Artemis ruins air lategame

If AA shoots any unit that is not "on the ground", this will actually provide a good counterplay to Artemis. As it has the longest range (and so will be the only thing to hit a high-flying jack), newton-launching jacks into enemy back lines will provide an effective way to disarm an Artemis (or even several of them), while also wreaking havoc on enemy eco. This will also make jacks landing on top of singus a legit target for all the AA turrets there which will make the whole thing look less silly =) It will also prevent gremlins from shutting down air factories and killing rearming bombers. I see only pluses except that the engine does not support this AFAIK.

As for actually implementing it, engine has a concept of unit categories which are defined for every unit, and any given weapon can target specific subset of those. What I could not find is an API to change unit category dynamically (it is quite possible that there is no such API in the engine). As a workaround, air units could have 2 unit defs, one for when it is landed, and one for when it is in the air (which would make sense as landed air unit effectively has no weapons etc). Either way, it is probably implementable.

While poking around at engine features, found an interesting thing - apparently airplanes can use flares to confuse missiles. Maybe give raptor flares? Then it would make sense using it as an AA penetration aid of sorts.

quote: Besides, I'm pretty happy with no situational modifiers to AA targeting. It is unambiguous.

Unambiguous, but not unsurprising.

quote: Besides, I'm pretty happy with no situational modifiers to AA targeting. It is unambiguous.

While technically it is correct (as it depends on what units "are air"), game-play wise space jacks (or pyros) seem to me the worst offender to the idea of "unambiguous". If they fall with constant speed they must be flying (as objects in free fall in vacuum should accelerate). If we consider an atmosphere, probably they should not be pushed that hard by newtons... No matter how I try to reason about it something is not consistent. (Note: not saying effort should be put to fix it, but explaining why I find it a bit strange)

An "In-Universe" explanation for why AA targets landed planes and not flying jacks could be simple.. Targeting Computers and protocols. An AA turret would be programmed to only fire at certain units, (planes and gunships), and to consider everything else as bad targets. This is present in game, and can be configured with the "avoid bad targets" modifier.

quote: This makes no sense when you consider that the only alternative is "The strongest AA in the game is mobile". So.... then what? Now the strongest AA can be cloaked and can't be tacnuked. Turrets are strong because being static has so many downsides.

The strongest ground unit is detri, and it can be cloaked and can't be tacnuked, and that is okay.

Now that I think more about, current mobile AA is just clunky and hard to use despite its mobility, thus "mobile artillery players" like lance spammers do try to put up Artemis despite the rest of their army being mobile. The problem isn't in AA units are bad, but in that all AA units take too much surface area in dirtbagged and artillery spammed terrain and get blown up by stray fire. With arty/skirm-balls packing mobile AA there is potential for more fluid play than "hold center mex, porc, build starlight" endgame.

It would make sense if Artemis were a back field defense turret as opposed to artillery dueling anti-air cover. Army AA should optimally be mobile units, especially if the player can allocate some micro effort at the units.

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Personally I'd experiment with changing a lot of AA weapons into EMP, and tweak gravity guns into an AA focused weapon.

EMP: Artemis, Raptor

Artemis Intended results:
Deep attacks by air can still be shutdown by Artemis, but air needs to be cleaned up by other assets giving players on both sides more gameplay. It greatly reduces effectiveness at solo covering the frontlines by itself and makes other AA gameplay necessary. It also stops the "instant fleet nuke" that makes lower skill air play so painful.

Raptor Intended results:
One issue with air war is that it is very fast and massive force concentration means the winning side in air wars can snowball. What is needed is another air unit to slow down the fight so that things like ground AA can actually move into the fight so that the side losing the air to air war can lean on strength of mobile ground forces. Without someone to shape the battlefield the stronger air player can play around ground mobile AA and weaker air players forcing the other side to lean heavily on turrets.

quote: While technically it is correct (as it depends on what units "are air"), game-play wise space jacks (or pyros) seem to me the worst offender to the idea of "unambiguous".

Anything other than the current system is much more complicated than having AA only shoot at air.

Say you decide something has to be "flying" to be targetted by AA. There is no clear line to draw.

• Do Lobbed units fly?
• What about jumpjets?
• Units dropped from transports?
• How about a Knight that hits a Jugglenaut and bounces up to Krow height?
• How about the little jump Buoy does when it pops out of the water?
• What about any unit pulled by Jugglenaut, or pushed off a cliff? How high does the cliff have to be?
• A Dante that is pushed and hits a small bump?
• At the lower end we have anything that skids a bit after being hit by a Ripper.

If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes', then figuring out whether AA will shoot at something becomes untenably arcane or complicated. Sure, we probably have more arcane mechanics, but complication needs to be in proportion to the outcome variance, with the variance here coming from how random a system looks to the uninitiated.

So what is the outcome variance? AA has range, and air tends not to be in its range, so nearby AA is going to hammer anything that qualifies itself for targeting. There is no clear line to draw. Different ways of ending up in the air can launch units to quite a variety of heights. Is Artemis to become the new counter to Recon Comm, or do we cut out jumpjets? What about jumpjets from space, what is 'space? And what happens when the AA needs to home into a unit that reached the ground since its peek? Low thresholds, anything in the actual range that aircraft fly at (remember, Jack can melee Nimbus), are just going to be silly.

Higher thresholds are janky, but in a much more reasonable way. It would be one of my last resort considerations if I thought Newton ramp really needed a nerf. And this would become adversarial, since I would expect people to optimise for low-flying Newton ramps if given a good enough reason to do so. Such a mechanic would still be a cost that other considerations would need to make worth paying, not a benefit. And it would be more ugly than what we have at the moment. Why does a Jack have to fly twice as high as a Nimbus for AA to shoot it, when Locust basically hugs the ground?

So I have yet to hear any answer to "When can AA shoot a Pyro?" that is anywhere near as good as "No".

I don't know the intricate system mechanics enough to have perfect scheming but one thing I know vaguely exists because of scorpions are firing angles/zones. Aka: things that can't aim 360 degrees. Would it be possible to set it so that an AA thing can't aim below a certain degree of pitch? AA things shoot up. If thing is above AA, AA should be able to shoot it.

Now this is far from a perfect or outright straightforward solution (Do you want AA to be able to shoot at things standing at the top of a cliff?) but it is how my brain would think to approach the concept that was being mused over in terms of having AA also being able to target high flying-not fliers, and being able to fly under or land and not get shot by AA.

Also one question I have on the main subject of this topic, the Artemis, from a design standpoint that I think is worth considering, (and I mentioned it in my analysis but it may of been glossed over): What is the Artemis intended role/function/purpose? What is it designed to be? I think there might be some disconnect from what the players who are dissatisfied are 'expecting it to be' compared to what the 'intended effect/use' is.

Why not give most static aa units an alternate fire mode for ground engagement?
We see irl the use of aa for land strikes (cough s200/300 cough).
Make aa units like hacksaw, thresher and chainsaw have an alternate fire mode allowing for ground fire support.
Hacksaw could be a low range burst turret (higher damage than stinger, but very long reload), thresher could be a great indirect fire aoe riot. Chainsaw can become silo lite. Firing unguided rockets to kill mexes/stationary things like an impaler (lower range/damage but better rof). It makes complete sense from a physics perspective and is a natural contrast to flex aa. These aa turrets are given a mode toggle from air defense to ground attack so users have to be carful in picking the right state.

quote: So I have yet to hear any answer to "When can AA shoot a Pyro?" that is anywhere near as good as "No".

I have more issues with pyros/jacks benefiting from "flying skills" without any visible downside (like fall damage, accelerating while falling).

On the "what is air" and inspired from shin_backline answer: AA could target fast moving targets above a certain pitch (not to kill darts or something). But probably the balance change would be too large and it would become a different game.

I will say Artemis being about the only thing that checks a Likho does feel like a fairly valid comment. I feel Threshers are a more cost effective answer to gunship balls, but specifically, the fact that a Likho can survive 2 Buzzsaws is rough for doing more 'fine tuned' AA set ups.

In theory, the Thresher should be your go to answer for warding off Gunship balls, as it has comparable AoE size, and far more DPS for its cost than the Artemis, though it takes 3 of them to reliably protect themselves from a Likho, 2 would still deal enough damage that it'd likely still make the bomber a metal donation. It does suffer from a lack of coverage.

2 Chainsaws can protect themselves from a Likho, and have much wider coverage in general though lack any AoE, for, some reason? It deals good damage for its cost, though less than Artem, and is one of the only things with a comparable range... but still dwarfed by Artem in pretty much every facet. On the other hand though, a Chainsaw, or even 2, aren't a hard 'no fly zone'. They make engagements in their area have risk, but don't completely shut out the unit types from acting in their zone.

Building an Artemis is like sinking a 2400 radius of the map underwater against tanks or rovers. The area of the map just no longer practically exists for any air player, even one that wants to match the cost of 2 likho's, or worse, who already had that many Likho's (or more) that are now dead weight. It's a no duh choice to build in response to that, but effectively removes nearly all engagement from the game for that avenue of war.

I love the Ultimatum comparison as the Ultimatum does what the Artemis does, but better in every respect: It is a terrifying and cost effective counter to large, expensive units, but requires finesse to both use and not get murdered by. It doesn't just delete it's targets from a mile away instantly, it has to find a window to sneak in there and get its job done, or have appropriate support. On the flip side, an Ultimatum on the field does not stop you from getting value with your 2 Dantes across a large swath of the map. The interaction is dynamic and interesting. Artemis? Nope, just, not allowed. This area of the map no longer exists. Go rethink your life because this thing just invalidated 2 factories and any investment you put into them up to this point for well over a quarter of the area of the map, assuming it's a fairly large map.


Now, all this isn't to say it 'isn't currently necessary', but just as someone who does enjoy having a few air pieces, this is what it feels like when I hear that big 'swoooosh' of Arte missile. Heavy bomber spam is very effective, and designing something to meet all the requirements to properly check it is no simple matter due to it, and as Air is already moderately disengaged from a lot of gameplay elements as is (hehe don't care about terrain) it's very reasonable that the best tool to counter it, gives the same implication.