Land Units Shooting Air, Realistic Interaction but Rebalanced.

That you think ants would be able to replace spinners or hummingbirds just boggles the mind.

....

You're off topic.



The ants are being bombed by a bomber.

Ants can't shoot bombers.

Spinners and hummingbirds are both the natural solution to bombers.

Solution as suggested by thread: Put an antiaircraft weapon the Ant.


Does that really make any sense to you? It's like taping a pair of scissors to your rock.

No, the thread was about letting the ant use its MAIN weapon to shoot up... and being very unlikely to hit. (say one in fifty)

Total Annihilation used this method. It worked and the basic tanks did not replace those units that had tracking long-range missiles.

All units could shoot all other units. Some were just a LOT better than others... several HUNDRED percent better.

It just boggles my mind too, I asked nothing even remotely similar to "put anti aircraft weapons on the ant". I suggested adding a whole new set of numbers to it's current weapon that it uses just against air units, so it fires it's weapon in response to them, but is not a successful anti.

The whole fallacy in your fight against this, is your argument that it would make spinners useless. Not even the AI will make a bulk of ants big enough to anti air anything more than single digit numbers.

I even argued it should be the other way around too. Remember RA2? Remember how tanks couldn't shoot any air even a hovering jetpack soldier overhead that's shooting at them? Yet, the anti-air tank could shoot the ground, but if you seen it, you saw it's spread only hit 50% of the time, at a much lower range of fire, with very low damage, so it took a single anti-air tank 20 seconds to kill a land tank while that land tank killed it in 4 seconds with the first 2 rounds it fires (the first round it shot was 2x past the range of the anti air tank's ground range).

I'm just saying. If you have 12 spinners that survived a battle on your side, and a badly damaged ant that survived on their side, that ant could finish cheesing the rest of your spinners, no contest.

The silly non-attempt to even try and defend themselves, the "no contest", is the cheese of it... You might as well self destruct the spinners in a light effort to modify the ending screen's "units killed" by the player, so they don't get credit for the free kills.

I don't think he realises that there was only 1 dedicated anti-aircraft weapon in the entirety of Total Annihilation; Flak. Only two units used it; the Flak tower and the Flak tank. Both were Advanced units and were a very serious mid to late game investment. Everything else was not dedicated anti-air. The Missile towers, the missile trucks and bots? They were good at AA, but that wasn't their entire role.

The funny thing is, I think even flak could hit things on the ground in RA2 and in real life (those german cannons in WWII).

In RA2, it looked like some WWII scene where it landed all AROUND the target and the target took 1 "peg" out of it's 10 "peg" health every 2 hits. Again, it took 15+ seconds to destroy a tank that kills it with 2 rounds, the first one shot on approach before the flak tank is even in range yet.

Of course, flak in this game is about specialization. I wouldn't mind if they brought flak t2 to PA, weaker than missiles but better in long-lasting full-sky-of-planes combat because it does a third the damage to any planes within a planes distance of the target plane (cluster).

I'm well aware of that. The 88 is an iconic emplacement/tank armament that started out as an anti-air flak cannon. However most of us know it as the Panzerkampfwagen's (Tiger I and beyond) main turret gun.

The fact that the 88 was an entire subset of weapons, built using essentially the same technology and parts, but used for several different roles is (or should be) inspiration for the Planetary Annihilation team.

Spinners are way faster than Ants though. As soon as they add in proper engagement behaviours (i.e. retreat instead of suicidal kamikaze) the issue largely goes away. For the most part, that's not in the game.I'm assuming it will be because there are some games where your combat units do retreat appropriately.

The issue is that Ants just suck it up and take the damage, rather than trying to escape. Likewise with the Spinners. They think they can target the Ants, so they don't disengage. As it is I have games where I build scout balls (I still build scout balls). And I completely destroy some dude's tank column. And then I do it again. And again. And again. And not once does he send a peregrine or a spinner in my direction.

I'm thinking it's a mental thing, but I really don't see the value added.

I don't' have anything about a unit which does less damage to both air and ground at less range (ala rocket/20mm chaingun units from Earth 2150). But I do feel that adding a weak antiaircraft chaingun to ants would not be good for the unit roster. As it is, people only seem to spam a limited roster of units, and there are times where you can see that they are producing units which are the wrong unit for their intended role.

And from a realistic point of view, that's not realistic, because tank cannons lack the elevation to engage aerial targets.

That's partially true, but it's also true that there are RTS games I've played where you have a unit with a very specific role that is superseded by other units. So you never build that unit. It doesn't matter that other units do the job worse, they get the job done, sometimes they are cheaper to produce, they are easier to replace and you can use them for multiple missions.


My main issue is that firefly balls are what you're talking about. They have a very weak anti-air laser. And they absolutely shred fighters to pieces in large enough numbers. (20 scouts vs 1 fighter = 20 dead scouts. 100 scouts vs 10 fighters equals 10 dead fighters, and heavy scout casualties.)

Who was talking about fireflies now?

I certainly wasn't.

Also, NO ONE except you are advocating adding a new weapon to the Ant. So stop using that as a shield against our arguments.

Yes, I do not want multiple weapons on the same unit, I want the ant to use his current weapon to take crappier shots at air.

Also, that is a very good point EXACTLY. Why do scout class ANYTHING have weapons at all? It is VERY sad a scout can take out a column of tanks and the tanks never even ATTEMPT to fight back. Honestly, I would be ok with scouts not having a weapon and being slightly cheaper. Honestly, the weapon brings the user more harm than good, it alerts the enemy that they HAVE been scouted and engaged, when what you want to do is sneak a peak without him noticing. If it didn't have weapons, it could fly over the entire enemy base quickly and if the enemy was preoccupied they might just not notice it.

Also, I might be ok with there being a radar-hidden t2 scout. Unit Diversity!

Stormingkiwi, obviously dedicated anti-air is going to be a better and more efficient solution at fighting air units. For the same cost you get a lot more killing power. Or, alternately, to deal with the same air threat you don't need to spend as much.

But many players would prefer not to depend purely on specialists because they are inflexible. An army composed of 70 dedicated ground fighters and 30 dedicated anti-air units is extremely brittle compared to a force composed of 100 units which are 70% ground combat capability and 30% anti-air capability. Or various other units with different properties that are effective against a variety of different units; not necessarily air and ground in some ratio.

It isn't "solution; put AA on the Ant." The point is that you can choose between a generalist Ant that has a main gun and a secondary that can shoot aircraft, or other ground units that might be dedicated heavy tanks, tank hunters, etc. and also dedicated anti air. Build an army however you like from these pieces.

You see that, right there, what you did? You added an additional weapon to the unit, but didn't tell anybody that it was actually a different weapon. Oh sure, it is "technically" the same weapon, but in practice it is a completely separate function.

If you're going to do this, just add a second completely different weapon with its own independent stats which can be designed and modified separately.

I bellllievvvveeeeee.... That it is less work for the devs to put in the unit config "against air: use these values; against vehicles, bots, naval: use these values"... Than it is for them to program a whole new weapon and stick same stats just divided amongst them.

Generally, all I asked, is that the ant weapon continue to do what it's doing, and then let it target air, and then configure it only against air to have x5 spread, 1/2 damage, 1/2 range, ect...

So to do what it did in alpha... and be crappy at it. It is less work than adding a new gun, because it was what it did in alpha, without anything asking it to tone it down, and it seeming to have MORE range against air while retaining 100% accuracy.

And I am really iffy about the "damage" thing, I think TA also shined more because it didn't have different damage values for different armors, just different healths altogether. I would rather it be accuracy, range, and spread. Again, I honestly would even be ok with making it impossible to shoot without having already died (i.e. less range vs air than air has vs it). The fact that it even attempted to aim at it before death is an improvement.

Did TA really have a suite of 'alternate' weapon statistics for all ground weapons when shooting air... or did it naturally allow the weapons themselves to define their own capabilities.

90% of the time, I believe it was the latter.

The firefly weapon is a really weak weapon which does very little damage. En masse, a pack of them do a lot of damage. If each Ant only does (on average) 0.2 dps to aircraft, then a pack of 20 does 4 dps. A pack of 100 does 20dps. Fighters don't have that much health (~30), and bombers have ~80.

You're advocating giving it antiaircraft capabilities. It doesn't have antiaircraft capabilities at the moment. For all practical purposes you've giving it a new weapon which can target air.

I also assume that the turret doesn't shoot down air all the time. In which case the statistics for its anti-air weapon are different to the statistics for its main weapon (it does 42 dps against ground, it does 0.2 dps against air, it doesn't do a constant 10dps against both). Whichever way you look at it, you've added a new weapon to the unit.

Not necessarily, and even if it is, it's probable that people will miss the fact because they will only ever spam one unit instead of building a balanced task force.

It's also possible that building dedicated antiair is too expensive (in terms of opportunity cost), and building a generalist tank is the better option. Especially if the health to metal ratio is better than the spinners. Spinners take 2 shots to kill, Ants take 3 shots to kill.

Are you talking about an army being inflexible, or a unit being inflexible? Because to balance the fact that you've got a unit which does a really good job at being a generalist, you have to take away some of its antiground capability

I'm not inherently against the idea. I just think that the request is really "Can we have a t1 unit with both an anti land and an anti air weapon, in addition to the ant and the spinner"



I may have mentioned - Earth 2150 had a similar system - it had 20mm chainguns, rockets, grenades/105mm cannons and then an array of energy weapons. The 20mm chainguns and the rockets were both anti air/anti land, the grenades/105mm cannons were anti-land only. They were vastly superior in terms of damage output to the chainguns and the rockets.

It worked well because 105mm cannons were really good anti-land weapons, the chainguns were really good anti-air, and the rocket was a happy mix which wasn't as good as either of the two in the early game. But Earth 2150 had an ammunition system, so the chaingun and cannon had more shells before they needed to be resupplied than the rocket launcher had missiles. That was the balance.

If tanks can shoot air, then anti-air aircraft should be able to shoot ground.

Commander assassins galore! Wooo!

...how about no?

Everyone seems to be missing the point and saying it makes dedicated AA redundant.

This mechanic doesn't punish air use. It punishes air units that hang around too long. If an air transport is slowing down and dropping a unit then the tanks can shoot it. If a bomber is taking a very tight turning curve and avoiding flying over AA, then the tanks get a chance to shoot it. If a gunship is stationary and laying waists to everything, then your tanks get a chance to shoot it. If a scout is flying over your army of tanks then after a minute or two one of your tanks might get lucky and hit it.

This mechanic isn't what you saw in the alpha. It doesn't make air obsolete. It only punishes you for very slow air movement and long term flight above the enemy. If you had dedicated AA in all of these situations it would solve the problem before you tanks get a shot in.

No, most ground units' weapons had massive increased inaccuracy and reduced damage against air units.

Id like to see proof of that.

Yeah -- not sure if this is what you were getting at, but it basically is rewarding the player for building the wrong stuff. If anyone's tanks are getting owned by slow moving bombers or (later) gunships, then it's pretty much their fault for having a bunch of tanks wandering around with no air support.

Same thing if I built 500 fighters and here comes a horde of Levelers. "My fighters should be able to attack those Levelers and at least do SOME damage!" No....I don't know that they should. If you want to kill tanks with planes, build bombers not fighters. If you want to kill planes with vehicles, build missile trucks not tanks.


There is a problem at the moment where there's no reasonable way to make AA bots escort Levelers (without simply getting in the way) but once that's fixed (formations?) I expect these complaints should largely go away.

I feel like I'm hearing Starcraft players complain that Siege Tanks can't attack Mutalisks.

This is partially true. TA units had a very difficult time targeting air units partially due to slow turrets, and partially due to the game's weak aiming. By the time many vehicles had the opportunity to shoot, the air unit was already long gone. PA turrets are hella fast and barely anything can escape them.

Reduced air damage is complete bull though. TA air units were pretty durable in some cases, but more frequently they survived by evading most shots thrown at them. They also didn't suffer as often from friendly death damage.