Navy Balance, Ground Fire, and Intel

[Azraeel]

There is a method that could deal with this to some extent.

Submarines have an elevation value in their blueprint that controls their depth - generally this should be set to a value at least as great as the larger AOE range values on the surface ships. This method should work well, provided the water depth is generally reasonable (that's more a map thing).

Another issue should also be WaterVisionRadius, another blueprint value that controls just how well units can see underwater. It's not set in very many blueprints, which means it defaults to the normal surface vision radius, allowing ships on the surface to see underwater units just as clearly as if they were on land. While this doesn't affect sonar range, it does have a great negative impact on those submarines that have Sonar stealth, and would otherwise be able to close the range on targets without being detected.

^ pls read btw

[Plasma_Wolf]

If someone spends 30 seconds microing a t1 bomber trying to kill a t1 sub then i will gladly grant him that kill.

That's not the real problem. The problem is situations like this one time I had about 8 t3 subs stacked up and lost them in one pass to about 15 t1 bombers ground firing. That took 1 second of micro and is BOTH unrealistic and makes for poor gameplay.

Then the problem here is that the subs were stacked with a shift-g, not that bombers have AoE. It is also one second of micro to get rid of this situation.

In a game of a 127-meter high STOMPY-STOMP BOT and 200 ASFs flying into 200 ASFs without a single collision while there absolutely clearly should be at least one, I am not going to bother with what is realistic and what is not. This is not an argument. As for poor gameplay, I'd say that the fact that subs shift-g'd into one position, while other units are a group with collision detection, is more poor than a T1-3 bomber, battleship or Ahwassa punishing the shift-g.

[Ithilis_Quo]

The argument is not realism, even when it is super funny how is napalm bombs killing underwater submarines.
The argument is that it breaks one of the core game mechanisms with layers.

Why will you bother with anti-nuke when you can use interceptor to kill nuke in sky? (because of its different layer? WHO cares? Nuke has 2hp so why not?


Or why not use your asf with nasty 400 dps to deal with land units? They shoot Air when is landed, why no tanks as well? You can even deny shield this way. Will you argue in samé way when all of your Army will be vaporized by asfs? Or you will say that it's broken as f*** while these units are not balanced to compete on different layers?

Do you know that you cant groundfire units directly but you need to move your attack command? What do you think why this wierd prohibition is there? Should not it have something with lame way how to prohibit this abuse?

[Steel_Panther]

If someone spends 30 seconds microing a t1 bomber trying to kill a t1 sub then i will gladly grant him that kill.

That's not the real problem. The problem is situations like this one time I had about 8 t3 subs stacked up and lost them in one pass to about 15 t1 bombers ground firing. That took 1 second of micro and is BOTH unrealistic and makes for poor gameplay.

Then the problem here is that the subs were stacked with a shift-g, not that bombers have AoE. It is also one second of micro to get rid of this situation.

In a game of a 127-meter high STOMPY-STOMP BOT and 200 ASFs flying into 200 ASFs without a single collision while there absolutely clearly should be at least one, I am not going to bother with what is realistic and what is not. This is not an argument. As for poor gameplay, I'd say that the fact that subs shift-g'd into one position, while other units are a group with collision detection, is more poor than a T1-3 bomber, battleship or Ahwassa punishing the shift-g.

I disagree that "this is fine, because shift-g." The reason I actually used shift-g for t3 subs is because the game can be very buggy and units literally do not move sometimes in a very full, late game setons with thousands of units on the map. You give them a move order, and only some units move, or don't at all. But for some reason, they will actually move if you make it a shift-g order. So you are sometimes forced to do so just to move your units. Why do you think it's fine for t1 bombers to deal damage to submerged units? "well, because AOE!"? I think that's a pretty stupid reason because it's both unrealistic and a poor game mechanic.

[Mach]

Or why not use your asf with nasty 400 dps to deal with land units? They shoot Air when is landed, why no tanks as well? You can even deny shield this way. Will you argue in samé way when all of your Army will be vaporized by asfs? Or you will say that it's broken as f*** while these units are not balanced to compete on different layers??

this can work by reducing all air units hp by like 100x and all anti air weapon damage (including air units aa like asf) same 100x too, that way they could shoot at ground like realistically they should be able to, without it being OP (because they will do little but not negligible damage), this was in fact similar to this (without aa weapons being able to shoot at ground units) in vanilla supcom

[armacham01]

I do find it weird that interceptors have about as much HP as t1 tanks. A cyclone literally has more HP than a mantis or a thaam. When you catch them on the ground it takes multiple shots from tanks to kill them. WTF? Some flimsy plane gets shot by a Striker medium tank, and it does not instantly disintegrate? A cyclone can actually absorb more than 10 shots from a striker, and not die. A cyclone can absorb 4 volleys from a pillar and not die.

Similarly, an ASF can soak multiple hits from a trebuchet. It can survive one hit from a scathis.

Making this change (reducing air unit HP and reducing anti-DPS by the same amount) would reduce the phenomenon of ASF shooting at landed planes (or kennel drones), hitting shields, and the shields dropping as a result of being hit. If ASF did 20% as much damage, that just wouldn't happen.

I believe that mobile AA (cybran and lightning tanks) have different weapons for anti-air vs. anti-ground, so this change would not affect them. The only units I know of that use the same weapons to attack ground and air are gunships. So if this change was made, we would also need to make gunships do different damage vs. other gunships (or else gunships would kill each other 5x as fast as they do now).

Also it would protect Chariots quite a bit, because if they're carrying engineers or tanks, they could absorb a lot more interceptor fire before the carried units die.

It would be sad if your interceptors park in the wrong place and suddenly just all die. Interceptors now will take off from the ground if a target comes into range. If we made this change, perhaps they should also take off if there are enemy ground units, even though the interceptors can't shoot them, just to avoid being slaughtered. But that seems like a lot of work to program.

I think the main problem with allowing interceptors/asf to strafe ground units is that they would behave badly during airfights if they got distracted and tried to shoot ground units. Even if their target priority is for other planes, if there were no planes in range but there is a ground target, it would waste the shot on that? And sometimes when they are flying, like on patrol or attack move, they would get distracted by ground units and try to fight them, instead of patrolling the skies.

So I understand that there are reasons for the current balance. "Fixing" it probably creates as many problems as it solves. I would definitely like to see at least a small shift towards planes having less HP, even if it's just a 50% reduction in HP/DPS.

[Mach]

I think the main problem with allowing interceptors/asf to strafe ground units is that they would behave badly during airfights if they got distracted and tried to shoot ground units. Even if their target priority is for other planes, if there were no planes in range but there is a ground target, it would waste the shot on that? And sometimes when they are flying, like on patrol or attack move, they would get distracted by ground units and try to fight them, instead of patrolling the skies.

this can easily be fixed by having a switch on air units for targetting ground at all, like cybran maa and cruiser had before faf changed it to automatic, they used to completely ignore units if they werent type that player told them they were supposed to target

[Plasma_Wolf]

The argument is not realism, even when it is super funny how is napalm bombs killing underwater submarines.
The argument is that it breaks one of the core game mechanisms with layers.

Why will you bother with anti-nuke when you can use interceptor to kill nuke in sky? (because of its different layer? WHO cares? Nuke has 2hp so why not?


Or why not use your asf with nasty 400 dps to deal with land units? They shoot Air when is landed, why no tanks as well? You can even deny shield this way. Will you argue in samé way when all of your Army will be vaporized by asfs? Or you will say that it's broken as f*** while these units are not balanced to compete on different layers?

Do you know that you cant groundfire units directly but you need to move your attack command? What do you think why this wierd prohibition is there? Should not it have something with lame way how to prohibit this abuse?

Better remove the ability for artillery to hit air units, remove the tactical missile collision detection with air units so that Soul Rippers or donuts can't be hit in-flight anymore. Same for the nuke, make sure it can't collide with experimentals or falling air wrecks anymore (yes, falling air wrecks hitting nukes is still a thing even though the air unit itself can't hit a nuke while it's alive). And while we're at it, we'll also make sure that beam weapons can't kill tactical missiles or anti-air missiles anymore.

One of the main reasons I was sad about the air balance changes from SupCom to FA was that the option to have air units fire at ground units went out the window. Air units have been given like 10-20 times the HP and 5-10 times the DPS. Back then, it was possible to have them without making air basically the only combat option.

So why is A not allowed while B is allowed? We can't look at realism, because it's not about realism. If we'd look at layer interference, it's a deeper discussion than "Oh this is bad because..."

What to look at? Effort to do something in terms of resources and APM and damage dealt in the process. Why can't nukes collide with air units anymore? Because it turns out it's easy and lucrative to get spy planes to fly over an enemy nuke launcher. It's definitely not APM-lucrative to kill submerged units with ground fire.

I disagree that "this is fine, because shift-g." The reason I actually used shift-g for t3 subs is because the game can be very buggy and units literally do not move sometimes in a very full, late game setons with thousands of units on the map. You give them a move order, and only some units move, or don't at all. But for some reason, they will actually move if you make it a shift-g order. So you are sometimes forced to do so just to move your units. Why do you think it's fine for t1 bombers to deal damage to submerged units? "well, because AOE!"? I think that's a pretty stupid reason because it's both unrealistic and a poor game mechanic.

Well, we're homing in on the problem: units getting unresponsive. For an immediate approach, I have found that ordering units in several smaller groups makes them react a lot better, and that spam clicking a move order also works. As for your solution? You're allowed to shift-g units into one spot, while the shift-g clump is itself a poor mechanic (no effort, maximum damage in killing), but someone else is not allowed to answer that with a ground fire? I'd also like to know how the game was so filled that units were slow to respond, or unresponsive, but still so fast that you weren't able to dodge the T1 bombers. If it were a strat, I'd understand the situation. Anyway, that's a tangent. The source of the problem is still not the ground fire. And again, realism is no argument.

[Steel_Panther]

The source of the problem is still not the ground fire. And again, realism is no argument.

You give no answer why you think this is good gameplay. Of course realism with bad gameplay is a bad idea. But this is both completely unrealistic and a poor game mechanic. Just because it is possible to move your units that you were forced to shift g doesn't make it fine. It is bad because subs are designed to be much more fragile with significantly lower hp per mass cost. This is fine when it interacts with torpedo damage of other naval units and t2 torp bombers. But it is a problem when they can be targeted by very cheap units. Subs aren't like t3 mobile artillery that every faction can protect from t1 bombers with flak and shields (static at least, mobile shields for some). You can't just say "no it's not op because it is theoretically possible to dodge." I have sniped plenty of acus with nothas, which are "theoretically, easy to dodge." The point is it is bad gameplay to have to super carefully babysit certain units because of the interaction of the balance of the game, compounded by lag issues. Give me an explanation that says "this makes the game better because..." Given how t3 subs are already thought of as pretty bad units in many situations, I don't think making them even harder to use makes the game better.

[Azraeel]

ThomasHiatt for balance team pls