Air experimentals are flawed

[Elusive]

tl;dr please buff the net survivability of air EXPs so they don't melt instantly under SAM/ASF fire.


Air based experimental units have an inherent problem not faced by land or naval EXP units, and that is the comparative 'value' of a units health is almost nothing for air units. Or in other words, the amount of time and resources required to deal an amount damage to a land or naval unit is much greater then the same amount of health to an air unit.

This stems from two things primarily, first is that ASFs are nuts, second is that SAM turrets are highly effective and readily available.

ASFs are fast, cheap and deal 400 DPS (or 405 for Aeon/seraphim). SAMs can be built by all factions (as opposed to only UEF having a T3 land defense turret) and deal 333 DPS over a considerable range. What this does is creates an environment where the only ways to stop a unit of value from taking upwards of 10k damage a second from combined fire is to either hide it, which is nearly impossible to do for large scale air especially considering any decent team would have Omni radar up by that point, or so make your own horde of ASFs to protect it from enemy ASFs.

Now you are likely going to respond with something along the lines of "Build more ASF to kill the enemies ASF" or "If you didn't have enough ASF to defend it, then its your fault" and while yes these are points worth mentioning, they do however miss the main point entirely. Simply being that to use an air EXP pretty much requires you to have already won air. If you are loosing or its a 50/50 then building a czar is a waste of time. Compare this to building a GC, for example, if you are loosing a land battle and the enemy T3 units are slowly over running your T3, you can build a GC to turn the land battle back in your favor. Same deal with a megalith, or a fatty, or even a tempest.
Plus as a bonus nail in the coffin, why build a czar when you can build a bunch of strategic bombers that are faster and easier to defend.

Here is my proposals of how to fix this:
First, nerf ASF damage per a fire cycle from 400 down too 360. A 10% reduction in the damage will mean that the amount of ASF shots required to kill any other ASF remains exactly the same (specifically, 5 full firing cycles) for all factions.
Second, buff the AA weapons of the Soul ripper and Czar (The AA weapons on the Ahwassa are already relatively strong and do not need a buff) by giving them a small area of effect. Not enough to turn them into giant flak cannons obviously, but just enough so they can at least cause damage to an ASF swarm.
Third, buff the hitpoints hitpoints of the Czar and Ahwassa (Going any higher for the Soul ripper would be silly) by approximately 15k and 10k respectively.

Optional other changes, boost the build rate of the Czar significantly, seeing as in theory part of its air defense comes from building its own ASFs, yet it can't be assisted to do so like ground factories.
Improve the bombing behavior of the Ahwassa so it 'fails' to bomb less often and has less down time after firing.

P.S. If this problem has been fixed in Equlibrium or BHedit, then please dont think thats an excuse to ignore this thread. If FAF requires mods to function properly, then something is wrong down to the core.

[Apofenas]

It's not about how weak air exps are, but about how strong ASFs are. These units have absurd DPS/mass. The problem is if you lose air, enemy can just instabuild air exp because of again absurd exp build rate and you won't be able to defend. You may defend your base from it, but it will just rape everything outside: your land forces, expansions, ect.

Here is top play by ZLO vs Petric. https://youtu.be/89rgsSV5DYM?t=4m59s at some point Petric has 47 t3 maas chasing 2 Soul rippers. These could just eat t3 maas separatly no problem and gain veterancy.

Here is similiar play by Petric vs ZLO https://youtu.be/RvTMYlJ4hhQ?t=4m54s Asswasher just ate some ASF for veterancy.

Sure Soul ripper's AA is a cosmetic weapon atm. I beleive it could use 150->400 dmg per missile = 1600 total(240->400 DPS), so it couldn't kill healthy ASF in one valley, making SR take 2 fire circles to kill it (If enemy bothered to use air staging before attacking SR). As for CZAR... you know it has like 1k DPS on its SAM and 2k dps on its flak, right?

One thing to mention is veterancy change. Both CZAR and Asswasher could vet on some ASF kills. Now it is mass dependant, so only 350 mass per ASF.

You know, Ithilis fixed it in Equilibrium. At some he nerfed ASF and buffed air exps, but at some point he just buffed CZAR to whole 150k HP, buffed its AA and yet 1/2 mass equivalent in ASF could kill CZAR no problem. So he even removed CZAR beam penalty to punish dumb attack and make ppl micro ASF around it. Ofc it is a lot more complex change in CZAR than i described.

[This_Guy]

While i see what you're trying to say you have to remember that these air units are very fast (compared to land) and do ALOT of damage in a short space of time. If you make it they survive longer than they do already they can do tonnes of damage even if you have defenses against them. I think how they are; as glass cannons atm, is fine. You cant just spam them and throw them away but use strategically, weighing up risk and reward and finding weakness's etc.

[Wesmania]

4 inties cost as much as a gunship and can kill it in 4 to 5 volleys. Same goes for T2 fighter bombers, except it's 6 inties and 4 volleys. If we want to make T4 air experimentals able to take more punishment from ASFs and to fight off smaller groups of them, then why are we fine with gunships / T2 bombers having little to no anti-air and being downed with a couple intie volleys?

[Farmsletje]

Because you see a t2 air snipe in almost every teamgame.

[uzurpator]

I'd hazard a notion that the issue with air experimentals is that fielding a horde os ASF takes too little time.

As an example - equal mass of percies will overkill a GC, but GC can be powerbuilt much faster then equal mass in percies, thus there is a window of opportunity to get that GC and wreak some havoc.

On the flip side - if an air player is left to his own devices, then getting 150 ASF by the 25 minute mark is perfectly possible. Even my 700 rated arse can get 100 of those in the air with anti nuke off eight mexes.

Bump ASF build time to 6000-7000 and all of a sudden many cool things will happen
- there is going to be less lag
- air experimentals are now much more formiddable weapons
- t3 gunships are going to get more use, thus forcing ground forces to utilize more AA and less 'awesome' experimentals
- t2 air phase is going to be more pronounced, because rushing T3 asf spam is not a winning strategy
- air slots on certains maps are going to have more resource to use on other things instead racing to MOAR asf
- losing a T3 air battle is going to hurt, because rebuilding a swarm os asf would take much more time and leave the loser at vaulnerable state
- T3 AA overkill is going to be less of an issue

Generally - cheap, quick to build ASF breaks the game in many ways.

[Ithilis_Quo]

why reinvent the wheel?

This discussion was there millions time, and result of them are there:
http://equilibrium.x10host.com/changelog/#t3air

instead of discus it again and again, rather play it and have a pleasure....

[Farmsletje]

No

[Elusive]

While i see what you're trying to say you have to remember that these air units are very fast (compared to land) and do ALOT of damage in a short space of time. If you make it they survive longer than they do already they can do tonnes of damage even if you have defenses against them. I think how they are; as glass cannons atm, is fine. You cant just spam them and throw them away but use strategically, weighing up risk and reward and finding weakness's etc.

I agree with most of what you said, I have no intention of making air exps near-imortal auto-win units for sure, in fact im even fine with the glass cannon setup. The problem as I see it is that we are not dealing with a glass cannon, but more of a soggy tissue paper cannon. A really expensive soggy tissue paper cannon that even when hidden behind 200 asf can still be taken down in seconds by enemy air.

why reinvent the wheel?

This discussion was there millions time, and result of them are there:
http://equilibrium.x10host.com/changelog/#t3air

instead of discus it again and again, rather play it and have a pleasure....

Why reinvent the wheel? Well when your wheels are all squares, perhaps it may actually be worth looking at alternative designs. Do understand that I do apreciate equilibrium, but here lies a problem. If something is broken but has a fix, but you dont apply the fix, then it is still broken. And standard faf does not have any fix for this problem.
And as long as that problem is still a problem, people will still continue to complain about said problem in hopes that the problem will stop being a problem.

No

Yes

[Farmsletje]

Wasnt directed at you