[old] Balanced Annihilation V6.81

[imbaczek]

#1. Increase basic AA range (Pulverizers, Flak)

#2. Make bombers use a shorter distance attack like a regular beam type weapon would use, instead of gravity drop.

those two are wrong. if you want to stop a bomber attack, put AA cover around the target, not at the target.

[MR.D]

Well as it is, T1 Bombers can withstand 7-8 Pulverizer hits before they're dead, you need a 7-1 ratio of Pulverizers for each bomber to stop it instantly.. and nobody ever sends 1 bomber at a time.

I'm sure that Flak does better in comparison with T2 bombers, but for T1 it seems a little off somehow when you add costs.

Bottom line is that Fighters are still more cost effective by far.

I suppose another alternative yet, would be to make bombers fly slower, then AA would have more time to track and fire at them, and the bombers would have to get closer before attacking.

[Pxtl]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't OTA bombers have to drop their bombs when they were over the target - the bombs had no inertia, right? Is there a way we could get those inertialess bombs in Spring?

I think the problem we're seeing with the missiles is a poor realization of their specific roles. They used to be clearly delineated in AA. PackOs were anti-fighter/scout and heavily armored, chainsaws were anti-bomber (and any other heavily-armored aircraft), flak was anti-gunship, and MTs were all-purpose (best DPS/cost) but take a lot of space and are easy to destroy, and screamers were long-ranged anti-air support (and useful against anything but a swarm of fighters or something with scouts to draw fire).

Now? I have no idea where the packo and chainsaw live in the ecosystem anymore.

[KDR_11k]

Nope, OTA bombs flew just as far as Spring bombs.

[MR.D]

In OTA, all Defense weapons shot at everything, and there were no AA specific weapons honestly.

So even HLT's and LLt's would add to the damage in taking down aircraft ect..

The only real deciding factor was the extended range of Pulverizers and Flak.

[Pxtl]

Actually, SAM weaponry did double damage to all air units except for seaplanes.

[Saktoth]

How far away the bombs drop depends on map gravity, on Speed Metal you can drop your bombs on his AA before you are even in range of it. Comet also allows you to drop bombs from much further away. One trick is to give an attack ground order and then a movement order in the other direction: Your bombers will 'toss', dropping their load and without flying over the target. Very micro intensive but cool on low grav maps. Attack ground is because attacking a unit will obviously make the bomber fly over the target and not acknowledge the order to turn around until the target is dead.

Low grav can make it harder to aim your bombers at the last minute, as the window for drop is further from the target, but it lets them toss much further. It can also be bad on rough terrain as going up/down elevation can make your bombers miss this window entirely. In other cases, such as the aforementioned speedmetal, the change in height will cause the bombs to be tossed upwards into the air rather than dropped at the ground- IE, following a ballistic trajectory. You can actually FPS a bomber to loop backwards to do this for insane distance, its not really worth it ingame but very cool).

You can fix any issues with bomb distance tossing by using the mygravity tag, which allows you to set the gravity for the projectile regardless of the map, and set it to much higher values than even the highest grav maps. CA has done this, though its mostly because...
1. All weapons fire at and do full damage to air if they hit.
2. As a result, bombers are faster and fly higher (So bombs would toss a LOT further without this). IE, we use physical properties rather than special damages to model the behaviours of air units vs ground weapons.
c. Bombers have to refuel after each load. This means they have an auto 'tossing' behaviour, arcing off as soon as their bombs are dropped. This means they dont fly through AA.

So obviously mygravity is prettymuch mandatory for CA bombers, its appropriateness for BA is going to be quite different and regardless of all those reasons. Note it can also make them more accurate vs moving targets.

[KDR_11k]

In OTA, all Defense weapons shot at everything, and there were no AA specific weapons honestly.

So even HLT's and LLt's would add to the damage in taking down aircraft ect..

The only real deciding factor was the extended range of Pulverizers and Flak.

Flak only shot at air...

[Gota]

flak in OTA could shoot at land units if the flak itself was made to guard a land unit that was attacked by another land unit.

[smoth]

no target category is a spring only tag iirc

[TradeMark]

does the "select & center" widget work with others? seems like it doesnt work anymore...

[BaNa]

does the "select & center" widget work with others? seems like it doesnt work anymore...

+1 i started REAL late on a 1v1 cause i didn't notice it launching

[Wingflier]

ChainSaw and Eradicator have always been crap, always.

Far too expensive, always weak damage, can't and never could take out a bomber attack, and just forget about taking down T2 bombers with it ever, pre patch or not.

Only worthwhile AA is your own fighters or enough Pulverizers in staggered rows.

This is absolutely true. I did some more testing on SAMs and Pack0s, in addition to my Chainsaw/Eradicator testing, and defenders are much superior too these other types of air defense.

For example, I would compare defenders to being regular solars, if advanced solars weren't even worth building. That is to say (for example), that spamming rows of regular solars was more cost efficient than spamming adv. solars. Possibly the only reason that you would even build adv. solars in this case, is that they have significantly more health. And that's a terrible reason.

That's exactly what's happening here. There is absolutely no reason to build any other ground-to-air defense than defenders because the effectiveness of the subsequent buildings does not scale.

Furthermore, it is much easier to take out one building than several, in almost every situation. Let's say, for example, that a group of 10 banshees fly in to kill a pack0. It will take them about 5 or 6 seconds, and then they can move on. However, if they come in to take out 6 defenders (the cost equivalent to the pack0), in a staggered formation across the base, it will take them much longer, and most likely they will lose the battle.

If you get to build 10 defenders, the cost equivalent of one Chainsaw/Eradicator, the difference in effectiveness becomes even more painfully clear.

Even more reason to build defenders vs. pack0s/chainsaws are the bladewings. It only takes 2-3 bladewings to completely disable a chainsaw (because the chainsaw only shoots a volley every 6 seconds), and maybe 4-5 to disable a pack0. How many bladewings would it take to disable 6-10 defenders? A lot.

So once again we see that Pack0s, while not being nearly as useless as Chainsaws, need a huge buff. There is absolutely no reason to build them as opposed to just spamming defenders in terms of usefulness and cost effectiveness.

Either buff these units or take them out of the game please.

Wing

edit: In TA:T, an OTA mod that picked up where AA left off after Caydr died (much in the same way BA did for Spring), he does things a little differently. Eradicators/Chainsaws, seeing how they are bomb resistant, are specifically designed to kill large amounts of bombers quickly, and therefore have special damage against bombers. SAMs/Pack0s are designed for large groups of gunships, and therefore fire on a rapid, non-stop basis, and have special damages against gunships. Defenders are just your general, good for everything, great against nothing defense. Whether or not you agree with how he does it, all three types of defense are actually useful.

[Pxtl]

Really, to make an "anti-bomber" turret, it just has to deal a tonne of damage and have good firing range. Other aircraft would be overkilled by such a weapon. Nerfing it just makes it useless. The chainsaw/eradicator just needs to deal a hell of a lot more damage per-missile, and put up a decent enough number of volleys that it can take down a couple of L2 bombers in the first pass.

The more questionable role is the SAM/Pack0. Those units are more about armor than firepower, which is kind of an odd feature in a SAM unit. I guess they're handy in that they're a SAM weapon that you can stick on the front lines without blowing up as soon as you look at it, although I think that Core kinda gets the short end of the stick with those.

[KDR_11k]

no target category is a spring only tag iirc

toAirWeapon is not.

[Wingflier]

Really, to make an "anti-bomber" turret, it just has to deal a tonne of damage and have good firing range. Other aircraft would be overkilled by such a weapon. Nerfing it just makes it useless. The chainsaw/eradicator just needs to deal a hell of a lot more damage per-missile, and put up a decent enough number of volleys that it can take down a couple of L2 bombers in the first pass.

The more questionable role is the SAM/Pack0. Those units are more about armor than firepower, which is kind of an odd feature in a SAM unit. I guess they're handy in that they're a SAM weapon that you can stick on the front lines without blowing up as soon as you look at it, although I think that Core kinda gets the short end of the stick with those.

I think you're completely forgetting about special damage. With special damages, you can MAKE the Eradicator/Chainsaw do massive damage to bombers while not being as useful against other types of aircraft. The same can be said about Pack0s in relation to gunships. Don't make things harder than they have to be.

Wing

[imbaczek]

special damages are evil, though. they're counter-intuitive.

[el_matarife]

special damages are evil, though. they're counter-intuitive.

Not for a unit that used to be called "Chainsaw medium range ANTI BOMBER turret". Seriously, all this aversion to special damage is nuts. Special damage is fine as long as you just document what units are countered by a unit in the description.

[CarRepairer]

Not for a unit that used to be called "Chainsaw medium range ANTI BOMBER turret".

Not following you.. is the chainsaw for fighting against air?

[Pxtl]

Imho, the best approach is to _attempt_ to do it without special damages, and suck it up and use them if that doesn't work. Now, a weapon with minimal blast radius that deals damage which would be excessive overkill to anything but bombers and krows is probably safely relegated to the "anti bomber" role.

I haven't seen BA take a real stab at making it better vs. bombers, special damages or not.

Of course, that still leaves the question of what the unit's role _is_. Is it an anti-bomber turret? Or just a very large SAM launcher?