Let's look at this mechanic more critically from the perspective of gameplay. What benefits does it add? Players who do not maintain air control are able to defend and trade more metal efficiently against vastly superior numbers of air units with less aa. I don't think this is a benefit, but let's put it down just to be nice and objective. What problems does it add? Players can no longer use cntrl to bypass the terrible air formation flock behaviour because this clumps up your units. You can no longer precisely control your units because there is no middle ground between total clumping and no unit responsiveness. Higher volatility in fights (the bad, luck based kind). No-one can control how their planes fly around when fighting. Random planes dying ontop of each other is not a factor the player can control, yet is something he is either rewarded or punished for. Higher 'micro' requirement (the stupid kind), where you're constantly fighting the system instead of doing anything creative, meaningful, or impactful. Limits the amount of air a player can ever build and use during a game, due to the exponential power of chain reactions. This is a very big departure from the spirit of PA where more is always better. Shifts air/naval power balance to naval due to the high hp of narwhals. Where before naval vs air was nicely balanced, now it is not. The mechanic is not intuitive, nor is it easily communicated to the player when plane deaths are in range of each other and when they are not. You should not need to read a text log to understand how something works. New player decides to assist his commander with his air factories to protect him because they are learning the game and have not much apm. Enemy attacks his planes and poofs them all without comparable losses. Can players circumvent it? Yes. When bombing a single target, you would send them in a longer stream. Which prompts the question why have this mechanic in the first place? At the end state, all it does is force the player to do annoying, unnatural, unintuitive actions. The mechanic fails to achieve it's objective. Conclusion Not much upside, lots of downside, and convoluted, arbitrary, and ineffective. Suggestion Remove, not reduce.
I mostly agree. However I think the aim to nerf "tons of bombers that stack up and bomb a single target" is a good one. I think the air pathfinding should be improved so that it: - does not do stupid "We're gonna stop mid air now"-things anymore - does not stack up units, no matter what command you give it.
What about pre splitting your airforces and then send them using control? Its micro for sure, but this game contains micro and its not that bad.
This was done to discourage bomber snipes on commanders. I agree with the principle behind it but not the manner in which it was executed.
Meh air always chain reacted in ta and spring. This should have been in ages ago. Only thing missing is air collisions to prevent physical stacking of air units.
Besides following from precedent, what's the reasoning behind this arguement? I can also point to rts games that allow stacking of air units and do not have air chain reactions. Would you also argue that all other land units need to chain react? And if not, why?
Ok, ladies. Let's break this down. TA had two tech levels and relatively tiny maps. They emphasized land and naval combat over air. SupCom FAF has three tech levels and massive maps. They emphasized economic development and trench warfare over flexible strategy. Air is useful as a primary unit type, but only to the highly skilled. PA has 2.5 tech levels and multiple maps. It emphasizes having tons of units over economic development, and air is meant to be about as useful as SupCom's.
TA also featured death weapons on land units. Light units like aks (infantry bot) could also chain react if in tight groups and hit by something powerful enough to cause them to fully explode. I support this mechanic for all units as its a staple of a simulated projectiles game. I also think air units should collide, it's the stacking behaviour that makes the death weapon so devastating. Simulated projectiles can add a great deal of subtlety to a game, this is currently an area pa lacks compared to Ta- I just don't want what is actually an improvement being removed due to another important mechanic being absent, but rather get the missing capability added in. I do agree with you that in its current form its a pain though.
Well, we had a simple choice: Enabling in air collisions and 3D evasion maneuvers (and disable weapons during evasion maneuver!!!) so that air units would never even be able to stack in damage output - or ridiculous AoE damage effects to kill the resulting death balls. You can allow air stacking, but only if you also use non-simulated projectiles for AA (like the ones the sniper bots are using) which can just snipe the bombers within the meatshield. Also note that defense structures don't stack, even though you can build them quite dense. Anyway, you need diminishing returns on large unit flocks, no exceptions. And for air, that means either applying the diminishing returns on the damage output (IMHO the favorable solution) or on the survivability (current solution). Third option would have been to enforce huge spacings in between air units just like with land units, but that's far to easy to cheat around as PA isn't exactly enforcing this spacing, it's merely considered a "recommendation" on how to path collision-free.
It would be better to have all AA do AoE then have flying bombs, either that or remove the assist command from all air so it doesn't stack because a player orders it too. Even both of them together could be good. Theres alot of better options then what they did, any changes to pathfinding or collisions would just cost too much cpu and just be detrimental to the speed of the game, no one would like the game slow down because everyone spammed air units.
Try out doubling the price of all air units. They are still useful and controlling the sky's is still important, but it will lead to having more freedom to expand on the ground and add some risk into air. I'm sure this will kill the air game in the smaller maps, but that's not so bad. The snowball effect air has can easily turn a game on larger maps. Win the air and then freely expand all over the map. Making it impossible for the heavier land unit opponent harass all expansions. Lose some air fabbers to a stray fighter, you still have more air, just build more. That's how the game is working out at the higher levels in the bigger maps. Nothing smart nor tactical, Build one more air favtory than opponent and profit.
He is. More and more people are starting to realize that air is more expensive in every single Annihilation-series game for a very good reason. It's taken a long time, but we are finally getting there....
And the fuel system in SupCom existed for a reason as well... Let's face it, with air superiority, you only need a single base per planet, no secured supply lines and you are not affected by terrain limitations either since there is no such thing as natural no-fly zones. The superior movement speed is just icing on the cake.
I would say no, but that's because having air superiority doesn't count for as much as it once did. Not to say bombers are bad, on the contrary a few bombers and murder a group of tanks, but more that cost for cost, losing bombers hurts more then losing ants, and bombers die quicker.
