There needs to be more anti tank options

Just a reminder. In vanilla SupCom planes were really fragile compared to Forged Alliance. AA did less damage as well.

If I remember correctly it changed because gunships could hit other gunships while strat bombers were a too effective counter to Aeon Czars and Cybran Soul Rippers.

We had a massive thread on that issue where, I think, the resulting consensus was that we won't get non-stackable air as the issues it creates with pathfinding, etc. were quite difficult to solve.

So, I wouldn't take that as a possible balance mechanism as for all we know we won't get that.

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Since this thread got thoroughly offtopic lets return to anti tank options:

Anti-tank vehicle. I want one. :mrgreen:

Less hp then a tank, higher movement speed and acceleration, horrible turn rate, higher rate of fire with slightly lower damage, higher range of main gun. Now the most important part: Its not turreted. Its cannon has a firing arc of 30-45° and can't fire upwards. Fast pitch and yaw within its small fire arc, but to fire on things on its side it has to sloooowly turn its entire body.

Thus, its easily to get to a position thanks to its speed, will die without recourse when get flanked but when attacked head on its decimating. Even slow tanks can outmanouvre it, bots literally run around it but when you get them positioned in a choke point it shines.

So yeah... anti-tank-tank, you want it. :mrgreen:

Make it cost roughly equal the amount of a Leveler, but with the power to take out three times its cost in enemy Levelers, and you've got a specialised T2 unit.

It's rubbish against Ants and Bots of all kinds, but good at countering Levelers. It's Specialised. Hooray! Finally!

hold on they can't remove air stacking?? where's the threads?

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=45711

I think that was a fairly productive thread about air unit pathfinding/stacking/collisions. Personally I'm in favour of it, I don't see why air units should be exempt from the problems land units face when in large groups, if anything it makes up for the fact that they ignore terrain. But the consensus was that it would be better if they just behaved as in TA and supcom.

Noooooo not that you've named it it will rise again! D:

Mike

really ? I thought one of the things people wanted to change about supcom was the massive air that you'd have to micro into a small ball to maximize damage.

Although I would personally love to be able to use my micro skills from Fa I'm wondering why you guys didn't take the opportunity to ask this so as to get rid of the air deathball.

plus I'm always up for more simulated-projectile-collision-realistic-computer's worst nightmare madness.

It's not that many WANT it to be like SupCom, many don't, myself included, but frankly a lot of people don't appreciate exactly how difficult it could be.

Mike

The whole argument collapsed in on itself with one side saying "It'll be relatively easy to implement." and the other saying "Nuh-uh!"... and of course there's at least 2 pages of people arguing the semantics between Clipping and Collision.

...fun...

Well I know it's not easy to implement, but it sounds like something PA really needs and would really make it stand out as unique (even more than is already the case).

I know it's hard with the speed at wich planes travel and such (that speed being redonculously slow and still the computer sees a world of difference compared to tanks) but alot of this issue is due to the game being unoptimized.

It's possible that the Flocking Behaviour tweaks that Uber are working on, while not exactly removing air units clipping altogether, may force them to spread out and adopt a sensible attack pattern.

Possible compromise... not sure if it'll work yet, since Garat was hazy on the details.

Ok. If they just spread out that's already better than nothing and already cancels out your big air deathball.

Well that thread was... enlightening

I'm intrigued to see what Uber have in store for flocking behaviour also...

Forcing Air units into some form of formation, rather than all clipping together into an ungodly clusterf*ck would certainly be appreciated.

Elitron Please tell us more!

Air units do actually spread out if you give them a move order on a distant point of the planet. Because they're all in a slightly different position, they'll spread out all over the planet. It's a pretty cool natural effect, great for scouting missions.

What if they all take off from almost the exact same spot?
And what if you want them in something a little closer resembling a formation, rather than a spread out messy trickle?

When I said it's useful for scouting missions I meant it's only useful for scouting missions. With maybe 15 Scout Planes you can do a visual sweep of an entire scale 4 planet using that method.

Formations will be good for everyone. I'm not saying they're bad.

My apologies, i thought you meant all the aircraft would travel through the air in exactly the same spot, i.e. like a big buggy unit, rather than a swarm that doesn't care where other units are during maneuvering. Which is a totally different matter.

Anyway, if they were all barrell rolling and whatever to get past each other, wouldn't that just have the exact same effect as no clip maneuvers, just with fancier animations?

My apologies, i thought you meant all the aircraft would travel through the air in exactly the same spot, i.e. like a big buggy unit, rather than a swarm that doesn't care where other units are during maneuvering. Which is a totally different matter.

Anyway, if they were all barrell rolling and whatever to get past each other, wouldn't that just have the exact same effect as no clip maneuvers, just with fancier animations?

No problem.

Perhaps on the surface, sure. but what I meant was if you implemented aerial units with a surrounding area that others try to avoid overlapping, then you wouldn't be able to fill an area with so many aircraft as you can now.

Example. If it's just on the ground, they'll just land right next to each other, no big deal. Not like they're flying around to smack into each other, right? But when you have several dozen fighters patrolling in one area, they should naturally take paths that don't overlap other aircraft. This would not only affect allied aircraft but enemy aircraft as well. You won't see aircraft phasing through each other, but actually dogfighting and calculating their vertical hight and closeness to other aircraft and their trajectories. I mean, everything's already the best right? If it comes down to the unit itelf knowing that it can't win, or will be destroyed soon, it would force trajectory into a nearby enemy aircraft and collide, taking both units down. Assuming any enemy aircraft doesn't get a lock-on before that happens. Making the count -1 unit for both sides instead of a -1 for only one side. Self-sacrifice is the ultimate final tactical decision, and the units should be smart enough to know when they have no chance to survive by the trajectory calculations.

In the way of gunships, They wouldn't be able to fly nearby each other while taking on any target, some would have to be above, some below, and would need to surround the target in larger numbers. They would strafe to avoid any anti-air fire, and in doing so, make the amount of gunships able to attack the same target less. The problem is they'd have to have something that tells them to stay at their maximum distance from the object as to not be a danger to itself, removing the ability for any gunships to attack the target from behind the first. That way, you don't get rows of gunships behind others and becoming a hive swarm like the other games.