Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF
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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
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
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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
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I don't think SAMs are the problem here. If ASF are too good, then why not just nerf them? A proportional decrease in both HP and damage should do the trick (ie: reduce ASF HP and weapon damage by 20% each). If air blobbing is too good, then why not add more air-to-air and ground-to-air AOE in general? It seems like it would be a particularly good companion change to an ASF nerf too, since it would help against densely grouped air-to-ground units as well.
Regarding the concerns:
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 address the above:- Restorers currently seem too weak vs air anyway, so that seems like a good change.
- Janus spam can reasonably be countered mass-efficiently at the T1/T2 stage.
- Cruisers generally seem too weak vs air given their relatively high mass cost anyway.
- Air T4's currently seem too easy to snipe with air.
- It buffing strat rushes seems unfortunate but acceptable.
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@penguin_ said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
- Restorers currently seem too weak vs air anyway, so that seems like a good change.
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- Janus spam can reasonably be countered mass-efficiently at the T1/T2 stage.
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- Cruisers generally seem too weak vs air given their relatively high mass cost anyway.
Torps: yes
anything else: no- Air T4's currently seem too easy to snipe with air.
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@ftxcommando said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
Torps: yes
anything else: not3 gunships too, at least when in blobs
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Cruisers are a T2 unit, it make sense that they are less effective vs T3 air units. The real problem is T3 Aircraft carriers have pretty meh AA
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@zeldafanboy said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
Cruisers are a T2 unit, it make sense that they are less effective vs T3 air units. The real problem is T3 Aircraft carriers have pretty meh AA
Aircraft carriers are so tanky, though, that they are able to do plenty of damage to enemy air for their cost. If they had a lot more DPS, they'd be too good, even if you nerfed their HP, because people can make shield boats or floaty shields (especially in team games with tech sharing).
If aircraft carriers were bad, top players wouldn't make them and send them to the front, but they do.
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@ftxcommando said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
@penguin_ said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
- Restorers currently seem too weak vs air anyway, so that seems like a good change.
???????
- Janus spam can reasonably be countered mass-efficiently at the T1/T2 stage.
??!?!?!?!?!?!?!
- Cruisers generally seem too weak vs air given their relatively high mass cost anyway.
Torps: yes
anything else: no
- Air T4's currently seem too easy to snipe with air.
???????????????????????
pfp credit to gieb
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He got you there ftx
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@mach said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
@ftxcommando said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:
Torps: yes
anything else: not3 gunships too, at least when in blobs
Its the exact opposite. The bigger the numbers on both sides the weaker the gunships are.
