There are quite a few good points here.
Anir I agree with what you're saying but I don't think it precludes a change. If Likho were a little less powerful in relation to the other bombers (through some combination of nerfs and/or buffs), then:
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Top air players would be even more effective when showing off their skills at the other bombers.
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Middling air players would have a bit more motivation to branch out from relying on Likho.
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New air players would still have Likho to lean on.
From what I've seen Likho is working pretty well at the moment. Air players are able to build up a force to influence the game, in a skillful way, and ground players aren't completely defenseless. It may feel a little too strong when on the receiving end, but for a bomber designed around winning on attrition this is very hard balance to strike. I think Likho AoE works quite well for giving the ground player some mitigating action to take, even if no Likhos are killed.
I think the aim is to make other bombers useful in addition to Likho. I don't really want to nerf Likho on anything beyond cost and rearm time, because the way it actually behaves seems decent at the moment and very hard to get right. Likho is an extreme example of an attrition style, with a large initial cost that should pay itself back over time. Making other bombers more generally viable will involve buffing other styles. This is inherently difficult as a lot of lategame comes down to efficiency.
Consider this diagram:
Here I have drawn the four outcomes of a bombing run with respect to the cost of the run and the cost of the defenses. It is more illustrative than to any sort of scale, and the fact that bombers are discrete would make the diagram much spikier in reality. Note that the dotted line between the green and yellow areas depends on the value of the target that is to be bombed, and that the relevance of a defense can depend on how well it covers the target. Now compare how the diagram would morph for each type of bomber. For example, the cost and durability of Likho gives it an enlarged teal area and smaller green area.
If all we want is to give the average air player an extra option beyond Likho, then we could add another bomber with a similarly large "Succeed with no losses" region. This bombers would necessarily be pretty similar to Likho, with high cost and reload. However, if we want to give air players a wider range of options which feel fundamentally different then I think we need to expand the green area. Essentially, to make a bomber that reliably deals enough damage for low enough cost for players to happily lose some on a bombing run.
As
Anir said, top air players are already doing this. When you are good enough to find cost-free pickoffs or efficient trades then making a light bomber carries less risk. This is mostly down to uncertainty, as it is very hard to judge the exact strength of the defenses in an area.
One of the riskiest parts of attempting a trade is having your bombers die before they even deal damage, pushing the run into the "Die with no benefit" region. One solution could be to have Phoenix drop its bombs from much further away and dramatically reduce its turn rate so it overflies, to shrink its "Succeed with no losses" region. The issue with this plan is that it would make Phoenix much harder to control. Bomber AI isn't great at retargeting without flying around to line up the shot.
Wackier unit designs are possible but would require a lot of work and testing. There could be a bomber that is faster, or armoured, until it drops its bomb. Justifying and communicating such a mechanic would put a lot of strain on the modeller, and the approach of having the bomber drop a significant part of itself (such as an engine or armour) would make the idea of metal-free rearming a little weird.
I'm talking about wacky designs because Raven is already almost too powerful for more normal buffs. A Raven without such a long rearm time was dominating the early or mid game. This was less an issue in large teamgames, but in small games or 1v1 the sudden appearance of Ravens could destabilise the other team in a way that is hard to come back from. Adequate AA coverage is expensive and takes time to deploy, but without it Ravens are able to bomb enough mexes, constructors or commanders to lock down the game. Ravens dive to hit mobile units to accentuate the degree to which raiders and riots act as flex AA. I recently added energy drain to rearming as a nerf that primarily targets the early game.
I expect to hit the same issue with something simple like Kestrel. It will be dominant at densities where it can avoid and force AA, but not really all that useful afterwards. In terms of small changes Raven could possibly afford to be slightly better, and Phoenix could be made to hit more reliably (probably with increased AoE). If someone can design a light bomber that doesn't excel in the early game or delete small units then that would be great. Such a bomber could be powerful quite safely. Adding another heavy bomber option, such as Eclipse, sounds ok if someone puts in the work.
quote:
Is that a phoenix nerf in the commit? Wiki mentions reload of 1s for phoenix, did that become 5s? |
No. The wiki is talking nonsense. Specifically, it is talking about this number:
https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/commit/10ccc5be01f7eb63f0bf9289b54da7bd6f84f320#diff-1957469360b0e4fbfe9380d65c5cfb8630d487b68af0cab3636a440a1b3296efL111Every weapon has a reload time, even if it cannot be fired twice without rearming. Rearm time defaults to 5s.
Also idk what
Yogzototh is talking about with old cool air combat. My recollection was that fighters would slowly circle into each other's backsides and there was little difference in usage between the fighters.
