Am I The Only One Who...

As far i know rushing is still part of PA. BUT!! The devs announced that there gonna be some changes of how you gonna start! They told that you can setup your base in your lobby so you won't have to worry allot about setting up the economy, this means you can focus allot more on your tactics, like going for turtle or going to build more factories to focus on rush. So i think games won't end that quick as 2 min (depending of map size)

As bobucles said, plenty left to do. Just because the Commander can kill your tank doesn't mean the infrastructure he's building can.

As far as my opinion goes about this subject, and using SupCom as an example, I always thought the early bomber rushes were inordinately deadly to the game's progression. In fact, i had actually thought of a couple of possible solutions that could be implemented as separate options, possibly with the different commander we'll get in PA.

One would be to simply raise the commander's armour against the sort of weak explosives used by most T1 bombers. This would allow special T1 bomber ammunition such as EMP to still deal secondary effects such as stunning, but would probably not be as serious in ending-the-game potential, and would be repellable by most any sort of AA.

Second, we could have the commander have the option to swap out his D-gun for the already mentioned D-flak, which would greatly reduce his damage to armoured T1 land units, but allow him to defend a base on his own with some trouble.

Third we could have it so you could 'sacrifice other units to save your early AA, since it gets destroyed so easily. I'm picturing our T1 little droids shedding some armour (losing either HP or armor rating) and placing it on the AA, so you could sacrifice land defense for air defense at will.

Lastly we could have more T1 units capable of 'force-firing' at air, that is, being able to target air units yet suffering due to inappropriate targeting systems, thus having far lesser accuracy, but being able to use More Dakka to make themselves minimally able to deefend against not very good air units.


Just my teeny tiny two cents.

I'd like to make an observation here:

I agree with this for the most part; "If you lost - it was because of something you did. Everybody loses games and if you lose then you have no one to blame but yourself."

Fundamentally rush is an interesting term.

What defines a rush tactic, to me is more a contextual thing than anything else. It's interesting to listen here to people who are not all (assumption alert) pro players and some of which are complaining about rush tactics. Yet the definition of rush is based around a time frame of plausible play at the very top end of the ladder. Maybe this is where the problem lies?

For example, a low level player might only get a group of tanks together to 'rush' an opponent after ten minutes. By this time a more experienced player may already have built their own tanks and also made an attack within five minutes. To the low end player this is inconceivable! How can this be done so fast? The truth is that both were playing the rush tactic, yet one player still rushed the other.

What about the other scenario, where the two play another match and the lower skilled player rushes within at minutes and the more experienced player was already well prepared for the attack. The lesser skilled player is infuriated because he lost twice. But losses are generally more valuable than victories in the early stages in the game. Which is just as well since they happen a great deal more often.

I am surprised that so far here no one has mentioned scouting and nor has anyone mentioned replays. These are the two most valuable tools at your disposal for learning tactics and developing your abilities. Using scouting and replays the less skilled player can learn both what the enemy is doing in the game and post game he can learn how the skilled player beat him.

That still doesnt cover fundimental flaws that the past games have presented.

The idea of rushing is really a blitzkreig tactic, rushing in to attack an oppenets logistics and intelligance in an attempt to weapon them from within.

Or somthing alone those lines.

However problems that are not coverd and cannot be coverd by scouting and replays is the ability to not rush by simply win the game via the use of immedietly building a ground attack air unit and hitting an opponet before they can effecticly scout and with enough power that they are incapable of reacting.

A commander without any anti-ground weapon would also produce this effect against a eraly raider attack, even with a poor anti-ground weapon like the TA commander produced this effect where the enemy could eaily win the game within a few mins by just attacking the commander, D-Gun or not, not a rush tactic, not a blitzkreig but a attack that is undeniably impossible to deflect without making one of the first things you build into a defencive structure, a costly stratigy as to prevent turret pushes from replacing actual units.

In SupCom 1/FA and 2 the commander is a decent anti-ground weapon, able to effecticly combat enemy ground forces, and can even become a powerful support unit in your army.

But in these games the players choice for early AA is almost always complealty worthless (SUpCom 2 somewhat less so) with T1 AA doing little damage per hit if one was actually made, meaning that the opponets aircraft like bombers could eaisly establish air-superiority and clean out early AA buildings if any were even present.

Commanders have no direct way to defend themselves from an airborne threat, and with basic AA in these games being horribly crap, air arriveing before you can reasonably expect to scout, and the only real counter is a great deal of AA built immedietly that far exceeds the costs that you enemy has spent I call Bullshit.


This isn't a rush yes, and with a ground rush being delt with by SupCom by making the commander a decent anti-ground weapon, and with the overcharge being a more expencive counter to early uses of T2 and even T3 units, PA really needs to deal with both the commanders lack of an anit-aircraft weapon and SupCom's insistance on using direct fire weapons on aircraft, the worst choice possible that even SUpCom 2 managed to get right.

When SupCom 2 has better AA then you, then you know that somthing is f***ed right up.


So allow commanders the common decentcy to start with a AA weapon that is worth a damn, and use tracking AA weapons for your units like TA and SupCom2!

(And that's why SupCom 1 will never replace TA for me, it sucks at covering the basic fundermentals of anti-air.)

Could it be that you have not considered mobile units as also posessing defensive capabilities?

Also consider for a moment that out of the two players if they are producing equal numbers of units, it is the defending player who has the home advantage. By this I am referring to the commander. In this situation, the defending player may successfully repel the attack. Not only destroying his opponents units, but also gaining the mass from the wreckage. Provided it was not destroyed with the D-gun that is!

Furthermore, a player may choose to play land and scout the enemy with land scout. It is true that he may build this scout much quicker than a bomber, but it may not arrive at the enemy base before the bomber is built. However, upon seeing this bomber en route or the air factory in the base, the player can make an educated decision to build AA - most likely mobile - and the commander already has short range radar as standard. The rest of your argument is merely based around balance between AA and bombers. That's a job for Uber.

While it is true that AA should be effective against air (the clue is in the name), should it be as effective as air-to-air? After all there must be a reason to build air other than for bombers.

Surely as a player who has been bomber rushed, your first actions must be to scout your enemy's power plants (which you should have been doing from the beginning anyway), mobilise your tanks to take it out and build mobile AA to defend your base/commander?

EDITED: Mainly because I was using my phone when I first wrote this.

The only worthwhile mobile AA is fighter craft, so unless you go for fighter craft you have to deal with very very poor AA that is more often then not much more expensive then what an enemy will be using to attack.

Considering that attacking is much better then defending , and that the only decent AA is in fighters then really there is no actual homefield advantage in such a situation.

And that is if you manage to shoot down any aircraft at all, so attempting to D-Gun aircraft is the least of my concerns.

Building worth while AA in the time between seeing an opponets bomber (Who is more then likely half way to your base by the time your scouts meets it) is extreamly difficuat to do, and even if you manage to deal with the problem your opponet has done much more then you were ever able to acheive due to not having to build defences.

You have over estimated the time you have for this decision compared to when a scout reaches an enemy base, and thats is you even went streight there.

Fighters have the advantages or being cheaper, mobile and immune to a bombers attack.

AA should be superior to air to air.

And by the time my tanks are assemled and are ready to roll out the enemys bombers fly over and kill my commander, makeing sure to kill any chance of building AA along the way.

Becuse the resources to build scouts, tanks and aa does not equal the cost of a few bombers.

Air was never such a treat to ACU, chill out. Seriously, ACU doesnt need any weak AA on start, simple mobile AA is good enough to kill some bombers. We're talking about not-real game, where when he have something, you have something else. He have bombers, you have tanks. Go with them to he's base, he will be scared as hell and he will retreat with bombers to support base. Simple as that, theres draw on this rush and game goes on, you build more AA, hes prepared at base.

Where's imbalance here?

The commander cannot defend himself from air.

There is no logical reason that if the commander should be expected to defend against rushes from wining the game that he should not alos have an AA weapon.

If it is not the role of the commander to defend against rushes then logicly there is no reason for him to have an anti-ground weapon or the D-gun becuse that would go beyond the purpose of the unit.

If commanders simply need only build AA to defend from an air attact then the same should be said about his ability to shoot at ground targets also.

The tech tree can play a huge role in controlling air rushes. For example, take 2 bombers. One has little direct damage but huge AoE, while the other drops a heavy bomb with little AoE.

The AoE craft is not very useful early game, because there are few real targets and the Comm only counts as one hit. Trying to focus down any single structure (like an AA turret) ends up a waste. The direct damage bomber is extremely good, because it can focus on the Comm and the 1-2 defense towers. Even with proper counters, the bomber can do crazy damage before it's taken out.

So what you do, is put the AoE bomber on the first tier, and the direct damage bomber in the advanced tier. That way it can't ruin the early game.

That is a problem with air balance in general. Air units were very powerful, against a Comm that couldn't defend them, in a game with limited solutions to air. If air is a threat, the Comm should be able to put up a few turrets to take care of it. An ubergun that targets air would be very handy, but may not be required.

More important is making sure that air carries a role appropriate for the game. A lot of things have to be considered, but typically support oriented roles are best. Flying tanks would be highly redundant with the huge number of tanks that will already exist. Less units that can target air means that air is tougher to deal with and more lethal overall. Lots of things have to be considered before air can really work.

BTW, lots of issues with the Comm have been talked about in the ACU snipes thread. Most important is the challenge of staying away from air and preventing air damage on the Comm.

@igncom1:
You took a lot of my post you quoted out of context. To clarify; I was initially talking about two identical players rushing one another with equal numbers of land based units. In this scenario, the difference would be the commander. This is the home field advantage I describe. Perhaps I should have been clearer, but who the hell tries to D-gun an aircraft anyway? I think you are just being ridiculous there.

When I was talking about bomber rush, I refer you again to AA:bomber balance. It's a balancing issue. Though you have your facts wrong with this too:

I can build 3x T1 AA for the price (in mass) of a T1 bomber with nothing like the same cost in energy in a fraction of the time. This is why I pointed you (as the player who is being bomber rushed) to attack the enemy's power gens. Remove his energy and you remove his ability to build bombers. For him to build bombers he will need to invest considerable resource into pgens.

Regardless of this, your first action should be to scout your enemy so you should already know what his base looks like -hopefully before you get attacked.

T1 aa.
http://www.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/un ... bp=UEB2104
150 mass

T1 bomber.
http://www.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/un ... bp=UEA0103
80 mass

T1 Mobile AA
http://www.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/un ... bp=UEL0104
24 Mass

Mike

Personally, I would do it this way:

UEF T1 "Scorcher" attack bomber = 80 mass

UEF T1 "Archer" AA = 28 mass

Also, have a look at the difference in energy and build time between the scorcher and the archer. I think it's fair to say that it is not that unfair a match up if done this way.

Mike, you beat me to it again!

Air is also more into energy, so 80 mass and alot more of energy than AA.

Very well then.

A ridiculously overpriced (and frankly, terrible) defense is not an indication of proper balance.
TA was pretty decent with air defenses:
T1 AA tower (80 mass)
T1 mobile AA (130 mass)
T1 bomber (130 mass)
T2 gunship(260 mass)

It really doesn't take much for one unit to be more efficient than another. The trick is making sure everyone possible can join in on the action. A hundred tanks that barely work is still more useful than a hundred tanks that are perfectly useless. It means that picking the wrong choice, while terrible, isn't a 100% loss.

Ingcom all of your recent posts are about air imbalance. That being said, the commander is used to prevent a small cheap group of 2-3 units demolishing everything in the first minute of the game when the opponent has nothing but a few engineers. It's purpose is not to hold of any and every kind if attack in the first 5 minutes. It can however quickly produce defenses capable of doing that.

On the contry, SupCom's commander could eaisly defeat up wards of 30 T1 units by it's self was was a very effective 'queen' peice in the early part of the game.

And I don't see why not, the commander can't be in 2 places at once, and in assasination game a rather big gamble.

That seems a touch exaggerated, OC is nice, and the ACU has decent health, but otherwise it can't kill that many tanks unless they like super clump up and you're taking out 5 or more per OC.

Mike