ACU snipes

No. If the average ground unit has 1000hp and the average anti-ground weapon does 100dps, then the average air unit should have 100hp and the average anti-air weapon should do 10dps.

Functionally identical but it stops a lot of problems.

Sorry I meant T2 flak from TA.

My bad.

Did you even click the link? bobucles was comparing the Wasp and the Titan, which can't shoot at each other under normal circumstances.

Okey then the ground units are 10 times stronger but why is 10 times so important and not twice, 9 times or whatever?

What problems does it solve?
In FA there were very few weapons that could target both air and ground units so it doesn't matter how much or little HP the planes got as long as you scale Anti air damage along.
Where it matters as far as I can see is gunships vs gunships, landed planes being attacked by ground or when you are bombing a Czar with strat bombers.

It solves the problem of planes downing shields by firing at planes parked under shields (although admittedly there may well not be shields in PA) and it solves the logical inconsistency of units not even able to attempt to fire at certain units, without it becoming viable to just spam AA units or fighter planes.

And ten times stronger is just a placeholder to stop the maths of it being distracting.

That will always be a logical inconsistency because aslong you could damage the enemy ground units with fighters you might want to do just that.
If you are suggesting that all weapons should be able to target airunits and vice verse then its important.

My point is that by putting an order of magnitude between the effective damage power of different layers, you completely remove the incentive to make huge numbers of fighters for ground attack, or AA towers for all-round defence.

It's still possible to attack ground with fighters, but it makes it something that you'd only do as a last resort, rather than it being a viable strategy.

If you can get the same firepower by spending ten times less on ground units, ground becomes much more attractive.

So far you have only mentioned 1 problem it will solve which is hitting shields which most likely wont be included in PA.
The easy solutionon't let fighters attack ground or let weapons deal different damage to airunits and ground units. But then it gets inconsistent, gets complicated to keep track of armor types, yada yada.
I say we will have to wait and see what gets going in PA.

Hopefully we can avoid logical inconsistencies like instant long range lasers not being able to target airplanes like in SupCom.
I hope you are aware that your solution is far from perfect on its' own.

Yeah sorry eukanuba but your solution does not do what you think it does.

My solution is to allow the commander hiding under a low altitude flying unit with much hp and a big hitbox (perhaps a floating platform?) or the nanoframe of it.

Commander sniping is a must strategy. It has been a critical part of TA and SC. It should not be too easy or too hard but there should be viable strategy’s for sniping. This is why the tml was loved so much in SC.
Building the most impressive army is not what this series is about. Its about killing the enemy commander.
I can’t imagin how this will happen when you have got different planets in a solar system and your enemy commander is multiple planets away. How are the snipes going to be performed?

An interesting thing with space is that it is big and empty. Unless there are given pathways between planets that you have to take, fronts arguably do not exist. There would virtually always be a path, whether curved or straight, that allows you to get from one body to another without interference from orbiting or ground units on other planets. In which case, it might be quite difficult to protect your ACU from snipes. Very interesting stuff.

The goal of a good Commander is to put things between him and trouble. If he can't do that, the next best thing is to put vast quantities of nothing between him and trouble.

In this respect, there is a huge cat+mouse type of game that can be developed in PA. Comms are key targets, but they're also small and difficult to chase. Make them too easy to snipe, and there's no real reason to build up or use expansions as a method of protecting him. Make it too hard, and games may never end until the last rock is annihilated and nothing else remains.

With that said, IMO the challenge of sniping should relate to the development of a planet. Large, developed worlds should make it easy for Comms to both enter and leave, as the potential for instant death is also very high. Desolate, isolated worlds are difficult to travel to, but also more difficult to snipe, so leaving should be fairly difficult. This helps with giving a home turf advantage, and place emphasis on major, planet killing conflicts as a way of targeting commanders.

In ta the commander could be invisible!

Which is cooler/more fun to watch: Large armies fighting each other to the death, or people desperately trying to snipe off one small single unit to the exclusion of virtually everything else? There's a reason the "supremacy" gametype was fairly popular.

I never played Supremacy online. It was always Assassination for me.

But to directly answer your question; yes, killing the commander was the fun part. Working out a plan to kill him, and putting it in place was golden. Doesn't matter if it was a sneaky snipe, or just a tank roll with a superior economy.

Well said. Assassination mode opens a wider range of strategic options.

I'd rather watch this problem at other angle. In low-game commander is super-unit and game-over-on-its-death is fair exchange for it's usefulness. But later, in end-game commander became some kind of liability. You need to hide it, to protect it and in most of cases it just doing nothing - staying underwater, maybe building some T4 if you can afford them, maybe helping navy factory - but it's not as extremely useful and game-over-on-its-death became some unfair and frustrating.

That's why everyone dislike telelazers (some people want to ban them, some people just get used to them, but nobody likes them) - it's not a game-ender, it's just some option for loosing party to turn the tide without actual strategic or economical trick/advantage.

It seems that Uber want to make situation even more ridiculous, removing possible protection for commander (if ACU would be not upgradable to make it more armored - even worse). It would be one huge liability without much use.

Of course, ACU sniping is fair tactic and require skill from both offender and defender, but it should not be reduced to finding hidden ACU and trying to get to him unnoticed. Like SupCom it would be sufficient force to break though and kill well-protected ACU. Making ACU itself weak means that it could be done by simple spam, without much planning and strategy to fast-and-complete breakdown of enemy defense - just run though it, get to commander and make enough shoots. Defender counter-measure in this case is just "make more turrets to kill enemy units before they get to commander", like those against telelazer.

I would rather prefer some options for ACU to be useful and more protected in end-game in exchange for something. Like - in low-game ACU mobility is crucial feature, but in end-game it's not used. Let's build some "command hub" structure that may be occupied by ACU giving it some advanced options, including increased protection, additional radar, maybe some command features could be available only when ACU plugged into one of this things. At other hand, such structure is not mobile and easier to notice.

I have nothing against ACU snipes as long as they prevent cheap "200 ASF 50 bomber" spams or any other air spam like that.

If I could upgrade my commander into a krogath like experimental commander, then I would be generally ok with it mid-late game, because they would have to work for their kill, but in the early game its a little cheesy.