Air Craft Fueling

Why does everything in the air need a counterpart on the ground? On the contrary, more variety leads to better gameplay.

On landing pads: airfactories should ship with one standard.

The appropriate air counter should be AA, artificial limits on aircraft are just that, and re-stocking mechanisms just introduce more micro.

So in order to counter bomber rushes I say why not give the Commander half-way decent AA out of the box?

That way there is some risk/reward around keeping your commander close or charging off to expand and lets them behave in much the same way as they do counter land rushes.

I don't see why Air Craft would need fueling since other unit does'nt, same applies to ammo.

I don't know why fuel is artificial, this is a game in a sense everything is artificial. As for the micro, in this day and age this can all be automated while still retaining the manual refuelling.

I don't think early bomber rushes are a big problem, and commanders should be vulnerable to air.

Because it improves gameplay and prevents a lot of boring aircombat pathologies?

1. It's more realistic. Flying consumes far more energy than an internal reactor could provide, at least for jet engines. You need some kind of fuel with high energy density like liquid hydrogen and you can't carry unlimited amounts of fuel either due to the weight of the fuel.
2. It ads a more strategic element to the gameplay as you are forced to use forward bases, same as when attacking with ground forces.
3. It prevents nasty camping and other exploits. You don't want an enemy air fleet to gather right behind your base, at least not until the type was aircraft was designed for that kind of operation (landing gear). Aircraft should approach the target only right before the actuall attack.
4. Actually modern bombers have dozens of bombs loaded but the flight time is still limited to less then 72 hours.

But there's no need to slow planes down or to destroy them once they run out auf fuel, just assume they have a reserve tank large enough to make it back to the base at full speed when flying in a straight line. The plane will only suffer disadvantages when forced to continue flying while already running on reserve, otherwise they will auto return.

Why not just combine fuel and ammo in one resource? That way attack strength of aircraft degrades the further you move them out. A highest tier bomber might be able to deliver a dozen bombs right next to your own base while having only enough power left to deliver a single bomb when used for rushing without any forward bases.

That way the strength of aircraft is bound to the expansion of your empire, just the way it's supposed to be. Aircraft stays agile, you can move it around within your borders as freely as you like, but it looses its teeth if you try to push forward to aggressive.

Thorium. Look up the LFTR. America was going to build nuclear powered aircraft back in the 60's (and it would have worked too). What I wish to say is; it's plenty possible for an aircraft to be self-sustaining (at least for the time frame expected in a game). Now throw in a touch of SCIENCE(TM) IN-THE-FUTURE to hand-wave why they can fly for so long.

Ammo. does this too... to an extent. It depends on if you're willing to allow planes to spend all day flying from your main base to the target (and then back again).

I'll give you this one.

But

• it assumes that the aircraft will be flying the entire time.

What's to stop me from landing my aircraft to conserve fuel while they build in numbers, or wait for the right moment to attack?

You are absolutely correct, but at that point it's just a balance issue; one bomb, three bombs, or six-dozen bombs??

Why not just combine fuel and ammo in one resource? That way attack strength of aircraft degrades the further you move them out. A highest tier bomber might be able to deliver a dozen bombs right next to your own base while having only enough power left to deliver a single bomb when used for rushing without any forward bases.

That way the strength of aircraft is bound to the expansion of your empire, just the way it's supposed to be. Aircraft stays agile, you can move it around within your borders as freely as you like, but it looses its teeth if you try to push forward to aggressive.

About landing to save fuel: It makes things to easy. The abbility to land on every terain should be special as it means an huge advantage. Normal aircraft should only be able to be parked in suiteable platforms.

Whats to keep you from landing your planes to conserve fuel? That's a tactic, that should be encouraged. It's a tradeoff, if they aren't flying, they arent bombing or scouting.

With regards to the ammo, it would only really work for bombers but the issues air has extends far beyond that and is actually more dominant with fighters.

Googlefrog mentioned that ammo is easier to read. If you use blockbars for fuel like league of legends uses for health you would be able to see if your planes have enough fuel at a glance.

Aircraft was rather fragile in SupCom and they get shot down before having no fuel. But i don't play on 40x40 or more map so after thinking about it on such big map it does make sense, you're right.

Landing is a tactic which generates an huge advantage and therefor requires a completly different balancing compared to units without the abillity to land. You want units which you can micromanage? Fine, you get them.
But also respect that there are players which prefer to use airplanes in a different way, they don't need to save fuel for their tactics so they are willing to sacrifice the abillity to land for lower building costs or higher air time.

Exactly.

I don't see how landing is such a great tactic though, it mostly leaves your planes doing nothing and being vulnerable to airstrikes.

I find the whole thing an unnecessary complication.
So the onus is on finding compelling reasons to include them and I've not to seen anything that convinces me yet.

Oh and why should Commanders be more vulnerable to air units than land?

Actually comanders are vulnerable to anything except the most basic land forces. No antiair, no torpedos, no antinukes. And you can easily outnumer any commander with land units too. A commander is simply your most versatile builder and a great support unit when using the D-gun. But it's never meant to go alone.

I would still prefer to distinguish between tactical, light aircraft with the abillity to land, but which also requires some micromanagment to be used properly, and the more heavy, stragical aircraft which is limited by the presence of infrastructure.

Both need to share an mechanism which limits action radius and damage, preferable ONE mechanism for both so things don't get to complicated.

I also don't want to make any assumptions on the importance of air fighters, their role always depends on how anti ground aircraft is used and if you need to counter it on the field or not.

Vulnerable to land attack, but not defenseless and attacked with impunity like they are against air units, and it's rarely necessary early game to take your Commander underwater.

Relative to T1 units, the high HP they traditionally have means their AA ability would need only be modest, to take a dent out of early bomber / ghetto gunship rushes.
i.e. Similar to a T1 AA turret

Why is this relevant or needed?

All in all, fuel/ammo are just ways to balance aircraft, along with HP, damage, cost and what have you

Limited ammo sounds best so far, as it means that players spamming aircraft will at least have to build a forward base/carrier if they want to drop more than a few bombs before resupplying

In current supcom at least (Forged alliance forever), fuel seems to be pretty pointless. All it can do is effectively kill (the unit becomes next to useless on low fuel) a plane if you forget to refuel it. Since aircraft in that game have fuel limits waaay beyond their life expectancy, it's not really a balancing tool so much as a snazzy feature (Seeing planes dock for fuel/repairs out of a defense patrol is quite cool IMO). However, the aircraft are balanced in terms that they cost a large amount of energy to produce, and are easily countered by enough AA of the appropriate tech level. As long as you see them coming with proper scouting, they are relatively easy to prepare for.

The main problem with aircraft is that they are really quick (duh), and hard to counter if you don't see them coming. The limited ammunition suggestion counters this by giving you breathing room between the unrelenting salvos of death. Another possible way is for AA options to be made cheaper, a-la very cheap and quick to build mobile T1 AA in SupCom

And SC2 "hoverplanes" were horrible. Why even have a "Front" if you can hover in one place? gah! ><

=)

I would like Repairstations for planes, but I can live without fuel...

I personally preferred the plane behavior a lot more in FA than in SC2...planes landing included.

There have to be better ways to balance aircraft other than with fuel and ammo limits. Just about every RTS game ever has had aircraft and land units, and it's almost never, or never, balanced using fuel and ammo. It only adds to micromanagement, which I despise, unless it's something which I can whip out at a moment's notice for special effects, as with special attacks, such as a special nuke drop command. That's the limit of what I could really stand to see, and while that is pushing the boundary of acceptability, it at least adds something to air combat, instead of taking something away, and making it inconsistent with the other units.

Even real life, aircraft actually have excessively greater range than any ground units, which doesn't fit with limited fuel. Aircraft can also have greater weight of arms than ground vehicles, with even fighters equipped for ground attack carrying as much, or greater explosive power than tanks, and helicopters carrying more anti-tank missiles than light armored vehicles.

Fighters' and bombers' primary disadvantages are they can't really hide except by staying out of radar range, stealth merely reduces effective radar range, or below radar line of sight. They have to be built lighter than ground vehicles, which makes them vulnerable to relatively light arms in certain situations. Aircraft are also more expensive, due to greater complexity. Aren't those draw backs sufficient?

If I could chose, I would show fighter, bomber, and helicopter equivalent life by showing missile and gun misses. Missile and gun misses would involve evasive maneuvers by the attacked craft, which break attack runs, and cause flairs and chaff to be ejected by the aircraft. If a fighter has 10 hit points, then each miss will be 10% closer each time; proximity detonations will cause more visible damage each time; non-proximity attacks will cause no visible damage until the kill shot, which in this case is shot #10. It could even have a +/- variable, so the kill shot isn't always perfectly predictable.

This is a complex point, and it really depends on the type of gameplay PA is going for, such as whether range or damage output limitations are important. So I am going to make some assumptions about the type of gameplay PA is targeting. I am going to assume that, fundamentally, planes will function like in TA/SupCom/etc. in that they are actually flying around- not like SC2 where an air unit is essentially a land unit with some variable indicating how high to place the model, and a flag that says only anti-air can shoot it.

We also know that the maps will be large, such that even fast air units might take a significant amount of time to traverse a map. This suggests that we do need to tie air units down to their pads in some way, because otherwise we will have a strategy of stockpiling a horde of air units, which then fly out across the entire map and deliver massive damage from continents away.

We also have the problem where, if aircraft have unlimited ammunition, then their dps must be quite low because they can fly around for an extended period of time and deal that damage constantly. If we have ammunition limitations, then we can have aircraft that deal a large amount of burst damage, and then need to fly back to rearm. Lacking this limitation, planes need to spend more time in enemy territory to deal any real damage. Therefore, due to the existence of anti-air, this then necessitates that planes be more durable to survive long enough to actually do anything of note. So now we have relatively tough planes that deal continuous, reliable dps until they run out of HP. Lo and behold, we have SupCom 2 gunships all over again. So, adding in an ammo limitation has big benefits as well.

Neglecting both of these concerns, we end up with SupCom 2 air units, which can go anywhere on the map making zerging with tons of planes from across the map quite effective, and which deal low DPS for long periods even in the presence of anti-air. Unless we make them weak to begin with, which we don't want to do.

The best system would be to implement both fuel and ammo limitations, but to do it in such a way that the player is not overburdened with micromanagement. All the complaints about these systems stem from tedious or troublesome micromanagement, which would be solved if there were an effective AI to govern their application.

One possible solution is simply to change the way we order air units about. Binding air units in groups to a carrier or airfield, and giving the airfield orders rather than the individual planes, would go a long way to resolve this issue, as they could return home automatically when they needed fuel or firepower. Rather than move the aircraft about on the map independently, you rebase them between bases, carriers, or other units that can supply them.