Air should be made fractionally faster then land

This is a topic I feel is rather touched on a lot but I view air to be slightly to "fast paced" compared to the land and naval counterparts.

Land blobs move slowly across planets trying to destroy bases while bombers and fighters instantly respond with a payload of bombs and instant air protection. Air feels too fast for the rest of the units to properly have a good engagement with. Sometimes I think I missed the moment bombers entered my screen and blew up half my army. And it makes me Sad .

Should I be constantly aware of air at all corners of the world? I don't think so. I propose a few Speeds that could help which are

• Fighters move Twice as fast as Dox
• Bombers to be twice as fast as Ants
• Gunships move twice as fast as naval
• Air fabricators move 1.5 times as fast as land/naval based fabbers
• Transporters can move at the same speed as fighters in this example

Tanks move pretty slow and are powerful. but they need mass numbers and time before their firepower can be released. Bombers move at around 3 or 4 times the speed of a dox and release a damage equivalent of ... idk, alot of tanks.

Bombers release their payloads at insane reaction times currently. (Incase you are confused by reaction, I mean the moment a bomber enters your vision radius [lets say the tanks themselves] and you react to move your troops. And then if you are the guy sending the bombers, it takes 2 seconds for a squadron of fighters to wipe out every bomber in 1 second. Satisfying yes, too fast? I don't know.

However, I want to debate with you guys. Is Air fun at the unit speed it currently is at?

It's a tough call. On the one hand, it can be dizzying to deal with air swarms. On the other, fast units like them ARE needed to handle the global scale of maps. I believe most of the core issues with air are in their behavior, such as stacking/formations, but slowing their speed a hair wouldn't be a terrible idea. Slow, drifting bombers might be more interesting to see.

Maybe some of the air speeds need to be tweaked, but all of your concerns can be addressed without making them quite that slow.

Also, I'm not sure I'm in favor of ground units - based on their vision alone - being able to juke bombers. That sounds like you then need to babysit + micro your bots/tanks or else you're not getting full value out of them.

I think air is fine the way it is. The only thing I don't like is bombers stacking up on each other. Air should be fast, that is one of the main points of it. Fast in and fast out, leaving nothing but rubble and the enemy wondering what just happened.

How will my concerns be addressed?

I wasn't attempting to say that land units should be able to juke bombers. I just don't think there is enough warning between, when I first see the bombers and bombers dropping bombs that destroy half my army. Its not really enjoyable from the "guy getting bombed side" if he has proper counters to the bomber, but looked away from his army for a split second.

I'm okay with fast, but i'm thinking for the guy trying to counter the bomber strike. Is it a fun engagement for the defender? I'm not saying making bombers terribly slow, but to give the defender a chance... to think about how to counter the bombing strike.

My fractions are just "ideas" on speed. I'm in no way saying it needs to be this slow.

It should not be a "fun" engagement for the defender. if they don't have air control in the area the army is moving or base is then they are liable to get punished for it.

as far as "thinking how to counter" if you do not have air control in the hot area, there are really only two choices.

1. If you know bombers are coming (by radar or something else) send fighters.
2. If you know they are building bombers build flak or have a lot of t2 fighters patrolling.

If you don't have any intel then don't complain about something you were not prepared for.

but really you should not even have to think about how to counter, because a good player will always have some sort of air coverage when the game gets to that point.

It would have to be balanced around. For instance, if air moved slower then the damage of anti-air might be sufficient and flak may even need to be nerfed below missiles currently.

However, all said and balanced, the idea of air moving faster than ground but slower than currently, isn't bad, but would need testing to be sure about this. I couldn't promise it would be better.

Generally, their role is to basically hit something, and if it had defences then it resists some of the attack units while if it didn't then it doesnt. It doesn't always require reaction, there is either something there or not.

Then again, one can argue that, if every unit in the game could jog 1/4th a planet's surface in 5 seconds then turrets only get 1 hit on them and moving any units anywhere ensure the moving unit gets 2 before the reaction even comes. Everyone could probably agree that if every unit could move fast enough to simply move through enemy defences before taking a loss or before the enemy can move their cursor to see the alert, that would probably be unfun and overpowered. You'd be reacting to stuff that was already killed the second you found out about it, and anything could snipe the commander with the right number despite defences around him.

First of all. This isn't thread about me complaining about air. just wondering what the community thinks of the current speed of air and how it interacts with the other layers. The examples are not meant to be read into too deeply and theorized upon. (maybe it was a badly done example on my part)

And Yes it should be fun. I don't see why any part of the game has to make the player feel bad. Feelings are subjective and hard to define so I'm not going to define it however IMO. It should feel awesome when you successfully defend against a bombing run as well as perform a good bombing run. In my example with the tanks, maybe it was a little biased in terms of "preparedness". If well prepared a bombing run will be denied, if not it will wreak havoc on your forces. However. The window in which you have to react to a bombing run is rather small. I'll try to do a better example.

1. I have a land army with good radar coverage.
2. I see bombers enter radar and go straight towards my army.
3. I scan to collect my fighters and then engage.

With the speed at which adv bombers approach targets, is there enough time to have your air force defend your land army? Unless you have your fighters constantly parked over your troops on the offensive?

Its the speed i'm concerned about, not the scenario. Is it.. reaction based fast raids or planned offensive attacks. I don't know. What do you think?

Seems I have pushed your button, have to admit it was kind of my intent so that I could see what you were thinking and sorry it was kind of harsh of me.

I believe it should not be "fun" or enjoyable to be attacked in game, but the game as a whole should be fun. "'oh my army is being decimated, thats really fun" just does not seem right to me. Yes I agree it should feel awesome when you win a situation, but when you lose it should not.

feelings and emotions aside I still don't think a reactive strategy should work against air.... at all. Granted that is my opinion take it or leave it, reactive strategies as a whole don't really work but they really should not work against shock and awe units like t2 bombers.

Really sending fighters after you see bombers coming in is damage control as it should be... unless you see them from rather far off and you can engage them before they reach your units.

PS: set up fighters on a hot hey (control+number) it helps.

yes I love the word really :]

How about really slow bombers, and fast fighters. Gunships in the middle somewhere. After all, bombers are much slower then fighters due to size and weight, usually.

Aren't they already kind of that way? I guess you could argue there is not a HUGE difference but to me the difference is already significant.
-just a thought

I'm inclined to agree. Air units seem painfully slow at the moment.

I'm sure you mean well. Regardless, you made me clarify my point a little better so that is the real victory.

Agreed on losing units shouldn't be fun. However, being able to defend and have a reasonable time table to give meaningful counter attacks to incoming bombers is the true question to be addressed by lowering air unit speed. I know air units are supposed to be fast. I just don't want them to turn into reactionary forces instead of planned strikes like I said earlier. Reactionary is me saying that air units move so fast and fluidly that coordinating an air strike takes only 5-10 seconds to move to the other side of the planet and complete. Compared to marching your troops for a good 5 minutes to the same destination to do the same thing. I Know realistic air units are the same way, but it seems to fast to really enjoy the engagements, the bombings, dodging fighters to land more bombs.

I would be interested in seeing how slower air would work out, babysitting air units can be really annoying currently. Reaction times can be really short, like OP pointed out. Air units also have the benefit of ignoring all terrain, so they need to be balanced really carefully. In the current build the game is pretty much a race to T2 air.

Current hornet speed = 75
Current dox speed = 12
Current ant speed = 7

I would consider changing the hornets down to 36 -- half their current speed.
2x Ant speed would be too slow. They would make one pass over a Dox army and have a hard time catching back up to them for a second pass. And 3x Dox speed should be sufficient to let them make multiple passes and is still a sizable reduction in their current speed.

But I think the biggest problem is that T2 bombers drop bombs that do way too much damage for the number of them that get dropped. I think you SHOULD be doing a lot of splash to damage a lot of units but instead you're just massacring the formation -- even T2 armies get pasted.

Fighters at maybe 40% faster than bomber speed which is roughly the current ratio.

I think that air should either be significantly slower than it is now, or significantly less hard hitting.
Either works.

You either have a system up that can easily and quickly punish unpreparedness(current air speed).
Or you have a system that gives time to be countered, but is devastating when it hits.

Currently air is both. If you are not prepared for an air attack ahead of time you will not be able to stop it. You don't have the same radar buffer you get with ground units.


My personal preference would be akin to the following list in terms of damage/counter-ability.
air<bots<naval<vehicles<arty<nukes

The first doing the least damage, but being the fastest and hardest to react to. The last giving lots of time to react to but extremely devastating if left unchecked. This is a personal ideal and does not reflect current balance even remotely.

I agree, my ratios don't fit very well with the current unit speeds listed on the Unit databases. I just know that Uber is in charge of the numbers, and the dox and ant's speeds could very well be changed at a moments notice. After showing the numbers though, The hornet is so incredibly fast compared to the land units. I'm pretty sure its easier to react to a dox or ant invasion then when the hornets invade your sight/radar range.

Ultimately I don't want the bomber to be a one and done machine that isn't fast enough to do multiple passes. So agreed on that point. I too actually want the T2 bomber to soften up forces that are unprepared instead of outright clearing the ground below them. I would like if the T1 bomber was effective at either softening up land units and T2 was better at softening up defenses. But, this is probably better discussed in that T2 air balance thread.

Well first off, if you have a ball of tanks outside air defense/radar and you know your enemy has bombers then that's sort of a learn to play scenario (no offense to you or anyone). Air is supposed to be good at hit and run, so if they're successfully hit-and-running undefended ground units then it sounds like they're working as intended.

Second, units can be balanced in a myriad of ways; units can be balanced a large amount just in scripting/ai changes without even touching any of the more normal balancing vectors such as speed, hp, or damage. Bombers could get their bomb dropping mechanics changed so they need to make a longer lead-up and suddenly they're doing 1/2 dps and becoming a sitting duck to mobile AA. There's really a lot of potential fixes for air balance, none of which require nuking speed.

All that said, I do agree bombers could have their speed evaluated and possibly lowered. I'm sure this is one of many bullet points to run through in Uber's balancing checklist.

I think when air can circle a planet in just a few moments it is too fast. It should be faster than land, but not so fast that you can only manage it from an orbital view.

I think TA and supcom got the relative speeds better. I don't know why they are so ludicrously fast here.

Increasing speed is not a way to make the scale easier to handle. If you increase speeds you decrease the scale. Size only matters if it's actually big to the units. If you think big planets are too big to handle when units are slow then don't play on big planets.

supcom maps were way too big for the units, so FA increased move speeds across the board, effectively making the maps smaller (and units harder to see)

It also means you have to be way too far zoomed out to get a good overview. How far you have to be zoomed out to get an overview is determined largely by two factors:
- How fast a unit moves across the screen
- How long engagement ranges are

I'd like to be able to zoom in closer to actually see my air units.

I think we are just not good enough at the game yet to deal with air attacks. We have all the tools needed to defend it but are too slow or lazy to act appropriately.

Slowing down air to just above ground units wouldn't feel right and would need so many changes to the game for them to be somewhat useful.