POLL: Balancing Air - Continued!

Moving on from this Poll: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...-no-come-and-suggest-for-the-next-poll.56055/

I'm creating another based upon the suggestions the community made there.

I'm of the opinion that Air is currently imbalanced, and even if it reaches as state comparable to that of SupCom, it will still be imbalanced for two major reasons:

1. Its ability to inflict overlapped AOE Damage, leading to invasions and land/naval travel being practically impossible without fighter support - a serious problem when the Unit Cannon comes in, and only solvable with the prospect of inter-planetary aircraft. I hate this solution as if Air can only be countered with Air, it is patently imbalanced. Also, suicide runs on commanders/anti nukes detract from any kind of strategic/tactical game-play and invalidate most other units in the game apart from AA.
   
2. Its unequalled freedom of movement coupled with this stacked damage. This is once reason I feel Air should be more expensive and slower to build - the advantage of avoiding terrain should not come easily. Spamming swarms of fighters also increases lag, and such a tactic being necessary every game in order to secure your base leads to repetitive and ultimately boring game-play. Anybody who has read me knows my opinion anyway, so I won't overdo it.

This Poll:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...al-and-big-guns-what-is-the-core-of-pa.54505/
makes an argument against the role of Air and Orbital, and explains why Ground/Naval Combat is more engaging. The Community largely agreed with this - However there is no debating the fact that Air must play a crucial role in game-play. It therefore should be decided how the stacked damage capacity of spammed air should be countered.

This may come through a combination of solutions, so I will trust you guys to choose multiple answers without trolling ^^
Please bear in mind that some of these options may be overcome by sheer numbers, which exacerbates the stacked AOE problem with Air to my mind, as the economy in PA grows exponentially and allows spamming (quite rightly). Therefore I feel a behavioural macro solution is required, rather than simple 'stat tweak'.

Edit: I forgot to put the option of 'I'm comfortable with Air, it's completely balanced or at least will be' - Please say so if this is you!

Edit 2: Just came from a short game where I got simultaneously nuke-rushed and then my Commander spam bombed by T2 bombers. Took the same tactic next game, spammed several hundred T1/2 Fighters and Bombers, made a suicide run on the enemy's commander, killing him in 5 seconds flat. Very laggy game, not very long. I also spammed orbital fighters and won by numbers there first too.
Can confirm this is the norm, and disappointing.

Too bad you didn't include an "all of the above" option

Hah! Well ticking ALL THE THINGS is fun anyway xD

I voted for points 1,2,4,5. I think point 2 is more of an aesthetic choice and will rarely ever make a difference - tank armies stationed on mesas notwithstanding - but hey, anything that adds to the atmosphere is a plus in my book.
Realistic movement for air units I don't like because that would introduce all manner of hassles when it comes to ordering them about.
Finally I don't think per-unit-stealth can be introduced to a game of PA's scale and momentum in a meaningful way.

I should clarify that I assumed some form of mobile emitter with AOE.

*Yawn* A lot of treatments here, but no cures.

Apologies for the plainly bad phrasing there. What I meant was 'deployable mobile sources of stealth'. I just think the asymmetry it creates is too much for PA. Even without stealth it is hard to keep track of stuff on multiple battlefields, let alone planets. Being subject to stealth attacks is something that might be too easily missed.

Well then, your chance to make a difference...

Would you prefer to be treated, or left to suffer?
I would expect a less apathetic tone from somebody with your signature.

IMO, stopping overlap would basically cure instant game-ending bomber runs on Commanders, which apart from looking buggy as hell, invalidate every other mode of combat.

such a useless comment when you aren't offering one

I like the idea of air units not overlapping, but if the game did go this route, I'd like to see air formations put units in a mix of altitudes. As long as there is enough room to drop bombs without hitting a bomber underneath, there's no reason bombers can't fly higher or lower than other bombers.

Also if you do start mixing altitudes it would allow for a variety of AA defenses that are effective at different altitudes (Example: flak for engaging gunships and lower and carpet bombers, while using some sort of long range missile defense system to combat high altitude bombers)

This might be viable, so long as damage doesn't stack up as it does now; there would still need to be a finite amount of space for aircraft, above each other or not.

Yep, different aircraft could have different minimum and maximum altitudes, you'd only be able to fit so many in that range. Also I would hope the formation system would leave a believable amount of space for units to shoot through without hitting other friendlies, that way you don't end up with a solid cube / sphere of aircraft (which would actually look kind of funny)

I'd like to see another option added to the poll, if possible - Friendly Fire splash on bombers.

The Friendly Fire thread has ballooned to nearly ten pages as of this posting, primarily in the affirmative; I feel that friendly fire on bombers would force players to be more discriminate in their use. Defending with bombers becomes a poor choice, making them primarily suited to attack; adding forced spread/formations to make them unable to focus fire would further specialize them for carpet-bombing enemy bases, which is how most people want to see them used anyway.

Not unit stacking for air units is pretty critical. It'll help out so many things – both for the players doing the bombing and for the players receiving the bombs.

It's probably a little too early to start talking about bomber reload times since that is pretty fine tuned balancing. The game need to progress a little further before we start haggling over small tweaks like that.

I also support air units moving more realistically. Fighters and Bombers shouldn't be able to hover. They should be constantly moving. And that could bring in the need for a repair station. I'd have a runway and a storage hanger so air units could land, get repaired, and then head back out.

I don't think this would do anything apart from introducing more clutter and confusion. Where to draw the line between high air and low orbital? And what about gunships hugging the ground versus hover units? Nice idea but not fit for PA in my opinion.

If by stacking you mean that units are on top of each other, couldn't a flak cannon easily counter a big blob of bombers if it can damage the whole "stack"? Would this be too unbalanced the other way, though?

I'm in favor of longer build times/more expensive. If you take the United states military for example, we have roughly 20,000 ground combat vehicles in service, including tanks, artillery, and armored anti personnel vehicles, and disregarding APCs. Compare that with the <5000 in air combat vehicles, including attack choppers, jets, and ground attack fighters.

4 to 1 Ratio of ground to air.

Taking a quick look at the data in https://forums.uberent.com/threads/pa-stats-charts.56126/#post-863880 this thread, reveals that we have ROUGHLY >700 ground assault units to >300 air units in the average game (without time restrictions). I feel like if aircraft were made more expensive, and balanced more thoroughly, tactics such as going fast t2 air or all in for air would become cheesey(all or nothing), discouraging their use, especially with effective counters balanced in to the game.

Not even taking in to account the number of boots on the ground we have haha

How do multiple bombers converge over a target without being able to overlap, and wouldn't flak shred such a stacked formation anyway?

Different individual attack vectors allow convergence without stacking, all while reducing vulnerability to flak fire. Blobbed air units on the other hand will of course always be wasted by flak. The question is: Before or after they released their payload?