a bad turn and feel you are not the favorite, you can boost out, meaning that when you are facing your opponent you can boost straight ahead while he cant boost until he has turned the corner. I find it bizarre to see when you are trying to flee and not matter what you do, the enemy ASF always stick on you and you cant escape.

Since you like the idea, what do you think I got right and what am i missing or wrong on?

[Gorton]

Personally i'm of the opinion that more tedious micro = worse game to play, and also = more annoying shit to do that isn't really fun.

I don't see the fun in these weird, special abilities. It would just annoy me instead.

[yeager]

The more micro the better, but using/abusing the game mechanics to win and just being better at fighting the game are 2 different things. I think I like this idea, all though I'm not sure fighter bombers are that bad, it's true I'm not in a high rated environment, but I've kill 1300, even 1500 lvl players with just waiting till I have 10 fbs and sniping his com

[quark036]

I'm sort of split on this. I agree with Gorton that pointless micro doesn't add fun to the game, but I do think that if you are willing to give up some of your attention from other parts of the map, to focus on one battle, then you should be able to get an advantage. Attention is a limited resource in this game
Overall I think I like this mechanic.

[Evildrew]

Hi Gorton

I dont consider having 1 more button that can be pressed tedious micro. As mentioned we already have a stealth button on cybran ASF which works about the same as the idea I presented. The only additional pain is that you would really need to build landing pods or a carrier at some point if the game lasts, lets say, more than 30 mins. But the main point would be to make air play a bit more versatile.

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

Being able to escape an air fight with afterburner when you messed up your turn is bad. It would mean more static late game and more turtle. Neither air player would accept a loss and just move ASF over SAM, cruiser etc. when things go wrong, eliminating the possibility of air domination from either side.

[Necrosis]

Being able to escape an air fight with afterburner when you messed up your turn is bad. It would mean more static late game and more turtle. Neither air player would accept a loss and just move ASF over SAM, cruiser etc. when things go wrong, eliminating the possibility of air domination from either side.

then again higher speed means less SAM hit rate.

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

Maybe, but the point is that you shouldn't be able to just bail out. An escape button like afterburner would also defeat tactics like surprising your enemy because he has no radar, luring him over an area with AA etc. Apply the same principle to land forces for example. If you mess up and get swarmed or walk into shielded ravagers because you didn't scout, you just have to eat it.

[Ceneraii]

It would require quite a bit of rebalancing when it comes to aa hitrate though, some aa is already atrrocious at hitting planes to begin with *cough* cybran *cough*. Against faster air units this would be even worse, while probably being too good against slower.