Spring RTS Engine

Bike shop + dreary ass depressing weather = no work.

Been brainstorming some solutions to one of the more pressing balance problems. This is my bored way of laying these solutions out.

Problem: Battlecruiser is very powerful and most of the time can be a game ender. While the game definitely needs some sort of powerful weapon to end games before they slip into the boring "declining action" of trying to mop up remnants, I feel the battlecruiser is too strong for how easy it is to get, and furthermore that it is far too difficult to counter.

Solutions: I have a few different ideas, and an idea that I will probably apply regardless of which of the other two I go with. This idea is to weaken the battlecruiser's damage against buildings enough to make them not rape any building within its sight, namely turrets. This could prompt more turret building, and also make the battlecruisers more precious/important to protect. The other ideas are:

1.) Strengthen the T2 flak turret's anti-cruiser damage to make it be potent against cruisers. This would be an easy solution, but kind of goes against the idea of the anti-cruiser fighter.

2.) Make an anti-cruiser turret. This would probably be a T2 structure, and I'm thinking either employ a continuous beam weapon (cool!) or just a standard blaster type laser. They'd only target cruisers (and the flying mechs...) and would be somewhat cheap. My concern with this is that it'd be too easy to make a base impossible to break with cruisers, and that the said base would have no resources to make actual units and therefore results in a stalemate.

3.) This will probably happen anyways, but a T2 anti-cruiser plane, like the T1 version, should be made to help combat T2 cruisers of all kinds. This new plane should probably attack in a different manner though, as a large reason why the T1 plane is so weak is a combination of being cumbersome and just having a hard time landing hits even on the giant cruisers. I was thinking maybe a continuous beam weapon that can pivot 360 degrees would help this problem.

Anyways, there are the ideas. Talk about/shootdown/give your WAY better solutions if you'd like.

You could repurpose battlecruiser into a strike weapon. Build a beacon that can call cruiser strikes.

*doesn't know what he's talking about*

if you make anti cruiser weapons dont make them ridiculously cheap, or else they will be porced to death. I like the idea of a continuous beam weapon, so it can do more damage over time. give them low hp or at least some extra damage from mechs or other units so that you can encourage a anti cruiser weapon break up team to attack before a cruiser push. just an idea.

What are people leaning towards, an Anti-cruiser turret, or an Anti-cruiser plane?

I've unfortunately still not had a proper game of this, but just going by your description, I think the anti-cruiser plane sounds most interesting - (that way you might get more spectacular air battles? ) but primarily, it sounds like something the attacker can counter to an extent (eg by sending along ground flak units, or fighter planes) - while the tower / or improved flak would be harder to try to negate by the attacker I think (so I'd wager it'd be easier to turtle up).

All this is pretty much out of the blue though :/. Let me see if I can get some multiplayer in and then comment again :D.

Caydr thought the same thing about air to air battles being more exciting than trying to shoot down planes. The result? Those spammy air-screens in AA/BA instead of having powerful SAM launchers.

If I were going to have an air-counter to a special offensive unit that is *designed* to be a game-ender, I'd make that air-counter a hero unit of some kind - you get a limited number of them. So while your dragonslayers heroically bring down a handful of cruisers, they get overhwelmed by an obscene late-game economy.

Force players to pay alimoney for the cruiser. Otherwise it outocrashes into a groundunit (that can not end game)


Also your mechas are way to weak, cant imagine them beeing succesfull even on there favourite terrain.