Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF
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It takes some research to figure out the best approach and the best values of course, this is just a direction
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One idea could be to allow sams (either from t3 sam sites or from say a cruiser) to retarget. That would make them stronger against units with low hit points, such as ASF. It would have less of an effect on strategic bombers or gunships as it requires more salvo's to destroy the unit.
We experimented with this using submarines:
There is sadly no video, but it did make the game feel a lot more coherent. Now torpedoes (or sams) are just destroyed when they lose their target.
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That sounds like make them better against asf but the same against strats/gunships rather than better against asf and weaker against strats/gunships.
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A stat nerf along with it could fix that.
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Why not just nerf ASF HP slightly too? Do they really need to have such high HP to mass ratios?
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@Blodir Please edit your opening post to abide by the Balance Thread Guidelines
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Nerf asf hp and damage proportionally so they feel the same in air fights + the sam retarget change accomplishes this and sounds interesting
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@exselsior said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
Nerf asf hp and damage proportionally so they feel the same in air fights + the sam retarget change accomplishes this and sounds interesting
I'd also probably look at movement speed. It would be interesting if air players in teamgames had to multitask rather than moving their asf in a big blob, and it would create opportunities for aggression even when it's not clear who is ahead in air.
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Moving your ASF in a big blob will always be optimal even if their speed was low, this will just make the unit feel worse to use
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@zeldafanboy said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
Moving your ASF in a big blob will always be optimal even if their speed was low, this will just make the unit feel worse to use
Moving any army in a big blob will always be optimal (at least if you ignore unit ranges or collisions). Movement speed is a big thing in forcing players to split their armies since they can't protect every vulnerable location at the same time.
Technically you can still force splits with several aggressive units in different locations on the map, but there's a combination of multiple variables that makes it very easy to respond with air regardless of positioning:
- any air usage that is not a snipe taking a relatively large amount of time to do enough damage to justify its cost
- asf killing anything that flies extremely fast
- asf movement speed
- there are usually not that many vulnerable targets on the map
Roughly the first three amount to the following equation for the payoff time of an aggressive play (eg gunships killing mexes)
payoff = value/sec * (asf distance * asf movement speed + hp / asf dps) - costIf there's no more than 1 opportunity for positive payoff at the map at any given time, then there are no opportunities for multitasking.
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@deribus said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
@Blodir Please edit your opening post to abide by the Balance Thread Guidelines
This is really offtopic, but I have to say that enforcing rules like that is a good way to make sure nobody ever makes threads or says anything regardless of how high value it might be simply because of the added mental overhead of constructing a satisfactory thread format.
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Another 'natural' approach to prevent a single large blob is by making it unwieldy by making the formation larger:
At the moment we have u (footprint of 2), but if you turn it to c (footprint of 3) a large cloud of ASFs become very unwieldy. Players that split them up would be in an advantage
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@blodir said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
@deribus said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
@Blodir Please edit your opening post to abide by the Balance Thread Guidelines
This is really offtopic, but I have to say that enforcing rules like that is a good way to make sure nobody ever makes threads or says anything regardless of how high value it might be simply because of the added mental overhead of constructing a satisfactory thread format.
You basically had all the stuff you would have had in the OP (why do it, some gauge of a change regardless of how theoretical, intended result) in your responses in the thread here.
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@jip said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
Another 'natural' approach to prevent a single large blob is by making it unwieldy by making the formation larger:
At the moment we have u (footprint of 2), but if you turn it to c (footprint of 3) a large cloud of ASFs become very unwieldy. Players that split them up would be in an advantage
I think most likely expanding the flock area would only reduce the impact of micro rather than discourage blobbing (people would "stop move micro" instead of old fashioned (skillful) micro)
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Some side effects of something like chsnging asf dmg/hp and sam dmg like suggested:
- restorers are now way better vs air
- janus spam will be dominant for longer
- cruisers will be a lot stronger vs air
- way harder to snipe a protected air t4 aftet you lost air
- strat rushes are even stronger than right now
Im not saying these are necessarily bad changes, but try to keep in mind the side effects of changing a single unit where a lot of other units are balanced around.
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Yeah I was about to say something to that effect, restorers and czar in particular might need small aa dps nerf here. It makes t2 air a bit more dominant but maybe that's not a bad thing, lots of people don't realize how strong it is now maybe it would highlight that more and allow a bit longer of a t2 air stage. Cruisers being stronger vs asf is probably fine, but not sure. I think nerfing speed as well is too much though, it's too much of a buff to bombers and drops.
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@jip I would probably just make 4 ASF blobs, put them on separate hotkeys (e.g.: control groups 5, 6, 7, 8 ) and then do the "Starcraft" thing of pressing hotkeys then click then pressing hotkey then click then press hotkey then click then press hotkey then click, so that all 4 blobs move to the same place. Because 4 smaller blobs would have a smaller footprint than 1 big blob.
That just feels like it would be a pain to micro but I'd feel bad any time I was lazy and got out-microed by my opponent
At least in the current system, you only have to micro one group of fighters
Even if I have to click 5 times per second or something, I only have to do that with one group. I don't want to do that with 4 groups at a time.
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@blodir said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
Moving any army in a big blob will always be optimal (at least if you ignore unit ranges or collisions)
Why would you ignore unit ranges or collisions for land units?
Moreover, you are ignoring AOE damage. The problem is there isn't a lot of effective AOE damage you can do to ASF blobs. Therefore there is no downside to clumping up ASF in an air fight.
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in original supreme commander, SAMs used to rapid fire aa missiles without pausing, like t1 pd shoots, if rate of fire is increased but individual damage reduced, the weapon becomes stronger vs multiple weak enemies rather than fewer stronger ones, such as asf (low individual hp) vs gunships and strats (high individual hp)
this would also make units that are just passing through SAM range take less damage in total since it is more damage-over-time than alpha now