**Platinum question**
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If no fuel, then infinite range mercies. Good idea anyone? No, didn't think so.
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@snagglefox I’m ready to sneakily snipe the enemy air player with a mercy rush on setons
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@azraeel That's a great idea. If it was a whole aura affecting tons of units that might be kinda op depending on the speed it can repair. The larger the aura is the easier it is for pathfinding but the stronger the unit is. Or it could be basically a hive that repairs one thing at a time and then we know exactly how powerful it is for the cost. Either option might work fine. And I think then the repair building would have to be unable to assist the construction of something new, or else it would break the balance. Also it could be designed to be only able to repair units, or units and buildings.
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@snagglefox said in **Platinum question**:
If no fuel, then infinite range mercies. Good idea anyone? No, didn't think so.
That would barely make a difference, given how vulnerable mercies are to being shot down. It's not like it's easy to keep 5 mercies around for 10 minutes or fly them all the way across the map.
And even if you eliminate fuel requirements for other units, there's no reason that means mercies need to have fuel requirements eliminated. Mercies are already different in that they can't refuel or regenerate fuel.
I prefer to keep fuel requirements as-is, it encourages people to think about what they're doing with their planes and encourages people to make air staging. It makes the game a bit more complicated but not in a bad way.
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I think some AIR units (such as T3 ASF) need to curry less fuel, units like T3 boomers tend to only have one trip.
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@thecore yeah, either nerf fuel tanks or remove fuel all together. Current system is pointless for many unuts.
Alternatively, could we let units consume more fuel when fighting?
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@valki Just thinking abstractly here, but what if it was like a shield? As in fighting and taking damage lowers it, and It only regens under the refueling conditions. Abstract it further and have their guns stop firing when they are out of fuel. Maybe change their out of fuel mode, or bingo fuel mode to a slight speed boost to facilitate them escaping to be rearmed. Then it could be harder to actually kill enemy air units, but more advantageous, so you might have to think a bit more about ways to get those kills.
But how, ideally, does everyone imagine refueling stations working? Like don't think of balance, lore, code practicality, what fun and depth could they add to the game?
In my mind, they would boost aircraft effectiveness in a way that requires them to return. Semi-tethering them to an area. Imagine (well, first image that the air staging is just faster in general), T2 gunships who's first volley is triple damage, triple AOE. Viable for snipes here and there, but on the defensive being pushed back to their FOB they can return quicker and quicker to the front line with racks of missiles. Or T1 interceptors have speed just below that of spy planes, for 20 seconds. Allowing them to actually intercept stuff. ASF maybe with a different ability, higher AOE when fueled, or additional homing missiles... With AOE. I like AOE.
Then bombers that need to be ordered to bomb, but then rearm. -
@kalethequick No need to overcomplicate it, being out of fuel means their speed and maneuverability sucks and they are sitting ducks.
For bombers in particular it could be used to have aircraft behave like in Command & Conquer. Needing to refuel between strikes. Having air stages means more sorties per time unit.
The best use for this would probably just as another knob to be turned to finetune balance. For instance if people are unhappy with the current state of bombers, they could be restricted by fuel to only 3 bombing runs before pausing but made a lot tougher in return.
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By making bomber tougher and lowering their fuel you're just massively buffing hoverbombing micro and hugely penalizing anyone that doesn't babysit their bombers.
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@ftxcommando Aw shit. And I really hate hoverbombing.
Would any of the other ideas work do you think?
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All these ideas are about buffing air when air is already really strong by using fuel as some sort of extra damage mechanic. If anything a more robust fuel mechanic would be related to allowing air units to become significantly more powerful as the reason they must be weak to any level of investment in their counters (aa, fighters) is related to their ability to attack anything from anywhere. If that isn’t true anymore then they can be made more durable with more damage.
No idea what a reasonable amount of fuel is and what the level of buff it allows would be, but in general I’d rather not convert air into land-like balance where you take away the thing that makes it unique. All I want from air balance is some sort of AOE t3 fighter to disincentivize asf blobs and introduce some level of counterplay in late air.
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@ftxcommando I'm right there with you on the t3 AOE. Didn't Aeon ASF have a flak effect in vanilla?
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@ftxcommando Just giving it to ASF should suffice - if 10 ASF oneshot any number of ASF then T3 air micro will become many small "wings" of ~12 ASF micro
Should look much more interesting as well and allow a weak air player to come back with king micro.
Plz go to suggestions forums with this or just tell the balance team directly
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In real life, planes usually need fuel to stay in air, while boats do not need fuel to stay on water and tanks do not need to stay on land. Also ships can have autonomy for months, and land units for weeks (if not moving fullspeed all the time, of course), but we can hardly say that about planes. So there is totally some logiq about planes needing fuel.
Also, planes needing fuel means that air play is not just copy of land/sea play. Air has its own caracteristics with raids, "sorties", attacks, pullbacks, bases/airstaging/motherships, best places to land and wait etc. Not just moving units forward step by step, like on land games sometimes.
Is t3 fuel tanks too big? Personally I tend to agree. This "beauty" of game is little lost for t3 air play.
Should we have possibility to repair planes? Of course, as we already have airports in form of airstaging and motherships etc. It is possible, that having (mass)free repairing was meant to compensate weakness of planes and force raid-type gameplay for planes (go in, come back), something like in real life. This is not only attackers advantage, you win fight at enemy side, but you have to go back to refuel/repair, leaving enemy with time and massfield. But now, as the planes are made stronger and more microheavy by high rated/experianced palyers, it works something like, you go in, win the fight and stay over enemy base until end of the game (or aa comes and survives fight with air). Dont know if it is good or bad, but in this case maybe make repairing cost some mass too? -
@wikingest There is real life reason behind things needing fuel, yes. But this is also a setting with teleportation and instantanious transfer of mass as a resource over distances of up to 114 KM.
I do really wish we could cause some massive overhaul of air, but as for little changes to upset the really awful meta of "have more, go in tighter circles" or whatever, trying out AOE seems like a good start.
If I had time I'd make a mod that adds wings of fighters to aircraft carriers with SACU like upgrade slots.
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@kalethequick "There is real life reason behind things needing fuel, yes." This is not what I said, I said some things need more fueling and have less autonomy than others.
"But this is also a setting with teleportation and instantanious transfer of mass as a resource over distances of up to 114 KM." Other parts of game, yes. Considering the shortness of games, even if calculating the "speed variable" that is not same in game/real life, it is not essential to add this to all unit mouvements.
I never spoke about "massive overhaul". Original question was: "Why air units do still have fuel?" So I answered this question: It is more life-like, and adds some personnality to (air)game.
I spoke about reducing t3 planes fuel tanks. This is so subtle and small change, most people wont even notice. (Reducing slightly, not 50 times of course) It would have very minor influance on balance, but will add some extra depth and little micro to game.
I said nothing about AOE. But if you want me to say something, I would point out, that this would be a huge change. It would unbalance so much. You would need to rebalance all aircrafts against asf's, and then eventually all aa against planes, and eventually all other units against aa... You can try some miracle thing, like making asf 5 times more expensive. But this may be too expensive for transport/strat catching and too cheap for inti cleaning up, etc. It can be perfect against inties and unbalanced against aeon t2 fighters etc. It can be perfect against aeon t2 fighter, but ridiculously unbalanced against aa (same health but 5* more expensive) etc. Might need to add effective "formation", like in navy/land, to keep planes spread out. Old asf's would probably be better in beginning of t3, and some tasks, so might be better to keep them, and add second asf-fighter. Something like t1 land has tank and arty.
I have nothing against AOE fighters, just pointing out that, it is huge amount of work and lots of added complexity (multiple asf or microing small wings), on a game already quite complicated.
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We dramatically reduced fuel time for all the combat air units in LOUD. The impact is important primarily in the respect that it forces players to consider 'depth' and 'time over target' as a part of their air operations. It directly magnified the value, and more importantly, the tactical value of a well placed (read: near the action) airpad - making them not only an important part of the game, but a vital necessity to maintaining air supremacy over any battlefield.
Now - on smaller maps, this is not going to be an issue, as even with reduced fuel, the air units will be able to range the full depth of the map, and have plenty for operations at that depth. It only begins to show it's worth on 20k and larger, where your bombers have enough fuel for a deep - but short - strike, with little time to linger around.
This change indirectly addresses some of the balance question between air units and other arms, putting a reasonable drag on the ability of air power to be utilized wherever and whenever. Short of a major rework of air unit stats, there are few other options.
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Problem is that FAF is balanced around 20km and smaller unlike LOUD and the air mechanics are built around striking anywhere except areas with minimal investment in their counters. Things that balance around “deep but short strikes” won’t do anything except massively buff hoverbombing as a mechanic.
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I don't know if that's a problem or not - just a choice - I was just trying to give some perspective of what might be expected from such a change. It revamped the tempo and flavor of the air game, without question. As for hoverbombing, I cannot say - it's not something we see.
