POLL: Balancing Air - Continued!

It's not just about Flak Vs. Bombers, it's about Bombers Vs. Everything Else, particularly Commanders. You say "There has to be some skill involved other that clicking on a bunch of units and telling them to attack another unit." yet that's exactly what Bombers do unless your enemy has his entire base surrounded by Flak.
The point is Flak is not the final solution to the fundamental problem that Air does not obey the laws of physics by stacking.

Just sounds like you are being outplayed and not scouting enough to be quite blunt.

If they are turtling the only say they can really win is from a snipe. Makes
Them easy to scout and you just need to defend accordingly with your better Eco.

The enemy needs at least 20 bombers to snipe a commander. 3 / 4 flak around commander will stop this. As raevn said in an earlier post. They will still all diverge on the unit to bomb it either way.

Perhaps. but when you have someone between them and you and you are fighting 3 people at the same time for mex sites its kinda hard to do much about it.. recon wasnt the problem.. had 2 factorys on infinate build scouts and auto patroling planet.. i had good visablity of what they were doing .. could i do anything about it while fighting to survive. nope... but hay as you say maybe i just suck and im venting to the internet.. stranger things have happend ;P

Do tanks or naval occupy the same space in reality? No.
Do planes occupy the same space in reality? No.
Do tanks or naval occupy the same space in game? No.
Do planes occupy the same space in game? Yes.

A Commander should not need to sit in a bunker. What if you land him on a hostile world which has T2 Bombers?
Bombers should not be able to end games instantly. I'm quite happy for Commanders to get bombed to death, just not because Bombers stack their damage and can kill one with a single pass. You should have time to move or respond, even if it's just enough time to scramble fighters.

As I replied to raevn earlier, if Air units were able to fly over and under one another, 'stacking' could be created. The difference being that only the bottom units would be able to drop bombs - Air could not drop bombs through other Air units.

If you ever look closely you can see that t2 bombs guide onto the targets. So in theory all bombs could land same time either way. I understand what you are saying about stacking but it is more of a realism problem than gameplay.

I don't think it's right telling people how they should play (from my view) bit I know deep down every time I get sniped it is ultimately my fault or I was outplayed. More so in this patch with the addition of flak.

The T2 Bomber drops in a line. You wouldn't be able to have a bomber fly above another bomber and have it drop its bombs through something below it, regardless of whether the bombs move a little towards their target. They aren't going to fall at a slower rate. I agree with you that Flak is a partial solution - it's a defence. But Air stacking still means two things:

1. Air can stack potentially unlimited damage.
2. Fatal damage can be dealt to unlimited numbers of stacked Air units by Flak AOE.

Gameplay reflects reality. We'd think it mad if Land stacked, but somehow have grown to accept Air stacking in games. In SupCom this meant Bombers could annihilate Experimentals and Commanders, leading to the default gameplay (particularly in games like Setons Clutch) being about building defences and spamming T3 Aeon Fighters/AA Gunships.

Planes can stack on top of each other like dox can stack behind one another. Planes bombs pass through planes like dox bullets pass through dox. Is this where your problem is? No friendly fire?

Bombers can stack an infinite number. But you could also build an infinite number of flaks to defend against. Or as you put it build 1 and it's the attackers problem if he flies over it. Again formations will fix this but stacking should be an option.

I would argue that if you are in a ffa and are spending all your time on one guy and then the other guy kills you, it is probably not the games fault. I would recommend playing 1v1's to avoid this happening again.

Dox aren't as fast as planes, and don't literally occupy the same spot in space. Yes they can fire through one another, but their range (and therefore damage) is limited by the presence of other dox in front. I don't want friendly fire - that is not my problem.

You cannot, nor should you be able to, build an infinite number of flaks in a finite spot on the ground. However, you can stack an infinite number of planes. But let's not confuse this issue. This isn't a matter of balancing one imbalanced unit behaviour with another. Flak tears through planes just fine.

Formations would help the issue, I agree. But planes should not be able to bomb through eachother even if they are able to fly over one another, as (unlike dox, which are restricted in their range by the presence of other units) this makes their potential damage unlimited.

I think it is just easy for me to grasp as I am used to it from TA. It's a case as it's always been that way so why change.

For me; if I see a stack of bombers heading in my commanders location I move and make that top priority. Would be nice to know the damage potential of the stack, I completely agree with that. But in the end if your opponent is able to waltz into your base up beside your commander with 100 or so bombers and you haven't already capitalized or defended against this threat than in my eyes you deserve to lose.

Planes shouldn't be able to fly through each other, but that would not stop them being used to snipe individual, high value targets. Even in a line, the majority are going to get through and drop a huge cluster of bombs over their target.

Bombers have been used for that since the original total annihilation.Commander/Vital Building (fusion reactor, antinuke) sniping has always been a feature of these games, and to be honest, if the enemy is allowed to build up a swarm of 40 tech level 2 bombers, he SHOULD be able to deal a devastating blow to a ground target if it is not heavily defended by fighters or AA turrets.

That's fair. I'd do the same thing, and I regularly build plenty of Flak. Often, however, you can't surround an entire base in time to stop T2 Bomber spam. There's also the issue that you can't approach bases defended by bombers with armies, and Flak destroys fighters if you send them in to deal with the bombers, leading to an Air-spamming contest for defence, and a nuke-spam contest for attack. This may change with T2 Flak, but I'd still prefer that Bombers didn't just insta-rape any exposed unit. Preventing stacking would mean several passes were necessary to kill a Commander.

Absolutely. I'm all for Air dealing crippling damage in high numbers against no defences, and killing high-value targets. Just so long as that damage can be balanced by being quantifiable through the prevention of stacking. This is important for invasions too. If an Army/Commander enter a planet only to be instantly annihilated by massed patrolling T2 Bombers, it encourages stalemates.

Another guy also suggested different roles for T1/2 Bombers, with T1 attacking single targets and T2 as heavy carpet bombers.

It is probably a good solution yes, as it keeps bombers deadly but be so in a more sensible way.

I would much prefer the way they move / interact in the sky be tweaked than them hit with the ultra nerf hammer to the point they become worthless to build.

Think it would be easier to fix it to have t1 for ground units and t2 for structures. T1 is ok for units as is. But the T2 bomber is so much better than the gunship which I think should be the more t2 unit killer. That plus the huge hp of buildings compared to t1 bombers dps.

I'm glad you think so ^^ I created this Poll with balance in mind, not over a blind hatred for Air lol.

I'm going to be that guy and just leave this here...

https://forums.uberent.com/forums/balance-discussions.84/

Ooh cheers! Once this has got as much traffic as it ever will on the Poll, I'll ask that it be moved there.

1. But the Dox can't all shoot all at the same time due to the difference in target distance from being lined up. While the bombers can because they have the same distance to the target And no, circling does not eliminate that completely.
2. That in itself should never ever be considered a valid point. Never.