Balance of flack, and should it change

So the game is just a giant tech race?

That is retarded.

I disagree, this is a game, the idea is to win. If you opponent builds 20 t2 bombers and you dont notice, don' t have the units to defend, or have advantage somewhere else on the map you are more than likely going to lose whatever he decided to spend the metal on. 20 hornets is the equivalent to 80 hummingbirds. You dont think this is enough to kill them?

T2 should be better units, they need to make cost and exceed that or what would be the point of teching up. You need to be rewarded for risking to tech up early and get away with it and punished if you tech up too slow or dont capitalise on the opponent teching up.

This is just my view on the game, and every rts game I have played use these mechanics. I understand from your previous posts you want to give units different roles. Do you think there should be 2 different fighter types also? or one middle of the road one?

I think that the advanced units should have different uses, different strategy, better at some things worse at others.

There should be no replacements, if you have one unit that is better then another, why have the other at all? Because of cost? That is not a good argument from a game design stand point, because the cost can change.

If the peregrine is just an advanced hummingbird , why would you ever go back to the hummingbirds when you an simply build the far superior peregrine ? Why even have the hummingbird in the game? Why would you ever feel the need to build an inferior unit?

That is the point of the game, you build the best of the best, so with the peregrine there is simply no need to ever have the hummingbird.

The hornet bomber has problems, *** all air units do when it comes to stacking, and even when scouted (before anybody says something about it) unless you are going to pull enough hummingbirds from their possible patrols or hole that the enemy is luckily flying into your air defences then you likely arn't going to get enough time to kill them.

I am not worried about being sniped, or having a building killed by a group of bombers that can magically stack into the same space to all attack at once, but I am worried about the redundancy of the basic units that even when massed have to face units that aren't just different, but totally better replacements to the originals, some of which haven't even been balanced into a useful sate anyway.

So why do we even have a basic air factory when players are going to (And mostly deliberately) replace it within the first 20 minutes of a game?

We can just move anything we need into the advanced factory, like the air scout.

This is the problem I face, why do the hummingbirds exist when the peregrine is better? Why bother with basic fighters that get outmoded past 20 mins?

"Ow well you can mass enough fighters to deal with the bombers, I don't understand the problem?"

Because I have been lied to, and unless I react to your bombers (That no player is just going to plow into you with, any good player will be sending their own fighters to screen them, no one is stupid enough to do that) with what could even constitute as my entire air-force when you have taken your entire air-force and quickly focused them into one area, on a single target, unless I do the same, I lose.

No if's, no you should have scouted, my fighters need to be right there to stop them, or nothing can.

"Why don't you just build flak around important targets"

Flak is a solution to the effects of bomber stacking, the the effects of being able to put 1000 units into a single spot, and doesn't deal with the fact that a player is VERY aware with what they are dealing with, especially if you have opted to go for a basic force of grater numbers spread across a planet.

Hell smart players even used to use air scouts of fighters to draw the attentions of tanks when they could shoot planes, so it is easily within the grasp of a player to come up with a cleaver strategy to get around enemy flak.

So if the player has been effectively left to patrol a large area of the planet, with units that only when massed can defeat the unit they counter, and against players who know this can will use this against you.

I defiantly do not see the point in STARTING with an inferior fighter craft.

Do what you will with ammo systems or cool downs to attacks, but this bomber stacking is a serious problem.

7 t2 bombers kill a commander in TA. 3 to kill adv labs, 1 t1 bomber could take out a whole line of wind generators in one pass. You could even off screen bombers to get from one corner to the next without flying near enemy units or radar. But the game still worked. Sniping only worked if you were asleep, and factories lost if you hadnt enough AA. Maybe we just need to spam more AA or fighters. Maybe the problem is us and not the game.

20 slammers would do much more damage but we can't do that because of how the bombers act as of now. All the effort of bringing units to the other side of a huge planet can be gone with one pass of a t2 bomber on patrol.

I dont agree with your examples. The defender has huge advantages in this game. Whether you have defences down, or even if his air force fly over one of your expansions, you know what he is doing, where is the best place to cut him off and if you set you defences up good enough he would loose half his fighters before he reaches anything valuable enough. This is not where the problem lies. The problem lies that this is the only method of winning. Air is just too strong, the flak helps the sniping and the ability to be able to defend your base, but your outer expansions and ground units can't cope with the speed and effectiveness of the air game.

Then by what you have said, its the attacker with the advantage, the advantage to choose when and where the battle takes place.

And with proper planning there can be no way to stop a good player from striking with a air-force.

At the very leas can we agree that flak doesn't solve the underlying problems with aircraft?

I still think the t2 bomber can keep it's damage and lose a ton of health, and the t1 bomber in comparison can gain health for his service, or even vice versa.

That way, t2 bombers just don't work 1v1 against anti air, and t1 bombers can tank well enough to accomplish things slowly but surely sometimes without even losing numbers against anti air.

Also, that way people will use t1 bombers all game, because they go in first and they actually live against AA. People won't rush and rely on t2 bombers, because you can lose a whole group of them without effect if that is all you use, no matter how dense. I think that is fine.

To be even more generous, if that buff/nerf system is used on the t1/t2 bombers, give the t2 bombers radar invisibility, just as a show of good faith. I know I advertize it a lot, but it would have meaningful tactical advantage if sprinkled into gameplay.

Besides that, flak should have equal or less damage than missile turret, and should probably just have a tighter AOE but still do limitless damage to anything in AOE. Because players who prevent their bombers from flying in a conga line deep up one another's arse, should be rewarded.

Better tell every single form of AA up until the invention of the guided missile that they have been doing it wrong for nigh on 80 years.

Real world solutions don't often work in a game , mainly due to the 100 years arm race the world just experienced over the last century of gunpowder and cavalry, to drones and bomb pumped death-rays.

Despite the fact that all 3 methods of destroying a bomber used over the past 100 years have been:

Other Aircraft (Fighters)
Flak
Missiles

Real world applications or not, they are tried and tested methods of dealing with bombers. Bobucles assumption that Flak is not the tool for the job is frankly, incorrect.

Well both right and wrong.

Flak is good at suppressing an area in shrapnel, and is good at hitting targets that fly at it and run into said shrapnel.

But its also bad that flak and T2 bombers have a system where the first to shoot wins, thus the assertions of rocket tag gameplay.

the need for a good AA to counter spam is kind of paramount still, especially since t2 fighters can target ground now....might be a bug tho, but still.....(ffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu)

and i don't care how many times I've said it, i'll say it again, air spam is still a huge problem.

tank spam can be stopped with a good number of ways, from artillery to bombers to having an equally large blob.

bot spam is a little harder, since they run faster and usually have far greater numbers. but they can still be stopped in the same way as tank blobs. albeit you need to be quicker to the draw.

air spam? you MAY be able to stop the first tiny wave, but after that there's only one real solution.

counter spam.

and if the only way to counter a tactic is though imitation, then we've got problems.

the t2AA was likely just shoved into the update to stop the crying. it obviously needs refinement, something i am sure the devs are working on. We still needed it though.

Igncom I understand what you're saying and I agree but remember the balancing phase has only had half of the first pass, Scathis has barely even started!

I am sorry, I should cool my jets:


I am just so FRIGGING excited and passionate!

I'd like to see both flak and an advanced SAM.

Keep T1 AA as it is
T2 Flak - rapid fire, good AOE, medium damage, slower projectiles, low turret turn speed, so it can't really track fast moving planes as well (it might get a few hits in), but mostly meant for gunships
T2 Advanced SAM - Fairly expensive, Limited ammo, burst fire (maybe 2 - 4 missiles) then a long reload, but also long range (we have Pelters and Catapults and Holkins for ground but all AA is pathetically low range) good for sniping bombers before they get close but keep the damage low enough / reload long enough that it isn't so OP that it can stop any number of bombers.

Might make sense for 2 kinds of advanced bomber as well

1. Heavier slower carpet bomber, can soak up more damage, but not great for taking out single targets
2. Fast high altitude bomber that can evade AA better, but much less armored. Better for taking out a single target, very low AoE

Think B-52 with lots of small bombs vs B-2 dropping a MOAB.

If you want to quote history, at least put a little effort into it.

Have you ever wondered how bombing runs have managed to stay so successful in those "nigh on 80" years? It's simple. Flak sucks. Bombers were armored against flak, and fighters weren't. When the bombers reached their target, the fighters returned to base so they wouldn't get creamed. Even defensive fighters were a bad choice to send into flak defense. The poor ability to retaliate against bombers has allowed them to remain successful and come back for bombing runs again and again, each run crushing more defense to make the next run even easier.

The most successful defense against bombers in the world wars was don't be targeted by a bomber. Lights out, everyone to their bunker, and pray that more bombs are wasted on grass land than they are on factories. Once a bomber flies overhead and it finds a target, you've already lost. The bomb is on its way.

There are a lot of ways to deal with bombers in a fun and engaging way. If you can avoid the first hit, bombers are a joke. They've spent their payload and have to do a huge sweep before they can even consider retaliating. Wiping them all out in the split second space between "AA range" and "bombing range" is NOT one of them.

I only skimmed this thread, so sorry if this was already talked about. I thought I remembered Neutrino saying somewhere early in development that he wasn't a fan of air units magically stacking and sharing the same airspace? If that's the case, and it is planned for air units to not be able to stack in the future, then that pretty drastically changes this entire discussion. Now suddenly all the other AA types are slightly better at taking out air swarms, and flak is slightly worse.

That said, from watching replays it does still seem super powerful at the moment.

I generally agree with Bobucles that defending against a determined bomber attack should require some combination of stronger single target AA + a fighter net. Building 3 flak towers and being immune to bombers is a little too easy.