Interceptors and ASFs

Both TA and SC had two types of fighter (and both added a third in their expansion packs), which basically amounted to "Fighter" and "Better Fighter". However, in SC the T1 fighter was called an "Interceptor", and the T3 an "Air Superiority Fighter", despite them not really having different roles.

How about we actually have interceptors and air superiority fighters that do what they say on the tin?

Interceptors are for intercepting enemy attack aircraft, and ASFs are for establishing air superiority over an area. ASFs are tougher and more manoeuvrable, allowing them to better deal with hostile action, but interceptors are faster and have better front-loading of their missiles, allowing them a good chance at destroying targets in a single pass (but take much longer to come around for a second pass) and can arrive at locations sooner.

I am not seeing the difference. Interceptors are for taking out T1 bombers and gunships. They were effective even against T2 gunships in both games (only cybren had T1 gunship).

ASF fighters are basically better interceptors, capable of taking out interceptors. Kind of like submarines and submarine killers. See what I did there?

As I recall ASF basically was the strongest AA unit available to all factions in SC and SC:FA.

However, the Aeon gunship was by far the best AA unit in the game.

You have also omitted fighter/bombers from this list. Obviously T2 units capable of multi tasking but less effective than specialised units. I don't know if they really have a place in this game.

As for gunships, yeah I think they need to be in the game.

I agree after thinking about it for a minute. I'd would like some clarification on what you mean by the quoted section. What do you mean by front loading? Aren't missiles on fighters generally forward firing to begin with?

Front loaded damage happens all at once when a unit gets within range, like artillery, or a unit that alpha strikes all of its missiles at once. Middle loaded damage is evenly distributed over time, like a fast firing machine gun. Back loaded damage is rare and requires a unit to be in range for some amount of time before dealing damage all at once, such as a unit that need a lock on, charge up or set up time before firing.

Generally, front loaded units will beat middle loaded units even if they look (slightly) inferior when you look at DPS/HP ratios because they tend to eliminate many enemies in their opening salvo, reducing the damage they take in return.

I kind of ignored fighter-bombers because they were a product of the hard AA/Ground Attack split in SC. In TA, all fighters are fighter-bombers. And due to the large difference in effectiveness between the tiers, it still basically went "Fighter, Better Fighter, Even Better Fighter". For air to air combat there was little reason to build anything but the highest tech fighter you had.

This is exactly the point. ASFs and Interceptors weren't actually different units, and could have easily been called "Fighter" and "Advanced Fighter". If there are two tiers of air-to-air combat units, they should actually have different roles, so one unit isn't the all-purpose solution to making things that fly crash into the ground.

This problem isn't just with air units IMO. SupCom tanks also had a progression where the next tier tank simply had more range, more damage. There was some variety because there were also artillery units and kbots, but essentially the upgrades between them was simply bigger unit, longer range, more damage.

SupCom wanted more homogenous units, I think in an effort to control balance issues with a wider variety. But I still prefer a wider variety. Take Total Annihilation. Multiple varieties of T1 kbots, and when you start building Tech 2, the kbots weren't clearly better, they were simply different. Fidos firing direct-fire shells at medium ranges, or Mavericks with fast firing, short range and incredibly high damage, at the cost of having only paper for armor. But even TA's air units had the same issue as SupCom (fighter, better fighter, best fighter).

Another thing about SupCom, is that the design intended for higher levels of tech to make lower levels of tech completely obsolete. You can make an absolute monster of a Tech 1 army, but face that army off against a single Tech 2 point defense hiding under a Tech 2 mobile shield guarded by the commander, and the massive army can be turned to ash if its stupid enough to keep pounding away.

Me, I like variety. I like being able to swap groups of units in and out of the fight depending on what I need. Getting back to the OP's issue with air, I can agree; there isn't any variety there. A couple more unit types with different roles would be nice. How about a "helicopter" style unit designed to fill a medium-range artillery role, like the Longbow? Or a true air superiority fighter craft that can only shoot air units? Or maybe a drone carrier that can attack only ground targets, floods them with half a dozen lightly armored and weaponized drones that are hard to hit with anything other than a gatling-style weapon? All while the drone carrier hovers outside AA range. Plenty of possibilities.

We must be playing different games then, cause with a "monster T1 Army"(I'm assuming we're talking about around 100 units here) there is no reason a single T2 PD and the commander should wipe it out unless you stay outside the shield, what you do is charge until you get under the shield and target the PD, Shield Gen and ACU directly, don't let them build up into a concave where only the front row is shooting.....

Yes the Tiers in SupCom were balanced for obsoleteness, but your example is just plain bad.

Mike

I'm really sorry but it just sounds to me that you are mainly having a problem with names rather than units and their abilities? I might have the wrong end of the stick but I think you're trying to reinvent the wheel.

As I already stated, interceptors are great T1 units for taking out anything up to T2 - even T2 fighter bombers were potentially targets as, although they were marginally better they were more expensive and as they were also bombers they were only marginally better fighters compared to interceptors. It was still effective to build T1 air right up until T3 when obviously ASF is the best way to secure air space. That's where T3 ASF comes in. You need to get rid of an interceptor you need to use something better than an interceptor. Where's the issue with this?

I'm not really sure how things are going to work out in this game regarding tech levels. I think if we move to T2 too quickly it's going to mess the game up due to the scale and time frame.

I imagine T1 should be your first conflict planet side vs your on world enemy commander. T2 moves you into the interplanetary stage where you look to the stars for your next conquest and finally T3 is full scale solar system war. This seems logical to me. I haven't really read anything how Uber intend to implement tech levels or how they are going to scale it across the game.

Helicopter as in gunship? I think gunships are a definite must in the game. They were a massive part of the previous games. Long range arty gunships seem like a nightmare from a balancing point of view. I imagine hit and run tactics mainly and micro to get the most out of them. A long reload time or something might help with that issue. Again easy prey for interceptors.

ASF, as far as I know, could only ever engage in air-to-air combat according to SC and SC:FC.

I think you've misunderstood his point. He wants high end fighters to be more different from the lower tier ones; he wants them to be different, as opposed to simply better.

He also suggested that one way to do that would be to make interceptors and ASF do things more in keeping with their names, but the actual names are really beside the point, which is that it would be great if units of higher tech tiers not simply be better versions of the lower tier units.

Agreed. Kind of what I was trying to say.

Well that I do agree with to a certain extent and perhaps it just shows a little lack of creativity with unit design. It does however beg the question what is there more to do than go faster, have more health and deal more damage than the previous tier? I mean essentially here what you are describing is more like the way SC2 works compared to SC:FA. Where you don't have tech tiers and simply have a single set of units that all perform different functions.

He also made the point that it was pointless to build anything but the best that you can afford. This seems obvious and I can't understand why you would not want to do this. Every game, including TA had better versions of units the higher up the tech tree you went. Small unit, middle unit, big unit, experimental unit. I always used cheaper units to supplement my larger, more expensive units. Point defence does not discriminate between my monkeylord and my loyalist so hopefully if I have enough loyalists I can keep the point defence off my monkeylord. This to me makes sense and therefore shows how smaller, cheaper units can still have a place in the game at the later stages.

In the end if there are enough of them then you can't shoot them all at once!

The problem The BlackOps Team has had with introducing new Air units into FA has just been like wolfdogg said "what is there more to do than go faster, have more health and deal more damage than the previous tier?" Air units are already so specialized and anything trying to fill a 'middle ground' has large amounts of overlap with existing Air it always came down to which was better.

EDIT: Also Worth mentioning is that it also depends on the amount of control we get over how units fly, in SupCom we had fairly limited control so you couldn't do something like a bomber that fired off rockets then veered off before entering defense's range for example.

Mike

I wouldn't mind seeing Interceptors having high top speeds with an extremely front loaded attack and maybe longer range. Think less agile T3 Scout with a slow firing, high-velocity missile. While ASFs would be more durable, more agile, a bit slower, and really meant for lasting and holding air space from other air. Much more like the T3 ASFs from SupCom.

That would give these units very distinct and different roles and uses. You'd use Interceptors to stop a transport drop or bombers from sneaking in from a flank or maybe to soften up the air cover over a far off enemy's base before your bombers come in. The ASFs would handle standard patrols around your airspace and over your armies and if you really wanted to try to claim an enemy base's airspace for gunships.

In what way is my example bad, when it is in fact an almost exact description of a game I played in SupCom's campaign, hardest setting, just yesterday? In fact, it was the only way I could find to win. The enemy just throws too many resources at you all at once, at a stage where you can't compete without using non-standard tactics.

60 T1 tanks split on two fronts hit me at once, as well as his wave of 10 or so T1 artillery, in addition to his 10 or so T1 air units. The commander guarded the mobile shield, which kept it running longer, until the enemy got within range. Then the commander overcharged those that got close, but that was only about 10-15 units on one flank. The tanks did flatten the mobile shield, and proceeded to blow up the shield unit and start attacking the point defense, as well as the factory (interestingly, it seems if the middle of the factory is covered by a shield, its considered fully covered). They could not blow up either as the second mobile shield came online, providing a shield again. By then their offense was too weak to break the second mobile shield.

I guess my point is, don't nitpick an incomplete description when its intentionally incomplete for brevity. Ideal strategy isn't the point; human or computer opponent isn't the point; the point was about how later tiers make earlier tiers obsolete. If I had spent a similar amount of resources in only T1 defenses (or proactive offense; I went through 3 failed games with the normal tactics), it would have been wiped out.

And its part of the reason why I loved TA so much, but consider SupCom to just be an "also ran".

I found the problem! Campaigns are NEVER the basis for skirmish balance, the Campaign balance is usually locked MONTHS before a game comes out so that they can develop the missions with that many fewer headaches.

Mike

Who said anything about skirmishes or balance? It was only an example of tier obsolescence. Do you even read these things?

This breaks my rule of being bated into internet arguments, but for someone who failed to understand so completely, who is arguing the wrong points, and who in theory should be one of the more informed members of the community, I felt I had to.

Arguments for balance that are based on AI play(in the campaign no less) is like an architect saying "Well I built a prototype out of LEGO, and it didn't fall over so the real version shouldn't either"

Like I said, I wouldn't have waited until the shield was down, I would have drove my units right up until they bumping up against your units and focus fired, even if only 30 tanks survived to get that close(which is a low number, considering a Triad can only kill a T1 tank ever 3.4 seconds) it would only take them 4 seconds to kill the Triad(even if you tried repairing it) and that's even ignoring the Mobile Arty, which have more than double the DPS of the tanks.

Like I said, yes the Tiers are set up to be made obsolete, but your example is horribly skewed as you're basing your judgement against an AI in the Campaign(which is arguably not eve as good as th skirmish AI seeing as its per-scripted to a degree)

Mike

On Gunships: Gunships were fine in both TA and SC (well, at least one of SC's balance patches got gunships right), so I don't see much to fix there. Except not bringing back that bloody T3 AA Gunship.

The names were just an inspiration for a potential way of diversifying air to air units.

I thought a stated design goal of PA was to avoid tier obsolescence.

The answer is to make them do all those things, but have some drawback which means they're not capable of fulfilling the same niches as the lower tiers. In the paradigm I describe, ASFs could actually be T1, and Inties T2, since intercepters are more specialised, but their inferior manoeuvrability means they don't beat ASFs in all situations.

This is a good idea. Different roles for aircraft are sorely needed.

From what I've read, it seems that the PA team are trying to avoid flat-out batter units, like ASF>Interceptor and T2 tank > T1 tank. Which is a good thing, would go a long way to the outdated-ness of T1 units after about 10 mins. Back in TA, spamming peewees or flash tanks was always viable if you could get them close enough to the enemy

OK. So the topic title is a little misleading. I think perhaps you need to forgive people if they are a bit confused by exactly what you are trying to discuss here. Perhaps a better topic title would have been "How to avoid unit obsolescence in the PA tech tree". Perhaps I'm just being picky. You decide.

Re: The OP. I have already stated that T1 interceptors have always been a viable unit against T1 and T2 aircraft. Their main function being taking out bombers, gunships and enemy interceptors. I think it is more than fair that by T3 a better unit - particularly one that's main purpose is Air Superiority - can take out an interceptor.

Plus the Czar was a really tough AA unit when compared to the relatively slow interceptors - which were easily defeated with it's Air-to-Air missiles. That's why ASF's were a necessity regarding balance.