Restructure air by delaying tech 3 air

I'm not sure I can acknowledge the claim that killing units is of no consequence. It opens up a path for your allies to make a push, potentially securing additional mexes and reclaim. Ofc it's all situational, but if T2 bombers actually become proficient in bombing and clearing out forward land forces / outpost bases, wouldn't this actually work to incentivize players to actually spend some time in T2 and build up some T2 air forces before inevitably going T3 to assure air dominance, otherwise risking loosing a front due to delayed air-reaction?

Like yeah, you can just ignore T2 and go straight T3, but if the enemy air player goes T2, it can cost your teammate quite a bit of ground while he waits for you to reach T3. Ofc it would be a reactive tactic to invest more in T2, if you scout and know your enemy is rushing for T3. Over time it won't become a norm to rush T3, but it will have to be considered as one of the options (which currently it is not).

Again, I mentioned to maybe keep the corsair on the snipey-side of damage.

@maudlin27 exactly why I'm proposing for T2 bombers to be more proficient in clearing out larger unit clusters. Not that you have to target the actual units on the front line. You could go for production and eco. What would differentiate T2 bomber capability is it's larger area but weaker damage, compared to strats.

Assuming we make the damage values for Janus | Corsair | Notha as: | 700 | 900 | 750, you can still snipe T2 mexes with 3 Corsairs, or 4 Janus/Notha (which is mass-efficient compared to T3 strats, but admittedly more risky at current speed hierarchy), but you can also use it's aoe to wipe out other parts off the base. Like unshielded PGens. You could also still snipe your land opponent's unshielded land HQ (pressummed T2 UEF HQ) with 'only' 6 T3 bombers making 2 passes (assuming no AA to kill them, and assuming the proposed lowest 700 Janus dmg, attacking a UEF highest-HP T2 land HQ).

Edit: forgot to write about 1v1 vs NvN, will be added in a hot minute (below, so you don't have to re-read the above, if you already did).

The 1v1 vs NvN problem

I'd argue this is a problem in all team games that allow for 1v1 situations, especially in RTS. It's the problem of how to balance the game in a way that both 'sides' are satisfied. And given the amount of years humans have been making RTS games, the amount of attempts this generated, and the fact that number of attempts = numbers of failures, I'd argue it's impossible to balance a game in such a way that the same stats are as impactful as in 1v1 as they are in team games. Similar problem, but one regarding pro vs noob balance, has been a problem in games since forever, not just RTS.

Now this is more of a philosophical drivel, but we as the community will probably always be torn between what's more important to balance, 1v1 or NvN. We could in theory 'decide', but that would, I feel, serve as a trigger to split the community, which I'd argue is not a good thing. Also, this part is not related to the discussion, but is important in the sense that we need to acknowledge the viewpoints of both 1v1 players, but also NvN players, and that those will in some cases vary wildly.

No because any decent land push has shields and flak which will drastically minimize any damage those bombers do and if you invest in the 8-10 bombers to make the shields/flak insufficient you then need to hit something like pgens or mexes or an acu to make the upfront cost of those bombers worth it. Killing random tanks loses you the advantage and you were better off ecoing.

On top of that, a timing push from your ally should have been succeeding without your bomber support already, or the armies are attacking into each other and now you are hurting your ally as much as hitting the enemy with the bombers. The only exception here is if the push ran into something like the first few t3 units and needs assistance against them, but this change serves to actually make the bombers actively worse at hitting those high priority targets to allow a snowball to continue.

The push should succeed without you because the ally should be investing nearly all of his eco into the push, otherwise it’s half assed and wasn’t intended to end the game. In which case you investing critical air resources into your land player dicking around was also a waste of your time and now you’re behind for no reason.

But you are basing you statement on the idea that each attempt ever should be solely based and determined by that players' attack force. Which, pardon me saying it, sounds very 1v1-focus biased and not representative of team games. Like in 1v1 there is no one else to cover for you, so I understand your sentiment of "if you can not do it yourself, it means you can not do it at all, which in turn means you are losing by doing it", but I think it's realistic to leverage additional support from one of your teammates if he is ahead enough to afford it - like, for example, from your sheltered air player - where most of the "air T3 rush is oppressive" sentiment arises from in the first place - because someone can afford to do nothing but rush for T3 air.

Following your reasoning, you shouldn't push ever if your army isn't overwhelmingly stronger, which means that in an ideal game, you will never push, and solely rely on using your ground army as a deterrent. Which isn't unreasonable, but it means you assume any and all games should be ended by sniping the ACU despite all of the infrastructure and units it has supporting it. Which is cost effective if you can pull it off, ofc, but I don't think should be the pivoting point of the discussion.

Tenderizing your ally's push path seems quite a reasonable strategy to me - either by doing it directly, say bombing the enemy forward combat units, or doing it less directly, by bombing their eco (say to stall enemy E, so shields go down, or their factories, to reduce their unit output) or other fortified positions - it won't take ages for a couple of T2 bombers to take down a couple of T2 shields. And yes, you might get the enemy to react by building disproportionate AA to dissuade this, but then you achieved your goal - making it easier for your ally to push (given some BP and mass was invested in additional AA by the enemy, instead of ground-striking units).

@javi if you think that sole purpose of t2 air is sniping acus you are such a monke. Like what if you go for pgens, mexes, hqs? Maybe skill of 1ks is too smol to consider this, thats why appealing to their games is clown.

This really just needs a few changes to delay a strat rush, so it requires a t3 gen, so increase the energy cost and the build time slightly.
Then slow down the massing of ASF by increasing their mass cost, and build time, and can also reduce their energy cost so adjacency is less important (but still is for efficiency) so you can assist factories to try and catch up after an air loss.

Don't go nerfing the T3 Air timing as it will affect 1v1 and other games too much
Don't make adjacency worse, air grids make the late game more interesting, and are juicy targets

This gives more time for the non-air players, who have to make units and defenses and not just eco like the air player, to get some more aa / shield up to guard strat.

Also more time for lower tier air to be relevant before ASF inevitably dominate, if T3 Air player keeps wasting them in small numbers that is a skill issue, not balance

And also the other effect it will have is the air player doesn't always become the mass / eco leader since more mass going into ASF

@tomma on most team games T2 air is just for snipes, what are you going to attack? The 5 t1 mexes that aren’t deep in the enemy base? Yeah cool other dude invested his mas on T3 air and your T2 air is now useless.

1v1 and 2v2 see where air is balanced perfectly. Feels like the less players, the more balanced everything is.

@javi said in Restructure air by delaying tech 3 air:

Feels like the less players, the more balanced everything is.

Ban all games larger than 0v0 for perfect balance!

But yeah, as I mentioned, the biggest source of this need to rush T3 air is how dangerous T3 strat mex snipes are. If you make them less dangerous (reduce aoe to prevent multi-mex kills in starting base) and less easy to make (higher mass and bp cost), it should also be much less prevalent for players to rush T3, since it's not as big of a deal. E.g. if you can shield each of your mexes before a strat is out, it'll in most cases be a waste of mass, given you'll most likely donate it's mass to the enemy when it inevitably gets shut down.

@javi most teamgames maps is what? Canis 5v5 or smth like that?
As for targets for your t2 air you go for t2 pgens/t2 air hqs and buildpower around them, then mexes. You can also use gunships to raid vulnerable mexes and armies without flak. Like, you are 1v1 player, dont you know how to abuse air? Or your only purpose in life is to get gun and go monke?

@javi said in Restructure air by delaying tech 3 air:

@tomma on most team games T2 air is just for snipes, what are you going to attack? The 5 t1 mexes that aren’t deep in the enemy base? Yeah cool other dude invested his mas on T3 air and your T2 air is now useless.

1v1 and 2v2 see where air is balanced perfectly. Feels like the less players, the more balanced everything is.

Alright you are being unreal. Let me end this with actual replays.

https://replay.faforever.com/17804806

Game of me going t2 air where my mirror goes t3 air. I kill the power of 3 different players and delay t3 air from my mirror by both forcing sams, killing t2 pgens, and then killing the engie support allowing my team to exploit their delayed t3 air from another slot.

https://replay.faforever.com/17764243

Game of me going t2 air from a support slot. I operate as the ASFs for my air player for the first few minutes and force Yudi to respond to my janus with ints because if he doesn't we get full air operating capability and can bomb the whole map into oblivion. If I went t3 air instead, I would have died to Tex's land pushes. I sniped power, land, bp, and ACUs.

Me operating as the ASFs is pretty important because Paralon often does totally gimped strat rushes that kill his eco since he does them 2 minutes earlier than the typical timing. The janus being out is a hard counter to that tactic.

https://replay.faforever.com/15685194

In this one Yudi and I use t2 air to keep land pushes back on a primarily monkey push map. This was one of my first games using janus so I was pretty bad with them.

https://replay.faforever.com/17708269

This game enemy team knew we were doing t2 air cancer and attempted to counter it but that left them open to my t2 land push and it resulted in game loss.

https://replay.faforever.com/18202812

This game I just straight up 4v1 with janus.

https://replay.faforever.com/17541745

Game ends on t2 stage because of frigs gaining map control and t2 bomber spam meaning air control won't be won for several more minutes in combination with then needing another few minutes to transfer mass into torps to deal with the navy. By then, everything is dead and game is lost.

https://replay.faforever.com/16063045

A completely lost game where all navy slots are dead but correct t2 bomber play results in a win.

But I guess 1v4'ing or 2v'4'ing teams with Tagada-tier players isn't OP enough and we need to buff it so that people can win an air 1v1 in 1100 rated canis.

A few others:
https://replay.faforever.com/18944676

Yudi outplays Farm and I with t2 air here.

https://replay.faforever.com/18218102

Another game of janus just winning the whole match.

https://replay.faforever.com/18890108

Game of me and Farm beating Blodir's t3 air strat rush when our team doesn't even have a t1 air factory with decent support to go t2.

I don't want to spend 30 minutes finding it because it was a map gen custom game so I can't look for it via map previews, but I also had a game where Farm crushed my t3 air rush with corsair/int abuse where he pretty much slaughtered my team by the time I built up the 15ish asf I needed to actually beat his int cloud.

Remember teamgame tournaments are almost always decided at t2 air stage, not t3 air stage. Because it's the earliest point possible to dump 2-4 players of mass on a single point of failure and cause a cascading snowball that results in a win. T3 air is too expensive and slow if you are actually working to win a game in a serious environment, but even in a casual teamgame t2 air is viable enough to force at least 2 slots to have to prioritize you and leave teammates at peace to do whatever is needed to win a game.

^ tl;dr nerf Janus.

Jokes aside, the whole T2 air is only for snipes sounds a lot like the people who don't like full share. People tunnel vision on the acu like nothing else exists. T2 air is very strong and underused. I almost completely stopped using T2 air for snipes once I got better than the 1200-1500 range or something like that unless someone is clearly asking to have their acu die to t2 air easily. I regularly use t2 air to snipe eco though.

I think delaying t3 air doesn't really solve much. It makes t2 even stronger and just delays the issue - people will rush t3 air regardless if the map calls for that. T2 drops are already kinda op given T2 transports are slightly faster than inties and having asf a few minutes later makes them that much more oppressive, right now I feel that they're balanced out a bit by only having a relatively narrow timeframe where there are no asf to counter them.

I've won air and seen it won more often with mass inties or inties + swifties/janus vs t3 air more often than I've won with t1 land vs t3 land. Yes air has an impact faster than land, but that's only to an extent. A relatively quick t3 land drop can be brutal for example.

t2 trans actually got nerfed some years ago to be .1 slower than ints. It used to be that you could lock a transport in enemy base and it would still land. Now they need to at least get to your map half unscouted to not be caught in time with ints.

Huh I could have sworn it was changed back or something, felt like I've had a few times where inties stayed just out of range trailing the transport without shooting. But you're right, looks like the transports top speed is 14.3 vs 15 for inties.

@maudlin27 said in Restructure air by delaying tech 3 air:

I can't immediately think of a big downside to buffing inties, but think we should consider going further than some suggestions here - e.g. if they were buffed to both be .1 speed faster than strats (which could also be done by nerfing strat speed), and to trade mass efficiently with ASFs (this could be achieved by nerfing ASF damage rather than buffing intie damage), would it be a bad thing? (It might be, I'm just speculating) - The main thing to balance them being oppressive is they have poor fuel and die really easiliy to any flak or SAMs, so I don't see them as being as oppressive as ASFs, and there's still a clear incentive to get T3 air and asfs since asfs don't die easily to ground AA.

It could therefore turn air fights from a 1 unit approach to a 2 unit approach, as well as greatly reducing the power of a team getting t3 air ahead of the other team. It introduces an alternative comeback mechanic if you lose air - i.e. you just build loads of inties and try to fight near your own AA. It also makes air staging more interesting.

While a comparison was made earlier about T3 land (e.g. titans) vs T1 land, Navy already sets a precedent for a T1 unit being useful into the T3 stage - frigates can trade mass efficiently with later tech naval units if there's enough space for them.

I'd also forgotten about the SAM semi-bug fix that buffed them so am happy with the changes proposed to that.

Want to note strictly speaking Inties do favorably trade e or m into ASF (actually every unit does. Until you take into account how “damage” degrades in combat more or less. Or kiting works etc)

Pardon dbl post, but thoughts on mobile shields working on transports?

won't change anything, asf will delete it in a second like anything else, they can already do so by attacking an air unit that is below a shield such as landed or taking off and do more dps than a monkey does to it

I think I suggested before that all air units should have their hp reduced by something like 10x and all AA damage should be reduced the same to stay the same, because it makes no sense how high their damage and hp are compared to other layer units, tanks take more shots to destroy 1 landed plane than 1 tank

EDIT for ftx: (won't change anything about the asf being the answer to everything)

Changes a lot, stingers and broadswords are now certified insane

@ftxcommando said in Restructure air by delaying tech 3 air:

How about this as a quick proposal for people that think early strats are a problem:

• Reduce all strat damage to variants of 2600-2800.

• Buff t2 mex hp to 3000 for all factions (I’m fine with going so far as to revert the hp changes in general but whatever)

Now that sounds like a good idea to reduce the devastation of early T3

It's abundantly clear from the discussion that the problem isn't the ASF itself, but the relationship of the air tiers, not only to each other, but the rest of the game. Stat changes to individual air units will never come close to adequately addressing that - you have to reseat just where air stands in relation to the rest of game, and then quantify the relationship that each air tier has to the next. There has always been a clear disconnect between T2 and T3 in this game, but it's widest in the air units.

The OP was closest to the subject, identifying that the entry floor (construction cost) is simply too low for Air Factories, especially in the energy requirement, and that the ability to mass produce them may also be out of line in relation to not only themselves, but other air tiers.

Also correctly identified is that any such change will directly impact the relationship of surface based AA, to the air game - and that too must be considered in context of the overall relationship of AIR to the rest of the game. Again, individual stat changes are not going to solve that overall issue.

No, changing those costs does nothing (or makes the game actively worse for lower player game modes). This is strictly the reality that in a teamgame (4v4) you put 4x eco into 1x eco with air and t2 air is the first point any noteworthy air to ground dps comes into play. It used to be possible to do similar things with jesters but they got nerfed for that.

Changing t2 air so 4x eco can’t beat 1x eco in defense destroys the capacity of air in 1v1 or 2v2 where the discrepancy of t2 air is nowhere near as strong because everyone is making their own air defense, there are less independent targets, and dumping disproportionate mass concentration is simply not as possible without misplay from the enemy.

It’s also vastly easier to attack with 4 people than defend with 4 people, especially across a whole map.

@sprouto said in Restructure air by delaying tech 3 air:

There has always been a clear disconnect between T2 and T3 in this game, but it's widest in the air units.

Air has no terrain or even collision so when a fight begins it's just who has the larger HP/damage pool that can keep firing. There are no air siege units or aoe units. It will always be like this no matter how expensive you make T3 air tech transition.