AOE against air

@ftxcommando said in AOE against air:

All these ASF nerf ideas are gonna result in is converting every current air slot in teamgames into a min 15 nuke rush slot.

This doesn't follow. ASF are a fundamentally defensive weapon; if they were nerfed (or disappeared entirely) you'd see gunships, strats, etc. (the sharp end of air) become that much harder to counter and that much more useful.

Low asf = sams decide air = investing in air is pointless beyond 25 to snipe strats = make sams and nuke rush

Well it seems that more people are comfortable with adding a new unit than I previously thought.

People have to understand that T3 air being so strong is one of the few counterbalances to extremely defensive and turtley strategies on large team maps. If you can’t effectively dominate air to make a path for your strats to strike (a SAM or 3 can’t stop a dozen strats from making a first pass) then you are indirectly buffing nukes, ecoing, and game enders.

So if we’re going to introduce a unit to counter ASF it should be expensive and only cost effective against ASF and not other air units. Maybe something like an aerial Fire Beetle that explodes and leaves a large but lower damage AOE cloud.

@ftxcommando said in AOE against air:

Low asf = sams decide air = investing in air is pointless beyond 25 to snipe strats = make sams and nuke rush

I'm not buying the logic that nerfing a counter (ASF) to something (other air units) would make that something less useful.

@zeldafanboy said in AOE against air:

Well it seems that more people are comfortable with adding a new unit than I previously thought.

I think other options should be explored first. Any AA unit that's good against fast, tough, high altitude aircraft is going to be good against anything. T3 MAA has a bit of an "aftermarket" feel to it, as it is (at least at first, I got used to it).

If men with batons came to my house and said "you need to add an AA unit to FAF to counter ASF swarms or we're going to beat the bricks off you" I'd say the solution would be an anti-air nuke, small yield, built and launched like a tactical missile (with homing). Keeping the rate of fire low is the only way to prevent it from blowing out Czars/Soul Rippers, etc, AND it would potentially (depending on damage) give you the opportunity to retreat and repair heavier planes.

I think that if anything we need to find some way to allow something non t3 to counter strats. As far as late game asf fights, czars and washers help a ton with countering asf spam since when a washer is going in u either need to submit air dominance to kill the washer or u need to allow the washer to do damage and win air. This means that, assuming the player with the washer is competent, the player with the washer is in the lead dispite haveing less asf.

My idea for fixing air was to give inties/asf a fairly slow damage over time so that there are diminishing returns to larger groups of them, because they will each waste multiple shots into an enemy plane before it dies. A smaller group would be able to inflict lethal damage on a larger number of enemy planes. The main goal of this idea was just to make air micro more consistent and less game-deciding, but I hypothesize it would work in this way as well. I'm not sure if damage over time would have negative consequences for performance though.

if that will work on t4 air exps, game is literally ahwassa rush and you're dead due to crash damage+bomb damage in 90% of the games

That won’t work the way you think because of stop micro making ASFs attack one another individually in large groups.

What about increasing ASF min airspeed?

AA needs to have some target priority coordination, like SMD. Now it's like... lets fly over a fly spyplanes, then then bombers.... all SAMS empty.

Casual reminder save T1 Arty & Engi. T1 Land Mobile gets invaliated as you go up the techs. Only Navy keeps all piece relavent. Also part of Air Design*, was way air units auto prioritize targeting. So being able to throw a bomber, transport or experimental into an air fight to tank or distract enemy asf so you could catch was thing. Due to stuff like ASI changing priorities, and adding the ability to micro preferred targets. Meant its harder to “distract” enemy units.

I think AoE would be onteresting. Could result in less clumping and more spreading out. I do think thinks could be done with fuel I don’t know what through.

By and large, what would be intriguign if we see more of a dbl down on certain mechanics. If we made Broadswords cheaper so spammable jn mass to make ASF first volley “miss” be interesting. (Ghetto labs being able to shoot air aldo be cool but thag another doscussion)

Let flakk fire from transports

This topic is no longer required - we've found an alternative and a fix for ASF battles being so notoriously slow. It will soon be on FAF Develop, make sure to get the #dev-news role on the official Discord server to stay up to date.

That's great news and I look forward to reading about it and eventually seeing it implemented!

The changes are live on FAF Develop. I highly encourage everyone to give it a try. As a host, you can choose the FAF Develop game type:

All other players will download the correct files accordingly.

A copy of the announcement on Discord:

The notoriously slow ASF battles are in the past - I highly encourage everyone to give the game a spin on the FAF Develop branch. With thanks to the unmeasurable help of @Deribus we can safely confirm that we manage to do a 700 vs 700 asf fight at ~40 ms / tick on FAF Develop. Where as that jumps to 300+ ms / tick on the regular branch.

I'll leave out the exact details, except for the pull requests that are responsible:
 - https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3892
 - https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3891

And two example replays between the immortal Deribus and myself:
 - Old (on FAF branch): https://replay.faforever.com/17159334
 - New (on FAF Develop branch): https://replay.faforever.com/17159366

edit: We're very open to feedback. You can use the game-bug-reporting channel to provide your concerns. Make sure to provide structured, objective feedback and keep it civil

Is it just a performance fix?

I mean regardless of how fast ASF battles are it's still pretty bad for the gameplay to just be spamming a singular unit for 20 minutes.

#realtalk ASF deathballs are really not fun gameplay. In FAF currently the air player is forced to build them or team will be strat-bombed or gun-shipped back to the Stone Age.

Pigeon holing players into only one optimal strategy is the OPPOSITE of Sup Coms core gameplay, Someone mentioned a anti air nuke earlier. That is in the right direction. We can do better tho.

ImAgine a super flak, with an aoe roughly the size of a large asf death ball but only does 10% per shot damage to ASFs with a slow fire rate. It’s long range will deter any air groups from lingering over target area but it’s large fragile and very expensive. It’s effectively an area denial defensive weapon. Keeping pesky asfs outside of the base airspace.

It wouldn’t effect balance because t3 aa would still be better/more efficient against any air unit not clustered up.

The possible downside I see is that games could run longer bc having 2x ASF would no longer be instant win air > strat death.

You might say, but wait won’t this make aa creep and effective strategy against air??? Yes it would. And FAF gameplay would improve bc it rewards taking and holding territory making the late game less static/base wars.

@omegaman said in AOE against air:

Keeping pesky asfs outside of the base airspace.
You could just remove ASF being able to shoot at grounded air units, as this would automatically remove the point of flying your ASF in enemy air space, if their units can just land to be safe.

@omegaman said in AOE against air:

The possible downside I see is that games could run longer bc having 2x ASF would no longer be instant win air > strat death.

But to counter a good snipe your ASF need to leave home and meet the bombers midway or they will drop bombs and kill you. If you prevent ASF from flying over enemy territory snipes will become easier, as your opponent has no way of preventing them from dropping at least one bomb.

@jip said in AOE against air:

This topic is no longer required - we've found an alternative and a fix for ASF battles being so notoriously slow. It will soon be on FAF Develop, make sure to get the #dev-news role on the official Discord server to stay up to date.

The reason why this topic was made has already been tackled. It can be closed - any future discussions can be done in a new topic.