Air Superiority

OHGAWD, why did you quote me from the first page of the thread?

Bring back TA carpet bombs!!

I don't really thing collision detection is going to do anything other than look good. It won't stop blobs of airplanes from swarming over the map and raping everything.

What stops that is good air counters. Right now in alpha, air units are made of paper and can be countered by just about anything in numbers. They are good at sniping lone units like commanders, battleships, or undefended buildings, but if they fly over a swarm of units or a line of defensive structures, the entire squadron will fall out of the sky. T2 air units will actually last long enough to fire off one round of missiles, but they will still be just as dead once the enemy so much as looks at them.

It doesn't help that right now, all ground units can target and hit air units. I imagine this will be fixed, but I like the idea of air units being really fragile as the best way to prevent them from being abused.


As for ammo/fuel. I'm kind of conflicted on this. One one hand, it's an excuse to include aircraft carriers. On the other it won't fix any of the problems it's proponents seem to think it will. Just a tiny bit of extra realism and extra micromanagement won't make them any more or less powerful. Remember the game where they are the biggest problem, is also the game where they have to resupply at air platforms.

Do you feel it doesn't work in the spring games that use those mechanics? The way I see it the problem with air units is their projection of power. Mechanics like fuel and ammo serve to dampen that projection of power as well as add interesting strategic considerations in carriers and airbases.

Ammo works, because it tempers the damage output of aircraft that get in range. Fuel doesn't. It simply causes random aircraft to crap out for no real reason.

Right now that issue is resolved by the inability of aircraft to survive longer than a few seconds after dropping there bombs. I imagine the anti-air abilities of non anti-air units will be nerfed soon, but they should still be paper airplanes. Making air units really fragile is a great way to balance them. They will only be able to get one shot in against a heavily fortified base.

Also giving the weapons cooldown times is a good way to simulate ammo without making them fly all the way back to base.

nonononono noone would ever say that, it is obvious you must have land and navy also (at least the bare minimum) to survive, however air kind'of seals the deal.

I don't understand why you state that ammo won't fix any of the (potencial) problems. Care to elaborate on the why you think that? Do you know any game/mod with that mechanism(s) while still showing the same problems? Can you find some video of those?

It doesn't add a tiny bit of realism, it adds tons of realism (though I care not all that much about realism). And it doesn't need to add micro - units auto-re-supplying removes most/all micro concerning the re-supply. And if you're not controlling planes directly but, instead, airfields/carriers, micro should actually be even less than current SupCom...

Which game would that be?

The problem with air-blobs is that in late-game SupCom air units are the most powerful units, and air superiority goes down to whoever has the most fighters. This problem can be fixed by boosting anti-air options, or making air to air combat more complicated than whoever has the most fighters.

Adding ammo and fuel just means planes have to return to base every once and a while. If Air units are overpowered, this just means they have to take a break from killing everything, before going back to killing everything.

Here's my take on how it could work:

1st of all ground based AA should be much more cheaper (50% or more) for the same effectiveness, but the downside of this is limited mobility in comparison with the Air AA and should be tiered more towards friendly defense. Air AA should be tiered more towards Air superiority above neutral or enemy territory. Usually you don't send fighters to escort your tanks or protect a building, but you prepare static or ground based mobile defenses, just ad you don't send a column of AA tanks into enemy territory to shoot down enemy fighters to protect form you bombing runs.

2nd: Break Air to Air fighters into 2 groups:
-Interceptors: High speed, high damage, low armor, low fuel, moderately priced fighters that work excellent for killing bombers and other non-fighter air threats
-Air/space superiority: Moderate speed, moderate damage, moderate armor, moderate fuel, high cost fighters build to wrest control of the skies/space

Yeah so, just making anti-air stronger doesn't affect how powerful air can become. If it's too strong then air will just be used in a defensive/sniping capacity. The reason air units get so powerful in Supreme Commander is that they can project a great deal of power. Land and sea units don't work the same way because the power they project is local. Just because you have more tanks here doesn't mean you control the land there. Air units however are so fast and uninhibited by terrain that air superiority is usually global. Ammo and fuel work by dampening the projection of power directly. You can't project power everywhere if fuel is a significant limitation. Likewise you can't constantly dominate a battlefield if you are limited by ammo. Forget the appplication in Supreme Commander for a minute, think about this stuff conceptually. And if you don't want to take my word for it, try some similar games out that use fuel and ammo properly: http://springrts.com/wiki/Games

My own personal preference would be tweaking of the current energy charging system, coupled with airbases/carriers.

The current concept is that when reloading, aircraft consume a small amount of power. They can then fire again. By itself, if the recharge time is greater than the time to come round for another pass, this means that it is advantageous for aircraft to run away for a bit between runs to maximise survivability.

The next improvement, would be to have aircraft capable of storing multiple rounds of ammo, up to some magazine limit. If the reload rate was slow, then this means that "fresh" or "rested" aircraft will deal a powerful alpha-strike burst of weaponry, then start firing in small bursts as each round is loaded one-by-one. This generates behaviour beyond the old ASF-Deathball system, in that a small contingent of "Fresh" fighters could fire a salvo of missiles equal to a much larger number of "tired" fighters, who are producing their ammo on the fly (ba-dum tsshh). Likewise, carpet bombing would be much more potent if the bombers are fresh, rather than exhausted. This also creates an extra balance lever for unit differentiation. I imagine gunships would have a larger ammo store for loitering, while planes have less to encourage fast raids.

The final component is airbases/carriers/recharge airships. What if a air-pad (mobile or fixed) would fully recharge a plane's ammo nearly instantaneously. Instead of firing in drips and drabs, the plane would fly to a nearby pad, reload quickly, and be back with a full salvo. In terms of rounds per second, it is a fairly straight forwards algebraic equation to determine whether a plane will do more damage by loitering and firing with it's own recharge, or hopping back to a nearby carrier for a recharge. The only variables are the speed of the plane, the distance to the carrier, the relative recharge rates of plane and carrier, and the presence of a queue or not. Thus air planes could automatically use a carrier if it is effective, or not bother if one is too distant.

Thus with this system, an airforce can:

• 
  Raid very effectively (relying on alpha-strikes and long dis-engagement periods)
  
  Loiter Less effectively
  
  Loiter very effectively with carrier/airbase support.

If the player doesn't wish their planes to return to a carrier between attack runs, and would prefer they loiter (even though they will effectively have less DPS), they can simply turn off the carriers with the currently existing (but not implemented) power symbol on the command side-bar. The planes will automatically see there is no nearby carrier, and loiter instead.

The crucial difference between this and the SupCom fuel system is that SupCom punished a lack of airbases, while this rewards players for using them well. Overall, I think this would create excellent synergy between surface and sky, without increasing micromanagement too much, and only being a development on the existing direction the game is going, rather than being a departure from it.

most of the features you speak about were into this game : ARSENAL Extended Power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I771gdLao8

IMO it was the best airplane management system in never see in a RTS.

good breakdown

Yup.

Mike