Air Experimentals

[Crayfish]

As F.A has progressed, Air Experimentals have been made virtually redundant. Their sole actual use now seems to be just an extremely expensive Mercy style suicide unit (basically a giant anvil to drop on targets), or as a kind of flying taunt that is lorded over an overwhelmed enemy before delivering the coup de grace.

It would be cool if they could be made useful, and actually fulfill the roles they were intended for, but Im not even sure they can be balanced, and may just be a unworkable class type. I think the main problem is not with the T4 air units themselves, but the very nature of T3 ASFs. The ability of ASFs to deliver so much DPS anywhere on the field virtualy instantly and then escape again, forces any other unit in their realm to either be extremely fast, stealthy, subtly deployed and quickly return to (or simply stay-in) safe airspace after any excursion into enemy territory. T4 are not designed with any of these perimeters in mind, so I wanted to put out some, and other hear peoples, suggestions on what can be done to balance them without also changing ASFs.

The most obvious thing seems to be to up their HP so that missions would actually be survivable, but it would have to be so high they would become virtually unstoppable game-enders, and I guess be given a suitably higher cost. A solution to this might be to instead give them a kind of air missile decoy flare that works in the same way as torpedo defense does for ships but leaves them vulnerable to flak. Or shields that only protects them from attacks to their sides and top (to help against other aircraft) but does not cover their underside, so they can still be cost effectively killed by ground fire from Flak and SAMS. But both these options are kind of a custom unit mod that I dont think is suitable.

They could be given such prohibitively powerful AA DPS and range that attacking with ASFs was not cost effective, forcing the opponent to scout and invest in ground based AA (in a similar way that directly attacking Land T4s with T3 land units often isnt the best way to deal with them), but again this may make them more like game enders.

Another route may be to make them cheaper and faster so that they can be fielded before prohibitive amounts of T3 air has hit the field if you go for a specific fast build (kind of the same role as the Monkey Lord fulfills on land now). This would also perhaps call for a decrease in thier attack power, and certainly thier crash damage so they are not a spamable assassination kamikaze unit.

Stealth would also help, but would certainly not be enough on its own.

What are other peoples thoughts and suggestions to actually get T4 out in the field doing what they were designed to do?

[-_V_-]

Why would we need to balance them ? I fail to understand so far. They don't appear imbalanced to me.

Have you considered the damages those t4 do to a base ? You want to buff them ?
Add stealth to them and they will be super OP. Imagine a czar popping out on your acu head

ASF are usually the only thing that stop them.

If you make them even faster, t3 AA won't stop them anyway , at least not before they make significant damage (the build power for instance).

At the stage of the game where you can afford a awhassa , even if you lose the wreck on the enemy side, if you hurt him well enough (still thinking of the build power), it's more than worth it.


Unlike what people think, I actually like the asf costs changes from 3599, no more those ridiculous 600-1000 asf battles .
But I really feel like nerfing them again would be overdoing it, too much of a nerf that would make the navy even more powerfull than it already is.

Only thing I would change on the air t4, is put back the death damage of the czar so it can kill a commander

[Plasma_Wolf]

The soul ripper could be given stealth.
The Ahwassa's bomb could be turned into two bombs of half the damage each (so 1 of 11K goes to 2 of 5.5 K). That would also be more in accordance of the visual representation. You have a drop, that explodes and explodes again a second later.

The advantage of this is that if a shield goes down because of the first explosion, the second one can actually do damage (It's not like the ahwassa can bomb indefintely, because it's a miracle if they actually can do two passes).

The CZAR could be given a build speed upgrade. But that shouldn't happen because then T3 air is more spammable as it is now (we already see the problem of a blob of T3 fighters that kills the T4 air unit)...

However, isn't the problem that most people send them before the large ASF blob is taken care of? You could also easily lure a T3 blob with your own T3 blob. Then you can at least get your air experimental to the enemy base.

Then it remains to be seen if the AA there is too powerful against the T4 unit. This is a bit of a painful matter because T3 AA and T2 flak are capable of dealing with enemy non-T4 air now, but they are not OP against it.

V was ahead of me and I agree with him apart from the stealth bit. A T4 experimental is incredibly expensive. I expect my opponents to have an omni sensor near their main base. And that would not be the only omni In my mind.

Anyway, he also is right about the fact that they are really powerful at the moment.

[FunkOff]

Air experimentals are very expensive because they are very powerful and very fast.

Specifically, all the air experimentals (CZAR, Ahwassa, Soul Ripper) have only 2 weaknesses: Mass SAMs and mass ASF. Air XPs beat everything else, including fleets of ships, defensive fortifications, and all land units. This is why they are expensive.

If air XPs were cheaper, there would never be any reason to build anything else to finish off a game with, because anything you could build would be cheaply countered by air XPs.

[Jace]

Don't understand why you think of them as weak. They are pretty much Gameenders like other EXPs too, you use them after you have secured AirSuperiority to kill your enemy that would be hard to get in other ways. In case his Air defense is weak.

Your point of them being weak against a base with a huge amount of SAMs sounds really......strange to me?
Even your point of them being weak against a horde of ASFs!
Seems more like you want a overwhelming powerful against everything unit?

Tell me:
Do you use a Monkeylord against a army of Percivals alone after completely loosing the Groundbattle?
Do you run into a full shielded line of UEF-T3PD with a GC?
Don't think so, at least i hope so? Thats pretty much the same case as sending your AirEXP into a base stuffed with SAMs and Flak. Or building it while knowing that your enemy has a threatening amount of Air to counter you on open field.

In that term they are much better than a ML or a GC. Because they are fast. ML and GC are slow and you can evade them if you arent prepared and you can still pull up some defense. If you aren''t prepared for an AirEXP when it comes you are pretty much dead meat. Because you cant even think about running.

[noobymcnoobcake]

Kill the enemy asf swarms first ad that air experemetal can do whatever it wants. Although i would not be against a buff to there AA. About 2 x the damage for the aa would be suitable so they can take on small numbers of ASF. At the momet they die to 1/10th the mass of them.

Also simple change that would be good is stopping them being able to merge into eachother. It does truly look stupid.

[Crayfish]

Thanks for the input guys, but I am just going on what I see. How often do you see say a GC or Chicken Bot in a competitive 1v1 game compared to how often do you see a Soul Ripper or CZAR? I see GCs and Chickens all the time in longer games, but almost never see a SR or CZAR, and if I do they are basically 'styling' coffin nails when victory has almost been guarenteed and Strat Bombers or Gunships could probably be doing the same job more efficiently anyway (and do in 99% of replays I watch). In other words, there is no real reason to build them. Im not asking to make them into Game Enders, I just want to see them actually play a role on the field, even if its a much reduced role of just dishing out some situation specific and cost effective damage to the enemy units like their land cousins can do.

No I wouldn't run a ML into Percys after loosing the ground battle, but that because I dont have to, I can just walk my ML a different route to avoid them and do so underwater on alot of maps. With an Air Experimental, you have no choice, the ASFs come to you from anywhere on the screen intantly as soon as you leave your own airspace. For the ML analogy to work, it would mean I have to kill the majority of your ground units across the entire field of play before fielding it.

When I made the suggestion of making them cheaper and faster to build I did also mean also making them less powerful at the same time (ala how the ML was tweaked from being like a GC to being what it is now).

The soul ripper could be given stealth.
The Ahwassa's bomb could be turned into two bombs of half the damage each (so 1 of 11K goes to 2 of 5.5 K). That would also be more in accordance of the visual representation. You have a drop, that explodes and explodes again a second later.

The advantage of this is that if a shield goes down because of the first explosion, the second one can actually do damage (It's not like the ahwassa can bomb indefintely, because it's a miracle if they actually can do two passes).

This is the kind of thing Im talking about. Good suggestion for actually making the unit do what its supposed to, not just be an Experimental Mercy.

Also simple change that would be good is stopping them being able to merge into eachother. It does truly look stupid.

Agreed.

[monty]

CZAR is quite in disadvantage compared to other air EXPs due to the fact they cannot land. As for other air EXPs, you can land them near a shield generator. in that way, they are protected from ASFs attacks.

CZAR desperately needs flying engineers for emergency repairs

i think the CZAR needs more hp regeneration.

[Jace]

How often do you see say a GC or Chicken Bot in a competitive 1v1 game compared to how often do you see a Soul Ripper or CZAR? I see GCs and Chickens all the time in longer games, but almost never see a SR or CZAR, and if I do they are basically 'styling' coffin nails when victory has almost been guarenteed and Strat Bombers or Gunships could probably be doing the same job more efficiently anyway (and do in 99% of replays I watch).

ummm, Never? In a real competitive game i almost never see any EXPs? And if there happens to be one its logically the cheapest you have first? You want Air to be the the cheapest instead of ground? I think because of the obviouse strength of AirEXP it would be bad if you could stomp them out of nowhere like a ML.

In other words, there is no real reason to build them. Im not asking to make them into Game Enders, I just want to see them actually play a role on the field, even if its a much reduced role of just dishing out some situation specific and cost effective damage to the enemy units like their land cousins can do.

Can't they do that? If you have Air superiority they flatten everything thats not in range of a Huge amount of SAMs. I think thats as much as you could want to have?

No I wouldn't run a ML into Percys after loosing the ground battle, but that because I dont have to, I can just walk my ML a different route to avoid them and do so underwater on alot of maps.

lol, and the *moving* Percis are so easy to run around or what. I really just had to smash my head on the desk about that comment

With an Air Experimental, you have no choice, the ASFs come to you from anywhere on the screen intantly as soon as you leave your own airspace. For the ML analogy to work, it would mean I have to kill the majority of your ground units across the entire field of play before fielding it.

um, y, Air is fast. That will probably never change. But you know, AirEXPs are also extremely fast compared to groundEXPs. So there is not much you can do about them when you don't have AirSuperiority.
When you miss the build of an ground EXP and see it coming while you have nothing against it you probably can still do something about it.
When you miss the build of an Air EXP and see it coming while you have nothing against it you are dead pretty sure.
When you scout either of them while being build you can prepare a counter may it be Ground or Air with ease.
You know what i am getting at?

When I made the suggestion of making them cheaper and faster to build I did also mean also making them less powerful at the same time (ala how the ML was tweaked from being like a GC to being what it is now).

y, sure a flying ML. and how would that be different from the kamikaze assasination unit we have now? except that it would be cheaper? that it would come earlier? that people would scream like hell because a rushed flying ml came at them and they didnt even have time to throw all insults they know at their enemy?

The soul ripper could be given stealth.
The Ahwassa's bomb could be turned into two bombs of half the damage each (so 1 of 11K goes to 2 of 5.5 K). That would also be more in accordance of the visual representation. You have a drop, that explodes and explodes again a second later.
The advantage of this is that if a shield goes down because of the first explosion, the second one can actually do damage (It's not like the ahwassa can bomb indefintely, because it's a miracle if they actually can do two passes).

Its a miracle if you dont have air superiority. And thats already much more than you get out of the other AirEXPs. Its a gameender if you have. Its already now a gameender, it would be even more with your suggestion.


You guys are funny. Are you complaining too if you build 5 T3Bombers to snipe the enemy commander and get shot down because your enemy build 6ASFs meanwhile?

If Air would be so affordable like ground nobody would use ground anymore and just care about gaining air superiority again.

[Crayfish]

Jace please stop replying to my post, becuase I just dont have the energy to continualy redefine the quite simple concepts that I am saying over a second time.

For example, when I said adjust the air experimental in the same way as the monkey lord has been, I didnt MEAN AN ACTUAL FUCKING FLYING ML WITH THAT KIND OF POWER FFS. I mean an adjustment in the same way (ie reduction of HP, DPS, along with the cost decrease) so thats its akin to perhaps a Supcom 2 'minor' experimental. Ofcourse Im taking into account the fact that its fast and flies when theoreticaly balancing, jesus christ..

Also, yes moving percys are easy to run around because I can take any route across the map from where I build my ML, stealthed and possibly underwater to get wherever I want to go, which insnt necessarily where the percys happen to be. With an Air Experimental, you have no cloaking, and the ASFs can come to you from anywhere on the map almost instantly, no matter where I am heading on the map.
And I would like to smash you head into the desk also.

etc etc etc