**Platinum question**
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All these ideas are about buffing air when air is already really strong by using fuel as some sort of extra damage mechanic. If anything a more robust fuel mechanic would be related to allowing air units to become significantly more powerful as the reason they must be weak to any level of investment in their counters (aa, fighters) is related to their ability to attack anything from anywhere. If that isn’t true anymore then they can be made more durable with more damage.
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.
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@ftxcommando I'm right there with you on the t3 AOE. Didn't Aeon ASF have a flak effect in vanilla?
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@ftxcommando Just giving it to ASF should suffice - if 10 ASF oneshot any number of ASF then T3 air micro will become many small "wings" of ~12 ASF micro
Should look much more interesting as well and allow a weak air player to come back with king micro.
Plz go to suggestions forums with this or just tell the balance team directly
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In real life, planes usually need fuel to stay in air, while boats do not need fuel to stay on water and tanks do not need to stay on land. Also ships can have autonomy for months, and land units for weeks (if not moving fullspeed all the time, of course), but we can hardly say that about planes. So there is totally some logiq about planes needing fuel.
Also, planes needing fuel means that air play is not just copy of land/sea play. Air has its own caracteristics with raids, "sorties", attacks, pullbacks, bases/airstaging/motherships, best places to land and wait etc. Not just moving units forward step by step, like on land games sometimes.
Is t3 fuel tanks too big? Personally I tend to agree. This "beauty" of game is little lost for t3 air play.
Should we have possibility to repair planes? Of course, as we already have airports in form of airstaging and motherships etc. It is possible, that having (mass)free repairing was meant to compensate weakness of planes and force raid-type gameplay for planes (go in, come back), something like in real life. This is not only attackers advantage, you win fight at enemy side, but you have to go back to refuel/repair, leaving enemy with time and massfield. But now, as the planes are made stronger and more microheavy by high rated/experianced palyers, it works something like, you go in, win the fight and stay over enemy base until end of the game (or aa comes and survives fight with air). Dont know if it is good or bad, but in this case maybe make repairing cost some mass too? -
@wikingest There is real life reason behind things needing fuel, yes. But this is also a setting with teleportation and instantanious transfer of mass as a resource over distances of up to 114 KM.
I do really wish we could cause some massive overhaul of air, but as for little changes to upset the really awful meta of "have more, go in tighter circles" or whatever, trying out AOE seems like a good start.
If I had time I'd make a mod that adds wings of fighters to aircraft carriers with SACU like upgrade slots.
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@kalethequick "There is real life reason behind things needing fuel, yes." This is not what I said, I said some things need more fueling and have less autonomy than others.
"But this is also a setting with teleportation and instantanious transfer of mass as a resource over distances of up to 114 KM." Other parts of game, yes. Considering the shortness of games, even if calculating the "speed variable" that is not same in game/real life, it is not essential to add this to all unit mouvements.
I never spoke about "massive overhaul". Original question was: "Why air units do still have fuel?" So I answered this question: It is more life-like, and adds some personnality to (air)game.
I spoke about reducing t3 planes fuel tanks. This is so subtle and small change, most people wont even notice. (Reducing slightly, not 50 times of course) It would have very minor influance on balance, but will add some extra depth and little micro to game.
I said nothing about AOE. But if you want me to say something, I would point out, that this would be a huge change. It would unbalance so much. You would need to rebalance all aircrafts against asf's, and then eventually all aa against planes, and eventually all other units against aa... You can try some miracle thing, like making asf 5 times more expensive. But this may be too expensive for transport/strat catching and too cheap for inti cleaning up, etc. It can be perfect against inties and unbalanced against aeon t2 fighters etc. It can be perfect against aeon t2 fighter, but ridiculously unbalanced against aa (same health but 5* more expensive) etc. Might need to add effective "formation", like in navy/land, to keep planes spread out. Old asf's would probably be better in beginning of t3, and some tasks, so might be better to keep them, and add second asf-fighter. Something like t1 land has tank and arty.
I have nothing against AOE fighters, just pointing out that, it is huge amount of work and lots of added complexity (multiple asf or microing small wings), on a game already quite complicated.
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We dramatically reduced fuel time for all the combat air units in LOUD. The impact is important primarily in the respect that it forces players to consider 'depth' and 'time over target' as a part of their air operations. It directly magnified the value, and more importantly, the tactical value of a well placed (read: near the action) airpad - making them not only an important part of the game, but a vital necessity to maintaining air supremacy over any battlefield.
Now - on smaller maps, this is not going to be an issue, as even with reduced fuel, the air units will be able to range the full depth of the map, and have plenty for operations at that depth. It only begins to show it's worth on 20k and larger, where your bombers have enough fuel for a deep - but short - strike, with little time to linger around.
This change indirectly addresses some of the balance question between air units and other arms, putting a reasonable drag on the ability of air power to be utilized wherever and whenever. Short of a major rework of air unit stats, there are few other options.
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Problem is that FAF is balanced around 20km and smaller unlike LOUD and the air mechanics are built around striking anywhere except areas with minimal investment in their counters. Things that balance around “deep but short strikes” won’t do anything except massively buff hoverbombing as a mechanic.
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I don't know if that's a problem or not - just a choice - I was just trying to give some perspective of what might be expected from such a change. It revamped the tempo and flavor of the air game, without question. As for hoverbombing, I cannot say - it's not something we see.
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You guys have mexes way more spread out than FAF which impacts the viability of hoverbombing, on FAF these changes to bombers will just make it mandatory to learn hoverbomb micro because it makes all your bombing raids massively more efficient for the 40 seconds of fuel you have or whatever. You do needless, long loops which now not only cut into your dps but also your fuel.
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We have many maps that have resource densities just a high as many typical maps used in FAF. In fact, many of our users will sometimes bring over their favorite maps and utilize them with LOUD. While philosophically, we do see things differently, being the Supreme Commander, and having to make those decisions, is what it's all about. Certainly, the layout of a map can impact the value of some of those decisions.
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Fuel is not a fun mechanic and not a mechanic that anyone is actually thinking about when playing. Your stuff just runs out of fuel occasionally and reminds you that it exists and you need air staging. I'd remove it from the game to reduce complexity and have one less variable that updates every tick. Obviously, we do not need more complexity since there are only a few dozen people that can play the game competently as it is.
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Removing fuel will allow everyone to see the bomber reload timer, which will also encourage more hoverbombing! Let me see the bomber reload timer just so I don't have that situation where I try to drop a bomb just before 5 seconds elapsed since my last drop. It makes me feel dumb.
In all seriousness, fuel actually plays an influential role on how inties especially are used. If you've played Crossfire Canal ever, you've gotten into games where you have 100+ inties. The way fuel works now, you actually have to be cognizant of how you use your inties—selecting small groups to deal with small numbers of bombers or transports, and parking the majority of them in a place to conserve fuel. You certainly can't just select all inties and move everywhere all the time. If fuel were removed, you could just patrol massive groups of inties everywhere and it would completely the way game is played. I say we should keep fuel as a mechanic.
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Yeah removing fuel usage is a straight buff to air units which seems like an odd thing to want given I feel like a lot of people think air is already op or broken or whatever.
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Don't interceptors on patrol automatically go back to refuel when they get low? If patrolling interceptors is so game-breaking then surely someone would just invest in a few air staging on each slice and patrol around the entire map. Your inties will just go off chasing some random thing that flew by and get slaughtered while you aren't looking. Worst case scenario they might actually intercept something like one of those busted arty drops that always get by and one-shot your entire base. If they are that good you could even make 4 air staging for the price of each T2 PD you need for drop insurance.
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Who thinks air is broken besides dudes whining that dual gap has a strat rush?
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I do find the idea of very low fuel times with AOE regen with air staging interesting. I'm thinking 30 seconds of fuel on asf or 1-2 minutes on an inti, maybe teammates air staging also works if possible. Basically forcing air staging dotted around the map and more tactical positioning. Sounds like a cool variation for the very boring air play today.
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Do carriers perform air staging, can carriers be given the ability to perform air staging?
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@valki Yes they do (atlantis for uef), also fatties, cybran cruisers, I don't remember if any other units can.
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It's pretty hilarious when a asf hits up a Fatboy for air staging
