mobile flak.... we need it!!!

What is the essential difference right now between bombers and gunships, role-wise?

Both are exclusively air-to-ground rapid-moving flyers. The only notable differences right now seem to be that one sits still when it shoots and is single-target rapid-fire damage and the other strafes with frontloaded linear AoE damage

How does this establish different roles for the 2? When would I want to build gunships over bombers or vice versa? What place do each have in the game that is distinct from the other?

One would guess that AoE damage be great for low-hp groups of units but being frontloaded also means lots of overkill, and a low RoF punishes overkill harshly, which is bad for unit blobs. High-hp single targets (like structures) are less prone to being overkilled since they're dying less frequently and a high frontload can burst-kill a target like an AA tower in a single pass with enough bombers, but then you all but waste the fact that your attacks are AoE

high RoF single target damage has no natural drawback aside from the fact that it isn't AoE. So, once again, you'd expect that when there are 2 similar units with the primary difference being that one does area of effect damage and the other does single target damage, you would assume that the AoE one would be specialized for units groups, and the single-target one for structures.

Right now that's not really the case. Bombers and gunships both work well against all types of ground targets and the only reason to pick one over the other comes down to preference or whichever the current balance pass has arbitrarily placed above the other. Before we start talking about counters, we sorely need to clarify the roles of these units

This was made before the new patch Mr demand. I said I have yet to give it a chance perhaps read the whole thread next time......

I don't see the point in this since the patch. T2 air got their hit points nerfed pretty severely. I find T1 mobile AA is reasonably effective at shooting them down now.

Bombers are better killers, especially against hordes of units, but they have a sloppier flight path that tends to get them shot at by every AA turret and vehicle in the area.

Gunships are less effective but the way they loiter at range rather than fly over the target means they tend to get shot at less.

^ see I haven't had my chance to notice that yet. I just made this thread at the wrong time because the patch dropped shortly after..

Id have to agree, balance is not a valid argument at this point. If you buff t1 (spinner) to be able to handle t2 air craft, it would make t1 aircraft obsolete.

So you might say lets nerf t2 air more, well then theres no point of building t2 air anymore if they are nerfed to the point that they are handled by t1 aa.

T1 should be "a t1 counter"
T2 should have its own counter (flak tank). If t2 is nerfed any more it might as well be t1.5, we need t2 ground based aa units.

Theres still the issue with massive air unit spam, which the spinner is not designed to handle.

@beer4blood What I said applies to the patch before as well. My apologizes for not reading the entire thread.

Saying T2 should have its own counter is separating T1 and T2 aircraft into different levels of threat. A t2 aircraft is just a more specialized aircraft that isn't stronger then a T1 aircraft just more unique in its attack patterns.

T1 Fighters will always destroy hornets and gunships with little resistance. If the enemy also has fighters. Then the spinners do their job of destroying the enemy fighters. Its a combined Arms tactic. In TF2, a Heavy Weapons guy is weaker then when partnered up with a medic combination. I suggest trying this in your next engagement and see if it improves. If it doesnt, then we can look at adding another unit to meld into the mix.

The last thing I want T2 units to be is just upgrades to T1 units. Making them redundant.

What say you then of the t2 fighter?? Seems like an upgrade to me. Upgraded units are ok imo not to the point of TA redundancy but still one here and there is ok. Otherwise why do we have flak turrets and aa missile towers? Shot force provides a good point. Units are going to be left behind as the game last longer, while still viable just not as much.

Pre patch I constantly littered my forces with mobile aa usually at a 2:1 ratio they were still utterly smashed by hornets. Perhaps now is different since slamz says the hp has dropped significantly.

That still leaves the point of how are spinners going to deal with blobs of spammed air units? They are a one on one unit. Flak has aoe "for groups"

I understand what your saying, but by doing it your way your giving one group the advantage (air) and making ground obsolete, ground already has too many counters ie artil, catapults, and air. Going air should be as equally risky.

Ground right now as far as I can tell is support for your other stuff. Rather than the other way around.

I'm hearing multiple things from these two paragraphs that is hard to figure out what is the problem and what is noise to the problem.

I don't like that there is a T2 fighter, There is no reason for it to exist. That is for another argument though.

We have Flak turrets and aa missiles because bases needed an extra unit to deal with air swarms. Land units have laser towers and artillery and catapults. Air only had missile towers.

What you are really saying in your example is that the opponent built hornets, and you went 2 to 1 anti air tanks to attack his base. I would then suggest that did you have any fighters... because they could of stopped the bombers if he had no fighters of his own.

The problem with the term "blob" is that air is currently playing with zero collision factors. Bombers can stack up to 1000 on top of themselves and deliver their payloads with little to no problem. Land can't do this, and neither should air. If air was separated out and attacked, then flak would not be powerful enough to deal with it. Again, this is a numbers game. I mentioned my fine line of when air can be useful or outright useless if anti air stops them in their tracks. I know people want to play with just pure land armies. But Air is part of the battle field as well.

Ultimately. I'm worried what you guys want flak to do then the pure inclusion of having flak as an option.

Do you want Flak to

• Option A annihilate swarms of air and leave nothing but carnage with little to no help from spinners or fighters
• Option B soften air swarms and let your spinners or fighters do the talking

I am more along side of option B then A.

Tell me what you want flak to be and maybe I won't have such a problem of adding another redundant unit to the roster.

Same here, B is basically what I want Flak to do as well, it's how I have it set up like that as well in my AA Trinity.

Mike

Well at the moment it is a straight upgrade. There's currently no reason to build T1 bombers over T2, ever, once T2 bombers are available.

They're better at both wide area
and singled target bombing.

EDIT: somehow didn't notice the 2 pages of discussion between Brian's post and now. My bad.

Monetary costs are NOT material costs. A lot of a plane's price tag comes from an expensive research team and the huge maintenance crew needed to keep them in the air.

PA already has the research 100% done, and construction is all the same to a nanolathe. Get blueprint, print, done. The cost argument is moot.

No. It is a concepts game. If there's any problem with bombers, it is because few units are conceptually capable of fighting one. A super AA does not fix this. Incomplete is not solved with broken.

i want to use both T1 (spinners) and T2 flak all in the same tank platoon. i not looking for a be all straight up air killer weapon, i want them both. too many times i have heard on these forums that we want the units to be specialized well......the spinner is good at one on one/flak is good at helping cut down spam.

I know people want to play with just pure land armies. But Air is part of the battle field as well.

soooooooo do we really need T2 fighters??????? we have T1 fighters. its the same argument only air gets to keep there stuff and land gets pushed to the side like in FA.

im not going to hold this thread up anymore.[/Quote]

Nope. It doesn't scale right, and supcom already proved this. The same weapon that's used for softening up an enemy force quickly stacks up to instagibb that enemy. AoE is a damage multiplier, and for a swarm based game it's damn good at it.

Find a better way. I already did SIX.

How? SupCom didn't have anything working together between tiers, Flak was useless against T3 Units, and needed to be sufficiently powerful on it's own to handle T2 Air units, so naturally it wrecked T1 Air units because SupCom Tier Power Gaps were huge.

Mike

So compare it to the T2 units, there's certainly a T2 of every flavor in Supcom. Flak starts out decent, and then scales up to WRECK T2. That's just how AoE works, it keeps scaling as the battles grow.

If the problem is with battles getting too large, then sure. Throw some flak into the mix, and large battles will never be a problem again. That's probably not the point of PA, though.

There is a T2 equivalent of a lot of things, but NOT other AA options.

Comparing one of a single weapon type designed to function alone against Multiple Weapon Types designed to work together isn't valid.

Mike

Having no valid test at all is even worse. I guess we'll have to reference another game for this one.

Splash damage. Is. Like. REALLY good. And that AoE didn't even damage stack.

Find a better solution. Not better as in "does more damage" better, but better as in "recognizes that PA is a swarm based game so there's always going to be a lot of everything on the field" better.

That's what I worry with flak damage stack. However, The reason it usually does so much damage is because Air currently stacks as well. Land units don't stack onto themselves, artillery would demoilsh armies if it did. Same principle.

Giving it a light damage with slow rate of fire would differentiate it pretty good as long as air doesn't stack onto itself.