Spring RTS Engine

vulc is actually fine now.. it won game yesterday in FFA .

Ignoring the opportunity costs of running a Vulcan, it takes like 8 Adv Fusions generators to fire at full tilt. The combined cost of that many Adv Fusions is roughly equivalent to two more Vulcans, and it litters your base with a bunch of "BOMB ME TO WIN" sites.

Its rarely usefull, lets say on FFA's it can be. But when even krog spam and 10 nukes does not finish big porcer, buzz might just the trick. Its not a unit for everyday use but now with reduced ecosts it can be used.

Think of it as wonder in AOE, building it in good spot will likely win you game.

For normal games just build 10 berthas instead.

Buzz, like the Flag ship, can be effective when peoples reach LV2 or 3 spawn.
Nothing better than a Flag in a pond for soften up a Sumo "rush", i say.

Kay, sure, a buzz is a lot of ressources, but i think if you can afford it it's not too bad. Because those sort of heavy arty can destroy far more than their cost without real answer from their targets.

For the Torpedo planes with sonar, i don't think it's a good idea. Maybe in reality, but the maps in RTS games are too little. Add a sonar to a torpedo bomber and no one can use submarines anymore.
And fast attack planes in reality generaly don't have sonar (actually, a sonar need to be under the waves).

The problem is that anti-air defenses are so ineffective against tech 2 planes that no matter how many defenses a porcer player will build, a determined air player will always be able to penetrate his defenses and bomb the hell outta his adv fusions/fusions/vulcans/etc

and that is AWSOME so games dont drag endlessly... so its not a problem but solution to good gameplay.

el_matarife wrote:Ignoring the opportunity costs of running a Vulcan, it takes like 8 Adv Fusions generators to fire at full tilt. The combined cost of that many Adv Fusions is roughly equivalent to two more Vulcans, and it litters your base with a bunch of "BOMB ME TO WIN" sites.

You don't have to fire a RFLRPC at full rate, one bullet per second is already plenty.

T2 fighters seems to stop T2 bombers very effectively (too effectively imo) unless you put all your important stuff on the frontline.

It's just the ground-based defenses that suck. The Screamer is easily countered with spam (although the controllable delay might help that), and the flakkers are really just useful against gunships. Chainsaw turrets just don't seem cost-effective, and building enough of any of the lighter SAM units would just take up too much space.

KDR_11k wrote: You don't have to fire a RFLRPC at full rate, one bullet per second is already plenty.

True, but the real problem is that if you don't have enough energy to run it at full tilt there's a really good chance you can energy stall and we all know energy stall is the quickest way to get yourself killed.

1. Hold fire
2. build some energy storage
3. wait a bit
4. when it's full release
5. when it's empty go to step 1

ZellSF wrote:T2 fighters seems to stop T2 bombers very effectively (too effectively imo) unless you put all your important stuff on the frontline.

Yep...which doesn't make sense considering you can build 20k metal worth of ground anti-air, and they still won't be as good against enemy bombers as even 5k of T2 fighters.

I looked up the stats on TAS Modit, apparently a lvl2 fighter does almost 8 times more damage to enemy T2 bombers than a lvl1 Anti-Air missile truck. Hawk does 450 dmg to lvl2 bombers, missile trucks such as the samson only does 66. Whereas lvl1 fighters such as the avenger can do up to around 200 damage to lvl1 bombers...which is more than 3 times more damage than your lvl1 Anti Air unit.

Pxtl wrote:It's just the ground-based defenses that suck. The Screamer is easily countered with spam (although the controllable delay might help that), and the flakkers are really just useful against gunships. Chainsaw turrets just don't seem cost-effective, and building enough of any of the lighter SAM units would just take up too much space.

Yeh, they need to beef up the ground AA or make them more cost efficient.

Dragoon wrote:The problem is that anti-air defenses are so ineffective against tech 2 planes that no matter how many defenses a porcer player will build, a determined air player will always be able to penetrate his defenses and bomb the hell outta his adv fusions/fusions/vulcans/etc

is this a bad thing? I mean, unbreakable porc makes for extremely boring and frustrating games

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:

Dragoon wrote:The problem is that anti-air defenses are so ineffective against tech 2 planes that no matter how many defenses a porcer player will build, a determined air player will always be able to penetrate his defenses and bomb the hell outta his adv fusions/fusions/vulcans/etc

is this a bad thing? I mean, unbreakable porc makes for extremely boring and frustrating games

Yeh, but the problem is that aircraft fighters cost 10x less than anti-air ground defenses, and are way more effective. I mean how the hell does a single hawk do 450 damage to t2 bombers in 1 hit, yet a missile truck can only do 66 damage in 1 hit? And the missile truck is slightly more expensive than the hawk too, I believe.

The stationary AA buildings are even worse - way too costly.

well, missle trucks are also effective vs ground, so I expect their dps suffers for this flexibility.

you need to t2 air for hawks- comparing them to a common t1missle truck probably isnt the way to go about it.

The T1 missile truck is the jack-of-all-trades unit. It is L1, available at the most common factory, has the longest sight-range at L1, and outranges LLTs and can target other ground targets. The fact that it also hits air is just gravy.

Compare vs, say, the L2 kbot SAM units (which should be better at AA than Hawks, since they have a massive mobility disadvantage) and you might have a point.

okay, how about : any t2 vech aa vs bomber attack.

BaNa wrote:okay, how about : any t2 vech aa vs bomber attack.

Not a good example. The main T2 AA vech is the mobile flakkers, and they're not meant for fighting bombers - they're meant for gunships, do passably well at fighting an onslaught-in-progress of other air units, and suck at stopping bombers before they hit, which fighters and screamers are meant for.

Again, the only SAM units worth discussing in comparison to Hawks are the chainsaw and the mobile L2 kbots. Everything else is L1 (yeah, so are chainsaws, but only technically) or in a different role.

Also, I don't know if Caydr ever explicitly stated it, but iirc there was an understanding that fighters were always intended to be the main counter to bombers. The reasoning is simple: fighters vs. bombers are cool. Originally this manifested as hordes of L1 planes, since the L2 airfield was expensive and stealth fighers weren't really all that much better at bringing down enemy aircraft. L2 airfields were used for gunship swarms, not fighters.

To fix this, Caydr made the L1 plant cheaper and nerfed the L1 planes, thus preserving the L1 planes viability as rush-defense but making them less-effective in the long run. I think he might've buffed the stealth fighters too. He also gave them some limited flares whose effectiveness I don't think anybody can even begin to guess.

The problem, of course, is that the L2 airfac is expensive, so the best anti-bomber defense is hard to come by.

And yeah, L1 fighters are pretty much flying jeffies - good for rushing and not much else. Considering the painful expense of starting air, combined with the superior effectiveness of transports in rushing (a com-nap trumps a fighter-strike any day) and nobody uses the "flying jeffy" stunt.

Pxtl wrote:And yeah, L1 fighters are pretty much flying jeffies - good for rushing and not much else. Considering the painful expense of starting air, combined with the superior effectiveness of transports in rushing (a com-nap trumps a fighter-strike any day) and nobody uses the "flying jeffy" stunt.

also Banshees and Bladewings are more effective support for a ground attack than fighters.

Note the support in that sentence, because it's important. Banshees and Bladewings just dont have the staying power (Bladewings especially, because they deal any damage) to carry out an assault on their own.

Fighters were much more fun in OTA where you could actually micro them to make them effective.
Same with bombers.
In OTA based mods on the spring engine gunships get used a lot because they can actually be controlled and microed properly while fighters and bombewrs cant.