SEAD bombers and AA changes.

[Saktoth]

There is a problem with air and AA. Either AA shuts down air completely and quickly, or it does not counter strongly enough and air becomes incredibly powerful if you switch into it, force the enemy to waste on AA, then switch out (As you must, before it becomes useless from too much AA).

It may be better if, while AA is strong enough to shut down bombers and most fighters, there is an answer that air can field to AA. This allows AA to be strong enough to counter while not making Air redundant the moment it goes up.

This would be an anti-anti-air-air unit (SEAD). This might seem supremely odd, but it basically follows the same pattern with air and AA. If you are facing a ground opponent, you make bombers and rape. If you are facing an air opponent, you make fighters, which allows you to try and wrest air superiority but until you do, any bomber you make will get sniped quickly and is a fighter you arent making. It becomes a wrestle for air superiority so you can make the bombers to support the ground players.

Once enemy AA goes up, a SEAD unit (a high HP, perhaps fast moving or cloaking or EMP or something else) capable of nuetralizing AA or operating within AA areas (but not, otherwise, anywhere near as strong as regular bombers) would allow players to take out AA within an area.

The problem of tailoring such a unit to taking out all AA is, of course, that AA comes in many forms- strat bombers are best vs jethros while prec bombers are best vs flaks. SEAD bombers could at least be tailored to take out static AA, though. They should almost certainly be killed by fighters though, since they are harder to counter with land AA.

One of the other things id like to do with AA (at least in 1faction) is to de-emphasize the role of defenders and instead focus on more expensive higher level spot AA, that will protect an area but can be taken out by a prescision land or SEAD strike. Something in the 200-500 cost range, with missiles or hitscan lasers so it doesnt suffer from the gunship-pwn problem, but is rather suited perfectly to kill bombers and fighters.

It should probably not be popup because, as interesting as popup AA is, they preclude the possiblity of taking it out with a land assault or prescision artillery strike.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions etc.

[maackey]

Stealth Bomber FTW.

It wont get destroyed by static AA, but when it drops its load it uncloaks and fighters can follow and destroy. Since damage decloaks now you don't have to worry about it disappearing in mid-flight home. Unless of course you don't have a fighter screen, which was the point, correct?

Its perfect imo. Also I have been wondering why there hasn't been any stealth planes for a while. Some invisible fighters would also be nice.

[Licho]

Precision bomber and emp bombers are your "SEAD"
They can kill AA almost under any circumstances.
After bombing AA they die.


Moving to higher AA wont help problem with air! you need cheap "damaging" weapon like defender. Else you are moving more into "all or nothing" territory. Either you have coverage and are safe or dont have any and die.

[CarRepairer]

Since damage decloaks now

You sure about this one? I think it's only graphical and not a true decloak.

[luckywaldo7]

Cloaky stealth bomber would be cool; it would probably be most useful for avoiding aa to get at the fusions.

Since damage decloaks now

You sure about this one? I think it's only graphical and not a true decloak.

It used to be that you would get a shimmery untargetable effect when damaging a cloaked unit, but there is now a gadget that forces the decloak.


I think the major problem is that current anti-air is too generic. In current CA its just split into cheap (defender/pulv), moderate cost (packo/razor), and expensive (chainsaw/flak), and then of course the lrmt. Basically any aa you chose will do well enough against any air units. It needs more rps to make it more interesting.

Also it might be a good idea to make some aa cheaper and do less damage. A chainsaw is relatively expensive (800) but shuts a lot of area down to bombers. It would be better to have a good way to contest air without suddenly winning it, and without spending so much metal. Currently defender is the only option for that.

Alternatively bombers could do less damage and get more hp.

[JohannesH]

Make some of the bigger turrets easily killable

[MidKnight]

5 of the current precision bombers used simultaneously achieve the same purpose at the moment. Will the prec bomber get a little rework, too?

[Saktoth]

The problem with EMP bombers is they are not perfectly suited to SEAD. The problem with prec bombers is they are also good at many other things like sniping econ and high value targets.

The point of a SEAD bomber is a unit which is used primarily to operate under or take out AA, but which is inferior to other air. Its less all or nothing, because air has some way to still do something about AA, rather than just dying to it.

Defender sucks because its A. Not dedicated B. Wont actually kill a bomber unless you have 3+.

Avoiding AA to get at fusions is probably not precisely what we want though, which is a downfall here.

[KingRaptor]

Liche outranging most AA with loopback is a nice trick, we could make it more effective at SEAD.

[Saktoth]

We want something specifically suited to the role. Say giving the EMP bomber a turret-type weapon so it blasts one target rather than an area, and it certainly shouldnt have AoE.

I also dont think it should be -that- expensive.

[Licho]

That will be useless. You have LOTS of AA late game. Imo its unrealistic to propose anti-AA air unit.
Either it will be overpowered and useful against other targets too, or it will be balanced and wont be used to kill AA, because in late game, with many AA turrets and fighters its better to hit economy.

[Yogzototh]

Actually i would love to have some kind of bomber which would be able to effectively pierce enemy frontline AA. The precision bombers do well at first, but as the amount of AA increases, more and more of them die before they are able to release their bombs.
Some sort of slow, high-HP bomber, preferably with a rather long range attack (like bombs from the old realistic bombers) would be nice. Sound slike licho, but even slower, much cheaper, and without any splash damage.
Its high health and longer range will allow it to almost surely deal damage to any land based AA, while its slow speed would not allow it to just fly over the AA line and go for the economy. These would also be useful for attacking enemy land armies covered by AA, while their higher cost would make other bombers still more useful against armies with no anti-air support.

[knorke]

maybe some decoy plane that does nothing but drop lots of flares.
Think like a jammer but for air.
or just spam peepers or whatever is the name of the scoutplanes.

[Pxtl]

The whole point of air is manoeverability - you can be anywhere on the map in seconds. So, hit him where the AA is weak.

Alternately, you could make everything but the pop-up AA stuff incredibly fragile so that it's easy to break them with artillery and whatnot.

[bobthedinosaur]

Sakoth, just to let you know; SEAD although not mentioned in Wiki, is also a mission with joint air and ground support where coordinated ground fire suppresses the AA target allowing the Air support to come in to strike a ground target without having to evade AA threats.