Balanced Annihilation v4.7 !!

[Machiosabre]

The problem is, that when you build an air factory it's really great as support at lvl1 with good units all round, but you used to be able to use lvl2 air as an actual 1st lvl2 factory.
Right now in a game when you see or, and probably when you don't you'll throw up a few SAMs, which is good against lvl1, nothing wrong with that.

But if someone went lvl2 air you used to have the ability to attack in early and mid lvl2 using gunships. You could cover your losses by spreading missile towers and other lvl1 defenses around but they wouldn't totally stop em until you get some lvl2 aa. Right now they just get raped by those couple of SAMs and missile towers, unless they didn't build any of course . And after the 1st attack you'll just build a few mobile aa units real fast and you'll be safe from that factory for a good while.

Bombers are still great but you don't have the build power and res to really get them going when you just get lvl2, it'd probably be a lot easier to get the resources for that if you go lvl2 vehicles or kbots instead because of the builders.

So lvl2 air is still a useful tool to have but one of the ways to use them got removed with the gunships antimissile damage reduction, and that's a shame because it just makes it easy when someone on the other team goes lvl2 air 1st because he'll be such a gimp instead of someone who can really help his team.
There might not be a problem if everyone just uses lvl2 air as an extra but I think it just removes options from the game.

And having missile towers attack ground would just be annoying imo, you'd just get a small xta effect because to be effective against air the aa units need to have quite some range which messes up the balance it would have vs ground units until it just becomes a really weak annoying artillery unit.

[Neddie]

Peekaboom, that wasn't cynical, it was downright fanciful. I'll just lay out the facts about the Advanced Missile Tower, a focused and interesting unit which has a place as is in the mod, and then we won't need to talk about it again.

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The Advanced Missile Tower has, if I recall, a reload time of fifteen. It fires a single missile which can be counteracted by flares - bring Vultures, children.

The missile has a moderate AoE which might tag three planes if you're clumping them for some insane reason, and deals 1750 damage - which drops to 1313 for gunships. The Krow, Seahook and Titan of Core can all take a single missile and not die, the Krow three of them! The Blade and Liche of Arm also have sufficent health to survive this.

So far, so good. Some planes survive direct hits, the missile can miss, and the reload time is downright terrible.

Now, as per the unit AI in spring, the Advanced Missile Tower automatically fires at the first enemy aircraft to enter range - this means that a leading plane will take most if not all of the first barrage. You can test it yourself.

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And now the errors in arguments against mine!

First, if you don't spread your planes, you shouldn't be using them in the first place. Lesson number two about planes, right after the fact that they are prohibitive in cost for a start and you need to be brilliant to start with them.

Second, nothing aside from a Bertha should have 2400 range? Nuclear facilities? Anti-nukes? Cruise missile/tactical nuke facilities? Not to mention that the argument lacks any substance.

On the point about the missile taking any plane out, except for the cream of the crop, of course it does! Why are you attacking with a single plane, or a small group? Third lesson about planes - they're better in mixed groups - just like everything else in war.

Last time I checked, the only planes more expensive than the Screamer and the Mercury are the Krow and the Liche, though the Blade should be mentioned as it comes a little above 50% of the cost. And the reload time itself should speak for the difficult task of stopping an air assault with them - I have never encountered an effective wall of Advanced Missile Towers, not even on SpeedMetal, where you can spam them like no tomorrow.

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My views on other anti-air units are different. I think the L2 Kbot may still be too powerful, actually, but I'm testing before I actually bring it up.

[LordMatt]

Learning to use air properly is mostly about scouting before using it, and proper micro.

On the topic of seabalance: How about making seaplane platform buildable by regular con ships, and rebalancing stats accordingly. They would get used a whole lot more often then.

[Peekaboom]

neddiedrow:

Point taken. I'll try working around the adv. missile towers. As jellyman pointed out however, it is irritating that planes on patrol can get wrecked my the missile towers. I suppose you can say BB's have the same effect on land units though. I'll live with it.

Overall, I have two general comments on air balance:

1) The investment required in air to overcome AA defenses and maintain a land (or sea force) at the same time is most often prohibitive. I think others are elluding to this.

2) This is somewhat a preference of mine, but I think the game/mod would be better if the primary counter to air was other air. Porc'ers don't win land battles in the long run because mobile units will eventually outrange/outgun/out-live any amount of defenses. You need your own mobile units to "defend the line" and repel the enemy. I'm sorry, but I don't think this is the case with air.

Assuming equal quantities of resources, a person building nothing but air just can't break someone building nothing but AA defenses. By extention in a normal game, someone building a modest amount of planes cannot break a modest amount of air.

Air is really useful only until your opponent realizes (or had the foresight) that you're pushing air builds defenses. After that, the game moves on to something else. Incidentially, I think the main reason why tier3 units are ever needed to break through annihilator walls and the like is because combined tier 2 land/air attacks are largely ineffective.

If you're looking at balance, you may want to look at the level2 anti-air ships (archer/shredder)

[DemO]

+1 to what peekaboom just said.

The reason i think its like this with air balance at the moment is because so many crappy players bitched to caydr in the AA thread to nerf air/improve anti air because they kept getting owned by gunships and bombers. Thus, caydr changed it to keep them quiet.

If this mod is supposed to be balanced, air should be looked at extensively and changes should probably be made at some point, and tested. Get the players that actually know what they're doing to test this and not the ones that will repeatedly make very little anti air and repeatedly bitch that air is overpowered because it kills them.

Death to air can be harsh and quick, but people should just learn to make more anti air, simple as.

[Neddie]

I would like to see weaker Flak across the board, and more flares on planes, as I personally think that Sea balance against Air is absurd... and I also believe the best protection against Air is and should be other Air units. I usually have Advanced Missile Towers and Planes myself. the former are... early warning, mainly.

[jackalope]

I'd like to see the buildtime for aircons increased a little bit. Not a lot, just a little. And +1 to what demo said.

[jellyman]

Just because bombers can take out a structure doesn't make them effective. For example you and your opponent start kbots. You build an air factory and a squad of bombers. Your opponent builds a tech 2 lab. You bomb it successfully and feel good. But you've lost all your bombers. Your opponent reclaims the wreckage and easily gets his level 2 lab back. You have two choices. Go back to a level 2 kbot lab, in which case you will be trailing your opponent because you have to build your from scratch, not from a pile of reclaimed metal. Or try and push your air assault harder. But your opponent will be ready with more anti air, and you can't guarantee that the next strike will be more successful. And in the meantime your ground forces are seriously lagging behind. Will you be able to hold out to your opponents next ground assault?

A scenario I've played out a few times in the past. Of couse better players may use their air force better; my point being not that bombers are fail, but that they can take out significant targets and still be a waste.

Another thought on air - I think much of the problem is the difficulty in understanding and using air effectively. Perhaps a good article on the wiki that we can point noobs at whenever they suggest that air should be rebalanced (i.e. noobs = stars with less than 300 hours experience lol). I did write some stuff in the AA unit guide ages ago which I think is a start, but I'm a star with just under 300 hours play time, so maybe someone else can improve it. Link is http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Absolu ... s#Aircraft

[el_matarife]

Changelog so far:

V4.2 --> 4.3
Targeting facilities cost 1/4 now, more facilities will enhance your accuracy of radar dots

That includes 1/4th building time and operating cost too right?

[Ishach]

bring back old fighters :'(

[tombom]

On the topic of seabalance: How about making seaplane platform buildable by regular con ships, and rebalancing stats accordingly. They would get used a whole lot more often then.

You still have the problem of having to go through two other tiers. It's pretty much the only way a ship player can get on land, but otherwise I'm not sure of their use. It's far easier just to use T2 planes. However, making them T1.75 would make them worse because that would make them just like hovercrafts, except easier to shoot down. It's important that they're more powerful that hovercraft to differentiate them from hovers.

I'm not sure that that is coherent but hopefully you get the idea I'm trying to say.

Also the only time T1 fighters are better than T1 missile towers is against T1 bombers (due to special damage), and there's the whole problem of having to fly around again to keep attacking. If you include the large cost you're going to have to go through to get them and the easiness of getting missile towers, they're not as useful as they could be. As mobile AA is powerful enough, especially at T2 where air can actually kill an army, they're less useful than maybe they should be.

[el_matarife]

Is it possible to get range rings on antinukes in spring? It's pretty annoying to have to guess at what the range is and what will be protected by it when you are building them.

[El Capitano]

I thought you got a black circle to indicate the range of an anti-nuke, or is that only once it's built?

[Neddie]

You have a minimap ring.

[tombom]

You get a black ring but only once it's finished building. You get a white ring if the anti nuke has missiles.

[Cabbage]

Chaps! Let's have some sexier weapons effects

The little yellow balls can be a bit boring, fine for high trajectory stuff imo, but perhaps long range low trajectory plasma stuff (berthas, low traj lvl 2 plasmas cannons?) could use something similar to the green goo the warlord in warevo uses?

perhaps emg weapons could use a diffrent colour projectile? light red?

The triangle thingie from nanoblobs has pretty nifty lightning effect...

Any changes that were made would be purely cosmetic, just think it would be nice to spruce things up a bit, lots of other things could be changed too

[tombom]

Another thing I forgot: T2 AA kbots target land stuff but of course can't fire, and so keep walking up to the thing they're targeting and get killed.

[ginekolog]

how about no and focus on balance first?

we all know more new stuff more errors --> less balance.

[ginekolog]

Another thing I forgot: T2 AA kbots target land stuff but of course can't fire, and so keep walking up to the thing they're targeting and get killed.

YES, fix that, rly annoying.

[CautionToTheWind]

Hi, i'm no expert player and balance is a tricky thing but the other day on small supreme i upgraded to seaplanes from lvl 2 air and it felt like a downgrade.

- The seaplane bomber seems to do less damage than the lvl 2 bomber? Also it has the same hp and comparable cost.

- The seaplane gunship has serious trouble firing (its as if los was blocked but its an air unit) and in the end a brawler would have done much more damage.

I am assuming seaplanes to be tier 3 planes, so i expected them to be better.

Cheers!