T1 bombers are too good at hunting down expanding engineers
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I get that the change is really hard to imagine and it's impossible to exactly predict how it would play out. But look at it like this. As farms said, the current interaction between engineer and bomber is binary: you either kill an engi or the bomber is worthless (well technically you can make the engi waste time by forcing it to dodge, but let's disregard that). By lowering the stakes on both sides (bombers are cheap, but require 2 shots to kill) as well as introducing other choices (hoverbomb some mexes/pgens) we create many more interesting scenarios (explicitly talking about 2nd air first bomber here):
- bomber kills and engineer (devastating, but highly unlikely)
- bomber forces an engineer to dodge for a long time. To evaluate the situation you compare the lost time of the engineer to the new reduced cost of the bomber. If the bomber is cheap enough it will always be worth forcing enemy to dodge - or if it's too expensive it will never be worth. Perhaps a good balance can be found in this interaction? Also I'd like to compare this to aoe2 where feudal archers behind treeline force you to vacate that treeline even though they don't kill anything and sc2 where oracle stasis trap disables workers in mineral line for some time without damaging them. Both of these examples are more healthy imo, because there's a lot more granularity than the live/die binary of the engi.
- Bomber destroys 1-2 mexes (depending on bomber micro and enemy reaction time). Again depending on the adjusted cost of the bomber this may be made worth doing
- Bomber goes after pgens. Effectiveness depends on pgen splits
- Bomber goes after factory build platform to cancel factory production
- You simply make a second bomber with the reduced cost/buildtime and do all of the above. Note that it being 2 bombers instead of 1 bomber again creates way more possible scenarios than the binary engikill or not of the current bomber making the interaction less volatile in the process.
The rebalance would move power from the "hunting engineers" role to all the other possible use cases of the bomber. I totally agree that bombers make the game more exciting, and I also don't think they are overpowered at all. In hindsight I should've titled the thread in a way that doesn't suggest that I'm complaining about the bombers being op... mby something like "T1 bombers need a redistribution of power within the set of their use cases" would have been more apt.
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@blodir said in T1 bombers are too good at hunting down expanding engineers:
T1 engis should live with low hp from one bomber pass. Some combination of the following:
- increase engineer hp
- decrease bomber damage
another problem here is that if engineer will not dodge on 1rst bomber pass, it will dodge on second one potentially meaning that bomber will do absolutely nothing
maybe make all bombers do damage over time equal to engineer HP xD
so if it is an expanding engineer it will die, if it is a group of engineers in base - they will survive if they repair each other...Personally i also would like to see people be less greedy. (even tho i am often greedy myself)
Would be cool if land scouts could be made even faster out of the factory so you could use them to spot bombers, just get a ring of scouts around your base, tho even that is not possible on many maps due to terrain or water or just map being hugeanother part of the problem for me is that engineer might be staying still so it needs to accelerate 1rst before it can dodge, and that is annoying (especially with 500ms delay)
Maybe let t1 engineers make land scouts without a factory? xDI think it is very cool when someone makes land scout to counter 1rst bomber
Or when people split pgens or make preemptive mobile aa... tho preemptive mobile aa is actually feels quite weak movealso it might be weird but what i hate the most is that i don't hear bomb release sound when bomber is coming out of the fog of war, cause of that there is no chance to dodge (add 500ms delay to that as well)... maybe i would not have chance to dodge anyway, but not hearing that bomb sound makes is much more annoying cause i often hear it when second engineer is already getting bombed
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okay i read more of this thread... didn't read the "bomber becomes cheaper" part.
i think it all may work, tho i have few concerns:
•bombing inties in factory might be painful, with aeon or sera you can bomb factory and pgens around it at the same time.
•also inties costing much more than bombers feels weird
•You can spam bombers all over the map even harder
•bomber gets cheaper but becomes better vs pgens and mexes... i don't have problem with that... but not sure if lower rated players will like this -
Give engineers an auto dodge to help out decrypted old players with 0 awareness and 0 APM like me.
Also why not buff t1 maa range and damage to make it effective to build one to guard a key expansion area?
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I don't know if it's a good idea, but engineers could get a 'hunker' ability so that they could survive a single bomb or last a little longer against a lab. That way if they are being defended they will likely survive, but if undefended they will still die. Removes the RNG of dodging while still requiring attention and defending, without modifying bombers or labs.
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Let engies repair themselves - a quick order could prevent them dying to single bomb if some of the damage is changed to dot
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make them a little slower maybe
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@blodir If you make it cheaper it will hugely impact all maps by simply amassing them. Making them absolutely uncathable so lowering cost a no go. Imaging catching 5 random bombers would turn into catching 20.
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Just make a mod and test this stuff
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Me personally I think bombers are a tad strong, but in a good place overall.
My major grip with them is their inconsistency with dropping and the semi-skill semi-rng ground fire&engi dodge mechanic we currently have. Micro is important, but for the same reason I hate a lab outmicroing a tank to kill an engi afterwards, I hate having an engi perma dodge a bomber for 30 seconds until an inti arrives. Having to guess groundfire locations is stupid and unpredictable. IMO the early game should not be prone to as much randomness as it currently has with unit interactions.
I would love for some consistent interaction with how bombers do damage. Can further balance afterwards.
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…also javi calling out blodir for skill issue is peak faf forum entertainment.
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@tex Isn’t Blodir like 2300?
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Just some ideas:
If bombers had a second larger aoe ring, e.g. doing 75 damage, they'd be able to kill all engies in at most two passes. The inner circle ring size could also be nerfed try and keep balance vs large armies. Now, if a bomber drops 4 bombs, it either gets 2-4 kills instead of 0-4. It's more consistent but not 100% predictable.Another change, instead of increasing second ring size, is to shrink the inner aoe size and adding partial tracking to bombs, so they always hit with at least the weak aoe against engies. Bombers would be a bit worse against groups from the smaller inner ring, but hit more consistently.
One of these could also be combined with engies having larger turning circles to be worse at dodging, then maybe aoe wouldn't need to be changed to hit.
Keeping an inner damage ring with the same damage as current bombers would help to maintain current balance against larger, stationary, or unmicroed targets.
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With tracking, T1 bombers would be undodgeable ACU-killing machines? Even if you needed twice as many of them, if they can't be dodged they would be very strong.
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Would resolving the problem from a different direction be possible? Like making it less detrimental to lose an early expanding engineer. If I were making a map with this in mind putting the initial expansion mexes closer together, with the assumption the expanding engineers are more likely to complete a mex before detonating.
Other ideas:
Cheaper T1 radar, with a boost to power consumption. Or perhaps radar installations can do an early warning 'pulse' that doubles their range and costs 5k power, for a moment. Just enough to see if there are aircraft.
Civilian AA turrets about the map to make running the bomber a tiny bit more complex than a b-line.
Tweaking it so an aeon engineer can dodge, start building an AA gun, then sacrifice itself to completion before the bomber comes back around
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@tex said in T1 bombers are too good at hunting down expanding engineers:
My major grip with them is their inconsistency with dropping and the semi-skill semi-rng ground fire&engi dodge mechanic we currently have. Micro is important, but for the same reason I hate a lab outmicroing a tank to kill an engi afterwards, I hate having an engi perma dodge a bomber for 30 seconds until an inti arrives. Having to guess groundfire locations is stupid and unpredictable. IMO the early game should not be prone to as much randomness as it currently has with unit interactions.
Personally I'm not a fan of dodge-micro. Some bomber micro options are good. Hover bombing, no.
To kill hover-bombing: (1) give all bombers low acceleration, (2) disable bomb dropping below some speed.
@ovenman said in T1 bombers are too good at hunting down expanding engineers:
If bombers had a second larger aoe ring, e.g. doing 75 damage, they'd be able to kill all engies in at most two passes.
Being guaranteed an engy kill in two passes is more consistent; good idea.
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FAF very strongly does not need to lower micro possibility more than it already does, killing hover bombing is not a good thing.
Same as holding fire a gunship so it goes under a shield to kill it, these are things that should be allowed to exist if not encouraged to reward unit play.
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Hover bombing is pretty gimmicky imo. I personally see it more as an exploit than a valid micro. I'd rather get rid of hover bombing and figure out other ways to add micro to the game, particularly in later stages.
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As opposed to the not-exploit of what I said above or using 10 hp structures to block pathfinding/shots
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Aircraft are vtol so hover bombing is correct and fun
