Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF

@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.

@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.

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

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.

@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.

???????????????????????

@ftxcommando said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:

Torps: yes
anything else: no

t3 gunships too, at least when in blobs

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

@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.

@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.

???????????????????????

He got you there ftx

@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: no

t3 gunships too, at least when in blobs

Its the exact opposite. The bigger the numbers on both sides the weaker the gunships are.

wish i had that metyr replay with 100 restos bullying asfs blobs

@penguin_ UnitDb Stata may not be accurate due to not being able to pull correct data

What am I supposed to do with these pictures, make a collage?

@FtXCommando I was also under the impression that inties trade favorably into Janus if you have at least close to the same mass invested in them, I thought Yudi told me that awhile back. Am I misremembering or just wrong there?

@exselsior said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:

@FtXCommando I was also under the impression that inties trade favorably into Janus if you have at least close to the same mass invested in them, I thought Yudi told me that awhile back. Am I misremembering or just wrong there?

The issue is that it's much cheaper to make infra for janus, you can just have 10 engis assist and t2 hq, whereas the opponent has to make 10 t1 airfacs. Then u can just switch to assisting something else once enemy has made 10 t1 airfacs.

@penguin_ restorer stats don't account for the fact that restorers can always shoot asf regardless of their position and orientation. ASF need to turn back around after shooting once or twice

dont really care looking at anything else

Good Job, Good Luck and Good Work.
Thanks.

A good option would be to make SAMs do exactly 1.8k damage (the same HP as UEF ASF). That way they are a "select and delete ASF" weapon.

It would also take 2.05 salvos to kill a Cybran strat, which decreases the effective damage against Cybran strats to an average of 1.23k per salvo due to overkill (a 32% reduction).

Would cause some weirdness against vetted ASF, and would need to look at the HP of each individual air unit, but it's a good starting point.

Janus all in has a small infrastructure upfront cost as Blodir said. In order to beat my 100% eco devoted into janus you need to spend at least 80% of your comparable eco on ints. That is not simple to do within a 2-3 minute period, especially if you have to adjust your original game plan.

And if I beat your cloud early on you will have an incredibly hard time to stop my snowball and it becomes closer to 100% eco you need to invest to catch back up.

@blodir said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:

@exselsior said in Make SAMs weaker vs gunships and strats, but stronger vs ASF:

@FtXCommando I was also under the impression that inties trade favorably into Janus if you have at least close to the same mass invested in them, I thought Yudi told me that awhile back. Am I misremembering or just wrong there?

The issue is that it's much cheaper to make infra for janus, you can just have 10 engis assist and t2 hq, whereas the opponent has to make 10 t1 airfacs. Then u can just switch to assisting something else once enemy has made 10 t1 airfacs.

Fair but then can't you just spam inties in more or less exact same way from t2 airfacs? You can build just over 4 inties in the time it takes to build one Janus with equivalent bp if I'm not mistaken and I think you need ~3.5 inties per janus to win.

But yeah, to your point and @FtXCommando last message I do agree. There's a big difference between in theory and in practice here. I think, and I think you guys agree with this, in theory inties should win if you know from the start your opponent is going janus and they actually do that. But it doesn't work like that in practice, since you don't know for a fact they're going Janus and they can at any point choose to not go Janus, messing up your investment.

Strong agree on the snowball potential, though I think that's air in general unfortunately