Hovers are op? Discussion (BA)

[SwiftSpear]

And there also one thing to mention: I never used hovertanks like a regular army, to kill everything on the sea. Actually, their speed is often used to fast raids over enemy's economy. They are mostly used to run through the water avoiding ships and kill shipyards, fusions, lab, and so on.

They can often be used to roll over everthing tough. Most sea players dont prepare thenselfes for a hover attack, or leave open passage for hovers to reach the beach and attack their land allies...

Those still aren't regular army uses... where you posture and positions lines of forces in such a way to deal as much damage to the opponent in open ground while taking as little damage yourself personally. Hovers highly depend on the opponent playing a conventional/porcy game so the hovers can poke holes through the weak points and exploit poor prediction of hover capabilities.

[manored]

True, but very few people actual do something about hovers till they know that there are hovers in the enemy team, just like air. and then they do something about it they generally just dt beach and dont even bother putting anything there to defend the dt or at least watch over it... people are stupid :)

[KingRaptor]

people are stupid :)

I think we've identified the root cause of the problem here.

[Gota]

Facts:corvettes pwn hovers if microed well.
Fact:if corevettes are not microed hovers can pwn them.
Fact:hovers are too usefull cause they do not get hit by torpedoes/subs/torps of destroyers and can buidld mexes and units on land.

Sugestions:
1)give BB ships back to t2 sea.
2)make hovers build floating mexes and not underwater ones.
3)unify sea lab and amphib lab so u wont have to build a special lab for amphib attack thus making both sea and amphibs more usefull and making the merged lab more flexible ans usefull.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

how does hovers being good equal need BB ship back and merge factories? dosnt it just mean the corvette is a bit unimpressive?

[KDR_11k]

how does hovers being good equal need BB ship back and merge factories? dosnt it just mean the corvette is a bit unimpressive?

NO! Any flaw in the mod (or even no flaw in the mod) == You must do everything Yan says!

[manored]

What you mean with "give BB ship back to tech 2 sea"? As far as I know BB refers to Battleship, and battleships are already from tech 2 sea.

Amphibious units arent used not because they require a special factory, but because they:

a) Are freaking slow then underwater
b) Are defenseless then underwater
c) There are only assault amphibious units, what makes a amphibious assault resourceless and vulnerable to air strikes.
d) Hovers cover up all those problems and are equally powerfull

[ZellSF]

What you mean with "give BB ship back to tech 2 sea"? As far as I know BB refers to Battleship, and battleships are already from tech 2 sea.

You don't know very far.

BB = Big Bertha
Big Bertha = LRPC

http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Glossary

[Machiosabre]

theres only one B in battleship...what were you thinking?

[eriatarka]

theres only one B in battleship...what were you thinking?

AFAIK DD refers to destroyers in military language, though I'm not sure about BB...

[Evil4Zerggin]

Turns out BB is indeed battleship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_class ... atant_type

[manored]

Turns out BB is indeed battleship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_class ... atant_type

I have a sea battle game :)

I never saw LRPCs on sea, but I dont see how they would help: Tech 2 seas wins over hovers easly, the problem is in tech 1 sea... :)

Beside sea has battleships, and battleships are ubber mobile arti, so I dont think it needs anything bigger...

[KDR_11k]

Yeah, that's why people were wondering WTF made Yan make those suggestions. People want the BB ships back for shore bombardement, not skirmishes.

[manored]

Skirmish is hit & run tactic right? If I am correct, then I dont see how a LRPC would skirmish or need to do it :)

[Pxtl]

Really, is there any plans for BA to use some of the new features in the Spring engine that get rid of the utterly-counterintuitive Spring defaults, like the beamlaser fall-off and the awful flanking bonus? I mean, I know it would screw with their balance (beamlaser falloff is simpler - just adjust weapon damages to average it out), but at least the game would make a little sense then. It's nasty when you have these little "hidden bonusses" where you have no idea what's actually going on as a player.

And as for amphibs - yep, they're pretty much used for getting kbot slope-tolerances when you have only a V-lab and damned little else. Never see them in naval games - even the Amphib lab costs only a little less than the hovercraft platform, so using it in tandem with ships isn't a great investment. And I still think crashers/jethros should be amphibious - it'd make as much sense as anything else, and give you an amphibious AA unit.

Obviously, though, none of that will ever happen since BA is about stability, even when a whole arm of the tech-tree has lost any semblance of its original purpose.

as for LRPC boats, IIRC their high velocity projectiles and low profile meant that they generally couldn't shoot too well inland anyways if the map had any kind of slope - the slower, higher cannons of the Battleship or the outright vlaunch missiles of the missile boat do that job much better. I generally found them more useful as support-fire in naval battles in maps that had a very open, large ocean.

[Sleksa]

And I still think crashers/jethros should be amphibious - it'd make as much sense as anything else, and give you an amphibious AA unit.

please tell my why giving aa bots amphibiousness makes sense ~_~

Every tech tree has atleast one mobile aa solution, scout boats for sea, aa hovers , airlab+fighters second, and jethro/samson for land, what more do you need? A flying walking hovering invisible anti bomber flak space defence platform with ion cannons to counter the threat of intergalactic alien invasion ?

Obviously, though, none of that will ever happen since BA is about stability, even when a whole arm of the tech-tree has lost any semblance of its original purpose.

What tech tree has lost its original purpose?

as for LRPC boats, IIRC their high velocity projectiles and low profile meant that they generally couldn't shoot too well inland anyways if the map had any kind of slope - the slower, higher cannons of the Battleship or the outright vlaunch missiles of the missile boat do that job much better. I generally found them more useful as support-fire in naval battles in maps that had a very open, large ocean.

you are right, people think the lrpc boat was somehow in wide and effective use, when in reality it was rarely seen because the missile boat was cheaper and more effective ~,~

[Pxtl]

Amphibs. I suppose calling them a "tech tree" was silly of me, more a "family" of units. But they've always been the poor, abandoned, useless stepchild of TA mods. The only use I ever see of them is to give the L1 V-plant kbot slope-tolerances.

Amphibs have no AA. If you launch an amphibious assault using Crocs or whatever against your adversary, besides the fact that it it will almost surely fail since they're slow, unarmed under water, and not particularly powerful - they're also incapable of defending themselves against any air units he might have ready for defense. So, make the Jethro/Crasher amphibious. They're already a rarely-used, generally useless unit - so giving them amphibiousness would hardly overpower them. And it would allow the player to field a complete full-spectrum attack force from a single amphibious complex. A weak one, but a complete one.

[manored]

Those guys are kbots tough, what means that if you by chance made a amphibious attack from a vehicles factory you would need a kbot factory too... :) All terrain units also dont have an AA solution, except for tech 3 anything shooting kbots, but that is tech 3, and as far as I understand tech 3 should only get used in utter porc situations...

I would say amphibious units are only usefull if there is a really small portion of water that is tough too deep to be crossed, and so it may not be worth to make hovers. I see very few maps with something like this tough (Charlie in the hills is a example)

[Pxtl]

I suppose I should just get to my point of intended usage: We're talking about how hovers are OP compared to ships, right?

I mean, if you can use hovers instead of ships, why build ships? Hovers can do more than ships, and are almost as good.

Now, solving the balance part has already been discussed. But what abotu solving the other part? Getting a way for ships to invade the land? Well, with a ship, you've a few options:
1) build an amphib complex
2) build a seaplane-lab (or build an airlab at home base), or
3) use whatever land-fac you have to build a hovercraft plant.
4) use your existing land-facs to build amphibs

Now, (4) is bad - the amphibs will take forever to arrive. (3) is bad - you should've just skipped the naval plant then and gone hovers from the start. (2) is pretty good, but limited with the problems you face with air units.

But let's look at (1). You build an amphib lab near the enemy coast. You face a few problems - first, the lab is kinda expensive. Almost as much as a hovercraft platform, which is more versatile. Which brings us back to (3)
Second, if you invade, and he has a decent fighter-screen (which might be why you didn't go air) or even worse, some gunships, then your troops are dead the moment they get out of range of your oh-so-fragile skeeters (which, in turn, have to be kept away from the land-brawl).

So, we cut the price of the amphib complex down to 500 metal, cut out it's L2 units (leave them to the L2 combat-eng), and give it an amphibious L1 SAM unit.

Now, would it be nicer if there were an L1 SAM amphib tank? Obviously. Re-purposing the L1 SAM kbot is a little odd. But on the other hand, it's generally considered a rather useless unit.

Of course, there are a few things wrong with this:

1) it pretty much thrashes the old function of the amphib complex. Not that it ever had one, besides oddly delivering L2 units at L1.

2) it's weird. A super-cheap factory buildable by boats, hovers, and amphicons is kinda strange. It'd also be used by hovers to get L1 subs to handle their demolitions of underwater targets.

3) it goes completely against the stability ideals of BA.

Obviously, it'll never happen. I just thought it would be neat to have the Amphib Complex become the "L1 Navy land-invasion" base, and also the "Hovercraft underwater destruction with subs" base. It has to be cheap, because it needs to be able to be built near the front lines, since it builds slow-assed units. You could take back this value by making it have a weak buildpower, thus making it require assistance to properly crank out your force.

[LordMatt]

you are right, people think the lrpc boat was somehow in wide and effective use, when in reality it was rarely seen because the missile boat was cheaper and more effective ~,~

They were a fun unit in noob games though.