Why no Advanced AA?

I like this alot, it's a force multiplier for standard AA. And it also helps negate the mass Air snipe that was often the centre of air balance problems in TA/supcom.

Enemy bomber/gunship swarm is slown down, T1 AA gets to fire many more shots than normal. And the additional time it takes them to reach the com can be used to move him or scamble more AA support.

What about a defence tower that builds drone swarms that flys around a set area only and explode at any thing get too close.
It would be pure area denial (air and ground) only weakness is the tower from units firing out of the drones range.

Or
Make it mobile

I like Mike's idea. Then we have the simple basic stuff and advanced stuff, both with their own fuction. I also like the slow-down-weapon ideas. There should be more variety between basic and advanced! Both should have advantages and disadvantages. The advanced laser turret should also be changed. It just does more damage and fires faster, that's it. It could become some kind of flamethrower or such, to keep bots from just running past your defences or getting too close?

You know what's really scary for turbine engines? Ash. TONS of it. Planets are filled with heaps of debris just waiting to be tossed into the air, and aircraft can't help but scoop it up. So, if you were to have something like a gigantic volcanic vent flooding the sky with crap, air units would be in a lot of trouble.

Sounds like a great role for Scout planes. Why equip a gun when their bodies are literally missiles, capable of smashing any other air unit out of the sky? (and with air scouts having a cool secondary function, land scouts can finally get the reclaim lathe they so desperately need.)

The point of air mines is to create a flak-like unit that scales against major air spam, but which can't be used indefinitely. It's made to stack with standard missile and ground support and not be a sole solution to air.

The TA T2 fighter was a stealth fighter. Stealthed anything can be absurdly good if you know how to use it. Unfortunately, for some reason the high level satellite makes stealth completely useless...

Make the Umbrella shoot air?

I cannot believe Mushroom's post was not addressed in any way by anyone else posting afterwards. It speaks volumes of exactly what Planetary Annihilation should be striving for.

Tanks being obscenely good at taking down aircraft is stupid. I think we can all agree with that. But these land-based weapon platforms shouldn't have any limit to attacking aircraft. That's stupid too. If an enemy Hind was tearing up some nearby structure, do you think a tank crew would just sit there and watch while eating pretzels? Of course not, they'd blow that SoB out of the sky.

To be honest, I don't think it would even be an issue if it was done similar to how TA did it. The shells missed their target. Tanks should be smart enough to aim ahead, and I know that's planned for the unit AI, but aircraft should be just as smart and fast.

You're not going to spin your turret to take down a MiG, nevermind insanely fast aircraft like F-22 Raptors. The aircraft in PA should be better in every aspect, so tank AI shouldn't even try to hit them. That doesn't mean they shouldn't try when it's slow enough to track. If an enemy aircraft is flying overhead slow enough to track, they should be able to try and nail the sucker. Barrels aiming too slow would be the exact solution for slow-flying bombers, and any tank aiming in that direction would likely miss sometimes since tank shells shouldn't be faster than aircraft.

On the topic of advanced anti-air. Yes there's a need for it, yes that's more resources put into one structure instead of several, but isn't that a choice that the player makes? If they only make a single advanced AA, whatever type of weapon it may be, it will be effective to a certain point after which can it be overrun. I don't see why people would complain about the implementation of such a structure if it's so easily dispatched by bombers. If it's so easy to take it out, do it then. More aircraft types will eventually meet our games, and I don't think having a single basic AA structure that can't even take down a single bomber by itself will cut it. (This may have changed by now, but my main point stands)

At first I was mad, but I think that's exactly how it worked in TA. Many tank shells were slow lobbed balls of plasma, and there was little chance of hitting an air unit flying at twice the speed. Most things in PA are much faster, and the relative speed of air has decayed as a result.

Still, the idea of a tank NOT taking its chances against air is extremely stupid and shouldn't be the very first balancing action from the developers.

Reinmetall 120mm gun muzzle velocity: 1,500 m/s. F-22 top speed: 669 m/s. At all points in history, tank shells have been considerably faster than aircraft. If you're going to use real life examples, you should use real life examples that are actually true. And if you don't care about real-world performance, you shouldn't bring it up.

Also, Tthe MiG-25, despite being from the 1960s, is considerably faster than the F-22 (Mach 2.8 vs Mach 1.8). The F-22 isn't "insanely fast" because that's not what it's for. All the fastest planes are spy planes and interceptors, not multirole fighters, which sacrifice top speed for payload, handling and stealth.

Well that is more reassuring and I could have been more specific about my comment being more so in reference to the ground/land based AA options, especially coming from SupCom which didn't have any T3 Mobile AA options and it just feeling like a rather obvious oversight to me. It's like I said earlier, it just feels odd that a tracking weapon is considered a basic weapon.

Also as I'm sure you already do, it's worth keeping in mind that every layer should have fleshed out AA options, yes with Land and Air considered there are four options, but if you can only use land or air that number is cut in half and I'm concerned we could run into the same situation he had in SupCom as I already outlined. I just don't feel that the right land based answer to Advanced Air units is just building 5x more of the Basic AA unit/Structure.

Violentmind, it's hard to reply to omni-slashing without omni-slashing myself and it's something I'm trying to turn away from. Frankly you're all over the place, putting words into my mouth, trying to attack my credibility and making some odd conclusions. Maybe if you can refocus you points we can talk about it, but as it's currently presented it'll just end up in a mess of chain quotes going nowhere on 20 individual points.

Mike

Well ya kinda did the same to me there, but yeah....in any case....truce! Not really worth arguing about anymore. Let's just agree to disagree on this one. I'm sure we'll find something to agree on in the future. After all, we are in the same clan now! Haha! I don't bash clanmates!

There's nothing odd about it. T1 units were the lightest and fastest stuff in TA, and it was solved by using tracking units to shoot them down. Heavier air units were slower, and thus could be attacked with heavier, direct fire guns.

It was Supcom that plagued design by making tiers faster, stronger, and more powerful in every single way. The fastest units also had the highest HP, and the most powerful AA weapons also had to be seeking weapons in order to hit. It basically went full retard.

Can you explain, why you think so?

A T2 AA tower and T2 AA units are a must. I've had the same problem as @ViolentMind just on a smaller scale.

To be honest, if the basic AA is good enough when used en mass then we wont need a advanced one.

And as it stands.......fighters and AA turrets are currently good enough that I don't even believe we need a advanced AA unit, only that the AA turrets could use a range buff.

Is it too late to roll my eyes? The answer to this is not nearly as cut-throat as you think it is.

If tanks were so unbelievably good in real life at taking down aircraft as you say, then why do we have AA weaponry? Why do we have flak at all? Why do we need heat seeking and tracking missiles to take down aircraft? Why are they so much more effective than just shooting the thing from the sky with a tank shell?

For a tank shell to hit an aircraft flying at those speeds, you'd first need a tank that had an extremely fast turret rotation speed and barrel aiming speed. Next, you'd have to have precise leading, and by that I mean pinpoint accurate. At that speed, you won't get a big window. That and shells slow down while flying through the atmosphere, so that has to be taken into effect as well.

All of that perfection, and all the aircraft has to do is move the joystick even a centimeter and the shell will miss. Unless, of course, the aircraft is giving your round flat face in comparison, then it would be much more.

Current real-world performance shows us proof of how aircraft work, and the abilities they have. To predict what one would have in the future, one must look at what they have now. To create something without any inspiration is not easy, and some deem it impossible. Making aircraft in-game work like current gen aircraft is not important, and possibly not even needed. The game doesn't need aircraft that act like their real-life counterparts, but aircraft that act in the best and most efficient way possible. What is needed is a fundamental understanding of what aircraft actually are in general, and what they are now, which is why we use the performance of current gen aircraft to begin with.

The MiG I was thinking of was actually this little number here, maximum speed being Mach 2.32, 2,445 km/h at altitude; Mach 1.14, 1,350 km/h at sea level (1,553 mph / 840 mph).

It's an older model vs the F22 Raptor at Mach 2.25 (1,500 mph, 2,410 km/h) at altitude. Sure it's faster for going in a straight line, but that's not what fighters are for, are they? The maneuvering speed is key. They need to be fast at getting from A to B at two completely separate angles and altitudes while not losing control at all. Neither the MiG-23 or 25 would be able to do the same. Even the MiG-29 can't do it, and it's designed as an air superiority fighter. Sure, Russia has super-maneuvering aircraft but irrelevant what country they're from, aircraft continue to get faster and more maneuverable.

If tanks were so efficient at killing aircraft, being that it would definitely only take one hit, why is it that they're obviously not playing the current role of Anti Air? Not only is it because aircraft are now able to maneuver beyond the physics of what aircraft were bound to beforehand, but because other weapons are superior at dealing with that maneuverability.

Like I've said elsewhere, I don't have problems with tanks shooting at aircraft, and actually prefer it. Simply put, I know what aircraft are capable of, and the immense amount of calculations it would take to hit a mobile fighter not flying straight at you, assuming it doesn't vary from it's current trajectory. As we've seen from in-game, there was obviously something that needed to be done.

It's plainly evident he never said they were good at taking down aircraft, nor was it implied. Your post is bizarre.

There's nothing wrong with my post, maybe your face is bizzare.

In all seriousness, he implied that tank shells cover distance much faster than an aircraft can in mid-flight, so that logic denotes tanks should have no problems with an AA role since obviously aircraft are so much slower than the shells fired. They're like sitting ducks, right? It's like trying to shoot a moving target with a handgun. Not so easy when the target moves fast. ..But a bullet is hundreds of times faster than the target, so why can't everyone hit it? Same logic, same mechanics, just larger scale.

If you say the sky is blue because it's full of fairies and I tell you that there are no fairies, I am not implying the sky is green.

If you say that air beats tanks because bullets are slow, and I tell you that bullets are fast, I am not implying that tanks beat air.

If you say A > B > C, and jurgen proves that C > B, you cannot say he is implying C > A, because A > C > B is still possible.

Alright, semantics then? If the direct reason that air beats tanks is because shells are slow, and then suddenly the tank shells are fast now, then air doesn't beat tank anymore because the one thing that made them win doesn't exist. If you actually followed TA tank shell logic, you'd see where I'm getting at.

If X < 7 and you tell me X is more than 7, then X, in no way possible, is less than 7. It can't be both. I think both of you missed the point entirely, but that's ok. The information he provided is not what I was implying, and unless you think that aircraft are going to dogfight against tanks at not only maximum speed, but high altitude, then all of that speed is useless. I never meant distance traveling speed, but agility speed. I'm sorry you can't read between the lines? :X

Tanks do beat air if tank shells are fast and aircraft are not. The earlier build proved this theory correct. You're free to argue against any of the posts on any thread at all from that build stating there was no purpose for AA because tanks just owned the skies. Or better yet, watch videos of the build and watch how tanks shred. Let me know how air beats tanks when shells are fast and air is slow as opposed to TA where air is fast and shells are slow. I'll wait.

Logic. You stated: "If tanks were so unbelievably good in real life at taking down aircraft as you say" when replying to Jurgen. That statement is logically false, because he did not. If you can't acknowledge that truth, and are clearly willing to argue in circles and change the subject whenever your statements are challenged, what point is there to further discussion?

Settle on this one point and an argument from truth can follow. Otherwise, not.