Air Rebalance

The problems with planes as I see it are:

1. Plane vs Plane is boring.
-a. Plane is almost mandatory to counter enemy planes.
-b. It degenerates to fighter vs fighter, which is unfun.

2. Bombers are strong early, but diminish in usefulness into mid game as AA is established.
-a. AA is hard to invest in early.
-b. Until you get enough AA to shoot down one bomber, you're not doing any damage.
-c. Once you get enough AA to start killing bombers, they take too much attrition to be viable, so must be used only in areas where there is no AA (mostly defensively).

I'd like to hear primarily if people agree that these are the problems, and to expand/clarify this list, so we can start talking causes and solutions. The discussion below from the other thread can be continued though. This is the development forum so expect heavy moderation to keep it on-topic.

Saktoth

quote: When planes went to the reload style and got roughly doubled speed, AA was balanced to be able to hurt bombers in the tiny window they spend over AA. So fighters have seen their HP just inflate and inflate and still not be enough (to the point fighters can spoof AA fire), and AA/plane damage/HP ratios were cut to 1/4th to make gunships viable. AA is designed to reduce bombers from 100%-0% in the fraction of a second they spend in it's coverage (and the ranges are huge, to increase the coverage), because anything else is simply not real damage and will just be healed through. These are some pretty incredible problems. It might be simpler to fix this if we just slowed down planes.

@Kingraptor

quote: I'm not opposed to it, but it doesn't really solve the problem of bombers being either shot down for massive loss or escaping and repairing for next to nothing. Well, if bombers were cheaper and died more often, they'd probably be used more like the silo missiles, with calculations of expected tradeoff and such. That wouldn't be so bad, actually.

GoogleFrog

quote: Would you halve bomber stats? We're moving into 'redo bombers' territory but that might not be a bad idea.

Saktoth

quote: I'd do the opposite. Raise the cost and HP, but keep the damage the same. This lowers the DPS potential from early unopposed bomber rushes but allows them to scale better into the mid game vs AA. The Licho demonstrates how this works quite well, it's for-cost comparisons are just terrible (like 4x-2x worse) but because it can get a volley back and repair it's still worth making. Think about it. You halve bomber costs, and now you can rush an early pheonix twice as fast (and it can still kill windgens/mexes with half damage). But the point at which you can no longer make pheonixes now comes twice as fast (and it's pretty fast now!). With this change you'd need only a razors kiss and pheonixes are useless. Once you actually have enough AA to kill the first bomber in the pack, your AA can switch focus and kill the second, third, fifth, etc. I designed units like the Hacksaw to ONLY do limited attrition damage, but most AA still doesn't operate this way. Which is the reasoning behind lowering bomber speed. It means AA can be less instagib, it gives you reaction time and planning, it allows fighters to actually dogfight over AA without having ridiculous HP values. There are less dramatic ways to solve the issue, but this is where the problem was first created.

No saktoth has it mostly down to earth correct

and mandatory planes is a problem
mainly because its a forced delegation for the higher skilled players as newer and worse players will just mess it up leaving your side down the anti air player and a ground factory which could have been useful if just for numbers

and because planes are fairly monotonous right now it becomes boring to be them again and again because no one else will

You're right Google. When I say Fighters have had their HP buffed massively to survive land AA I don't mean they're good at it. The fact they still drop like flies even with all their HP just shows how instagibby AA is, because you just cannot afford to spend time dogfighting on top of it.

But, early game, you cannot afford AA. It is just fighter vs fighter, until there is established land AA. There is then a small window where you have enough land AA to stop enemy fighters, but not enough to stop bombers. That is the window when bombers are useful, and I don't think it's very large. The team that loses the air war has to invest a lot more in AA or be bombed, but IMO the main purpose of planes is forcing AA rather than doing damage.

I agree with everything Licho said, except that I think activables are not the answer. Planes being mandatory in 4v4+ is fine, but it IS a problem if planes are boring, I.E, you can't just opt out, someone is forced to play a boring matchup or lose: antifun.

Air was originally designed to be a force of atritition.

Bombers were meant to have small dps output and high capital cost.
They were meant to rearm long, even with some metal cost.
One of the initial ideas even was "one pad per bomber".
Bombers were meant to damage frontlines slowly over time but not be decisive all or nothing air raid monster we know from BA.

Somehow through ongoing buffs this was lost even from imperfect initial state:

• stiletto used to drop bombs and not be crazy strong
• precision bombers used to toss bombs, they had much smaller hp and high chance to miss (no insta hit commander!!)
• bombers took longer to repair before repair was buffed

As a result of gradual changes bombers became stronger. To counter that we created boring instagib ground AA killer machines and had to buff fighters too.
This creates all or nothing gameplay which is boring and not satisfying.

I would suggest to go back to original design plan.

quote: Sure on big teams planes are "mandatory" but is that bad - ships are also mandatory on a sea map.

Air tends to become mandatory even in 1x1 the moment your enemy gets one.

I'll use the remaining space in this message to +1 the idea of a fighter RPS triangle.

My take (rather than "anti-gunship"): swarmer/antibomber (agile, paper, fast), superiority fighter(agile, tanky, slow, high rof), interceptor(clumsy, medium armor and speed, high alpha).

It seems to me that air has a far too limited selection of units compared to ground and even sea. (note that I consider gunships to be “those fast hovers that AA can shoot at”, not actual air units)

If there where some light, low-altitude, somewhat slower fighter-bombers for early-game close air support, and light air to air combat, both bombers and specialized fighters could be more expensive (and in some cases stronger too)

Also…in the previous thread I posted a different formula for AA range, do any of the devs have any opinion regarding it? (I can post it again if necessary)

I wont find quote, but remember some dev said it something like this "if I would make planes from scratch would remove AA only weapons everything can shoot everything XTA style" or something like that.

Here are some ideas:
- Fighters are currently massed in many games. Making fighters more costly but also more efficient would increase micromanagement of fighters in midgame. I suppose that would make them more fun. A problem might be lower attrition.
- Maybe have a plane with an active "electronic countermeasure" that would cloak nearby planes for a short period of time and thus protect them from aa. This could make bombers viable in mid to lategame for a micro cost.
- balance ground aa so that it has high damage but slow rate of fire. in order to prevent spoofing, micro would be needed (holdfire, set target). This might be impracticable due to defenders dual role and chainsaws not fitting in that layout.
- i am also in favour of active fighter abilities. the cloaker was already mentioned but also missiles would be a nice-to-have. both would have to be recharged at an airpad.
- maybe there could also be an increase in strategic role of airpads? Make them more expensive, so that they actually become interesting targets. In real wars, airstrips are often strategic targets either to conquer or make them unusable. Making airpads somewhat "rarer" by increasing their cost would add the option to a game to reduce enemies air capacities by emping or destroying them.
- There could be a plane that has a single unit stun in form of a slow travelling rocket (needs to be recharged). This rocket would be easy to dodge by mobile units (eg commander, we do not want another flying infiltrator), have no area of effect but be strong enough to stun static aa (hacksaw) for like 2-4 sec. This could provide a small time window to let some bombers slip past the fist aa line and reach inland targets or bomb the aa itself.

First, I'll preface this: I suck. Especially at air. So just keep scrolling.

Anyhow, I agree with Saktoth's list of issues, the interactions are both too simple and they have a bad curve over the course of the game.

To fix the curve issue? Embrace that this is a two-tier game and move the special support facs into the second tier. Air, Gunships, Athena, Strider Hub, and Missile Silo. Mark them all as non-ploppable "Support Factories" with 1000 cost. No more air-starts. Removes a bunch of the opening-action RPS from the game.

Second, remove pure-air-to-air units. The default for air is flex-AA. This makes an air-to-air game more interesting since there are more viable unit options.

Divvy air units up into three roles:
1) "Tanks". Slow, extremely low-DPS, low-alpha antiswarm weaponry and can tank a tonne of damage.
2) "Strikers". High-alpha anti-heavy weaponry, and enough health to deliver it.
3) "Interceptors". Super-low-weight, raw firepower and terrible health.

Interceptors kill Strikers (interceptors are low-weight, strikers carry anti-heavy weaponry), Tanks kill Interceptors (riot-y weaponry and their low DPS doesn't matter when your targets are made of paper), and Strikers kill Tanks (tanks don't have enough firepower to kill Strikers before they deliver the payload).

So we have an RPS triangle. Interceptors are primarily defensive units because they'll die up front, but they tend to be the fastest and cheapest so you can cover more of your base with them. Strikers and Tanks are both offensive, but can be used defensively for riot or anti-heavy work, respectively.

Now, the existence of Tanks means that we need surface AA to properly prioritize. Hacksaws can not waste shots on Brawlers. So simplify sjeah's AA micro widget - repurpose the useless "return fire" firestate mode to automatically attack available units that are not in badtargetcategory. Rename "return fire" into "discriminate".

For AA, the Screamer needs to be something other than Chainsaw++, and Chainsaw needs to be something more than Hacksaw++. This will reduce the problem of "welp, he has a chainsaw, time to give up on air". Make Chainsaw stockpile-based but with a finite stockpile... so theoretically it can be depleted with judicious use of shields and flybys and whatnot.

Screamer, on the other hand, goes back to its BA purpose - pure long-ranged area denial. Make it terrible for actual base defense. It's artillery for exerting your reach over more space.

Cobra's blast radius is a solution looking for a problem. Repurpose it for raw, unbridled DPS over a short distance.

Then we've replicated the triangle on the ground - the Cobra brings raw DPS, it brings down Tanks. The Hacksaw still takes out Strikers. The Razor takes out Interceptors... which isn't really a hard task, which is why it also sports long range and excellent survivability.

Now, for the individual units:
In the Plane lab, the Shadow is now a flex-AA unit. The bomb is replaced with a very short-ranged missile. It's your mainline Striker. The Avenger is your Interceptor, obviously. The Vamp and Stiletto are converted into tanks - exaggerate the vamp's "slows down with attack" feature to effectively make its speed only useful for arriving at the battlefield. Its weapon is converted into a Tankish weapon - a low-DPS riot weapon. Flame-bullets or something. The Stiletto is converted into a sluggish flying low-power Outlaw that pulses *constantly*. Just give it a fake weapon and have it incessantly outlaw-pulse. No refueling anymore.

For the Phoenix, I'd just gut the weight on it and make the bomb purely fireball damage - not ignite targets. That means it's primarily useful against slow/immobile things. But at the same time, increases its total damage potential. Basically, Phoenix is used to stop advancing forces and demolish bases, but suffers from serious attrition when used aggressively because of its low weight. Ignition is the real problem with the current phoenix - it lets it one-shot massive low-weight armies since they all burn to death.

On the gunship lab, the Brawler loses speed and DPS and gets a pinpoint-accurate weapon. The Blackdawn gets a precision missile instead of a swarm of them. Possibly a widget/gadget would be needed to improve Blackdawn AI such that it backs off between firings so it won't have to tank damage when it really shouldn't need to. The Rapier is your interceptor - gut its armor and buff its weapon. Dunno what to do with the Banshee... that thing's a mess.

You can now stop scrolling and read the posts made by those who know what they're talking about.

What do you think about air in this game? http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/150876