Nerfing advanced bomber com snipes

Well theres been alot of good ideas and methods to solve this, but to me the bombers have been no issue... Even large groups trying to attack my Commander usualy get met with an overwhelming anti air that waists the bulk before its a problem.
I can however agree that it can be a big issue and im not trying to defend the system as is. I think adding another Anti-Air turret could help to correct this issue, my concern with that is limited to the balance of course. The other Idea I had was simply changing the Bombers Pathing script(if its controlled in a similar fashion). For instance why not have them path'd in such a way that they need to line up to bomb a small target? If its bigger simply let them go in pairs to bomb the target? Of course this may add more problems so I can't say this is a sure fire way but it would be a better alternative to letting them stack up and bomb all at once. Im not expecting my ideas to win out or influence but they are just some more to throw in there to help get the ball rolling.

I doubt it. He'll probably just quote himself saying

Even so, off the top of my head I can't think of a single TA-like game that did air competently. TA made every plane that wasn't a gunship be made of tissue paper and Flak essentially solved all problems except Hawks. Everything else was too slow and got chewed to pieces by just a light scattering of Flak guns. So air was rendered pretty useless until you got critical mass on Hawks.

SupCom FA had flying tanks with a 'limiting' mechanic (fuel) that didn't work at all. Either the map size was to small and you could ignore it, or too big and then you had other problems... like 5fps gameplay. What both SupCom FA and SupCom2 are both guilty of is just making a tank that had noclip... and SupCom2 even gave its gunships shields. They literally had the worst implementation of aircraft that I've ever seen.

Zero-K had an ammo mechanic that tried to solve the problem... but all it did was marginalise aircraft into a spot where using them was only viable in a team game. Air Factory first was literally a death sentence since AA was so prevalent and cheap... and to overcome it you still needed a critical mass of planes. Basically you're back to TA again, only with bombers having to return to base to restock. AA in Zero-K was a total mess though. The ranges that some of the weapons had was just silly. Imagine a Big Bertha that shoots homing rockets that can only hit planes and you'll have a pretty good idea of what some of them were capable of.

I think they need to be more spread out when attacking, so that they cant just snake through your defences.

Nano, air is really really strong in ZK. But it is best used to support ground forces, not to just fly in and kill everything by itself. Even starting airfac is viable in 1v1 but it is not something I would recommend to a new player. ZK's air is the best implementation I have seen yet for TA style games. Best air implementation full stop goes to Wargame: Airland Battle (which is brilliant).

You are absolutely right about air in TA, SupCom, and the unadulterated disaster that was SupCom 2 air "gameplay" to use that word generously. PA should definitely look to aircraft as a great area to improve upon TA.

As for anti-air, it seems to me that long range surface to air missiles with very high lethality are the kind of deterrent that will make players think hard about how to use their valuable planes. Flak as a very high DPS anti air weapon has its place as well, but it will never get rid of air blobs if aircraft mechanics encourage them because aircraft are inherently more mobile than AA.

Anti-air got better in the last SC2 patch, but you really do need a whole lot to effectively bring down a horde (Like the number of tanks you need to counter an enemy tank horde, 1 to 1 works best).

Still, there are many upgrades that give tanks AA, so that helps.

Even if Zero-K has the best implementation of any TA-like, it's still only the best of a bad bunch for me, and honestly feels overly restrictive. ' Only viable for pro-players, punishing for newbies ' is not a good way to balance your systems and mechanics in my opinion.

If you'd like my opinion... planes are just too cheap for their use of noclip.
Either take the total noclip away and give planes boundaries to their mobility, or make them pay for it in other ways.

The ASF wasn't a "solution" to T3 Bombers, it was simply another T3 Air unit was was 'needed' simply because originally there wasn't and T2 fighter type unit. combine that with the way higher tiers made lower ones obsolete and the simple fact that there are ONLY 2 units that can actually HIT T3 Air(T3 Air and T3 AA Turrets) and you've clearly got a problem.

SupCom's problem wasn't a balance problem, sure better balance might have offset the issues it had to some degree but at the end of the day there were much more fundamental problems, mostly that due to the way the Tiers worked only units of the same tier were effective. It's not that flak was badly balanced, it did just fine in the T2 Stage, but once T3 rolled around the T3 units flew too fast and too high to even be HIT by Flak in any sort of reliable manner, and when you compare damage and health, UEF Flak did 36 damage a Shot, but the UEF ASF had 1850 HP!

If PA goes along the route of more or less 'flat balancing' units as many are hoping for there won't be the potential for the same fundamental problems SupCom had, then the worst PA should have to deal with are balance issues.

Mike

Absolutely agree with both nano and knight. But planes' mobility is the true source of their power, although the noclip doesn't hurt since it lets planes overlap to instantly fire or maneuver together. Just fixing noclip alone would not do it, and should be done in addition to designing planes around limitations to compensate for their mobility. But not allowing planes to overlap is still a fantastic idea

Real planes have to maintain distance, especially if dropping bombs. Bombers "stack up" in 3D formations around a target area. The cardinal rule being that no bomber can have a lower altitude than an earlier bomber in the stack. The first bomber is lowest, with those behind it flying higher and descending as the front of the stack breaks off.

In gameplay terms, imposing a spacing requirement on aircraft would make air formations actually matter. A wider bomber formation could drop bombs quicker, but must spread its attack over separate areas. A deeper formation would put more bombs on fewer areas in a denser shape but would take more time.

I was talking about them completely ignoring not only their own hit boxes, but also all terrain and distance in its entirety. They don't care where the target is, or how far away it situated; as long as it's on the same planet, you click, they go.

Bad design. Real planes don't function that way and you can not emulate their intended 'support' role in any way that I can see by having them as flying tanks (even low health doesn't work). Aircraft have restrictions in their flight time, range and height. Until something is done to emulate these restrictions then planes are nothing more than tanks with fly and noclip cheats. Increasing their cost to health ratio doesn't solve it, merely changes the point at which critical mass is achieved. You reach a point at which a aerial force is either completely worthless or completely overpowering, since the only thing that matters is if you have enough to kill the enemy Commander. Because bombers are essentially designed to snipe single targets at the moment, regardless of distance or intervening terrain it becomes a binary calculation; do you have enough planes to overwhelm the defences and kill the Commander? Yes or No.

There's no higher strategic thought to their deployment. That is their flaw.

I hope formations stop the 'plane singularity' happening... but that alone doesn't fix them.

Since we are talking about comsnipes, if the point at which critical mass is achieved after the commanders have left the planet, it isn't that big of an issue. I'm actually not convinced it is an issue in the first place currently in PA . When the commander is deep inside the base there isn't much that can touch him and by dodging the advanced bombers and repairing him between the salvos this should give more then enough time to destroy the advanced bombers.

I hope flak doesn't get put into the game. There are so many other ways to make anti air weaponry effective.

Except against groups of air units.......

Mike

I just really detest that Bombers are used as snipers at the moment. It feels really wrong. Maybe I just like WW1 bombers too much for how inaccurate, potentially 'trickable' and how vulnerable to all forms of AA they were.

Bombers were risky way-back-when. Supply of munitions, fuel and trained manpower was a limiting factor. Flight time was a limiting factor. accurate maps, accurate flight-plans and accurate methods for self-positioning were a limiting factor. Bombers were so limited in what they were designed to do. They were as far as you could get from TA-like games' depiction of planes as a flying tank.

But I don't even know what TA-like games are trying to emulate with their planes. Certainly isn't anything close to realistic in any time-frame, and it's damaging the potential of the game in my opinion.

Groups of Air are imbalanced on a more technical then in game gameplay standard.

they are kind of like air tanks that can clip into each other.. thus making a small ball and output the damage equivalent of a 1.3x a nuke. on a single spot. If the bombers can't stack, then needing some sort of splash damage attack would not be necessary.

EDIT: "Data:"

Nuke metal: 32400
Nuke Damage:22000 dps

Adv bomber Equivalent: 32400 metal/1215 metal=26 bombers..
Adv Bomber Damage: 26 bombers *2200 DPS= 58666 dps

Of course it will, for all the same reasons AOE is good against ground armies! Unless you somehow force large space of at least 1-2 unit length between air units they can still group up. Not to mention that with Air being as mobile as it is you see them grouping up for larger attacks at a single area more so than with air units. Flak(or any AOE really) is key in helping to offset the advantages of Air units, and it's great because it's not some kind of RAW upgrade or anything because it's not effective against small groups so you can't JUST build flak and need to mix it with other AA weapon types.

Mike

NoNoNo, stop talking about flak in SupCom, it's entirely a red herring to what I'm trying to say. And obviously any reference to SupCom's tiers is not relevant here either.

What is relevant is that the top-end bomber needs something that can take it out effectively, and if the thing that can take it out is too effective then it defeats the purpose of having a top-end bomber (or in the case of ASFs, simply means that you need to have more of them that your opponent before you can use your top-end bomber with impunity).

If the PA top-end AA turret can kill bombers too easily, then air becomes pointless. If there is a critical mass where bombers can overwhelm the top-end AA then the problem is simply delayed. This seems to me a practically intractable problem, so I made a suggestion that something from another layer (in my example orbital) may be able to take out large swathes of air units with no risk to itself - of course then you'd need something on yet another layer that could take out the "anti-air satellite" with no risk.

All that means is you have hard-counters that act like tiered progressions.

Planes beaten by Anti-Plane Satellite beaten by 'X unit' = T1 beaten by T2 beaten by T3.

Planes are a problem. You can't fix them via outside influence if they stay as they are; infinite range and leash-less, pinpoint, stackable alpha strikers. You must fix the aircraft mechanics themselves, not band-aid over them with counters.

I was thinking that maybe the thing that could take out the anti-air satellite would be low-tech and easy to build, but Christ knows what that could be.

Then all you have is a rock-paper-scissors scenario in which Air + Cheap Anti-Sat always wins.