Hovers are op? Discussion (BA)

[manored]

I think yes, and I will give as example a game I just had in small supreme: I was in the metal rich area of land that sprouts from the mainland and I had to take sea. But instead of going sea, I went hovers, while letting enemy take sea. Then I attacked with hovers and killed out the enemy sea completely, after what I made sea and used submarines to kill their mexes so I could take em...

Hovers are as good as tech 1 sea (and considering how dam expensive tech 2 sea is we can exclude it since sea battles end early most times) and can go on land, where they are as good as tech 1 land units... and they cost the same! If that is not OP, I dont know what is :) Beside, sea has trouble defending from hovers, as they are immune to torpedos, and if you make stuff capable of shooting hovers you will be vulnerable to submarines (Destroyers suck unleash if used as arti)

Discuss:

[LordMatt]

Corvettes > Hovers. Whoever you played was a nub.

[ralphie]

No.

[manored]

I made a test with 10 anacondas (arm assault hover) against 8 (To even the metal cost up) arm corvettes: 4 arm corvettes lived a bit damaged: While corvettes can fight back hovercrafts efficiently, you need to waste almost the same amount of metal than the enemy wasted in his hovers to do so. Still looks like hovers are OP to me.

In fact hovers are greatly helped by the human factor: Most sea players forget about hovers and rely his safety on torpedo launchers, consequently being overun by hovers later. The fact that people dont notice that destroyers arent meant for battle but for artillery/antisubmarine helps too, and land people also forget to defend their beaches quite oftenly. Maybe adding some sort of underwater defense/submarine that can shot hovers?

[det]

Corvettes > Hovers. Whoever you played was a nub.

I used to say the same thing. Then a couple weeks ago I made a test game to prove my point. I found that anaconda and corvette were pretty much equal for cost. I am pretty sure this was not the case before. I wonder how this came to be. Maybe Spring engine changes?

[PRO_rANDY]

ask yan

[LordMatt]

In fact hovers are greatly helped by the human factor: Most sea players forget about hovers and rely his safety on torpedo launchers, consequently being overun by hovers later.

Then they should lose to hovers because the other player exploited their weakness. Hovers also require a separate lab with cons that don't have the enormous build power of sea cons.

[Evil4Zerggin]

and can go on land, where they are as good as tech 1 land units...

They are not. A Stumpy has more hit points, range, DPS, speed, and AoE, for less metal, energy, build time, and tech, having only slight disadvantages in turn rate and weapon velocity.

However, the advantage of Corvettes over hovers is much more dubious. Estimating the standard 60 energy per metal, and ignoring build time:

Anaconda
Cost: 310
HP: 1377
DPS: 70
Max Speed: 2.53

Decade
Cost: 412
HP: 1650
DPS: 146
Max Speed: 3.25

We see that the Decade has less hit points per cost, while having quite a bit higher DPS per cost (but see below). The smaller number of Decades per cost means that they are less vulnerable to splash, but there's not much splash in a T1 sea situation, so this doesn't really help anything.

Range and turn rate are about equal. Anaconda suffers from shot travel time BUT Decade suffers from the hardcoded minintensity = 0.5 (damage decreases linearly to half at max range), not to mention burning 20 energy per shot, or 58 energy per second when in combat. This puts a huge dent in the Decade's DPS advantage.

In addition to these theoretical numbers, we have det's testing. In light of the numbers, the results are hardly surprising.

Does this mean that Anaconda is OP? I would say no. They are clearly not as good as Stumpy, especially for cost.

Instead, I would say that the problem lies more with the Corvette. I would suggest doing some or all of the following:

1. Speed boost. Did you know that each side's royers are faster than their corvs? Granted, the royer is less maneuverable, but this always struck me as strange.
2. HP and/or DPS boost.
3. Decrease or remove firing energy cost.

[HeavyLancer]

The tech factor is the most important to hovers. They are best used in surprise situations by land players, not as a sea replacement.
Example: I played a game recently on RainShadowRidge where I went sea for my team. I actually spent a little time building up my econ, but by the time the other player had gotten a single hover I had taken sea, consolidated parts of it, and had 4 or so 'vettes blockading him. He couldn't recover from that, and he made it worse by sending them in piecemeal.
I won the sea, consolidating it by killing all defenses near the sea with 'royers and finally teching to seaplane to help the rest of my team. My side won.

[Sleksa]

I made a test ...

THANK YOU COME AGAIN

[det]

Decade doesn't reach full DPS.

[Machiosabre]

sea still sucks. next discussion!

[ginekolog]

and can go on land, where they are as good as tech 1 land units...

Instead, I would say that the problem lies more with the Corvette. I would suggest doing some or all of the following:

1. Speed boost. Did you know that each side's royers are faster than their corvs? Granted, the royer is less maneuverable, but this always struck me as strange.
2. HP and/or DPS boost.
3. Decrease or remove firing energy cost.

I agree here, never knew that corv does less damage per range. Any other unit with similar disadvantage?

Hovers are good as they are actually used now. AIR kills them HARD, so should corvetes. Perhaps increased DPS to hover amour type so we dont wreck sea1 balance?

[manored]

Personally I think that being a little weaker than sea and a little weaker than land doesnt covers up for the fact that they can tread upon both land and sea and are torpedos-immune.

This discussion also called my attention to another point: Sea doesnt haves metal start positions, what is sort of hardzarous for players who want to go sea only. The fact that the commander is designed for land (cant fight back and freaking slow) also hurts it. Dont know how hard would be to do this, but how about giving the mod 2 diferent commanders to those from, like, one designed for sea? :)

[SwiftSpear]

They aren't really "a little weaker than sea". There are only really 2 sea units that can kill hovers for cost, and most sea players will have few of those units if they were fighting another sea player (because corvets and fhlt suck against most sea stuff)

Hover players, if they aren't seen building the hovers, will almost always steamroll a sea player.

[Evil4Zerggin]

Any other unit with similar disadvantage?

AFAIK minintensity = 0.5 default applies to all beamlasers, unless another minintensity value is specifically applied. This would mean that all beamlasers, from LLTs to HLTs to tachyon accelerators, are affected. I haven't tested all units to see if this really the case, though, although I did do a damage per shot test of corvettes which showed the reduced damage.

[KDR_11k]

Use minIntensity=1; to fix it but be warned, it may cause balancing issues.

[PRO_rANDY]

its fine

[[Krogoth86]]

Well - it's the same problem I pointed out back in the 5.91 thread. The minintensity problem makes some units that are well balanced stats wise bad. I used it to proof my point that the Annihilator is underpowered (i.e. imo underpowered stats wise but even more through minintensity). So here you have the two screens again:

Image 1
Image 2

Here you see an Annihilator dealing just 2454 damage instead of its 5000. Together with its high reload time you now can imagine how much dps this long range weapon wastes...

EDIT:
Maybe some experiences I have from EXTA as I made all lasers lose this damage falloff. I liked the outcome as especially at T1 the turrets get a bit stronger and so things like a one skirmisher unit spam gets less effective. The difference was not too big though so I'd vote for a general minintensity=1 in BA too...

[I2:Isaacment_Day]

hovers are really energy costly and the lab costs more

you need a really well developed energy econ to run a hover war so just going by metal cost isnt very good at all


edit: if it was changed in the last few versions i might not know what im talking about but last time i used them they were still balanced with caydrs energy cost 'barrier' system