Air Superiority

I think the disconnect here is, you have to think outside the box. The reason AA/SAMs exist is to counter an air threat. So if base X is heavily fortified by triple-a then it would probably be unwise for base Y to send in a bunch of aircraft anyway. You should probably be thinking of other ways to knock out the anti-aircraft threat (ground attack, surgical strike on electricity) which would allow you to achieve air superiority/supremacy.

Give this man a beer!

Thank you. If your strategy for dealing with more AA is to simply build a bigger blob of aircraft then you're doing it completely wrong. That would be like entering a room by using your face to batter down the door instead of turning the doorknob.

Your problem is that your concept of strategy is too black and white and boils down to Threat vs Counter. There's nothing else in that equation, though, so the only way to overcome the threat is to build more of the counter and the only way to overcome the counter is to build more of the threat. That's not (and never has been) how warfare works and any RTS that simplifies itself down to such a dumb formula is a crap RTS.

If AA are not effective at stopping aircraft, they have no purpose. In fact if AA are not effective at stopping aircraft NOTHING has purpose because then the only unit that is relevant is aircraft.

If you can't wrap your head around the concept of killing AA units with something other than aircraft I look forward to meeting you on the battlefield. Hi mate, Let me introduce you to my new friend, the CANNON.

Exactly. AA should counter air, up to the point that it's ridiculous to even think of killing AA with aircraft (as in, it'd cost you 5 or so times as much as the AA costs). Well, except for aircraft artillery - which is a thing almost no game has, and which should be awesome.

Well one of the more retarded aspects of airblobs was the fact that every aircraft basically occupied the same space. Ground units were limited by how many you could fit in a given area (as well as terrain and speed).

While I wouldn't like uncontrolled randomness, at the same time I can't help but expect to hope that a giant blob of air units would end up all crashing into each other and making one incredibly laggy, expensive explosion.

The problem with the only AA solution being turret- or ground-based is that in that case, pretty much everyone will have AA in their base.

Even if you make fighters more expensive, people are still going to spam them because they are an essential unit in the battle for the skies, manuverable enough to take out bombers

Looking at it a different way, imagine the game without basic anti-ground tanks (or fighters). Artillery (or bombers) is still there, as it's used for taking out structures, and AA (or gunships) is still there for taking out planes (or ground units). Taking the main unit of that area just denies that area's ability to counter itself.

While I totally agree with previous statements about hating giant "air blobs" of fighters, I don't see how just having AA on the ground helps things. Neither option is totally ideal.

Just my 50c

This information is coming from a guy who loves air planes and I have my pilot license so the information might be a little bias. The AA guns should be able to take down lots of aircraft fairly quickly. They should also be fairly comparable to the price of tanks. If you see a massive amount of tanks rolling toward your base you should be scared just like if you see a lot of aircraft you should be scared. Nothing is better than taking out the enemies AA and sending in the air power to take out the base. Most people don’t like defending from aircraft because they don’t know which direction they are coming from and want to set up a bottle neck for ground units. One AA installation should be able to cover a large section from a medium air attack. I feel that air attacks might be the least of your problems if you have artillery on the moon blowing your base sky high along with space ships in orbit sending in attacks.

Yes. Which is why I suggested if that is the goal, make it so air units take longer to build so such swarms cannot be put together quickly.

That's not solving the problem, just delaying it.

Mike

Mike[/quote]
Yes. Which is why I suggested if that is the goal, make it so air units take longer to build so such swarms cannot be put together quickly.[/quote]

Agree. If they took a long time to build you would be careful with them. If your enemy has a large air fleet than he must have low amounts ground units so take to the ground and stock up on AA. If they have a large air fleet and ground forces than you just suck at the game and should be more aggressive.

I never said AA shouldn't be effective. I am saying AA should not be PERFECTLY effective so it stops ALL aircraft no matter how many you send. Here is an abbreviated summary of the discussion:

Someone else: Make AA better at taking down large numbers of aircraft so people won't build so many aircraft.

Me: If you make AA more effective at taking down large numbers of aircraft, it won't make people build fewer aircraft, it will instead encourage people to build more aircraft, because more aircraft are required to get through the more effective AA.

Someone else: It won't matter how many aircraft you send because the AA will still be able to kill all of them.

Me:If it doesn't matter how many aircraft you build because the AA will kill all of them then air eventually becomes useless once the playfield is saturated with AA.

Someone else: Yes built the whole point of AA is to counter air, so figure out a way to take out the AA.

Me: Yes, AA should counter air but it should not do it perfectly, it should be balanced, and it should not be able to wipe out a big swarm of aircraft simply because it's a big swarm of aircraft.

The entire crux of the discussion has focused on how to discourage swarms of aircraft. My point is this: unless you make AA overpowered, people will always have a reason to build more air. I don't look forward to trying to do the balance dance of "when is AA too weak/too overpowered/just right." If the whole point is to reduce air swarms, I contend that the cleanest and simplest way to do that is to increase the build time of aircraft so that fewer of them can be produced over the course of a game.

Build time and cost along with the power of the AA can be tweaked in the Beta so I feel there is no reason to fight about that right now.

Yeah, air is always going to be a bit difficult, i'm sure Uber will come up with something inventive, let's not all have a falling out, Cupcakes for everyone!

There is an option you haven't considered- having anti air that scales better than air units as the numbers of both increase.

The easiest way to do this is to have anti air options with excellent range compared to the air units they are shooting at. Alternatively, splash damage has a similar effect on changing the scaling formula so just throwing more units at it has diminishing returns.

The most important thing to keep in mind with anti-air is that dedicated anti air cannot win you the game. It is a countermeasure against a threat which CAN win the game, and as such it should be extremely cost effective.

"Overpowered" as a concept only makes sense when you compare it to some other option. Anti-air can never be overpowered against air- a factor like that determines the structure of the game, and how it plays, but does not determine balance. Now, if one anti-air unit was cheaper and better than another anti-air unit, then we can start talking this or that is overpowered.

I really think this is a question best discussed when we can actually test air in the beta. You can't balance something that doesn't exist yet.

WIN!

You should think asymmetrically, looking for specific nodes and centers of gravity, applying strength to your opponent's weakness to achieve objectives. Battles of attrition (throwing a bunch of aircraft at a heavily defended base) are very costly and make little tactical sense.

I disagree with your statement that "making AA more effective at taking down large numbers of aircraft, won't make people build fewer aircraft, but will instead encourage people to build more aircraft, because more aircraft are required to get through the more effective AA." Do you know how many millions of dollars are spent on real AA systems to improve their accuracy and higher probability of kill? If what you say is true then that wouldn't make much sense to do that, would it? Reducing the time it takes to build aircraft for the sake of the aforementioned statement doesn't make sense either because If they were a decent enough tactician, they would probably rule out investing so much in aircraft while applying their resources to other types of tricks to bust down your door. But, if i understand correctly, then, yes, it would be unlikely for AAA to score 100% accuracy on an aircraft (SAMs much more of a possibility) unless they were radar guided and you took into account pilot maneuvers (a topic for another time), and I would have to agree with you on that. However, I liked how in SupCom, the higher tech aircraft were able to overfly/out-pace/endure lower tech AA. What should be happening is if you don't want people to swarm your base with a bunch of aircraft, a good layered defense (IADS) of AA SAMs and Aircraft should be sufficient enough deterrent, or look to take out your enemy's airfields/ability to produce aircraft (thats how it's done in the real world).

Yes but you have got to start somewhere.

As I outlined earlier, for a roughly equivalent investment of resources, my current thoughts run to:
Static AA > Fighters > Mobile AA > Bombers.

Now to expand on that...

Fighters are the linchpin to my mind, and the hardest to get right.
In addition to the obvious dog-fighting (get that superiority) and interdiction (tackle those bombers) roles, they should also perform a SEAD role on Mobile AA with ground-attack abilities. Static AA? Forget about it!
But too effective at ground attack and they will supplant bombers. Not good.

In relative terms:
Static AA: No-speed low-health with long-range high-strength guided munitions.
Fighters: High-speed med-health with short-range low-strength guided munitions.
Mobile AA: Med-speed low-health with mid-range mid-strength unguided munitions.
Bombers: Low-speed low-health with short-range high-strength unguided munitions.

So breaking down the potential engagements:

Static AA beats all aircraft, engaging them at distance and tearing them a new one. But are vulnerable to assault via other means. If they go down then watch out!

Fighters beat Bombers and Mobile AA by running rings around them. Too fast to be tracked and effectively engaged, knocking bombers out the sky with ease, and pecking away at Mobile AA until they die.

Mobile AA pepper incoming bombers with flak, engaging them before they can get in range and drop any appreciable amount of ordinance.

Bombers are only a truly viable option once you've cleared the way for them but play merry havoc with ground forces and installations once you have.