Bomber first - discussions.

[Ze_PilOt]

Here is the place to discuss it.

Please don't go outside the line, we are talking of a small change here, not a total rebalance of T1 AA or whatever (this has been tested a while ago, and the implications of it are too large).

From what I saw in the replays posted on the other thread, I don't see any problem with bomber first, at all.

But I see a fair point about seraphim bomber first.

So, why that bomber and not the others (if you think the others have a "problem" too, please post a replay first in the bomber replay topic, or your post will be edited) ?

It has a large bombing area. But the aeon bomber too.
But unlike the aeon bomber, it can be microed very easily.
For those not familiar with the aeon bomber, it need to drop exactly in the direction of his fly path. Ie. trying to slow it down, making turn and drop doesn't work, making it useless to micro.

So I see multiple "fixes" possibles :

- Put the same restriction than the aeon bomber.
Pro : We know it will work.
Con : Faction diversity. It will be a exact replicate of the aeon bomber, minus the stun.

- Reduce his damage, so it can't destroy anything on a single pass.
Pro : It will make that bomber unique, only dedicated to players that can micro it perfectly.
Con : It's probably a completely stupid idea and will make it useless for any normal use.

- Increase his energy price, so seraphim bomber first will be impossible to do, but it still will be a very good bomber overall.
Pro : It also fix the fact that sera bomber is *maybe* slightly OP.
Con : It's the only raiding option sera have.

- Reduce his heath so it die to AA faster.
Pro : Will really need micro to avoid AA. Later in the game, it will still be able to drop a bomb before dying.
Con : ?

[Softly]

Another two ideas:

Reduce AoE for sera bomber.
or
Reduce projectile speed for sera bomber.

Pros: You can now defeat bomber micro with good land micro
Cons: Less effective bomber against large unit formations

[Ze_PilOt]

True, I forgot the AoE reduction.

While I like the projectile speed reduction, I feel it will only punish "noob" players that can't micro their unit at all.

[pip]

I think the possible fixes with less implication for faction diversity are either to reduce health a bit, or another one that you didn't post : reduce speed a bit (-1 air speed).

Pro: it increases faction diversity ; the bomber keeps its micro friendly nature, but becomes more vulnerable to aa, since more shots can be fired at it. Yet it stays the bomber with the biggest AOE and veterancy helps it to take the additional shots due to its slow speed.
It also slightly delays bomber first for Seraphim by a few seconds, which gives time to build aa or an additional engy. It also makes it a bit easier to micro land units to avoid its flight path.
Con: ?

[Myxir]

i think a smaller aoe will do the best job, the bomber remains a micro and raiding unit, but you can evade the bombs with almost any unit when you actually try to do it (instead of spamming the chat with bomber-hate-messages)

if you compare sera bomber with aeon (the one which is the most alike, http://www.faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/un ... 03,UAA0103 ), you notice that sera bomber is equal or better in any aspect except the emp bomb... whatever, decreasing the aoe from 4 to 2.5 or 2 would suffice, you could still bomb pgns which stand exactly together


also, it'd maybe be good to get uef and cybran air factories pushing engies out faster, i think aeon and sera do it ways faster (because their air factories don't have an animation like getting the whole buildstage down, engy drives out, buildstage gets up again)... but that's probably worth another thread :O

[pip]

If you reduce the AOE to 2, or 2.5, the Seraphim bomber will be the worst in the game (it will be worse than the UEF one). 0.5 AOE is a huge difference. Be very careful with this value.


Also, for the ones interested by even more enhanced faction diversity for t1 bombers, and who want to test a different approach, I made a mod for Zock in the tool and mod subforum. I think some values are still too extreme (like -2 speed for Sera bomber is probably too slow), and the AA buff is not necessary, but Zock's ideas are very interesting. You can check it out there:
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=1817

[Softly]

On the point of air factories producing engineers, I did a test a while back and found in the time a sera air fac has produced 100 engies, aeon has made about 95, uef about 90 and cybran only 73. So if a sera and cybran player both went air first, the sera person would have 4 engies at around the same time the cybran player has 3.

[Ze_PilOt]

Now this is all predicated on the belief that only the Sinnve is "maybe OP". I don't think that that's just case. I think the inherent nature of an air unit this early causes the problems.

Didn't get any evidence of that so far. But any replay with other bomber than sera proving it are welcome.

but Zock's ideas are very interesting. You can check it out there:
viewtopic.php?f=41&t=1817

Any replay using it?

[Lu_Xun_17]

Bomber first is not a balance problem but a "players disapointed" problem, which is maybe even more important.

Seraphim has to rely on their bomber to counter an aurora spam, that's why the reduce of aoe or the speed of shoot sounds bad ideas.
I like the idea to give him the aeon bomber restrictions (except it keeps his 250 dmg and doesn't have stun).
However i don't know if we go in the good direction by only focusing on the sera bomber.

[Ze_PilOt]

However i don't know if we go in the good direction by only focusing on the sera bomber.

Again, I only got replays with sera bombers. It's up to you, the users, to provide me datas about others.