This game seems to have too many pointless weapons
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Weapons that are never going to have a substantial impact on gameplay, because they'd struggle to kill units a tier lower or even two tiers lower.
UEF and Cybran units are particularly guilty of this, having little extra features that don't actually do anything.UEF T3 gunship AA is so weak that you'd need 10 of them focus-firing (and always hitting) a single ASF to kill it in 15 seconds, the fight might not even last 15 seconds.
Cybran T3 gunship AA is a little better, it can do it in 10 seconds and it's missiles. Still, an experimental's worth of gunships isn't going to kill a single ASF without focus-firing.
UEF and Cybran strat bomber AA is a little stronger relative to mass, but of course strat bomber and ASF engagements are so short that there's no chance of an ASF dying.All T2 transport weapons (all have AA and all but Aeon have a ground weapon) falls into the uselessly weak category, especially the ground guns. The one possible exception is Cybran, because a 4DPS weapon with EMP might be useful.
UEF T3 transport can actually beat an ASF in a 1v1 (but not a 1v2), or a small swarm of interceptors, so its fairly weak AA actually matters; however its ground guns most definitely do not.UEF, Cybran, and Seraphim frigates, UEF and Cybran destroyers, and UEF, Cybran, and Seraphim battleships all have really weak AA.
Of course, these are tough units and can be escorted by cruisers/carriers which have amazing AA.
There are only two situations where this AA being so weak is actually a big problem for the player; No cruisers have been built yet and there's no air support, or it's a Salem and going places where cruisers can't follow and aircraft would die.And lastly there's ground experimental AA and battlecruiser torpedoes.
Monkeylord and Fatboy AA is enough to deal with T1 scouts and small groups of T1 bombers. Sure, they're early experimentals, but strat bombers are almost certainly going to be a concern at their stage of the game.
Megalith is even later game and has even weaker AA, it'd struggle with singular T1 air units.
And battlecruiser torpedoes would take 30 seconds to kill a T1 UEF sub.I'm not sure what I'm saying about what needs to be changed about the game, I think that with the exception of the transports and Monkeylord all of these units would be considered overpowered if they were buffed further.
I do think it's rather misleading to new players though to label a unit as having "AA" when it's completely incapable of protecting itself against anything you'd expect it to encounter, plus the similar situations with a few non-AA weapons.
However, these weapons should be kept as they fill an "anti micro" role, otherwise you could much more often force a player to waste APM by constantly sending units where they can deal damage without being damaged back.Are there any units where you think it'd be reasonable to makes some changes to their minor self-defence weapons?
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There are real life precedents for this design decision. From the wikipedia page for the B-17 bomber: "Defensive armament increased from four 0.50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns and one 0.30 in (7.62 mm) nose machine gun in the B-17C, to thirteen 0.50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns in the B-17G. But because the bombers could not maneuver when attacked by fighters, and needed to be flown straight and level during their final bomb run, individual aircraft struggled to fend off a direct attack." Like most bombers in WWII, the B-17 was equipped with multiple anti-air weapons that were not very effective. The UEF/Cybran strat bomber is likely based off of this—and their lack of anti-air effectiveness is also accurate.
Battleships in real life had even more anti-aircraft weaponry that was about as ineffective as it is in the game. From the wikipedia page for the Yamato: "Yamato carried twenty-four 25-millimetre (1 in) anti-aircraft guns, primarily mounted amidships. When refitted in 1944 and 1945 for naval engagements in the South Pacific... the number of 25 mm anti-aircraft guns was increased to 162." That didn't stop her from getting torped to death though.
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I also just think that having minor self-defence weapons is really cool. Does it really matter that the fatboy AA tracking isn't doing much damage? No, but seeing 4 anti air guns tracking air units doing flybys while the main cannons are firing off into the distance and the two riot guns are taking out close range targets is just really fucking cool.
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@archsimkat But the problem with that is that in real life, an ineffective weapon is not one that does too little damage, it's one that tends to do no damage at all.
An attack on a WW2 bomber formation that ineffectively defends itself will likely still have a few attacking fighters be lost.
An ASF attack on an unescorted strat bomber group results in no losses unless the ASF force is really small, for some reason one fighter gets focus-fired for ages, or there's fighters with very low health to start with. -
It is a bit silly, but I have a bigger problem with unexpected weak weapons like the Aeon cruiser guns.
As long as the pointless weapons look pointless it is fine. And give the Aeon cruisers the same guns as Aurora or Flare.
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@bellatrix said in This game seems to have too many pointless weapons:
An attack on a WW2 bomber formation that ineffectively defends itself will likely still have a few attacking fighters be lost.
Gonna be honest, it's a little annoying that you are so confident in making such incorrect claims. The equivalent to the ASF in WWII—jet fighters like the Me 262—could literally one shot the strat bomber from out of range of the strat bomber's AA.
Eventually, German pilots developed new combat tactics to counter Allied bombers' defences. Me 262s, equipped with up to 24 unguided folding-fin R4M rockets—12 in each of two underwing racks, outboard of the engine nacelle—approached from the side of a bomber formation, where their silhouettes were widest, and while still out of range of the bombers' machine guns, fired a salvo of rockets with strongly brisant Hexogen-filled warheads, exactly the same explosive in the shells fired by the Me 262A's quartet of MK 108 cannon. One or two of these rockets could down even the famously rugged Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, from the "metal-shattering" brisant effect of the fast-flying rocket's 520 g (18 oz) explosive warhead.
Even earlier in the war, when the Germans were fielding the equivalent to t1 inties or t2 fighters (propeller planes like the Bf 109 or the Fw 190), bomber squadrons suffered massive casualties for little damage in return. E.g. on Black Thursday 77 B-17s were lost while only 35 fighters were lost, and the majority of the german fighter casualties were because of P-57 fighter escort.
The allied commanders even recognized that:
Such high losses of aircrews could not be sustained, and the USAAF, recognizing the vulnerability of heavy bombers to interceptors when operating alone, suspended daylight bomber raids deep into Germany until the development of an escort fighter that could protect the bombers all the way from the United Kingdom to Germany and back.
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the anti ground weapons on transports are so you can use them as ghettos, else labs would just shoot at anything.
Main practical use of these weapons (e.g. for strat, cyb gs,moonkey) is to prevent the units getting slowly crushed by a few T1 units. also sera and cyb frig+cyb destro aa shouldnt be on that list, since the combined aa of sth like a 40 frig 3 destro navy will win against a sizable number of torp bombers -
All the token weapons were much "stronger" in vanilla. But the whole balance was very different, if you've ever played it.
The weapons were stronger but they also missed a lot. When I've redone the Vanilla balance mod, any naval unit that has some AA (destroyer, battleship, frigate) became almost better at killing air than Cruiser, since it had bigger fire rate. And with the same stats, those AA weapons in FA rarely missed.
So with the improved targetting they had to nerf those weapons and they are useless on most of the units. -
In a way I would agree to removing some weapons as it makes the game more readable. How should a beginner know that a battlecruiser can get absolutely wiped by t1 subs?
But on the other hand: We have animated models for most weapons. They are just nice to look at in action. -
The aa ona strat doing a 1st strat run will kill inties In a straight line
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The reason several units have memetic AA (see Fatboy and Monkey) is partly so yhose units don’t get memed by T1 Bombers and similar units.
There is a place for a discussion to be had with the meme weapons. To be frank. I’d rather see them improved then removed. Like UEF Frigate AA basically pointless. If we made it not so? I mean I don’t know the stats but you’d need to condense and find them all
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A uef strat running away from a small group of inties (irc 3-4) can beat them down, perhaps 1 broadsword should be able to kill 1 intie per pass
