Idea to balance planes - Airbases

Do we want naval units on desert planets? COMBINED ARMS. COMBINED ARMS!

I think at some point we have to accept that in some situations, certain units won't be viable or appropriate to use.

Fuel sucked in SC, but was needed to balance the ridiculously powerful aircraft. Air was good in TA, but not as good as it was in SC. Air is great, but it probably needs to be toned down from what it was in SC, or more effect AA needs to be implemented. No fuel no matter what, though. Needless micro.

This I agree with, and I now don't believe scaling aircraft fuel to the map makes much sense if you're going to go that route. Their proportional advantage they have over land is the factor, not the map.

Because we've seen how aircraft were unbalanced in Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, and we're trying to figure out a way to balance them just the same as the Uber developers will be doing as well. More heads are better than fewer.

Then let's limit their ammo so they can't deal unlimited damage. They are faster than everything else, and can do intense amounts of concentrated damage at very fast rate, there needs to be some other restriction that will scale to the late game. If you have restricted ammo but unlimited fuel, you can fly to your heart's content until you start attacking something.

Most competitive matches were played on small maps or with only 2 players. The problems arise on much bigger maps with many more players, because at least one player can sit back and build air while his allies hold off the enemy. As we've said over and over, aircraft have a balance issue in the mid-to-late game on large maps because of their speed and maneuverability makes their range and ability to deal damage over time to any target anywhere completely unrestricted. The economic cost of planes becomes less of an issue when everyone's economy gets huge relative to the cost of the critical mass of aircraft you need to deal lots of damage.

(Emphasis mine). I agree with you here, but you seem to have gone ahead and used another silly picture instead of an argument to counter what ledarsi just said.

In his quote below, introducing variety is exactly what he's talking about:

The whole idea of having to refuel or re-arm ties aircraft to land and sea units so they can't just rebase without restriction. Creating interdependence between units creates a whole realm of tactical possibilities. Land units already depend on air units to take out difficult installations that are causing them problems, and to defend them against other aircraft and air transport flanks. Aircraft themselves, in the forms they've taken in the past, only depend on the factories that produce them. Once they're out in the open they don't need any help, and that's what makes air combat so cheesy and boring.

There is obviously a lot of disagreement about the idea that aircraft aren't overpowered given the three different highly active threads discussing how to balance them.

What ideas do you have, zordon?

Fuel restrictions didn't really make a difference for T3 aircraft in Supreme Commander because the planes simply had way too much fuel. Most battles didn't last long enough for the aircraft to need refueling, so you'd just end up forgetting to refuel them until later.

I'm not interested in a variety inflicted by limiting the scope and potential of well used aircraft. I'm also not interested in arguing that any particular playstyle is more important than another one. The fact that you feel large maps break air doesn't merit destroying it on smaller ones. A better solution should exist. Another factor none of you seem to be considering is that PA is not supcom or TA, introducing planets to fight over will cause profound changes to how gameplay will fundamentally operate that we cannot know, merely guess, the changes of.

The idea that introducing fuel and ammunition for planes will even achieve what you're hoping for is questionable at best.

Finally, I encourage people to think about the implications of their ideas for longer than the time it takes to write the damn post.

Ok, first I'd just like to point out that gunships would be terrible on a 200km map, they're nearly as slow as land units! But on a map that size in a game that plays like supcom you're almost certainly passed the point where air is viable. For that scale the optimal strategy is probably to just go straight for massive nuke bombardment while hiding your commander. Or perhaps teleporting SCUs. But let's say that's not the case. Air might be what wins the fight, but if you have no land defences a clever opponent could engage your airforce then hit you with an airdrop near your base, or set up a stealthy firebase within shelling range, or a battery of TMLs and snipe your ACU. Air is strong late game on large maps, but it is far from the only way to win.

But that's all talking about supcom. The way the balance between air and land shifts on larger maps depends on a thousand factors which don't even exist yet for PA. The difference in speed between aircraft and land units, the complexity of the terrain, the effectiveness of AA, the relative costs, ranges, durability, fire power, what long range transport systems exist and how effective they are (there's been mention of teleporters already) etc etc ad nauseum. The devs have hundreds upon hundreds of knobs they can twiddle to balance air vs land. And that's without even mentioning the orbital layer which is sure to shake things up dramatically, or the elephant in the room - multiple planets! There is no need to arbitrarily cripple an entire theatre of operations just because you're afraid it'll be OP for a particular type of map.

This is impossible unless you remove all unit diversity. Different units will always work better in different scenarios. A map with incredibly tight terrain with choke points everywhere favours turtling and then attacking with air, artillery, or some kind of game ender. A more open map rewards fast moving land raiders and spreading out rapidly to capture resources. As I said before, that's kinda the point.

I disagree entirely. Saying land units depend on air but not vice versa is ridiculous. There are some types of 'difficult installations' which are best attacked with aircraft, there are other types which are best attacked with land units, or artillery, or offshore bombardment, or nukes and some of those installations can make it very, very hard to operate aircraft near them. Land units are also quite capable of depending on other land units for defence against the types of threat you listed, mobile flack is great. Aircraft often depend on land units and fixed structures to defend themselves against both other air units and land units. Want to build up a wing of gunships large enough to be effective? I hope your landing field is secure. Yes, ASFs are largely self sufficient - but they are a single role unit which can't actually win the game for you (that's where the Hawk went wrong in TA).

Explain how restricting ammunition would break aircraft on small maps rather than just asserting that's the case.

Sounds like a scapegoat. Even while fighting on multiple planets, there is nothing the developers have mentioned that would suggest that aircraft combat would be much different than it was in the context of the planets themselves.

This is not actually an argument.

I've outlined why I think ammunition and fuel is bad in many other threads already, I don't think having units return to base after every attack is a good idea for many reasons. How are you meant to hide your secret base, if after every attack your aircraft lead the enemy straight to it. That's just one problem. If you have ammunition, how are you going to balance the reduced operational effectiveness. If you just increase the damage per bomb, suddenly you've got a much better unit for assassinating a commander. etc. Try some devils advocate yourself.

Having multiple planets means you cannot just dominate air on the map and be assured victory. While you're doing that someone's just sent an asteroid in to obliterate everything you've just spent your economy on.

I'm trying to get you to think of the implications, because I certainly haven't thought of them all already, and I believe discussing air in isolation of the game they'll be operating in is incredibly shortsighted.

I agree with zordon here, having multiple planets will affect airs effectiveness a lot simply because the large mobility it has limited to only a part of the "map".
When it comes down to it we actually don't know enough about how the game will function to have a debate over how air will be in PA. All we're arguing about now is how to "fix" air in supcom (most of this thread isn't relevant to ta even), which is even sillier when you consider half of us don't even seem to think there was anything wrong with air is supcom anyway.

Are you forgetting air spam in TA with stealth fighters?

Allow me to paint you a picture of the effect of adding limitations to air units, and demonstrate why games get more interesting by adding rules and limitations.

Suppose we have a 1v1 on a big map with large continents, and large bodies of water as well. Playing with restricted air, where planes have limited fuel and limited ammo (on some weapons).

Both players are building air forces to complement their navies and ground armies. Player A is emphasizing air units to a greater extent than player B. A has 6 fleets with a couple carriers each, B only has 6 carriers total. Let's assume their aircraft and carriers are identical in strength, capacity, and other stats.

With unrestricted air, B could never win an air battle, because air units can go anywhere, and their dps is constant. However if we restrict air mobility with fuel, and restrict their damage with ammunition, then air combat becomes more complicated, and if B is clever this can allow B to eke out a victory despite being disadvantaged in raw numbers.

The most obvious maneuver is for B to move his carriers in a large group and attempt to chew on A's air force in smaller pieces. 6 carriers vs a fleet containing 3 at, say, an island called Midway in the Pacific, would probably result in a victory for B, all else being equal. The rest of A's air force has to be close enough to participate to be relevant in that localized fight.

If air units have unlimited fuel and ammo, there is no reason for A to ever let that situation occur. If he keeps his air force together, B's ball is just smaller, and it is not a winnable fight, regardless of B's strategic or tactical acumen.

Except that you're analysing air in isolation. In reality the case is either A has a stronger economy, and B would lose anyway, or B is stronger in another area.

Another thing is you say air can go anywhere, well that's only assuming B hasn't built any AA units or structures, and has failed to defend his base from the obvious threat of A's airforce. In which case B should lose.

These very one sided arguments aren't really very close to reality.

The point is adding restrictions creates ways the clever player can leverage those limitations to advantage.

Who in their right mind would deliberately build AA instead of air units if they had any chance of still winning the air war? Air units can go places and kill stuff. Anti air, especially slow land anti air or static structure anti-air, is not capable of covering as much area as planes can. And furthermore, air control gives you a very concrete advantage that having superior quantities of anti-air simply does not.

So, yes, you could somehow convince the player with the bigger air force to fight you directly over a large quantity of your anti-air. But on a big map, that player would be an idiot to let that happen. Consequently, you want to be the dude with the bigger air force, not trying to fight your way out from under a bigger air ball with a global presence.

But why does that player have a superior air force?

You're preaching to the choir here- assuming equal economy, B must have something else. Be that a bigger land army, going for a superfusion, nuke, experimental, whatever. That's irrelevant.

The point is, when forces are distributed across space, it is possible to gain a local advantage against a larger army, if you just added together all the enemy's hardware. Grouping together just enough to win a localized battle, or hold against a slightly superior force, or to crush a fortified position, all takes different distribution of forces.

Gaining a localized advantage is the most fundamental principle in war, if there is one.

And against the enemy that is so unimaginative that they ball all their forces together on a single point, the countermove is to distribute your forces all over their territory and harass them to death. Don't get into a direct fight. If they're that stupid, they cede to you a localized advantage everywhere, except right where their army is.

I just looked through the Aircraft Fueling thread, and you did address why you think limiting fuel is a bad idea, but not specifically ammunition.

If you want to hide your secret base, then take out his scouts that are following your planes back home, or don't refuel your planes at your secret base. If he can see your planes go to your secret base on radar, then it's not really a secret base.

I'm suggesting that aircraft go from a point of non-balance to balance by limiting their ammo, so no further adjustment would be necessary. Aircraft being able to reach any part of the map as quickly as they do is the increased operational effectiveness that I'm trying to balance.

What you're saying here applies to taking over a planet with any type of unit, not just air. Taking over a planet with anything can't assure you victory because someone could just drop an asteroid on you. This doesn't address the relative balance between aircraft and ground or water units.

It's true that I'm talking about hypothetical balance here, but it's based on past experiences from Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander 1 / FA. If this game has relatively similar aircraft mechanics as either of those games, then we'll probably end up with air imbalanced in late-game or large-map scenarios. I'm all for other solutions that don't limit ammunition, but I don't think limiting ammunition will actually hurt the game, and could provide an interesting dependence between aircraft and their supply units that I've already gone into detail about.

This is just a note that if there are limits on fuel or ammunition for aircraft, then there should exist a mobile unit that could resupply them on land.

In past games I think the aircraft bases would refuel the planes, and there were also aircraft carrier ships. There was no mobile aircraft carrier for land, but that would be helpful.

I wonder about making a flying replenishment aircraft, and if it could be balanced...

In-flight refueling could absolutely work. The only question is whether the unit which does it should itself have limited fuel, albeit in large quantities. Such an aircraft would allow you to extend the range of your other planes arbitrarily, and with natural diminishing returns with distance because they use fuel themselves to fly out.

If we are going big-flying-base route, then that really is a game changer. That would have to be done carefully.

If you'll notice the poll, only 6 votes have been for the fuel system.

The problem with going air early is it leaves you open for a ground attack, you must do substantial economic damage for it to be worthwhile. If you're trying to juggle doing enough damage with limited ammunition or even being able to reach the enemy, then what you're suggesting is actually limiting strategies not increasing them. This is one of the reasons why I so strongly oppose this idea.