Why no Advanced AA?

I guess I ment the AA idea as one or the other when considering the spinner still exists. I think the Cougar would make a great replacement of the Spinner, considering the role the spinner is currently playing. The Fussilade is bloody awesome. Love those long barrel quad cannon designs. They fit any art style that has anti-aircraft in its era.

If the spinner was to cover the role of a mobile SAM site, and like you said :

Perhaps if these are batteries of four missiles with a cooldown per missile launched. (Can fire all 4 at seperate targets as individual shots, and each missile reloads per cool down)

Gunships is the key word you are looking for in ruining gameplay regarding the flak.
There was balance issues all over them.

Seeing as you are concerned with Direct fire, Flak, and advanced missiles while asking for finding another way.
Where else do we go? I guess giant spring loaded fly swatter hasnt been brought up yet. Or is that like direct fire with AOE damage?

@KNnight: I like your AA Trinity suggestions as opposed to what we have now. Those make sense to me, and give you plenty of interesting strategic options to choose from. Were you also suggesting that these new AA options would have some usefulness against ground units as well?

Gunships were simply the most overtly broken result. The problem with flak scaling was common to all air units.

If you're really interested, then check out my previous posts in air power threads(and even one in a land mine thread!). But try coming up with at least one alternative on your own. It's far more convincing than relying on someone else to tell you.

I'm with Ortikon. I haven't seen any of the other suggestions that you are referring to, bobucles. Not saying there aren't any, I'd just be interested to hear what they are, and which you think might work best for PA.

I posted a list of ideas in neutrino's thread. It was very much in line with Knights AOE design. Im not going to repost my similar version of it if Knight has made art for it. Nothing like waving a flag around about MY idea that is similar to his. Lots of people have posted AOE flak as a concept, most of us grew up making flak cannons out of lego. It is not new, Knights post is the most complete iteration.

To be honest no, I've never really liked the whole 'everything can shoot everything' deal because to me it always ends up being something you need to design around to the point where it can compromise other elements, yeah it's essentially RPS, and pretty hard RPS at that but I just think it ends up being a lot cleaner of a system overall.

Mike

If advanced AA is needed, then what really should happen is basic AA be mildly buff and you just use more of them on one target to accomplish the means, and that be that.

I guess I don't mind RPS, as long as it's not one to one, which is why I like your idea to have multiple options for each type. If you have multiple options within each unit class, that function differently, then at least it doesn't feel as rigid as a traditional RPS system

Ah, here's a good ol' thread:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/the-problem-with-fighter-planes.44141/
Granted it doesn't have everything, but it's a good start.

All right, I did my part. Unfortunately, it's a very common demand that sees little in return.

That would just make T1 air useless to build. I'm against having fewer, more general purpose units. I'd rather have many different unit choices than only a few.

T1 air is almost already useless to build against other t1 air. Fighters are currently the strongest AA. T1 ground being stronger and fighters maybe taking 2 shots to takedown so they must sustain pursuit of their enemy, might not be such a bad idea.

You can not create new unit choices with sheer numbers. Two units can not have identical roles, or one will become obsolete. A unit can be inferior at one particular role, but it will only avoid obsolescence by having a feature its competitor doesn't have.

Choices can only come with creating units that excel under their own unique circumstance. There's only so many ways you can turn numbers into choices before having to get creative.

Flak and missiles. Both should have advantages and disadvantages, to keep both basic and advanced a live! Flak should have problems hitting the faster planes, maybe?

I'm fine with it so long as it isn't as silly as Tanks gunning down entire fleets of Bombers.

This was solved in TA by tanks firing slow-moving Plasma Shells, which actually moved so slow that they couldn't hit Aircraft at any point in their firing arc, unless the aircraft was near the ground or landed (read: transports abducting your Commander).

The ground units that didn't use Plasma Shells were either really good vs. Air Units or terrible. PeeWees and PeeWee-like units had such low range, high firing randomness and low damage per-projectile that any damage they did to Aircraft was negligible. Storms, Rockos and other such units could hit planes, but like Plasma Shells their rockets traveled slow as molassas. The Can, Gaat Gun and various laser towers and units were only able to hit units flying directly at them very slowly. Their turrets had very low tracking speed.

Now that I think about it, the best AA unit really were the dedicated AA units. Also Battleships, but that's another story lol.

Am I the only one here getting tired of the same old choices of Flak & Missiles? I mean aren't we dealing with futuristic robot technologies in this game? Why not come up with new and interesting ideas? Look to movies/books for ideas. Hell, even SupCom 2 had some different alternatives to these. Things that operated completely differently, like the unit magnet, bomb bouncing shield, etc. Off the top of my head I can think of a few others like setting up no fly zones (or complete dead zones to ANY unit) with EMP type weaponry from the orbital layer, or units that allow for disruption of flight patterns and lack of control of enemy units. After all, some tradition is good, to maintain the user base and core functionality. However, isn't part of the goal here to really differentiate this game from all others with more than just it's scale? Doesn't the scale of this game allow us to play with elements that eliminate gameplay options mid-game, besides just using planets to smash into things? If we can create huge fields of play, across multiple planets, I say allow us to tear it up with more than just a moon, or an asteroid! Let's think outside the box here and really make this an epic game with more than just its massive size!

Having said that, I think that all the layers of play should be able to interact with each other...land, naval, air, and orbital. Why not? I can imagine flak type energy weapons raining down from orbital into the air layer, and specialized air units assaulting orbital. In my opinion, this would create tons of dynamic gameplay options that could balance each other out. Essentially each layer should be able to stand on its own to combat the other two (or 3 on mostly water worlds).

I'm sure I'll get ripped apart by some people who hate this idea, or who want exactly the same game as before, but on planets. However, I'm really hoping that someone at Uber reads this and considers the fact that at the end of the day, if it's fun, and it works, it will be great. So why not do it? After all, if anyone can, they can. And who else is going take that chance and explore those options? Not the big publishers!

ViolentMind, the problem with things like the Bomb Bouncer and Unit Magnet is that those aren't really things you can do well outside of Experimentals, and while there is room for some funky way of doing things they aren't all applicable on the scale of units we're working with in PA so far. The Bomb Bouncer is a good idea for an experimental, but it's not something you can do as a 'regular' unit.

It's also not so much that they need to be called Flak and Missile, the name isn't what's really important, it's how they work, for a missile it can be a homing laser so long as it fits all the mechanics. Even in my Trinity there is room for little tweaks to things and for variations. Heck, you can even totally flip things on thier head if you wanted, but I'm also trying to fit into things people will expect, especially as many might be coming from SupCom and my set-up will be familiar to that.

Mike

I see you're a few patches behind. Tanks can't shoot air any more.

Yeah, I was concerned about people arguing the feasibility of any units mentioned directly, but that wasn't my point. I didn't mean to suggest we should use those units, or even the idea of experimentals for that matter. Those were just immediate examples of attempting to do things differently, that SupCom players could identify with very easily. I just meant to begin to push people to start thinking differently. I really think that there is an opportunity here to mix the old with the new in a creative way that makes sense, adds a fun new dynamic to the game, and still feels somewhat familiar to the avid fans of the older games (of which I am one). If nothing else, this would open things up for continued development down the road (PA2).

The thing is, if you limit yourself to the same options of the older games, such as Missiles and Flak Cannons, you will invariably run into the same balance problems that have traditionally been so hard to solve. Don't the mechanics of the options that you present have to inherently change to solve those problems? I'm not sure if it works to simply just change the name of something from missile to homing laser. It has to be something wholly different. I like your Trinity idea as a means to stay traditional to attempt to solve the problem, but I don't think it's too late to at least consider taking another path. One that is at least partially unique.

EA are a big publisher. They made Red Alert 3, a game where one faction's main mobile AA option was an APC that was also armed with a gun that shot bears, and pretty much every unit had some oddball special ability. I like the TA-style RTSes precisely because they avoid Red Alert's paradigm of giving an army a hundred different crazy special weapons that didn't make any sense. These oddball weapons are often so powerful that they have to be balanced by horrendous design flaws, and this is supposed to be a game about robots who have been fighting for so long all of their tech has converged on a single set of perfected units. The units should do their job well and be predictable.