Static vs Mobile Defenses

I was going to write an essay but am pleased to find that bobucles has pretty much hit one out of the park on pretty much everything I was going to say. One comment- while making ground units more mobile would stop air units from being a special problem, it could create the same kind of dilemma with ground units as well. Giving players multiple highly mobile deathball options is arguably better than having only one, but I think it makes more sense to restrict air units to make them more interesting than to enable ground units. It also differentiates air and ground thematically, which is stylistically appealing at least to me.

Diminishing returns for very large forces are absolutely vital. This warrants repeating. For all units, but especially for highly mobile units

Role limitations are another avenue we haven't discussed much which could work if designed carefully. I still think a literal leash to a base or carrier is a better solution and allows for air units with almost any functionality or role with suitable limitations. But aircraft with unlimited fuel and ammo might be given other limitations to cause airblobs to be incomplete in terms of available functionality.

This is just an extremely powerful turret. Normal rules work perfectly for it. It is obviously powerful and would need to be expensive, and would completely obviate air play within its range. A very bad unit design, with a binary in-range, out-of-range dichotomy being life and death for an entire air force. Furthermore, what's to stop players from making many of these, and covering a map with instant death for arbitrary numbers of air units? Hardest of hard counters against air. Very bad.

If I might suggest something that fits the topic at hand?

Drone fighter hangers?

A structure dedicated to quickly creating and unleashing throwaway fighters and scouts for defensive purposes?

Not a hard counter, due to the drones being inferior to normal fighters, but to act as a good screen against enemy air blobs by throwing either free or very cheap fighter units an an approving enemy in order to whittle them down in a conflict of attrition?

Drone hangars is an excellent idea that allows a player to cover a lot of area against enemy air units using an effective but limited strength long range anti-air system. Drones can get shot down, depleting the strength of the AA without destroying the hangar, which rebuilds them over time.

I think a good way to add to a drone hangar implementation would be to have regular air units be more expensive, and with more range and lethality than drones. However in close combat the drones are comparable combatants. This means the fighters shouldn't fly into the drones directly- they might win the fight, but it will be highly inefficient, and favorable to the player using the drones.

It makes a quite different kind of air defense which captures the essence of an air patrol, and can be entirely automated. The hangar scrambles drones when enemy air units are detected on radar, and rebuilds any losses.

Still, if all planes function in a manner loosely approximating hangars then the drone hangar isn't so much a special mechanic as a special type of aircraft, and perhaps a special structure that builds and stores them.

Unless of course you don't use the normal rules but make the aircraft automatically avoid it, in which case it's not a normal turret anymore, nor overpowered. It's just a termporary terrain element. Also, the "in-range/out-range" reminds me of this other unit that everybody wanted in... the shield generator.

And finally; what's to stop players from making many of them and covering the map? Ehm... being killed by tanks? If you're still building mass aircraft when your opponent is covering the area with expensive air-killers, you're a bit of an idiot and you deserve the loss.

Will the drones destroy bombers quick enough when dealing with huge air blob? I don't think so. It's not the fighters that are a problem, after all they are useless without bombers or gunships.


Anti air weapons must be fast. Their projectiles must hit before the bombers can drop the bombs. SAM launchers missiles were too slow to counter bombers, which means they were as good as nothing. I'd rather have good AA turrets than a cluster of drones above my base.

A single bombing run is almost inevitable without interception.

TA tried to cover this with pop-up turrets and unpacking solar generators who had more health when not functioning, and Quite a few people have suggested this, but the majority never really cared for the idea.

Interception is a real planes job, but otherwise you will have to live with the fist bombs always dropping.
As long as the enemy doesn't get a second.

The purpose of interceptors is to scramble against enemies detected at range, and intercept enemy planes before they reach your base. They can also follow those planes and can have a dogfight over your base if it comes down to it. While "real" fighters should be ideal at this job, with longer operational range and more lethal weapons, drones should function in similar fashion.

I think the same system should be used for air superiority birds, fighters, interceptors, and drones. Several kinds of airbase might be used, but it's the same principle with different craft. Airbases and carriers would have real planes, whereas a drone hangar might be a combined production and airbase facility that only accommodates drones which cannot rebase.

I also think you are making a mistake if you think AA should mean you intercept enemy planes with zero damage to your perfect little base. We want there to be lots of damage on both sides, and lots of attacking constantly. The player using the planes should expect to get some damage when they commit planes. However losing planes should really sting.

That's exactly what AA should do. Planes cannot counter AA and that's their weakness.


like plujsien said:

I don't really see difference will the planes be killed by drones or AA guns. The only difference is that drone system is more complicated and requires microing and attention while turrets work automatically.


If there was a drone system in this game, you could easily make a AA turret that's firepower/cost ratio are equal to the firepower/cost ratio of this drone mechanic. Then you could make the turret use energy every time it shoots to (somehow) resemble the cost of the drones that would be destroyed during an air fight. There you have the simplified version of the drone system, aka. AA-turret.

You are suggesting a hard counter, where attempting to (or accidentally) commit planes against anything more than token defense results in all planes dying before they fire. Planes are already weak to AA due to their low health to damage output. The problem with air blobs was that they would either always kill their intended target regardless of defense, there was never a battle or that you had the capability to instantly destroy any thing that stepped out from underneath the protection of what AA they did have.

A no fly zone is also a hard counter (in more ways than one, invisible wall)

Drones are almost by definition under automatic control, they have a built in response radius and will either already be patrolling that or launch against any target that enters it. They in many ways are turrets however they engage the enemy with their fighters, causing interceptors to break formation, some damage and in general serve to supplement both your AA and defending air force rather than replace either.

You can also attack the bomb. If you do it early enough, it'd count as a sopwith kill.

Sometimes. More generally, drones are slaved to some kind of master. The idea is that they are not quite fully capable on their own, and rely on the master to carry and support them.

I do like drones, but I like independent aircraft even more. There's so much more they can do, and they can work without being OP.

Booooooring. The strongest and most consistently powerful counter is to render the air units unable to attack. This can be done by blocking air vision and generally finding ways to hide things. Denying damage from heavy weapons is also important, as well as having a strong first strike to retaliate with.

No defense should be perfect, and air defense is no exception. Just because an air raid is inefficient doesn't mean it should be ineffective.

This here is the biggest issue I have with traditional aircraft implementations. AA and air balance was such that you could always group your aircraft with enough power to completely mash any attempt to leave the defensive umbrella. So the only counter is to have your own airblob, which you use to attack their airblob, and the loser limps home with a few aircraft and the winner gets to destroy anything unprotected.

I like Bobucles ideas a lot, and an interesting twist on his idea of radar being for aircraft-only could be that aircraft have vision related to how high they fly - high up for larger vision, but less precise (cannot identify ground units that have active camo?), and in range of more AA / radar. Fly low for precise targeting and identification, but have a much reduced vision range. You could even add effects like dust and smoke that limit the ability to target mobile units and make it harder for gunships to hang out in one location.

Additionally, I'd love to bring back the idea of a proper bombing run.
1) Bombers cannot drop bombs through each other (must spread out!)
2) Bombers cannot turn on a dime
3) Bombers need time to line up on target and drop their bombs
(Optional) 4) Bombers have a limited payload and must reload
5) Bombers carry an enormous explosive payload. Lets see it explode when a bomber gets taken out! Bonus points for having bombers that crash into the ground explode as well.

Finally, I'd love to see anti-weaponry in effect. Anti-bomb batteries on the ground, chaff for aircraft, bomber-mounted phalanx turrets, decoy drones and so on.

to the OP:

Porcing, turtling, steamrolling, wet willies, wedgies, sniping, nuking, harassing, flying outside the map borders, LRPS... ANY strategy should be able to win if performed correctly. That is the reason why its called strategy and reason why people play this damn genre.

If theres only one or two ways to win then Im afraid the game has failed to deliver. Balance must allow players to take on 100000x strategies if so they choose.

What I get from your post is that you never got to win against someone like that or your opponents sucked **** at it and well... you got bored.

But the thing is, no one is invincible no matter what strategy they choose.

But what's the difference between destroying the bomber or destroying the bomb? Either ways, bombers are going to be useless if I make bomb destroyers or bomber destroyers.

True. Defenses shouldn't be perfect, but they should be viable counter against an air blob.

It's a super sekrit damage bonus. PA isn't going to have much in the way of damage modifiers, but there's no reason it can't have clever kills. A defense might deal little damage, but if it sets off a bomber's payload then it's now dealing bomber damage. That's easily enough to take down a heavy aircraft.

Bombers have a huge advantage of dealing large amounts of up front burst damage. That kind of alpha strike power is extremely powerful, and a big enough squadron can level bases in few passes. It's likely not possible to stop the bombers from reaching the base, because they're big and heavy and made to reach their target. Forcing interceptors as the only good defense encourages air blob spam, as each player tries to clear the way for his own unstoppable bombs. The next best thing is to attack the payload so that it doesn't end up flattening everything. Dealing extra damage to the bomber is a bonus.

Unlike a super powered AA cannon, a bomb-popping defense would be ineffective against gunships and carpet bombers. Its primary use would be against heavy weapons like big bombs and artillery.

The goal is to make it possible to defend against this tactic by multiple strategies. Currently stopping an air blob comes down to prevention or interception considerably before reaching target.

• The inclusion of a drone tower allows for a certain amount of passive interception that can supplement normal interception. [all those things that have been said about drones thus far]

• tweaking SAMs to reacquire on destruction of target is another change that could help defend against large air waves. This in particular (well so does everything) requires careful balance. For instance just inserting this into sup com would change a tech 3 AA from being almost irrelevant to the alpha strike of a bomber wave to reducing it to near insignificant levels (with shields and such) and that would be too far.

• Increasing the overall effectiveness of flak has also been proposed to deal with that blob like first wave. This is of particular balance issues because it can very easily go from okay to destroys all the air forever, even with marginal increases.

None of these on their own should be a complete shield, they each have their strengths and weaknesses, as they should. And none of them necessarily have to hard counter massed air, but a cunning combination or using what you need as the situation evolves and allowing for multiple avenues of choices is what can make PA interesting.

My favorite type of drone is the mine. Cheap to use, easy to deploy, and very effective if they fly. Airplanes depend on being fast, so let them run straight into a wall of death. :lol:

An airborne trap could deal a very powerful defensive first strike.

The reason I stopped play SupCom was because they nerfed the bejesus out of turtling trying to make it like every other RTS out there, most land controlled = most power. I'd say it sank them.

I will buy this game 100% but if I can not turtle I won't stick around(. The past speaks for it's self there is a demand for this type of RTS(turtle friendly). I am hoping I can infact turtle a small area like I did in TA and achieve victory. I should specifiy by turtle friendly I mean it's possible to do it not you have to. You don't turtle in SC2, your resources will run out..........

This is why I hate maps in SC that have like 6 mass points at spawn, if most of the mass is outside of the spawn area, people can't turtle as effectively

That's more so on smaller maps, on bigger maps there are enough Mexes between bases that if you grab them you're eco will be huge in comparison to his "6" Mexes.

Mike