Missle units (in particular air craft)

the Panther and the Rockhead are good examples of generic tanks with light anti-air capability. Both were weak enough against air that they had trouble dealing with contemporary heavy air threats, like gunship swarms or experimentals.

but going back to the Ant's main cannon slapping down bombers is a bit of a problem heh. there's no room for a specialized AA unit if the tanks can kill everything as is.

You're wrong on that.

If bombers were meant to take out static targets, then they would drop one bomb instead of carpet bomb.

Carpet bombing is effective at taking out blobs of units, while dropping one bomb is good for taking out static structures.

Even so, why force bombers to be used for one task and one task only?

Ants firing at air is dumb.

+1

The thing I loved about TA above everything else was the *loosely* physics based implementation of units (I know it wasn't realistic but it did make sense). All the modern RTS games have gone further and further down the 'rock paper scissors' route, some (like age of empires) took it to the level that 1 unit could destroy 100 if it was the correct counter.

Personally I think everything should be able to shoot at everything else. Weapon stats should determine its effectiveness. Point being if tanks are the correct counter to missile trucks, you have 1 tank and they have 100 missile trucks the missile trucks are still going to win. That's how it should be. Obviously some things would beat the 100 missile trucks (e.g. a nuke or an asteroid) but that just makes sense.

This also extends to not artificially limiting weapons to say 'this is anti air only', this is 'anti ship only' and this 'can only fire at scouts when they are moving backwards'...

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/two-beta-builds-and-a-partridge-in-a-pear-tree-58678-58772.54899/
"Fixes to bombers so they have a better time hitting targets. Mind you, their main use is still against static defenses. If you're chasing bots with them, you may want to restrategize."

prove it

I dunno, I like carpet bombing on power-plants and other stacked up buildings.

My dad was an Air Force fighter pilot and I have studied military history extensively.

Carpet bombing is better against blobs of enemy while a single strategic bomb is better against static structures.

Go play the game. Send bombers against a blob of units and all of the bombs will hit. Go send bombers against a lone missile tower or metal extractor and less than half of the bombs will hit. You tell me what's a better use of the bomber.

It's simple math. Bombs use energy. Would you rather have every one of your bombs hit a target? Or just two or three bombs hit a target?

You also didn't answer my question.

By making units do one thing and one thing only when they could be very versatile, you're creating poor gameplay.

Also, you completely ignored the fact that air was 100% useless during Alpha when Ants could fire at air. That's bad gameplay.

This is something I wanted to address specifically. I could argue many things for and against this statement, but I've already seen a lot of posts from both sides by now, so I know calling it a can of worms is definitely an understatement. What I want to do is understand why you think this way.

- Is it specifically because of the way ant's vertical firing was set up in Alpha where they could efficiently take out aircraft? That I can agree with. It was unnatural as hell and made AA useless.

- Is it because ground to ground units in TA were inefficient at shooting aircraft because of turret turning speed and/or bullet speed? IE: gunships, slow-flying construction aircraft and bombers doing slow turns.

- Or as opposed to above, is it because units still aim at aircraft even though they're flying too fast for the unit to fire and get a hit? Not a fan of this myself. I do like units aiming at aircraft if it's flying slow enough, irrelevant of their flight-capability.


How would you feel if tanks were a bit more efficient than they were in TA at striking aircraft that are only slightly moving but only aimed at said aircraft if they were going slow enough to guarantee a hit. This wouldn't be like it was in Alpha. (that was definitely stupid) With something like this, time tanks would completely ignore aircraft a majority of the time, but if your aircraft decide to hover near enemy units, that's a mistake I believe should be punished.

I believe there's probably a middleground somewhere.. but that could be wishful thinking. The only thing I know for a fact is that if you don't find out why the opposing side thinks they way they do about a specific detail, then you'll never understand and never reach an agreement.

- Edit'd for clarity

In TA altitude was the major factor in most land units not being effective against air. Air altitude was generally only near the top of the range of most units in TA, unlike PA, thus decreasing their effective range (because ranges are spherical). Their accuracy also was very low against fast-moving units like fighters due to projectile flight times. Planet curvature exacerbates the issue in PA as well.

Also, there were preferred target categories for units in TA. I'm not sure how much they're implemented in PA, but I know they at least exist because units ignore walls.

This makes sense. I don't know if changing their altitude would be a good or bad thing, since it would have to be tested in real battles. This is the kind of thing I hope happens, though. Making tanks semi-effective firing at slow or stationary aircraft while they don't bother with aircraft flying too high or too fast for their effective vertical range.

This will also help, since tanks should prefer ground units coming in. If they can't guarantee a hit on an aircraft of higher priority (ex, gunships firing on buildings that are high priority to defend), then they should definitely ignore it and make sure their barrels are aimed and ready for approaching enemy units. Smart units, as it were. Radar signatures and visuals should keep units ready for battle before the enemy is within the range that their barrel cannot rotate before the enemy unit fires.

(Did that make any sense at all? xD)

This was a wonderful post I think. I came in after Beta started, so I didn't know about the Ants in Alpha, but it sounds miserable. I think that you're right, there should be some sort of middle ground.

I think that tanks should be able to shoot at a near stationary air target, like constr. aircraft. I remember tanks doing their hardest to take out aircraft that could hover back and forth with little success except in larger numbers, which makes some sense.

Also, on the note of balance, and it's been mentioned before, missile defenses and other AA units could shoot at the ground in TA, but their damage to tanks, etc., was very, very low compared to buildings like laser towers.