Why I think T3 air is badly designed

so much unecessartây theory,just build a few sams to cover the map and even if you are going to be behind 10-12 asfs,those sams are going to be extremely worth it,also if you want to nerf it,air will turn to be extremely useless since all the AA needs to be reworked as well due to that

@ftxcommando said in **Platinum question**:

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.

Restorer spammers be rubbing their dirty little hands together in excitement at the thought of ASF blobs being reduced significantly.

@derpfaf Yes. I would very much like the unit labeled "Anti Air" to be viable for that purpose.

A good air-based counter to the ASF would be anything mounting an extended-reach air-to-air missile: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40660/f-15ex-to-carry-new-oversized-air-to-air-missile

Presumably, a new plane would carry something like this in FAF. It could shoot from ~5-10x ASF's weapon range and the missile would have both tracking and significant AoE (maybe 10) to kill 10-20 ASF in one shot. Missile damage would be low (~4,000) and rate of fire would also be low (0.05, or 1 shot per 20 seconds) so, if this unit cost ~5x an ASF's cost, it could be weak against air XPs and outright countered by T4 bomber and CZAR. To make this unit even better, allow it to fire the extended-reach missile backways, thus allowing it to kite the ASF hordes.

The counter-play to something like this would be sending a few ASF in, or using these things to shoot down each other. The first is micro-intensive and small squads of ASF lose to ASF hordes. The second option is expensive and does little to kill bombers or T4 aircraft.

Why don't we just give each faction a T2 fighter like the swiftwind.

@funkoff sounds great, like seeker missile from the Starcraft 2 Raven and Parasitic Bomb from the Raven.

Interesting to note is that both offer a counterplay by breaking off the targeted unit. The Parasitic Bomb from the Viper is a Damage over Time Aura allowing late reactive counterplay.

How do you view Blizzards implementations, and how would you offer factional diversity in this massive missile anti-ASF unit?

@funkoff So... A unit that is capable to single-shot any strat bomber. 25 of them would be able to single-shot any air experimental. For the modest price of 125 asf's. 25 of them could also kill (with single shot) huge amounts of asf, even when coming from 25 different directions. Not to mention kiteing. And all that with 5 times less health masswise than asf. Making it hugely vulnerable to aa. Basicly unit that counters all other air units easily and loses hugely to aa. Defencive absolute. Both sides will build ~30 of those and then all airplay will stop?

Maybe reduce the ~4000 damage? Also, this range will give advantage for stealth asf's over normal asf's. Also, if those counter asf blobs, how would people kill air experimentals (without big asf groups)?

Every One here is stating that building a sam is a counter to a strat bomber, however air players tend to just rush T3 in ten minutes or so and make no attempt at making other units, so to compare that with a naval or land player who has to spam out massive amounts of low end units to get map control exc is never going to have access to T3 Tech in the same time, some players will even still be at T1 at ten minutes, meaning no sheilds no flak and deffinetly no sams or power to even run shields, second point is that the larger the map the ever more devestating T3 air strat rush is as mexes are spread out and you cant make a shield or sams over the entire map to cover all your mexes everywhere.

The simple matter is if your air player does not keep up with the enemy air player and they make an early strat you lose the game.

Wich makes for very boring play just rushing t3 air and no variance in strategy.

Thank you for adding your unique thoughts and insight to this ancient thread.

Kill Enemy before t3 air stage.
Issue solved

since we are necroing, I would suggest that the reasons asf are ultimate unit for air control (which sounds close to definition of overpowered to me) are few:

• air ignores unit to unit collisions, allowing massive number of units and thus firepower to be packed in tiny areas, allowing asf to deliver ridiculous damage (ex. 200 asf deleting a full hp czar in <1 second) compared to every other layer of combat
• t2 fighter/bombers may as well be renamed to t2 bombers, because fighter part of them is worse than even t1 air, which they lose to mass for mass and have worse (aa) dps and hp per mass as well, so you are forced to rush t3 or lose to enemy doing so because t2 adds nothing to fight air with and t1 dies in 1 shot to asf while also being slower and lower damage/mass and lower weapon range and lower fuel capacity, aka worse in every way except hp/mass
• there are zero experimental units designed specifically for fighting air

1. Not sure we can easily add collisions.
2. T2 fighters bombers are not weak. The notha and corsair will arguable lose mass to mass vs interceptors as they have stronger ground weaponary. However, take the Janus they 2 hit inti's, have good aoe ground and in groups can fight asf. 10 janus can probably wipe 5 asf if micro'd well meaning they are formidable in the correct hands. T2 air can be used with late t3 air as the "bomber" part can wipe your enemy air by destroying pgens, mexes and factories.
3. I mean the czar is pretty damn strong for fighting air. Keep it behind your asf, and micro it back to keep it at the edge of its range and you basically have 4/5 sams firing non-stop into the enemy air.

Never experienced washer bomb into ur asf cloud I see

@lord_asmodeus said in Why I think T3 air is badly designed:

I mean the czar is pretty damn strong for fighting air. Keep it behind your asf, and micro it back to keep it at the edge of its range and you basically have 4/5 sams firing non-stop into the enemy air.

The speed and HP along with the high amount of burst damage that comes from an ASF swarm make it easy to wipe out a CZAR in two passes, and the CZAR's firing range and acceleration isn't great for zoning tbh. The way you win air is because the CZAR is a damage sink for the enemy ASF and then you can sweep in and get free shots with your own. At high unit counts the Sams are useless cuz they have no AOE

Maybe ASF shouldn't cost less mass than t2 land and t2 air units while getting 75% energy cost reduction from adjacency.

@thomashiatt

Obviously ASF are made with a low density construction to allow their high speed, meaning they take less mass. But the precision needed to 3D print their design means it takes a high amount of computing power (energy). Same reason ships cost high mass and lower energy proportionally

People still not taken my first post into consideration yet.

Kill your enemy before t3 air stage.

Problem solved.

Imagine thinking that a strategy is fine if the only way to beat is to go completely all-in.

I was conceptualizing units for a laser weapons oriented faction, and was thinking how I could make their ASFs unique, and one idea I had is an ASF with omni-directional fire (or at least being able to fire from front and back), but ofc with reduced DPS to compensate.

One other method of adding flavour to ASF is to add a bit of diversity to their weapons. I don't think you can make it work by changing their speed or health dramatically, but weapons could work. One example of that is above - omni directional weapons.
For another example, you could give Cybran ASFs double or even triple range, at the cost of DPS - they fire missiles, might as well make them fly a bit further. Aeon could get some AOE. UEF could get flares, so anti-air missiles aren't as effective or something.

I mean you could always play with movement speed, acceleration and maneuverability, but that seems like a lot of 4th digit adjustments for a long period of time - not that the aforementioned weapon changes would be easy, but at least they feel somewhat inspired.

Anyways, these kinds of changes would mean you'd approach different ASF fights differently depending on the faction you are playing, which I'd argue is the core 'problem' the now-presumably-inactive OP actually had - every faction was the same, and there was no dynamics to the air game - just get to T3 asap, and then spam the living hell out of ASFs.

I mean the problem is not only with the ASFs, the only 'outliers' in the whole air lineup is the Mercy, given it's quite unique only to the Aeon - everything else is somewhat present in all/most factions. Which ofc you need so one faction is not inherently stronger, but it kinda feels ASFs are that much more bland. Like the biggest diversity in units characteristics are T1 and T2 bombers, but again they are not viable the moment T3 hits the game (which is usually rushed, so useful for a very short time).

That doesn’t change anything. You still spam ASF and only ASF in late game. It just results in the potential of not risking fights at certain quantities for certain factions or (god willing) one faction being strictly better or worse than others.

All t3 air needs is an aoe gunship that is slow, expensive, and low rate of fire while also having decent range and damage attached to the missile.