PTE build 75134-main (please post feedback and bugs here)

There is unused code in system_editor.js that basically makes the UI hold a list of all know brushes, decals and features already. It's unusued yet. It was added in the current stable build. Whoever wrote it had exactly in mind what you want. I'd hope they still have it mind. It's just easier to first provide hotkeys, as they are super quick to implement and people want to have fun with them

Thanks for the helpfull responce. I still think basic AA is underpowered and the 9000 fighter and 1 bomber strat is overpowered. Also, if you lose your fighters in a fight once, there is almost no way to get enough fighters again to engage the enemy swarm if he plays any good. Basic aa could be stronger against fighters to slow down the fighter snowball and create more chances of getting back into the airgame.

Like I said already: The problem is thew flight path of AA missiles. Make these missiles travel BELOW the air layer, and suddenly meat shields in the air layer stop working entirely. Plus guard radius larger than weapon range, of course, so that target acquisition can't be cheated.

That's why what we should be aiming to do is decrease fighter hp, not buff aa.

Though I kinda disagree about the no way to get back in. Commander aa is strong so you just need to be patient, and also if your opponent over commits to bombers, that is where you get back in. Like i said before as well, there are ways to snipe off bombers and trade well even with inferior fighter numbers.

@exterminans
There is nothing wrong with the mechanic of using other air units as meat shields. That is the entire point of fighters - to protect other units.

Prior to the current air balance, I used to use t1 bombers as meatshields for my fighters as they used to take 2 hits to die rather than 1 for fighters.

No, that's not how fighters work. They are supposed to act as fast strike AA, opposed to stationary or "slower" mobile AA installations. They have not been designed to be used as decoys or raw meatshields, only the (not specified!) target priorities and the bogus AA missile flight pattern allowed them to be used as such.

Why else would have the fighters have so much health? They were designed to be put up against EACH OTHER whereby the increased health and damage made them less vulnerable to ground installations - necessary since the relation between ground based AA and fighters is as asymmetric as it can get.

That "bomber + meathshield" tactic wasn't even known when the balancing for air was made. Just look at how the balancing was "proven" in PA in the past, two unit types are put up against each other head on with equal metal worth, but side effects of composite armies were never evaluated.

Then you don't want realism, so please stop using the word.

Think about it like this.

If fighters could not meat shield, then why bother? We already see this with protecting air fabbers. You need way more fighters to prevent your air fabber from dying from significantly less fighters. In the end you must consider metal spent to defend vs metal spent to attack. Attack and defence go hand in hand. If there is nothing to defend, there is nothing to attack.

Agree. If this is a reasonable workload I think it should be heavily prioritized.

So, Air is just Ground 2.0 in your terms? The inability to defend airspace without falling back to asymmetric measures such as ground based AA is fundamental. You have to ability to react faster and to be more agile and flexible in movement than in any other layer, but this comes at a cost. Right now, the only disadvantage air fabbers have, is the slightly increased energy upkeep. Apart from that, they are superior in any way, mostly since they are not much harder to defend than a regular ground based fabber, quite the opposite actually, given that they are also more difficult to hunt down.

I agree, a palette would be useful. At the moment a good stop-gap is using Wondible's 'Hidden Biomes' Mod for the System Editor, and copying the CSG from the CSG-Debug planet (which has all the CSG on it), apart from Metal Planet stuff.

Say please! You crumpet.

Yeah I can recreate them later . I always run on max graphics.

I'm gonna start posting these shots elsewhere though, as I don't want to annoy the Uber guys with impractical prettiness.

I couldn't agree more with this. T1 air isn't in a bad place at all, it just seems to be flavour of the month for folks to be discontent with.

I'd really love System Editor CSG controls to have acceleration, e.g.: The longer I hold "scale up" the faster the action occurs. So I can quick tap for minor adjustments. Also, a Yes/No confirmation when a planet generation setting is going to destroy all my CSG placement, such as Height adjustment which seems to discard any previous customisation.

What do you mean ground 2.0, defending air space, ground aa, and stuff about reacting faster? I'm not sure how all that is relevant to the arguement i presented.

To re-iterate, imagine we remove 'meat shielding' like you suggest and both players have the same 10 units metal to spend. Now, one player can spend all of it on 1 bomber and the required 9 fighters to 'try' and sufficiently protect it. The other player only needs to buy say 2 fighters in order to kill the bomber, and can then spend the other 8 units of metal on units that can actually interact with the land sphere. The other player now has a bunch of useless fighters doing jack all and less ground units than his opponent to defend his mex.

From that it's inevitable that the meta will evolve to players not building bombers in standard play, and thus not building fighters as well. If you cannot cost efficiently defend something, then you will not build it. And if you do not build it, your opponent will not need to build units to attack it. It's really as simple as that, there's no need to convolute it with other factors.

As for air fabs, i didn't talk anything about their underlying stats. I said very specifically that you need a disproportionate ammount of metal to defend it compared to what you need to attack it, which is why i brought it up as an illustrative example of this cost behaviour on player decisions. This is why you generally only see air fabs used to ninja mex, since in these cases the player is gambling on the cost to defend = 0.

Most people say the opposite. A lot of people go bot first. They probe around with a dox. They find an air fabber, they shoot it. Or they don't. But, they might find some sort of air unit. Then, they go air with heavy hummingbirds, like 100 to the air player's whatever percentage they have to spend on at least a bomber or two and the air fabbers themselves. Then, the hummingbird blob goes hunting for air fabber. Those are the 2 most common situations with air fabbers.

Trying to change the Metal attributes of a Planet while editing the CSG seems to cause a crash.

I've also encountered a bug where all the CSG on a planet is wiped whilst editing:

Ctrl-E Planet A
Go to Planet B, Ctrl-E, Copy a CSG.
Planet A, Paste CSG, press Ctrl-E.

Mucking around like this will cause planet A to lose its CSG.

BUG: PTE System Designer Blackscreen

• Title above pretty much explains my problem.
• The only other thing is that it still shows the [preview all] [simulate] [clear system] bar on the top and is only black screen where the sun and planets should be.

P.S. There are too many pages to look through to see if this issue has been experienced by someone else or reported by someone else.
P.P.S. Got to make this bug/issue report look legit

I love the air as it is! I wouldn't change a thing! Obviously an unpopular opinion. If I get an opponent that knows how to play the air game it basically ends the air game in a stalemate and land options become more important. Most of the opponents I have played seem to ignore building planes, to their detriment. I just use them to support my land units, take out expansions, and the occasional commander snipe. I can't do any of those if my opponent just knows how to play well. I would vote for leave it be and possibly slightly adjust aa and largely adjust boats.