Why I think T3 air is badly designed

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.

I mean, if you allow for T2/T3 mAA to fire when carried by transports...

That isn’t slow nor expensive nor low ROF.

Though I'm now noticing I failed to mention - if you do push the ASF into that kind of 'diversity' territory, then you could push for them to be more expensive and not a spam unit, so much so as to allow for other non-t3 units to exist in the air once first ASFs arise.

Also, if you can't imagine it, changes like what I suggested, or other of the 'weapon' type, could push smart micro into the forefront, allowing for players to actually find it more viable to save on mass and energy to build other units (say bombers, but whatever your heart desires). Like the range upgrade for the Cybran could allow for a cybran player to, with enough micro, win with inferior numbers of ASFs. And sure, you'd still have the problem of 'well someone can still spam ASF', yes, but at least you are opening up avenues for different approaches to air superiority game. Like yeah you could spam ASF, or you could micro them and afford yourself more eco or a bomber strike force, or extra ground/navy support with gunships/torps.

Ofc, I'm just thinking out loud here, I'm not a pro player, so maybe my insights aren't deep enough to grasp what kind of situations these kinds of changes could bring.

There are some simple things that could be done to some air units to make early air play more interesting.

1. Increase the speed of T1 Interceptors.

As the name suggests they are an interceptor, that cant catch up or intercept anything past T1 phase, this would make them more effective against the ever so devestating early strat rush. If your air player is behind this means the game is not won or lost or as reliant and one player to be good at one specific thing like rushing t3 air.

2. Increase proficiency of T2 Fighters/Bombers, 10% fighter/90% bomber to be 50%Fighter/50% bomber

T2 Air is used for mainly for one purpose and that is to snipe coms or in full share to snipe mexes/power thats it. If they were better at air it would be a better reason for more players investing in t2 air, and a good defence against again the early strat rush maybe reduce there bomb damage a little also,

the only T2 main anti air, air unit is the swift wind and that cant be produced in high enough quantitys to really be that effective, as by the time you have ten the other team will have T3, with a roll off time of 40s compared to 25s for T1 and T3

I gotta feeling you never actually used janus or notha to contest t3 air if you’re asking to buff their AA. Also buffing int speed to deal with strats now makes drops almost impossible to accomplish.

@FtXCommando forgive my ignorance but wouldnt say 10 janus although i undertsand they are good at air-air fighting for a T2 unit but wouldnt they get asbolutely wrecked by 10 ASF? and the build time is about triple that of an ASF.

If you mean trying to deny a T3 air factory with T2 bombers, i have tried that with limited succes as they are very weak to flak and shields and the HQ health is very high.

Perhaps reducing the health of a T3 air factory would go some way into denying/punishing an early T3 rush?

Although i have had some succes fighting early T3 with a large number of T1 inties but that only takes you so far.

Personaly i think buffing the fighter aspect of T2 air would be the most reasonable change, reducing build time and reducing bomber damage but increasing aa damage and speed or somehting like that.

I may open this subject in the balance column get peaoples thaughts.

You can get 10 janus out when 1st ASF is out. You keep forcing bad engagements and as long as you outnumber ASF 4:1 or so you won't lose air. I've managed to maintain air control for like 35 minutes in game by doing this.

Buff the AA of t2 air and you basically turn them into the new ASFs where it's impossible to counter them with anything that isn't t2 bombers. Frankly it's easier to counter ASF with t2 air than it is to counter t3 land with t2 land.

ASF just cost too little mass and build too quickly, upping both by a about a third would go a long way to making them feel less instantly oppressive against lower tiers but still dominate once you have numbers, a bit more like how swifties work.

Strat could get a nerf to power cost, so you basically need the t3 pgen before you can rush it

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

ASF just cost too little mass and build too quickly, upping both by a about a third would go a long way to making them feel less instantly oppressive against lower tiers but still dominate once you have numbers, a bit more like how swifties work.

Once you have a T3 air grid up, yes. When the T3 air HQ is first up, no. On the other hand, SAMs are extremely effective at local air control.

Before T3, combating T2 bombers without air can be quite hard. If you have T2 land and pgen + shields already, fine, or if you can directly attack the enemy base, but otherwise... you need about 2 T1 AA turrets per corsair to defend which is 3/4 the mass, assuming they are spread enough not to take splash damage. Vs Janus it's probably worse (unless really spread out). This is too expensive except as a very specific counter around a single base. T2 flak turrets aren't really better in terms of mass, except maybe with larger numbers due to the higher chance of hitting other T2 bombers. T1 MAA is a cheaper counter, but also has very little armour so you need to spread them out and have lots.

Also noticed in testing: a corsair can kill a T1 AA turret in one pass fairly reliably if on a straight approach from far. But the default attack runs are very short with corsair missiles fired just as the unit finishes the turn, and in this case the turret takes only about half the damage.

@cptant I agree.

The way I did it in the mod I made was to ultimately make AA countered by air experimentals, which were countered by ground-based T3AA. Since there isn't a lot of variation at T3, you might end up having to chain its balance to ground balance.

I also feel like the overemphasis on generalist units hurts things-whoever spams the generalist combat unit and controls it better-there isn't a rock/paper/scissors type balance.

This man has never seen a Grimplex air crush with Janus against strats and ASF kappa

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

Im quiet a low skilled player, so may opinion may not be counted.
But if we fantasy some.

How about SLOT-BASED ASF?
T2 air factory can be upgraded to ASF-base. It supports, lets say 16 ASFs, build it automatically, like drones and support\repair it.
What we can get from it?
Lost air can be comebacked fast.
But as winner's ASFs survived and can be docked to base very fast - they save veteranacy.
Winner in most cases have more bases and so it ASF cap still higher.
Also - air carriers\CZAR\Atlantis may also work as ASF base, increase comeback potential for land\naval players.

PS it opens way to some interesting ways to play with fuel and fuel-games.

No seriusly, no body takes this into account? This is also nice counter to T3 strat rush, yes, you still can rush T3 bomber, you must choose bomber or ASF dock first? And if you choose bomber, it is become cheese strategy, because you cant fast send cover for him.

“The missile guidance system knows where the missile is at all times because it knows where the missile is not”

Instead of adding another air unit to counter clumps, The US and Russia both have missile ~5 kiloton fission warhead long range Air defense missiles designed to take out the entire wings of bombers/fighters.

Why not add a new missile to the tactical missile launcher that has to be manually targeted and it’s a air only aoe mini nuke. It’s high risk high reward but if you predict where the air blob is going to be you can take out. 20-30 a missile. Set the mass and energy costs of the missile to 40% of 25 asfs but with an equal build time and you can only stock one per launcher.

It might even be interesting if it did EMP damage to ground shields and stunned units in same area area.