Air Superiority

This is not a unique balance problem. Aircraft have utterly dominated ground warfare since 1930 and sea warfare since 1940. In every conventional conflict since 1930 the side with air superiority has won without exception. It's no coincidence that the first stage in any battle plan (before any ground troops even think about stepping out of base) is to establish air superiority. It's just that decisive.

Of course that doesn't make for fun and balanced gameplay so aircraft need to be artificially nerfed. The key is extreme specialization. For one, no fighter-bombers. Aircraft can either attack air units or ground units but never both. Bombers either specialize in attacking single units, groups of units, or structures. Fighters similarly need to specialize in attacking single units or groups of units.

Break up air defense into multiple different subsystems (as it is in real life). SAMs have very long range but require forward radar stations to track targets. This makes air defenses very powerful but only if paired with relatively vulnerable radar systems. Add in short range flak guns that can devastate packed groups of air units to discourage blobbing. The end result is that with a properly layered defense, aircraft would decimated before they even had the chance to get close enough to do anything.

Using air units effectively would require dismantling an opponent's radar system first (and unlike most games, using massed aircraft blobs to this would be incredibly cost inefficient). Your best options are either long range missiles or some concentrated ground attacks.

The ultimate goal is to make every unit and every theater of combat intimately dependent on a completely different unit or theater of combat. This emphasizes combined arms strategies rather than just basing an entire strategy on just a single unit. The problem with most strategy games is that they remove these interdependencies that have been the absolute core of warfare since the beginning of recorded history. The hallmark of a good strategy game is one that rewards you for building and using almost every single unit.

A hard truth you fail to realize here, is that while yes, aircraft are important in modern warfare, they cannot win wars by themselves. There is just only so much you can bomb before is becomes highly impractical to continue the war with air power alone. Sooner or later you have to send in good old fashioned soldiers on the ground or you can never win a war.

Aircraft, and bombs, cost money, lots and lots of money.

Soldiers and guns cost nothing.

Also as you yourself admitted it gets downright boring if the entire game is about air power alone. If one unit, any unit is so powerful that it makes all other units irrelevant, than where is the fun in that? where is the strategy?

Thanks for only responding to the least relevant part of my post.

In any case, what you say isn't some "hard truth" that I overlooked. It's a difference in victory conditions. Wars in the real world typically require occupation of an enemy's territory before they can be "won". Occupation is really just a formality as a war has typically been over and decided long beforehand. WW2, for example, was over well before any allied troops stepped foot into German territory because the massive allied bombing campaign utterly destroyed Germany's industrial capacity and logistical infrastructure (among other things). Ultimately, it's all a moot point because strategy games like PA don't require you to occupy an opponent's land to win (which is frankly the sole purpose of all ground units). You just need to destroy all their buildings and units which is good enough and that's exactly what aircraft are designed to do.

This couldn't be farther from the truth. Aircraft cost a lot of money up front but relatively little in terms of maintenance and upkeep after that. Maintaining a front line division of infantry fed, supplied, and operational is orders of magnitude more expensive. What you fail to account for is that for each man that actually holds a rifle in a trench, there are ten men needed behind the scenes to support him in non-combat roles.

Tell that to Japan.

Tell that to Vietnam.

Tell that to Korea.

Tell that to Baghdad.

Tell that to Iran and Iraq.

It may cost the US that much money because we are fat and lazy capitalists who aren't in any real danger of losing what we have in a war in some 3rd world country half our citizens couldn't have even pointed out on a map before it got splashed all over CNN.

They on the other hand, have nothing else to lose.

This couldn't be farther from the truth. Aircraft cost a lot of money up front but relatively little in terms of maintenance and upkeep after that. Maintaining a front line division of infantry fed, supplied, and operational is orders of magnitude more expensive. What you fail to account for is that for each man that actually holds a rifle in a trench, there are ten men needed behind the scenes to support him in non-combat roles.[/quote]


Felt I should point out something here, first we'll start with your real world scenarios in which you are generally correct air power does provide a very large advantage as they cost relatively little to maintain compare to he soldier I have to say that even though this might not be the case you're lacking obvious uses of a soldier you stick on the front lines. They do take money and supplies to upkeep but so do aircraft, you need to keep the pilots trained, fit, and keep the aircraft in perfect condition which required more people involved in the maintenance of it. Anyway the point I wanted to make is that the aircraft is worthless without the soldier, what happens if there's no soldier defending the airfields and carriers? What happens when your front line is shattered and the enemy can just destroy your planes on the ground? Air dominance is useful if not vital to some sucess but in a standard war there's more to it than just bombing stuff.

Why do people keep arguing my points without realizing that they're actually agreeing with me and confirming them. Maybe you should take the time to understand my points before immediately jumping to the conclusion that you disagree.

More to the point, why do people insist on arguing inanities, minutiae, and verbiage and ignore the bulk of my original post?

People do tend to read the first sentence oddly enough, first. If they disagree strongly enough with what they see, they often stop reading.

This is true in the business world as well, not just the internet. You need to be really really careful where you lead off from in a post, or a letter, or an e-mail. It's all the same thing really. The first sentence, the first paragraph, is the most important.

In fairness, I did re-read the rest of your post after you complained. Yes, clearly I stopped reading previously. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

I think that this solution is on the right track. A verity of different Anti-Aircraft systems optimized for various ranges and targets would be good. Big very long range missiles (like the 40N6) for taking out flying early warning and control aircraft as well as strategic bombers and long range strategic missiles; long range missiles (like the 48N6) for more general aircraft and short range strategic missiles; medium range lasers and missiles to defend the longer range missile sites from aircraft and tactical missiles; and flack guns to defend against low flying gunships and other heavily armored aircraft; or something like that.

Just a note to everyone else reading, this part of his post isn't as important as the rest.

Having both long-range SAMs that can track aircraft by radar and short-range flaks makes air defenses more comprehensive and interesting. Having SAMs in the first place will fundamentally shift the balance towards air defense, but making them reliant on radar will introduce an interesting dynamic in to the game that we haven't seen before in Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander.

I completely agree.

A hard Truth you fail to realize is that you aren't fighting a war, you're going for all out extermination, and it turns out, you can exterminate just fine with only air units.

Sorry to go back to this, but I figured it needed saying.

Tpapp157, love the combined arms idea, only thing I'd add is that there needs to be some form of overkill control, either built into the weapon targeting code, similar to BM's OverKill Control Mod or smart missiles that can retarget if their initial target bites the dust or something else I haven't thought of.

Mike

I think that both would be essential features.

If it's on AA is it on all units?

I think it would work well for all units, though I have only found it to be a huge problem with AA in TA and SC/FA (though less so in TA)

Well IMO that'd be a question of balance and how much do you want the game to play itself for you(but this isn't a thread for Automation, I'll have to make that tomorrow) but IMO It should only be used where needed.

Mike

I dislike special cases for certain things. If it's good enough for one solution, It should be good enough in all cases.

The overkill solution makes sense for most everything but missiles are highly varied in real life, and probably should vary in the game. Some missiles should have very advanced automation, being able to choose new targets (or even seek initial targets if fired into an area blindly [like real life advanced anti-ship missiles]) while others should be rather dumb (i.e. an inertially guided ICBM).

It seems simple to me. If you want to minimize air spam, just make air units take longer to build

(And, for the love of all that's holy, limit the amount of engineers that can assist a factory!)

I think that air spam should be doable, but there should be defense that can not be easily overrun if they are set up properly and sufficiently numerous.

I think that the only limit should be how many that can physically fit near the factory

Limiting engineer assist does nothing but reduce the numbers of factories you have to build. It's not a good way to balance anything.

I think it's a matter of having a defense that scales well against a more numerous (ala. a spammed) enemy, but doesn't completely pwn a few units. The the best of my knowledge, only AoE does this.