So, problem with hummingbirds is they have too much hp both against land and air. I think the land one is pretty obvious, so i''ll talk briefly about why even in air to air hummingbird has too much relative hp. Because they 3 shot each other, just like tanks we also get the same snowballing behaviour. This isn't too much of a problem with tanks though because they are slower to take advantage of the positional advantage the snowballing creates as it's very much harder to camp an opponent's land into his base. Move speed to tank build speed is such that it never becomes a real problem. Air however is fast, and fighters take longer to build than tanks. So what do i mean by snowballing? I mean that fundamentally 3 hummingbirds will always trade very efficiently against anything less than 3 hummingbirds. The same behaviour follows when you scale up the numbers. Basically, a very small metal advantage in hummingbird presence can turn into a very big metal advantage at the end of the fight due to 3 shot mechanics. While bombers are also getting alot of rightfully deserved attention, i don't want people to miss that fighter hp is also contributing very heavily to the 'air or lose' play we have currently. Also, 3 shot means you can do tricks like stacking hummingbird groups with guard and running away like this so they absolutely crush enemy fighters as they come in one by one. Before, with 1 or 2 shot fighters, you could atleast count on fights trading metal for metal efficiently no matter how stacked. You could still dig yourself out of the hole without having to massively overcompensate to get back in. So yea, hummingbirds are broke.
I didn't like how hummingbirds vaporized instantly previously. It sucked how a group of aircraft would move towards each other and suddenly disappear.
You assume no benefit. I disagree with that claim. When scouting, sometimes my fighters will run into defenses or enemy units. With no health, boom, my fighters are gone and there's nothing I can do about it. With more health, I can actually retreat and keep them alive. This exact smae thing dan be applied to ground units. The 2x health increase in the Realm Balance Mod makes gameplay so much more fun and engaging. Retreating actually works.
FIghters die slowly for more scouting. Die quickly with no benefit and much frustration. I think there needs to be more damage coming from AA to compensate. Not too much, but an increase would be nice.
If you retreat, you should be saving units, not health. Health is a detail far too small to take into consideration with a massive army.
1) Fighters have huge vision and move incredibly fast. If you are running your fighters into land aa, you deserve to lose it. Quite honestly, the amount of health fighters have vs land aa is ridiculous right now. They take 8 land missiles.. That's a full 4 seconds - I could purposely run over a spinner TWICE and not die. If you need this much hp to 'retreat', I think it is a l2p. Also, the case being made in this thread is air to air hp. The point of snowballing has nothing to do with land aa. You could simply increase hummingbird missile dmg separately. 2) Fireflies are for scouting. You all constantly want units to be different from each other, and all be viable, but it's ok for fighters to obsolete fireflies. 3) Fighter tankiness is why bombers are basically unstoppable vs land aa.when it comes to sniping fabber trains. This is a problem.
I like the fighters as is. They have more worth. 1 for 1 trades are and have been boring since alpha. They are also useless if the other player doesn't build air. Ground aa destroys air with much less numbers too. I'm sure we are all guilty of not having enough aa support.
They are really good though clopse. Air control is everything because bombers, and fighers are more metal efficient at killing air than land aa. 150 metal for a spinner is crazy. If they were 90 like stingers, i might be more inclined to agree. If they don't build air, even better for you. The point of building hummingbirds in the first place is to get the enemy air presence to 0. Now they'll never catch up in hummingbirds to defend the bomber group spams because you just have to match their air production.
1: Vaporizing unit simply isn't enjoyable, be it land or air. Longer engagements between enemies is more fun. 2: You incorrectly assume that I'm advocating for fighters to make fireflies obsolete. I simply want unit engagements to actually mean something rather than for units to disappear whenever they get in range of each other. 3: Fighter tankiness is not why bombers are "basically unstoppable." The fix is to make ground AA automatically target bombers first.
I'll ask you again since you didn't answer it. Why does it feel unenjoyable for units to be 'instantly vaporized'? I was trying to get you to think about this opinion more and realise why it's flawed, because only then would you really understand. Or atleast have thought about it and come up with some compelling reasoning i missed why it isn't flawed. Me simply telling you (as i did in my first reply just to help get the ball rolling for you), wouldn't work by itself. Also, i'm not advocating for one shot hummingbirds specifically. Only that 3 shot is too much, and that the snowballing effect is a really big problem with this amount of relative hp. No, i'm not incorrectly assuming anything at all. You want fighters to be able to tank 8 missile shots from a land aa unit that costs basically the same yet is so much slower, has no other multipurpose, and dies to basically everything on the land shell. You basically said yourself you want them to scout with impunity - that is, scout and not die. Why should i even bother spending that metal on a firefly at all when i can get a way better scout that also shoots other planes down? There is no timing in this game from 0 seconds onwards in which fireflies are a better choice. I'm not going to argue this point any further with you. Plain as fact, hummingbirds obsolete fireflies. No it is not. WYSIWYG. Plain and simple targeting rules that follow intuitively throughout the game without ifs, buts, or exceptions. You are making up situational rules in order to band-aid issues. And on top of that, these rules act to lessen depth of gameplay. If players want to buffer bombers, then let them, just as you could in previous builds in which fighters wern't sky gods. It just shouldn't be as metal efficient as it is now.
You keep on telling me what I want, when that's not what I want. You also keep on changing my words. There's no need for the personal attacks. When you resort to veiled attacks on intelligence, it shows that you don't have confidence in your stance and need to downplay your opponent's intelligence to win the debate. 1: Units vaporizing instantly isn't fun. It's a view held by most everyone on the forums, and I did explain it. Increased health of all units makes the game more fun as it increases the tactics and strategy involved in attacks. Air health is good where it's at, now ground units need their health roughly doubled. That's what the Realm Balance Mod does and it's tons of fun. Controlling your units matters. Your units don't instantly disappear when they meet an enemy. You can move in, retreat, make mistakes, adjust your ranges so certain units achieve maximum effectiveness. It's tons of fun. You should try it. You're theorizing about the difference in unit healths. I would encourage you to try the increase in health. 2: I actually think ground AA needs increased effectiveness. Particularly, missile defense towers need more range. I've been advocating for this on the forums for a while now. Hummingbirds making fireflies obsolete is not because of their increased health. It's because Fireflies need tweaking. There's more than one way to skin a cat as the saying goes. Primarily, the speed of the Firefly needs to be increased, and possibly give it a radar as well. 3: How is making AA target bombers not WYSIWYG? AA targeting bombers is just common sense. Imagine controlling a missile defense tower. You have two targets: the first one is a bomber that will rain down death and destruction on you, and the other is a fighter – a unit that can do nothing to harm you. Obviously, you should shoot down the bomber first.
I like that they now fly in circles and stuff during a fight now, like they fight as hard as they can to avoid enemy rockets while dishing out their own. Just add a little dodging, flips rolls and maybe even the possibility to dodge a really close rocket with a well timed barrel roll. And I'll find them to be pretty much finished.
I'm hardly making veiled insults on your intelligence. It's not that i'm attacking you personally (i'm really not), you're making it impossible to phrase it any other way due to some some really questionable logic. Personally, if i say something dumb, i really don't mind if people point it out and I look dumb as a result. I learn that what i previously held to be true is actually pretty dumb, and become better for it. You still havn't answered my question. Why is it not enjoyable? Because it seems you're only going to go the route of "personal attacks", I'll just answer this for you: Because they feel weak. They feel powerless. It feels like I have no control. Well guess what. Right now, having only very slightly fewer number of humingbirds going into a fight is exactly the same effect. Increase hp all you want. Slow it down so that it seems like you have control. Talk about strategy and tactics. The math and objective observation speaks for itself. Then why do i need to build radar? You see what you're doing? You're just pushing the ball forward in order to cover the original mistake of giving one unit an overlapping function with another. This common sense arguement is as silly and unconstructive as the "but in reality" arguement. Imagine i'm driving a tank. Do i shoot the inferno? Or shoot the tank behind the inferno? It's common sense to attack the tank first right? Therefore, tanks should automatically prioritise tanks over infernos and also automatically run away from infernos without you giving the command to do so. No. I said that the rules must intuitively follow through the game without special exceptions and circumstances. And that golden rule is this: ALL units automatically target the nearest attackable unit unless ordered to do otherwise.
Go play the Realm Balance Mod. Increased health is more fun. But not too much health. I've tried several different changes, and about 2x health increase is great. Why do you need to build radar? Because radar has greater coverage. Your two tanks analogy doesn't work because both of those tanks can fire at your tank. Fighters can't shoot at ground, and AA can shoot at anything in its range. It doesn't make sense to shoot at the fighter that can't shoot at it, and don't shoot at the bomber that's about to blow it up. This conversation is bordering on pointless until you try the Realm Balance Mod and see how increased health increases strategy and fun.
It's more strategy than before. Maybe that's what Brian is thinking. You have time to tactical retreat, split up, lead their fighters over your ground aa. All of the above adds to game play instead of maths which is worse for snowballing. Now you have a little extra time to actually kill the threat(bombers) instead of crashing units into one another.
Increased health allows for mistakes and maneuvers. Units that gib each other in seconds mean a numerical advantage will always cause huge losses. It's very punishing for those who have poor intelligence or simply weren't paying attention for the 5 seconds battles take. It can make the player feel (and actually be sometimes) powerless to change the outcome of a fight once the shooting has started.
I think it would be fun if they would also miss from time to time, their missiles have superior speed and superior guidance right now which looks really odd to me (this was something that TA did differently with fighters, they actually had difficulty with chasing each other down). It could soften the snowballing effect a bit depending on the situation.
