i have read it a few times, some friends mentioned how strong they are, so i have thought "bombers cant be that strong, a few AA units and the problem is solved" i was so wrong... tried an island map a few minutes ago because the AI will always build Bombers and only Bombers for me, i thought "lets try to defend" uff...one single T1 bomber can nuke AA Towers with a single hit, before it can kill him, even with Radar nearby. They are fast enough to bypass them and hit something inside your base :s ok, then i tried to defend with units. A bunch T1 AA Ships at the coast - i don't need to say that they have not survived for long. A long line of AA Turrets at the coast - needed to rebuild them all the time. One Bomb = Turret down. Some AA Tanks inside my base - down in a few seconds, but they have survived for a while. only my AA Jets survived and protected my base. Then i build some T2 ships to try them - one single T1 bomber destroyed my Leviathan in a few hits If it would have been a human player, my commander would have been dead very fast. Sure, i'm not "in the game" now, still a noob, tested only a few thing against AI, the whole PA system is not finished (Alpha) and i heard that we have only 12% of all the planned units. Many things can change, as i said, its Alpha and i don't expect a perfect balanced game right now. the main problem in my opinion is, that our AA is Rocket Based. Air units are way too fast for them. I loved the SupCom AntiAir, doesn't matter what faction it was, T1: small MG with fast moving unguided projectiles - good against T1 stuff T2: AoE Bubble - good against a bunch of units T3: Guided AA Rockets - perfect against larger targets like T3 Bombers or Experimentals, but way too slow to defend against T1 stuff or Scouts. In SupCom i have bypassed my friends defense many times because of this. My favorite scenario was like this: I was Aeon, parked my Czar near his base. He was a UEF Turtle, many T3 defenses, many shields, Antinukes etc, but only a few T1 and T2 defenses. So, my Czar would have not survived very long, the biggest damage would be through its crash. I ordered my Czar to build a huge number of T1 Bombers - because Czar acts like a T4 Factory, it was very very fast to build a big number of them. He laughed as he saw my bomber squad, until he saw that his T3 Rockets wont hit my Bombers. They were too many and way too fast to get hit, so they nuked his commander with one drop. a higher number of T2 AoE AntiAir would have saved him. And that's how it feels at the moment. T3 AA against T1 Bombers - no chance I would really like to see a changed AA, faster unguided projectiles at the beginning and Guided Long-Range rockets at Advanced. But as i said, Alpha, many things can change, i just wanted to point out how it feels for me.
You're wrong about sams. -T3 sams could hit ANY aerial unit in the game with ease. They did have a longer reload time which resulted in them not being highly effective vs T1 units. (High amounts of overkill, and easily swarmed) You're correct about T1 AA -Although I will agree on the T1 AA being useless. It doesn't have enough range to be effective vs. bombers of the same tier, and the projectile speed is lackluster at best. Hopefully it will promote some good habits within new players before it's "fixed", because making only land or sea units is a bad strategy to begin with.
The question you are asking is about balance. It will be something the Devs will address probably somewhere during the beta, but until then you probably won't see any change. Game play mechanics are much more important at the moment. Balancing can come later once the game play is perfect. But yes I do agree with you that AA is far too weak at the moment especially when ants can defend for you.
I think we need to wait and see what T2 anti air turrets will be like and (I'm assuming there will be these) T2 anti air bots and vehicles. I've heard talk that T2 anti air will be flack to take out clumps of units. You should also consider using fighters. A large patrol of fighters on the edge of your base is *extremely* effective against bombers. Just be careful when going up against players – an effective counter is to have an escort of fighters fly with your bombers.
So there is a bunch of things air needs before it works correctly. - actually paying proper attention to ammo - more changes in movement and overlap checking - AA needs tweaks, possibly flak to be super effective etc. I agree it doesn't feel correct atm.
ah yes, ammo, think it was mentioned in one of the streams. but as i said, i don't want to make a "balance discussion" it was just my personal feeling about them. As you said, balance is something for the beta, we don't have our full arsenal and all the functions. And nope, T3 SAM could not hit everything. T3 Scouts can just fly away from them, without being hit. I have only lost my T3 scouts when i circled over them, and even then, if my circle was big enough, i could survive it a while. And: all SupCom towers have fired before they have pointed the target, noticed this with my modded Cybran T2 Ground Defense (small continuous laser, instead of the pulse) because of this (not always) the first salvo of the SAM moved in a small circle before chasing the target. but as i said, that's not the topic, good to have a redname statement^^
Well, you won't fix a first strike unit by making something else even MORE first strikey. There are plenty of mechanics to deny, negate, or even turn a bomber's strengths against it, and plenty more to address air in general. Sheer numbers just aren't going fix a fundamental scaling problem that air has always had.
I would love ammo to become a true factor in these things (when you guys get round to it). Are there any plans for aircraft carriers and air bases, in order to assist with reloading?
well, normally that the sense of defense^^ kill something before it can kill you...defend something, not "stand in the way and look fancy" artillery is usually the offense to destroy the defense then, while bombers are made to take out groups of ground units, or pointstrike a single target. its not called defense when a unit that they should destroy has the ability to completely bypass the defense and destroy the main target before the defense can hit back. i have just played a little bit with numbers, turned the bullet velocity from 155 to 200 (and changed the rocket into a laser...just for fun) and it actually made a difference (i think), the bomber could fly near my base but could not really bypass the defense, they could still drop a bomb on them, but not behind them. but hey, lets see how the ammo system will work, without a change in AA it would not make a real difference, because they could still bypass defense, but...lets see what the future brings us
ima go ahead and tell you now that 1 t1 bomber cannot take out 1 aa tower. it would take 3 passes to do so and the aa tower 1 or 2 shots the bomber. I know from experience as I generally focus on making air units rather than ground. And believe me if you are proactive you can maintain quite the army while still defending against even the largest air raids. Im not saying it couldnt use some tweaking Im just saying it isnt near as bad as OP made it seem lol
possible, but as i said, that's what i have noticed. i can also be wrong, as i said, i have not played for long now, tried only a few things against AI, alpha is for me just messing around with ingame stuff. Bomber was Bumblebee, so T1, and AI build and send them in 3-5 squads so far. And they could just fly over a line of 10 AA Towers, drop the bombs in my base, and then my rockets hit them. It may be possible that more than one bomb hit the towers, Towers need two hits to destroy a T1 Bomber, and it needs 3 Bombs for them to destroy the tower, so its highly possible that it was more than one bomb, still very fast. AA: 500hp 5dps AA Vehicle: 80hp 4dps AA Bot: 80hp 2dps T1 Bomber: 10hp 200dps T2 Bomber: 40hp 2000dps only the antiair-fighters can onehit bombers in the same tier, and bombers cant target them. the biggest advantage for the towers are the 500HP, but that does not really matter for the bomb-damage. Compared to ground defense: T1: 1000hp 100dps T2: 2500hp 500dps Wall: 7500hp Skitter: 10hp 5dps Ant: 100hp 33dps Leveler: 500hp 400dps Sheller: 250hp 1200dps Scamper: 80hp 2x10dps Slammer: 400hp 2x150dps Stomper: 320hp 200dps so, from numbers it is harder for ground units to bypass ground defense, even if it is only a T1 tower. They can take more hits and can deal more damage to all the ground units. Even a T1 tower can hurt a Leveler pretty bad, in the best case the T1 tower would hit the Leveler with 300dmg before the Leveler destroys the tower. But Air units have not really a problem bypassing AA towers, and that's what felt wrong for me. But as usual these are only theoretical numbers. As i said, in my opinion defense means "kill before they reach the target", not "kill after they nuked it". That's what defense lines are made for, stop the enemy from passing through. But its Alpha, many changes incoming, many new systems and tweaks. and even neutrino said that AA needs tweaks so lets bury this thread and lets see what future patches will bring us.
A defense only needs to be more efficient than the weapons used for the attack. Wreckage plays a huge role in mitigating the damage of surprise attacks. A wave of bombers ends up leaving scrap behind, as well as raining free scrap from the sky. The simple fact of reduced efficiency means that bombers will deal less temporary damage while being much easier to recover from. In the long run, bombers have a huge amount of things going against them. You don't need flat out counters to make them ineffective.
