Air should be made fractionally faster then land

Well dealing with the lighting fast attacks from any and every direction isn't easy, especially that now we are on planets instead of maps.

I find it hard to not turtle.

This is tremendously important. I believe eroticburrito made a similar point in one of his first posts on air units, and it still rings true; super-fast air shrinks the planet. To be fair, zooming out does that as well, to an extent, but making big maps feel small is definitely not something we want to double down on.

After reading more in this thread, I have a question on reaction times; does Chronocam affect the "blink and you miss" aspect of air blitzes? I feel like it's a factor that keeps getting forgotten. Personally, I've never used Chronocam during a battle, but that could well change. Even air at half their current speed (as Slamz helpfully brought data for) runs the risk of this happening; if we account for the ability to do an instant replay and see what went wrong, can we call it fair at around that number?

Chronocam doesn't allow you to interfere retroactively. Since it only allows you to witness the demise of your army all over again it just adds insult to injury. So I think it is safe to say that Chronocam does not remedy the short reaction time windows against air raids. It does however help in assessing what went wrong - but chances are you knew that before.

I think air is actually fine as-is and rather make ground overall a bit faster. Bots by a tad, tanks some, scout vehicles a decent amount. (All vehicles are stupidly snail-like atm, though) The scout vehicle should be very quick and agile in it's scouting. Where's that at? Did you use carpet bombers (like the adv is now) to hit Jeffys/Weasels in TA? Or scouts in SupCom? Nope. You used them on tank battalions, large formations, and slower/stationary targets.

Tanks are slow as dirt right now, and even if you sped them up a bit, bombers would still ruin their day. Not so much if you slightly sped up bots as well. But, see, now you have a purpose for gunships. (once balanced, anyway) Faster variants of bots simply won't have the AA firepower tanks do. (dat flak) Sure, they'll have missiles, perhaps. Useful against cost-heavy bombers that fly in and out wrecking shop, not so much against swarm of gunships.

Bombers being useful against everything on the ground at once is what's making them feel broken. Their role throws them off, not their speed. If you gave them a more precise role other than just 'bomb all the things!' even by slightly changing everything else on the battlefield, then you wouldn't be worried about bomber speeds anymore.

I like the idea of slowing down air because, right now, placement of air in the game is irrelevant due to speed, and with the absence of any terrain placement is one of the only tactical considerations air has going for it.

Making ground faster to compensate for the insane speed that air has is masking the real problem. Reactionary fast units that can be anywhere on the map at any time because they have the speed is making the game more twitch instead of methodical. Making things slow give strategy in unit placement. If you can just "adjust on the fly" with no real consideration to where you placed your army, how is someone supposed to attack your weak spots if every unit is 2 seconds away from responding.

Not asking for a huge speed nerf, but enough to make you think twice about moving your units everywhere.

[/late reply is late] Trying to figure out how to word this as effectively and efficiently as possible. I have a whole lot of thoughts on this, so bear with me.

If nothing else was changed besides aircraft journey time, no change of unit composition, movement orders, or unit placement, the only thing about the battle that would be different is what time the battle takes place, not the outcome of the battle nor the units lost. It changes nothing.

Before I get into things that I wrote previously, I think that if we made AA fire more effective, then air can be fast, but it's only as fast as it's ability to avoid stuff trying to kill it. It's not about how fast air responds. It should respond fast. The problem is it's too effective after it responds and arrives on scene. They could instantly teleport somewhere even from some other planet (figuratively, just to arrive, not used while in battle), but unless they have viable weapons, no amount of journey time reduction or increase will change their effectiveness in battle, only when the battle happens. What would happen, say, if you made AA missiles take sharper turns and fly faster so they're more effective. Air has always been quick to get from A to B, that's specifically what it's for. It's always the first thing to get to a battle. Whether it wants to arrive first and meet the very things designed to take them out is a different thing altogether, and that's what air should be all about: The ability to be first responders on the scene, but the scene itself may not be worth going to in the first place.

That's assuming you actually have things in your battalion that's designed to respond quickly to aircraft, and that is what we are missing in my opinion. Aircraft speed is not the problem, the lack of ability to respond to them is.

And on to my original post. It may or may not be outdated with my collective thoughts above, so uhm. If I contradict myself, it's because I've been thinking about this for at least the past few hours while typing this.

So.... what? You want aircraft to move as slow as ground units, or slightly faster? Why would we even use aircraft? Why even need aircraft? I don't see a point. The entire point of things in the air is the speed and maneuverability they have over ground forces, and in doing so they lose the ability to pack the heavy armor and extremely powerful weaponry that ground forces contain at the same time while having a decent speed.

What it seems like to me is that you think I want everything on the ground to respond instantly to threats relatively close by. That's not true. Some of the heavier tanks are currently slow, and should stay that way. Lighter tanks are nearly just as slow, and are stupidly easy targets. You're building a battalion of sitting ducks, and the only way to effectively use them is to simply have more. The name 'Ant' given to the tank is, in my opinion, both extremely fitting and horribly wrong. Ants can pack millions of themselves into extremely small spaces, and work together very well, but they're also insanely fast and extremely strong for their size. This is where the Ant of PA falls short, and blaming aircraft is, like said elsewhere on the forum, putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. It won't solve the problem, it just gets rid of it, and ruins the entire original idea entirely and where the problem was created in the first place.

What scout do you know that's slow and/or sluggish? Are scouts not meant to be fast and nimble? Where's that at? The only thing I see scouts being used for is vision, which makes no sense since they're so low to the ground. Irrelevant of logic like that, the whole idea of light vehicles like scouts and other lower tier units is that they're cheap and fast while still being efficient and reliable. They don't cost a lot and can cover ground easy, some better than others, but all better than the larger, more bulky building-buster style tanks like the Leveler.

Currently, All ground units are pretty easy bombing targets, no matter what, and I disagree with this road. Some units, like tanks, should definitely be prime bomber targets, large AoE to affect multiple layers of ranks, that's what the carpet bombers we have are for, right? Taking out large areas of enemy signatures, be it stationary, or mobile. Tell me I'm wrong. The heavier tanks should be able to withstand carpet bombing, their armor having none of that shenanigans. Fast ones should simply outrun it, but if caught, won't even know what hit them. That's why we've developed different kinds of bombs, no? Some are designed to pierce bunkers and other impregnable fortresses, others are designed to turn anything on the surface into vapor. You need different things for different scenarios. Nothing is effective at everything, but you can make something a supreme contender for the best at what it can do.

there are quite a few straw man arguments laced in your paragraphs. I'll only answer a few of the points you raise in your post, but first, I will explain my point again.

Air right now is reactionary instead of planned and methodical. People react to gunships by flinging all their air units in that direction. That is a knee jerk reaction. What I really really want is air to be just as strategic as ground. Air right now can circle a planet 5-11 times faster than any ground unit in game. It is so fast that any planning that is required to coordinate an assault depends mainly on the slow land units to reach the target before air to make it seem coordinated.

My question to you becomes. Is this fun? or does your suggestion (boosting the speed of land units) improve the situation? If it does. can you explain how it solves the reactionary game play presented by air units?

I presently think it will just make land units reactionary as well.

Reading your arguments.

I gave my numbers as just a reference of speed, not anything concrete of how I want to balance the game. Scathis is the decider. Aircraft provide ground support and mobile fire power. Not instant firepower.

Time/ position/ strategic planning and setting up locations. All important, but you find that it changes nothing. The outcome is entirely different, Instead of reacting to a sudden airforce, I see it on radar and I plan my defenses and position my units to best counter the incoming air raid. Position and Timing is what is gained by reducing the speed of air as well as making it strategic. That is what changes.

Edit : If I may quote something told to me :
"What you're trying to tell them is 'You're trying to fix something that you're not able to react to quick enough.' What you should be saying is 'Why are you reacting in the first place?' If you stopped trying to fix the reaction time and actually created a scenario where you didn't need to react at all, you'd have a better chance of knowing what needs to be fixed in the first place."

Post write-up : I talked with a friend about this after explaining how PA works, and we came to the conclusion that if you made AA viable, missiles powerful, added mobile flak units, changed units and buildings to aim using radar signatures, it would definitely save time the player needs to spend, but also would require resources spent on AA as well as a permanent lack of power issues. Even if all of this were going smoothly, air fighters would still be able to swoop in and eat a group of attacking gunships alive, but everything else would be able to kill them as well. Seems like gunships/bombers would have less of a role from this.

So.. I came up with something that may or may not solve the conundrum. What if aircraft flew slower while in battle, but could slowly accelerate to a point where their weapons would no longer function at that speed, similar to how real aircraft go supersonic, but they wouldn't dare make a wrong move or the aircraft would disintegrate from the immense pressure of air. If that concept were implemented into PA's fighters while slowing them down for battle speed, that would not only give you your slower aircraft, and they would take more time to get from A to B than they do now, but would be able to traverse from A to say, X, but would need to slow down in order to dogfight. What would you say to this?

Original post :

Here, let me go into detail from the ground up about the scale that I'm thinking of, why I'm thinking about it, and where it fits/doesn't fit with your thoughts. Maybe somewhere you could point out what you think.

I wasn't thinking of it being "fun" as opposed to it being more fair in general. I'm not actually seeing any difference in theoretical gameplay if you slow aircraft down versus speeding ground units up. I mean, in essence, they both do the exact same thing. What I see are two outcomes that would change the way the game is played.

- If aircraft slows down, ground units will move "faster" in comparison to how fast aircraft once flew. This slows down gameplay as the average speed to get from A to B will be slower, and aircraft will not be able to secure locations, so larger planets will be more of a hassle in this case. Teleporters will be the way of the battle, and aircraft will tend to be only local area-based while ground units can traverse instantly to far away destinations.

- If you speed up ground units, aircraft won't seem as 'fast' compared to the new speed of some units, which will make the ease of avoiding large bombing runs become that much more clear. At this point, larger planets will seem more viable for a larger area for ground forces before needing to use teleporters, but aircraft will be able to traverse at they speed they are now, making them useful since they can't actually be sent through teleporters. This could solved by simply.. telling aircraft to fly through the teleporter.

I want to keep in mind that we still play on small planets for now while the game is unoptimized. Playing on any of the very large planets will make games slow and boring unless you have a way to quickly get to your enemy. I'm not talking planets with the radius of around 700 to 1000, I'm talking about the big ones. When the game is optimized and we can play planets around the 2000-2500+ size for 20-30 player games, aircraft will need a pivotal role in getting places, and being too slow will destroy the large planet gameplay, and they will lack viability. This is what I don't want.

If aircraft is slowed down, it may help ease the lack of player reaction time, but will also create problems on large planets. I see where you're coming from, but I feel this is a completely different problem that can be solved at it's core without any change to how the player chooses to play. I'll go a bit more into my thoughts on this after the quote.

My argument for ground is simple. Instead of making the player react by sending aircraft to fight attacking aircraft, units themselves should react based on radar signatures. AA missiles should be trained and ready as soon as it enters visual range. Flak cannons should be ready and waiting while predicting where the enemy will be when they cross into visual range, their crosshairs already marking an invisible no-fly zone. They should at least be smart enough to do this. That itself should change the air vs ground war entirely.

Turret rotation and AA guns spinning is all reaction by units based on visual. All buildings and units with any type of moving weapon mount is guilty of this. This problem itself makes units look stupid and forces you as a player to react to the attack. It shouldn't be like that. This one fact is what makes ground units reactionary, and forcing the player into an action you shouldn't have to even do. Units shouldn't react. They should ready themselves for something they already know is coming before it even happens. This is, how you said, planned and methodical, right?

The reason I think people fling aircraft towards gunships is because we don't have ground units worthy enough to be called AA. The mobile flak unit would be a good addition to this, and if the unit can accurately aim it's cannon while predicting where gunships and bombers will be by using the radar signatures, then there's no need for you to even worry about your forces if there's enough anti-air coverage. I wouldn't send out a large tank battalion without some flak for gunships and missile units for bombers.

The AA missile units should be both versatile and packing something volatile. They should prioritize fighters and bombers rather than gunships. Flak should prioritize gunships first, then bombers, then fighters presuming they'll even hit the fighter. This viable AA combo combined with prediction based radar signatures instead of visual alone will cut the need for a player to need to watch their ground forces as much. This doesn't just apply to AA, but all mobile ground forces, stationary defensive buildings, artillery, and even aircraft hovering above an area. Aim at the incoming enemy before they get there.

What you're talking about is the results after everything is already said and done. All of that is outside the theoretical instance, in my opinion. I totally see where you're going with this, but it's including a lot of variables that I didn't include because none of those variables can be guessed at.

I think what I'm getting at here is that only solid changes at the very instant it happened should be included when making changes like this to know what exactly happens. What I want is the effect from the cause. I believe what you're describing is ripple effects of the problems caused by the results of the effect, but not the effect itself.

I personally like their speed. It is not as if their air units are quicker than yours. If they decide to attack a location with a group of gunships, it is thought through. You not defending the area with your own aa units or fighters is not the games fault. You also have the option to attack similar unprotected areas in their base.

It's much easier to defend against 20 gunships in your base than 20 shellers. Both cost the same. This adds a lot to gameplay and is more fun. Why build air if they are slower? They are easy to handle as is and are made of paper.

Air is not as op as it was before and aa is a lot better. As it stands with current balance all is great.

Comparing with Achrons Resequence that does allow you to interfere retroactively it would indeed fix a lot. To bad that having a planetary scale engine that would do that would be another Herculean effort, clearly needing the development context of a whole new game (and an unlikely alliance of Uber Entertainment and Hazardous Software).

Like Bgrmystr2, I'd try buffing land unit speeds alot, I'd especially buff tank and commander speeds. And make tanks faster than bots. That would be one indirect way to nerf air (at least a bit) and make ground units more useful.

These posts are getting longer and longer, its hard to digest in one sitting. Anyway, I want to comment.

What do you mean by lack of power issues? Power plants? power of the user?

I read on to your example of fighters swooping in and destroying gunships. I'm not sure if you are arguing for aggressive anti air use will help the situation of the fighters swooping in. It's hard to figure out what is the aggressor and who is defending with what units.

This actually sounds really cool. I like the idea honestly. Sometimes I think dog fights in PA are a joke. It would be cool to see aircraft trying to bank and dodge enemy fighters. However, this all depends with aircraft weaponry more with the combat. But I like the idea of aircraft slowing down.

Again, this is a numbers game of how slow is slow and how fast is fast. I would like aircraft to have some form of speed essence. Large planets is a tough question of how fast a ground army should move and how fast air should move as well. I'm still uncertain of the final "just right" planet size.

A trade off I'm willing to take. and hopefully have Scathis experiment with.

(the above is just to reference what i'm quoting and not those specific sentences.

I personally don't see Anti air reacting for the user as helping in this situation to help ease reaction times of players. I do agree that there should be a buff to Anti air to help with air raids, or just a general balance pass over air units. I however don't see an improved anti air helping a user not worry about reacting with their airforce to stop another airforce. The situation is that it isn't the ineptness of anti-air but the immediate and dire attention needed to stop Air from attacking your base or have your attention focused on it.

I don't see air speed being a ripple effect, but a constant perpetual effect that causes people to react. Thus having to micro, and have to deal with microing air forces because the units are so fast and deadly that not reacting is bad gaming. Which I do not want to happen. Making Anti Air super effective to counter this air speed is adding another extreme effect to counter this Cause(air speed).

I want to open my post with something that caught my eye.

This, right here, is exactly my problem with PA, and I would like it to not run the same path as SupCom. When a player is forced to respond to enemy aircraft with his own aircraft, I see a large problem with the game's balance. This is what I want to stop from happening. Air should be no better or worse than bots are to tanks. Some strengths, some weaknesses, but nothing should completely outdo the other. Now if it ends up being that slowing aircraft down is what was really needed to balance it, then so be it.

Overall, I still have quite a few thoughts on the subject, and this topic covers a very broad idea, so I'll try to keep it short.
(And fail miserably)
I didn't mean to totally wall of text before, but I would have ended up with several posts, and personal history has shown it's better to form my thoughts into one large form and explain my stance entirely. If I don't, and end up with back and forth chat, it ends up turning into having to define what words mean and how they're used rather than the topic itself at hand. [/communication problems are gg]

By power issues, there's a few things I was taking into consideration beforehand. Let me ask a simple question before going into detail: Units can fire using radar, but why don't they aim at the closest enemy using radar as well?

Some units like Artillery and snipers use radar to fire when the enemy comes into it's weapon range. I want to completely destroy the unviability of this. I want artillery to aim their barrels at enemy dots outside of their range before those dots actually come into range. I want AA to turn their weapons towards fast radar signature that can only be aircraft before they even come into view. I want defensive turrets to be ready and lock their barrels onto enemies even though it's still outside of firing distance.

This in itself requires you to have power for radar at all times, or units will function as they do now, only turning their barrels to respond to what they see visually instead of doing so before it even gets into their firing range. With this, power stalling will change unit behavior from being active to reactionary by themselves. This would make power a very big deal, to the point where spending extra on power or storage is worth it just to guarantee you don't stall. It totally changes the game, and I think would be an excellent addition.

When we play FPS, we strafe sideways in order to look down hallways we're passing, weapons at the ready, so if anything is hiding there, we're ready for it. When you look at Zaphod's videos, he constantly turns turrets and artillery to face outside of his base so they have less time to spin around when enemy units come into range. This is the very problem with literally every fighting unit in PA, not just AA alone. It's obscenely inefficient. When applied to ground AA, it makes incoming aircraft require that much more attention because you cannot rely on said AA to protect you. You have to take care of it yourself. That's where the stem lies.

The way I see aircraft is the same way I see tanks or bots. Each aircraft has higher speed but lower armor than their ground counterpart, and take a bit of a reverse engineering thought process to create a good design. In my opinion, aircraft should be, if compared to ground units, quickly in, quickly out, and highly damaging. You have quick aircraft with some low firepower, moderate speed aircraft with moderate firepower, and slow aircraft with extreme firepower. Gunships are no different than fixed-wing as this encompasses all aircraft.

- Lack of armor gives aircraft the ability to hold 'heavier' weaponry than ground forces at the expense of a quick and easy death. Fighter aircraft don't have the armor or massive canons that ground units pack, but their firepower still wrecks. They're fast, but if we learned anything from war, it's that aircraft are still slower than the weapons they pack themselves. When targeting aircraft from the ground, Missile batteries should weild the same missiles aircraft use against other aircraft, but available cheaper, in larger numbers.

- A good example of aircraft that encompasses a medium-high armor with still decent speed and deadly firepower is the A10 Thunderbolt (<3 Warthog) It has burst DPS like a bomber, but trades the amount of damage it can do with the speed at which it can do the damage. It may not be able to level an entire city, but it makes sure it's target is very, very dead. After one pass, it has to circle around like a bomber does, presuming there's another target.
- Another example like above would be Apache gunships. They can take several AA missiles to the face and still keep going. It's the idea of the gunship that has staying power that brings this to the table. That's why we have flak cannons. They're slow but have huge AoE, and god damn do they hurt.

- Aircraft should have viability around this path with heavier armor, too. Slow-flying death. Look at the alien assault airships in Independence Day. They were massive, arguably slow, and couldn't do too much against the fighters which flew around like flys compared to a building complex. They also had that damn cool laser that destroyed entire cities.

.. They also contained within them probably thousands of fighters, but you're talking capital ship scale of aircraft carriers as if they were scouting frigates. It's an extreme example, but also perfect for the end of the spectrum I wanted to touch on.

I think we want the same thing. A lack of user-needed micro for something that tends to be one of the most micro-intensive things in the battlefield. Maybe AA shouldn't be super effective, but neither should air to air, or air to ground. All scales of "effective" are relative. I think the real question is how should we scale things from effective to efficient without super-sizing our order of both.

Edit'd a couple times for clarity when some details didn't save when posting.

I don't have a problem with needing aircraft, but with needing to outdo your opponents airfleet or risk having little to no effect.