Idea to balance planes - Airbases

/sign, they have. I mean discussed it and that too much fuel too. I mean there are experimentals and ships which act as air bases, but they are prety much useless as an average T3 plane can still cover a radius of 30+ km without need for air bases, T3 bombers can even reach every location on an 82 km map and get back without running out of fuel.

Oh, one important thing about fuel: Planes may no longer be able to attack once out of fuel. In SupCom planes became slower when out of fuel, but they retained their attack strength which made gunships almost immune to the fuel system as their tactics didn't rely on fast movement but rather on their sheer attack power combined with the lack of effective counter measures.

He has a good point here. Limiting fuel doesn't make a difference on small maps if it's made to be constant, but if you limit fuel proportional to the size of the planet the aircraft is on then you can make fuel have the same relative effect on all maps. Just make sure to set a minimum so they have relatively infinite range on very small maps, otherwise they won't be very useful.

If you limit ammo, your aircraft will still be able to fly to the ends of the map very quickly, but they won't be able to stay there indefinitely. If you want to make a serious air presence in an area, you will have to bring aircraft carriers or whatever other land units can resupply aircraft.

Think of aircraft carriers and repair stations as having an elastic leash on your aircraft. They can stretch the leash for a while, but eventually it's going to pull back when it's time to resupply. Limiting fuel or ammo limits the boundless range of aircraft to a short amount of time, which gives other units a chance to maneuver into position given how slow they are.

I actually like the idea of limited ammo because it doesn't affect airs ability to raid far away places but it does affect airs ability to continuously attack larger armies and bases, and having air staging close to the enemy's large army/base would make air more effective at attacking it without air staging being a prerequisite to attacking said base.

I don't think I agree with dynamic amounts of fuel based on map size though.

I am strongly in favor of limited fuel as well as ammo for air units. They need a hefty nerf and this sounds like it. Everything gets much more interesting if you need carriers and airstrips to utilize your killer airforce. More realistic too - there's a reason the US has carrier groups everywhere afterall. I do think carriers should be able to resupply planes indefinitely, just like airbases.

I don't think air force range should scale directly to planet size. It's more appropriate to let it increase with low gravity and dense atmosphere. In other words, on an airless world, planes don't work. Bring tanks...or make your own atmosphere. However, on a low gravity Venus-type world planes are king since they can hit anything from anywhere.

I don't think limiting fuel is the right idea either, but if it is, I think it should be proportional to the map size.

Limiting ammo can accomplish what people really want from limiting fuel without the tedium of having to refuel planes that have merely been exploring. Even if you give scouts unlimited fuel, which would be valid, you still end up exploring with offensive aircraft.

I assume they would auto return to base when their fuel is up, so where's the tedium? Wasn't it like that in Supcom? (Never played it )

I'm in favor of tying all planes to an airbase. If their airbase is destroyed, so are they. There's a use for having fuel and ammo separate because fuel determines your range while ammo determines how much damage you can do when you hit that range. And like I said, fuel range should scale with atmospheric density and low gravity, while ammo should probably be constant. (Or should ammo capacity scale too? Hmm... :ugeek

Why not make artillery range proportional to map size too? And unit speed? There's no point in having big maps if you scale the numbers to make them feel like small maps. It also breaks suspension of disbelief to have fighters that inexplicably become shorter ranged because they're on a small planet, when the same fighters could be fighting on a larger planet somewhere else with a longer range.

Every time this comes up people complain that refuelling planes was tedious. This simply wasn't the case. One air repair pad could keep several dozen aircraft in the air continuously with no intervention from the player.

I thought TA's system was fine; just make aircraft suck energy as they fly.

A giant airforce is really powerful, but you'll need an economy to back that up. Without enough energy, aircraft will have to land (or possibly fall out of the sky -- or fall out of the sky if there's no place to land nearby, or whatever).

The only problem with the original TA was that there weren't any particularly great anti-air units. The Flak towers were alright, but you really had to build a ton of them -- I felt that only third-party units really provided proper anti-air support.

That doesn't really work because energy isn't remotely hard to get.

So you want to be able to kill all their aircraft by just killing one building? have you not considered that that might be half a players army? all dead by sniping one building?

Imagine if you had a 40km map where you start in the corners and an 81km map where you start 40km apart.

I am in favor of tying planes to airbases in the game's command and control system. The best way to do this is to direct planes to a base that they will land at, and treat as their home base, until they are moved.

There is no reason for destroying the base to destroy the planes. Perhaps if they are aboard a carrier which is sunk, sure you lose the planes. But if they are airborne, potentially a huge distance away? Why? You could just send them to a different base. If no such other base is available, then they get stranded or crash or whatever when their fuel runs out.

And changing game parameters based on the size of the map is absolutely ridiculous.

I agree, the airbase idea is great and makes air a compliment to other unit types like land and naval. You still need air to win but you can't win with solely air. It also makes aircraft carriers actually useful.

We're fighting on spheres, or at least wrappable 2D shapes, there are no corners anymore.

Zordon, I often notice that you have good arguments to make. Let's see some of those instead of just disqualifying ideas without justification.

What don't you like about the idea?

Also, please quote things so everyone else can more easily follow the conversation.

Ok, imagine you're playing a big map with 8 people on it. You'll start a lot closer to your enemies but your aircraft will still be better than they should be. Even if it is 1v1 you could just not start 180 degrees around the planet making the map effectively smaller like in my example you quoted.

Also the main reason I dislike scaling aircraft like this is that land units move at a certain speed. That speed will never change. scaling aircraft will just make land units progressively less effective the bigger the map is, which is the exact problem people want fixed for large maps.

How about we don't jump the gun and wait until we see, wether Air units are unbalanced? Seems stupid to me, that you want to balance something we know absolutely nothing about.

Ok coldboot, and yes dmii I agree we need to actually see whats involved before we write a novel about it. oh wait, oops I wrote this anyway.

I believe this idea is very similar to the aircraft need fuel thread of doom that I critiqued several times. By reducing the ability of aircraft to strike anywhere on a planet you're reducing them to a form of artillery. Hence the only place an enemy can expect an attack is within their range to strike. This is bad, it removes the strongest advantage aircraft have, the element of suprise. There is no class of unit more suited to this role than aircraft. Land is slow, sea is limited in area, orbital I got no idea what that'll be like. It is the thing that makes them so fun to use, the careful cat and mouse game of watching your opponents radar coverage, judging their air power, waiting for the moment you can strike a blow to gain an advantage. All the time watching for signs your opponent is doing the same.

Now I know many people think that aircraft are overpowered, or can project their power too far, but I believe that this is actually a result of a certain playstyle. In none of the competitive matches I played, or any of the many many replays I have watched was air overpowered. Was it sometimes decisive? Certainly, but what is the point of a group of units which cannot be decisive. However when both players were great there were generally fights across all spectrum of the game, land, sea, air and economy.

I do agree that air needs work, it is too limited to deal with tactically as it stands. There are 2 basic roles bombers and interceptors. Ground similarly has very few responses to deal with air, it has anti air obviously and at least in supcom damage limiting shields. I think its this area we need to discuss and figure out where more variety can be introduced.

I don't see why having a fuel limitation makes them less useful as finesse-based surprise attackers. And I am absolutely certain giving air units an ammunition limit makes them far better finesse surprise attackers. Swoop in, unload all their missiles, instantly blow up a fusion or whatever the target was, and leave?

The simple fact of the matter is that as map sizes increase, the speed of air units becomes problematic. No matter what the stat comparison is like, as maps get bigger, sooner or later you are going to prioritize mobility over cost and power. And we have air monoculture on maps of that size and above. Unless we constrain air units with something like fuel.

I also don't see how they are like artillery at all. Artillery is safe, inaccurate, relatively low damage. Planes can be killed, but they are precise, high damage dealers. And while you say that planes have a "range limit" due to a fuel restriction, that is only partially true. Planes can be rebased freely, and might have truly exceptional range compared to all but the most expensive artillery. If we had artillery that could reach across continents with precision and lethality that can be destroyed by attacking, and which can quickly rebase itself wherever you have an airfield or carrier, then maybe there's a comparison.

Implementing these limitations also gives us more dimensions to differentiate air units. We might have a close air support craft which has a short fuel leash, but can carry a lot of missiles and bombs (think A-10) that is quite different from a big strategic bomber that flies long distance and drops one massive payload of bombs, and heads home. And that is quite a different animal from a surgical strike stealth bomber, which might fly fast at long distance, drop one single bomb (nuke?) precisely, and fly home.

As for fighters, cheap interceptors with unlimited ammo and short operational ranges would make excellent automated air patrols. Air superiority fighters with limited missile payloads could take down an enemy plane in one solid hit, but only carry a few missiles each before having to switch to less potent secondary weapons, like a nose mounted cannon.

So what you're saying is that different classes of units have different characteristics, and depending on the map you're playing on some of those units will be more or less effective?

That's kinda the point of having different types of units.

So you throw in the towel and say let's all just make air superiority fighters and gunships on 200km square maps?

We want combined arms and unit diversity, regardless of the parameters of the individual game. Any map size, and number of players, etc. etc.