Problem Air superiority is single-handedly translating into game winning map control and metal income. The choice to build air factory is much more powerful than the choice to build other types of factories. With an air advantage you shut the opponent out of the game and condemn him to a death 5 or 10 minutes down the road. Basically all high level games i play come down to who couldn't spam more air factories than the other guy, or who wasn't paying attention to their planes for 5 seconds. A good game should have avenues of comeback, but unfortunately once you lose air control in PA currently, it's the start of a snowball to your loss. There are certain map exceptions, but these are only very specific circumstances like pacific or forge. Also, no-one wants to be stuck playing sub ~400 radius planets all the time. I don't mean to whine, but only to emphasise how big of a problem this is currently. The game at high level is really very stale. No air control, no win. Suggestion This is only one suggestion. There are many other possible ones, and as usual i'm not saying I'm 100% right. What i hope people take away from this thread instead is more a recognition that air is a huge problem that needs addressing. - Increase dox aa effectiveness. Currently it is mostly luck based outcome of "will he find them with his bomber". - give tank splash damage but reduce rof a bit. Knock on effect of making dox/tank viable. - reduce all air move speeds by ~10 - reduce fighter hp from 6 land aa hits to 5 (125hp), fighter dmg to 60 - Reduce number of bombs/potential damage by bomber.
Nooooo! I still disagree with dox having AA capability, even in its current weakened form. Less of an issue now their vision and speed have been nerfed, but yeah.. What about cheaper AA turrets?
Despite my lack of air mirco ability I see the point of this complaint. Air surperiority is very poweful on big maps even for noobs like me. I am surprised to the proposed solution though. AA already beats air hard right now. This is why we have maps like pacific and forge where air does not dominate. Driving up the power of AA (or making it available in new units, or nerfing air) will only increase the planet size required to cause air to be all important while also making it utterly irrelevant on many current maps. The simple calculation is this: how much metal do you need in AA to protect each mex field well enough that the air-wielding player cannot, with a given metal in air force, get a cost effective confrontation with his air against ground at said mex field? This quantity goes up with the square of the radius of the planet no matter what the scaling factor is from AA power. No matter AA power there will always be a planet size big enough that air dominates. We can make that size not a realistic one in PA, but only by making air useless on most other sizes of planet that we might want to play on. Basically, in its current state air will be balanced on maps of only one size, under-powered to some degree on any smaller maps, and overpowered to some degree on any bigger maps. This is unavoidable with the current air. I personally would rather have air that is reasonable on berg, usable on pacific or forge and dominant on meso then one which is reasonable on meso and useless everywhere else. Solution: Implement a refueling system to limit the range of planes. This, once plane and AA power is adjusted appropriately, makes the planes always balanced within what range they have and never overpowered or under-powered regardless of planet size (micromoons and weird terrain features aside). The only reason I can see not to do this from a balance POV is that it is simply difficult to implement. If this is true then what maps you want air to be balanced on and what maps you want it to be under-powered on or dominate is, ultimately, a matter of preference.
I disagree, air can be balanced without refueling imo. why would air require fuel when tanks don't for example? Personally I think cheaper teleporters are a better idea as it allows fluid movement of land forces over large areas. Currently the running costs prevent them being viable early game which I think was a mistake.
I'd simply double the cost of all air. Also the presence of AA should make low tech air locally useless. T1 bombers never ever should be able to fight ground AA without a massive metal advantage.
Let's just remember that TA didn't have any of the nonsensical refueling of rearming mechanics found in SupCom or C&C and didn't have OP air (Except for the anti-anything Hawk, which was simply a bad unit).
Because air has as its niche the ability to be anywhere before a reaction by the enemy. If you think about your example, the fact that tanks don't have a refueling system means that tanks dominate maps vis-a-vis turrets. Air is fast and weak compared to tanks which are strong and slow. Tanks are fast and weak compared to turrets which are strong and slow. Only a fool spams turrets as plan to win the game because the planets are big enough that tanks dominate over turrets since you can't cover everything with sufficient turrets. If maps were small enough turrets would rule (we see this in comm boxing). If the maps were small enough tanks would rule (we see this on forge). Your example makes my point. The reason that a refueling system is bad for tanks but good for air is that we want tanks to dominate over turrets except for the purposes of protecting the main base. We don't want air to dominate tanks except for the purposes of protecting the main base not least of all because towers will then make tanks obsolete. Basically my point stands, as planet size increases air beats ground. Without refueling air will always beat ground given a sufficiently big map. (This is unless aa has so high an alpha strike that air never has a favorable confrontation with it regardless of numbers of course). Doubling the cost of air is just another way of nerfing air. If air must be tied to planet size for its importance it honestly is in a state that I personally prefer right now.
I've been thinking about air gameplay a lot and its a tough nut to crack. The problem is that it snowballs out of control at some point. Things that I find bad You can't properly defend land fabricators. Its a lot of micro when you add some spinners to it (guard unit is flawed). Its not guarding that fabricator its following the fabricator. I haven't even talked about the delayed prioritization bug that has come in with later patches. Air fabricators. The risk vs reward is HUGE with these air fabricators. On bigger maps you'll be spamming air fabricators like a madman. You know they get taken down. But each mex they build will return the cost of this investment easily. The opponent has to do some pretty tricky stuff to even get to that spot and to try and take out the metal extractor again. Don't forget that the build power is reasonably good. add 3 fabricators and forget to scout an area for a minute and you'll pay the price for it. Spinners suck. a bomber can kill a spinner for sure. The spinner might take down the bomber. You'd need 2 to be sure and 4 to be sure that bombers stay away Bombers snowball. I like the galata turret. Until there are 5 bombers that take it out easily and probably without a loss too Fighers too. I've told this to tvinita but fighters are tanky beasts. You can't kill those with spinners. Hell even galata turrets won't scratch its surface. You already need t2 flak to counter them or your own airforce. You won't get an advantage any other way. We all know that. Sounds wrong doesn't it? You'd even scout above someone base with fighters and get more intel then with a standard scout. So what happens if you have air dominance. You can expand with air fabricators really quick and get an even bigger advantage really quick you can raid his unprotected stuff easily. You can get more bombers and snowball your way into a base You get more scouting intel. A fighter is tanky enough to fly a small squadron over the base and get intel about what he does. - Meh the dox aa is a gamble. Its just a matter of time until the bomber gets shot down. I'd say make the bomber more expensive to use. - dunno about that tank balance. I like how it is - maybe air speed can have a bit of a nerf. It'll mean bombers will get shot down more easily by dox. - reduce fighter HP more drastic in my opinion. It shouldn't be able or atleast really expensive to fly over someones base. They only have a role for defending against bombers and killing enemy fighters. Reduce the damage output too to match the hp reduce. - Keep the AOE on aa turrets and increase it maybe. If you're gonna kill the galata turrets with 5 bombers then I'd better be sure that it did some damage to some those bombers so that i can shoot em down more easily with my own fighters. - Reduce build speed on air fabricators. They're faster then regular fabricators but get shot down more easily if they get scouted however they're way harder to scout. So maybe even increase cost though that might be too drastic. - Make the spinner a bit more effective and give it AOE damage. Sounds indeed complicated and makes the game more micro intensive I think? I agree. Not sure about making it more costly though. That sounds as an aggresive balance change.
I can't speak for those other games but either the non-OP air was under-powered in some cases or maps in the appropriate size range were used. The logic of defending your mex with enough aa to make an air attack not worth it is unassailable. This gets harder to do as maps get bigger.
Nice selective quoting there. I agree air is strong, however we have a mechanic in game to make land strong in the form of gates. Make them more cost effective and I think you shift the meta back from air to land. As @stuart98 says TA didn't need any special mechanics to make air work, neither does balanced annihilation in spring. Also the fact no other unit requires fuel makes it a really hacky solution in all theses games. Are these super high tech war machines of the future or not? Either all units need fuel or they don't. Actually for that matter, even the mighty starcraft oft held as the epitome of unit to unit interaction doesn't put a fuel range limit on air forces. I say improve the effective mobility of land units rather than cripple air, or add arbitrary limitations. This game isn't about limitations, quite the opposite.
I'm not totally convinced on that. Air is powerful, but you can't rely on it alone.... The issue is air + land.
It certainly does, but I feel like doubling the cost is a bit too much. 640 metal bomber! More than a gunship haha . Though I'm not opposed to trying changes, I just hope we can see some changes to test in pte. -- About the dox aa thing, I just want to clarify why i suggested it. The first reason is that dox are absolute crap against air, which has huge consequences for your decision making when it comes to factory choice and build orders. The second is that land forces need a way to raid metal that has been ninja'd by air fabbers. Part of the reason bombers and air are so dominant right now is that they are incredibly effective at responding and 'putting out all the fires' from raiding dox. The tank change worked not only to counterbalance the dox change, but to finally create true synergy between dox and tank compositions. Where a pure dox force would trade well against a pure tank force, but would get slaughtered by a dox/tank force. I find it so weird having armies of either robot people or tanks, but not robot people and tanks. And the whole bot factories being a hindrance later in the game is a real problem i have with current gameplay. Anyway, this is off topic now sorry.
I meant ALL air. Not just t1 You might need to buff t2 air afterwards, dunno I admit I havent played a lot lately and I have never seen a lot of t2 air since quite a long time ago anyway. No idea how they fare against anything for the most part. And yeah 640 metal for a bomber made of paper sounds pretty heavy. Probably need to look at some other levers.
Actually I've just had a thought... why is air actually so powerful? it's not very good at killing buildings (certainly leaves enough time to counter). No the real power of air is that it kills (multiple) fabbers In a single pass. So, let's just say for arguments sake that instead of changing air, we significantly increase the health of fabbers. now it takes a bomber multiple passes to kill a fabber. Fabbers en mass could get aa turrets up before the bomber kills them. You also have time to send your own air the counter. This was the case in ta which is why air didn't totally dominate ground.
A tank can kill multiple fabbers in seconds as well. Also if air would only kill fabbers and nothing else then it would be somewhat around the t1 air of SupCom. Bombers were nearly pure engineer snipe machines. Great for that, useless to do anything else. t1 ground aa, even mobile, would slaughter t1 air. That is what is missing in PA. t1 air can fight t1 ground even in the presence of aa. The root of the problem imho is the very bad t1 aa vehicle. Nobody ever used that for as long as the aa bot existed. Then the aa bot was removed, the dox was given an aa water pistol and players were left to try and use the aa vehicle. Turns out they didn't use it before for good reasons. I do agree on a buff for fabbers though. They are made of very thin paper and die to anything within like 2 or 3 hits. Air fabbers sort of have the same issue. A random thought about their risk and reward thing: Since they have practically 1 hp and at the same time a high potential for extreme expansion they have a high risk and a high reward. What about trading build power for hp? Give them multiple times the hp and reduce their build power or speed by quite a lot. The aim is to reduce the risk (more hp, if you have some of your own fighters close they won't die to random stray missiles) but also the reward (takes longer to expand) to even them out. No more super dicey risk and reward stuff.
Me neither its more that it snowballs out of control at some point and you can't counter it anymore. you can do a ton of damage with 10 bombers and probably still keep them alive. Thats not right. Requoting my other post which I think is a really important piece. Thats why I prefer more of a hp reduce and getting some AOE going with aa. If 10 bombers bunch up to quickly kill a galata turret then you better pay the price for it. Making em cost more still keeps the snowbally nature it still has. You're just stalling it more. thus air won't have a bit of a role on small to medium maps. Thats why I think its not really an elegant move but more of a quick aggresive balance change. I'm sold you already had me at the robot people . A bit more serious thank you for the insight. I do agree that dox can't do there raiding role on bigger maps just because of bombers. I think bot factorys will switch up to a mix with grenadiers more midgame late game. You're right there kinda useless at some point. Though small raiding dox army's can be a big annoyance still. I think it just depends more on the map and metal placement then.
Well, it's all about the metal control. Bomb his metal, protect your own, go crazy with the air fabbers. You get to a point where there is no way for him to stop you anymore. It's a huge run-away train. Especially when it comes to how snowbally fighter vs fighter battles are in favour of the guy with more fighters. *Say you lose air control. To get back into the air, you need metal to build the fighters. And you need the fighters to get the metal safely against someone who is expanding metal as well. So it's like a catch 22 that is very hard to get out of.
Your idea with the gate look cool @cdrkf but if you need to build one gate on each metal spot to defend it i think it's not a solution. I'm just finish a game on Amplus systeme, i loose slowly the ground game, so i switch on a massive air force, take down slowly all mex, army in move on my base and scout the annemy base to see they try to rush a T2 air to take back the advantage. But that was too late he loose the moost part of his mex. So i think the same think like @cola_colin says, increase the cost of the air to make it harder to spam.
That's only shifting the bias slightly upwards. Once the avalanche has started, there is no stopping it. Any real attempt at balancing air, would have to limit the mobility in some way.
