Balance of flack, and should it change

Please edit your post. It is flak. Not flack.

As of now 3 adv turrets can easily stop a snipe attempt of 20 bombers. 900:9000 mass ratio. I understand this is only 1 scenario bit it is similar to an anti nuke costing 3200.

Call it finding the lower limit as scathis mentions but there are 299 lower numbers below all equally as insane... And a few hundred above.

If they cost similar to the adv turret then you should be rewarded by spending the money to protect key units/buildings, and your enemy punished for flying over them.

The entire point of bombers is to deal damage before they die. Killing bombers before they drop breaks their role.

If the bombers didn't stack up like they do now, maybe the flak wouldn't be that effective, you know.. I want to see those bombers flying in formation over the enemy base. Hell I'd have them flying all over the place because it would/will look so awesome.

As far as I can see, the current state of flak does not heal the wound of the broken air mechanic of bomber spam obliterating everything. But it stops the bleeding/bitching/whining for a time. I would personally favor this solution:

make the T2 AA Flak akin to an artillery type of unit, except that it targets Air instead of land. "Anti-Aircraft Artillery", if you will. relatively slow fire rate, but long range and exceptional damage, but also frail if the bombers actually break through, much like land based artillery is now. this would encourage mixing T1 and T2 together. the AAA weakens the horde, and the T1's finish off stragglers.

and Bobucles, killing a bomber before it drops is exactly what AA is for. or at least, to stop them from dropping again.

as for stopping the first drop, there's fighters for that.

Notice the difference. Bombers are one of the, if not THE fastest attack option in the game. The only way to deny them their goal is to be FASTER than fast. Instagibbing bombers completely breaks them, because why would you build a unit that can't even attack once?

Fighters and ground cover and traps and the like can definitely help mitigate the damage caused by bombers. But the only realistic defense against a dedicated high speed heavy hitting fast attack unit is to HIDE. By wasting the bomber's time, you get yourself enough time to respond.

there are a few problems with your statement (at least, in my eyes):

1: you say that the only way to defend against them should be to hide. that encourages avoiding the problem instead of dealing with the problem, by, say, destroying them and their factories.

2: having your bombers be insta-gibbed by dedicated defense is not, to me, a game breaking balance issue. rather, it should be a little red flag saying "Try something else, this is not working"

3: if the anti-air is that much of a dampner on your strategy, kill them with a strike force, perhaps consisting of artillery units, or a smaller swarm of gunships. THEN send in your bombers for the kill. Score one for Tactics.

and if all that doesn't work....then maybe using air as your primary means of attack just isn't gonna cut it anymore.

Yes, having a large effort completely fail to work is a red flag. It's a sign that something went wrong in the development process, where one unit which is the pinnacle of its role is somehow trumped at its very own nature by the accidental use of a generic jack of all trades. It sounds like vanilla World of Warcraft Rogues all over again.

just because something is deemed the pinnacle of its role should not mean it must be virtually unstoppable. the reason for the T2 AA's existence is because T2 bomber swarms alone were able to wipe entire planets with little effort. or even losses. the only real way to stop them was a counter spam of fighters. and even then, you couldn't kill them all.

i also suspect you misunderstood my post. yes, T2 bombers have a role, and are very good at it. but using them as your go-to for attack, and only them, is inexcusable. but the point of a counter in general is to stop something from fulfilling that role effectively, if not at all.

granted, we're talking about a game where spamming is about half the battle, but being able to spam something whose effectiveness multiplies with numbers, without the ability to adress those numbers, is a balance breaker in itself.

going back to my counter agrument, let me cite some historical references:

Medieval era:

Army A has a thick line of spears/pikes. army B has a huge line of cavalry.

while normally a large cavalry force would wipe the floor with a foot-based army, it is an army of spears, specificly mustered to stop the horsemen.

but if the horsemen had another troop to back them up, like archers to think the enemy ranks, they would stand more of a chance.

now lets look at a more related example.

we have a column of tanks. under normal circumstances, an entire column of tanks is difficult to stop with anything short of a massed artillery barrage, or a tactical nuke. however, there is a more economical solution:

the hellicopter gunship.

this is because, by default, tanks have no defense against airborne threats.

however, if they have an anti-air vehicle accompanying them, they are relatively safe from the gunships.

unless, of course, there are a couple hundred of them. which warrants for something stronger, one can take on many.

so whatwe basically have here is that we had a counter, but it was unable to contend with sheer numbers, because that was the only thing stopping the threat - lack of numbers.



so to make a long story short, we have T2AA because we had a problem with people spamming something whose only real weakness was a lack of numbers. because anything can be killed if you bring enough bombers down on it.

and for the record, i personally think you're trying to defend bomber spam. but thats just me.

What? Bombers flattening the whole map with impunity are just as bad as bombers that can never deal an attack or hurt anything ever. They are both fail conditions.

finally, something we agree upon!

but sadly, that is the currently the problem we face. people spamming T2 bombers with said impunity to the point of saturating the map with flocks of doom. sometimes even to the point of crashing the game. the current T2 AA was likely a stop-gap solution.

like i said: stop the bleeding.

but it doesn't permanently fix the problem. the ideal solution is one that doesn't completely eliminate the bomber's usefulness, but stops it from becoming aforementioned flocks of doom.

because we currently have this kind of thing happening:

oh no! an enemy base! send 10 bombers!
did that work?
no?
send 100 then!
did THAT work?
no?
send 500 then!
did THAT work?
Yes, but we lost 450 of them.
don't care! make more, and move on to the next guy.


the situation i would like to see is something like this:

oh no! an enemy base! send 10 bombers to kill it!
did that work?
nope, they got shot down.
ok then, send some bots to kill their AA.
is the AA dealt with?
yep! theyre all dead!
excellent, send 10 more bombers!
is it dead?
almost!
get some tanks in there and wipe them up!
Win!


pretty much saying that i like bombers...but i just want to have to use them in numbers that are a little more realistic.

because nobody likes to have to face a Flock of Doom.

As a tip, T2 fighters are a good response to t2 bombers, they cost a lot less than before and outclass t1 fighters by a lot.

most any good player knows that, zaph. its the fact that alot of people never consider countering with T2 fighters is is why they cry. though a static solution was a step in the right direction.

Dunno if many people have actually looked through all the stats. They were useful before but now they are so cheap/quick to build and even more efficient than t1 fighters.

Yeah, with the changes to air, advanced fighters became more cost effective then basic fighters.

Yeah you spend 10x times less to secure just one position while bombers still have reign over the whole planet. Balance of flak vs t2 bomber is correct right now, If you make turrets at one spot then you weaken your map control, so at this one place you have to win convincingly.
If t2 bomber gets nerfed then flak might get nerfed too but otherwise air is/will still be too dominant in the game.

I know, that is why I referred to it as a SAM when I was describing the scenario. I think an advanced SAM would be a better way to go.

Here are my reasons:
1. AOE with aircraft bunching up like they do is too extreme.
2. The number of viable targets for the tower needs to be limited.
3. It would be a one shot one kill launcher with limited ammunition.
4. Visually, seeing a volley of 10 SAMs fire at a squad of aircraft, all individually targeted would just look plain cool.
5. Balancing is easier, all that needs to be done is modify the missile count if it is doing too much or too little.

Well the game is completely broken right now. To make this game work bombers mustn't be able to attack ground units. Have them great at attacking buildings and then they are an option. Not a MUST which results in everygame being an air **** fest. Any confidence I had is gone...

*whistling*

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...nds-into-dedicated-anti-building-units.55992/

I wouldn't say that that's an idea solution. I would much rather see the quantity of bomber reduced. Make them cost 5-10* more then ground units so you will be at a loss if they don't return after there first attack.