Make planes less dumb?

I am not sure how much it would cost CPU wise, but could we make planes less prone to mass suicide when attacking? Spectacular as it is, 2 tridents killing like 15 swifts in 1 volley is a bit much, is it not? . And it did not appear like the plane player had any chance to counterplay vs tridents there. The units which are most prone to this sort of nonsense are plane fighters (swifts and, to lesser degree, raptors), but also gnats, ravens, phoenix, locusts and revenants.

'For AA buildings only artemis has AoE'

*cries in Thresher*

Yes I know, poking fun.

Although if AoE is dialed/removed from AA. I really think some tone downs on health for gunships is needed, particularly Revenants/Gnats.

But honestly?

AA's balance in general is messy, and it stands to reason most AoE seems to be slapped onto AA that is continuous DPS, whilst Trident is a burst.

It's removal from Trident at least seems reasonable.

Tbh. I really wouldn't be against seeing a rework for AA in general.

Like seriously, how often do you see Hacksaws being made despite the fact they're clearly designed in mind to be anti-plane to Razor's anti-gunship design?

would it look strange that aa wont shoot gships?

Wanted to post exactly the altitude think but in the end not sure it solves much. If you make them fly higher it's just making planes much stronger (they can avoid some AA). If you reduce then damage/speed/something, you make them more "disconnected" from play.

Probably making them clump less would solve more problems with less risks (less frustrating, minor boost, possibility to find dense AA without loosing all force).

Making AA not shoot gunships is silly, and not ZK way. AA should hit flying things, period. Now having more gun-based AA or flex-AA units that are good vs gunships but not as good vs planes may be fun thing to try. We kinda already have that, as most forms of continous damage AA (razor, gremlin) are not as good vs planes as missile based AA, which can actually chase units.

As for splash damage, imho homing weapons in general should not have significant splash damage, and for most ground units that is the case. Notable exceptions are with Ogre and Scalpel, but overall homing missiles of ground units have very little, if any splash. With AA it is all over the place as mentioned already, which is misleading. Arguably, Ogre shots are so fast they do not need to home, and them flying across half the map chasing a swift is silly. If ogre loses some of the homing on missiles it would probably be just as good in its intended role, and not as good as counter to planes.

Returning to AA, today we have the following options for "scary to air player" AA that is not actually intended as such:

• Felon kills anything that flies, and has shields to tank bombers. Lobbed felonball can eat like 20 fighters in seconds.
• Shielded dominatrix ball is amazing at snatching bombers.
• Ogres can snipe planes if they are not careful, and their AoE makes them good vs bombers trying to dive emissary or just fly over.
• Tachyon accelerator weapons are great at sniping planes and gunships in all conditions.
• Desolator is surprisingly good AA, as is faraday, and both are antiswarm turrets. Stunned planes and gunships are super silly, maybe flying units should be immune to emp?
• Krow is really good AA as it just does not die to planes and can kill a fair few fighters without support.

Now some units from the above list have no business hitting planes (desolator, felon, ogre), but they do anyway. Making planes fly higher would fix that quite nicely. Also it would make the most scary forms of lose-your-army-in-one-shot less of an issue for planes, thus making their role more distinct from gunships.

A thing we could try here is to give planes a "flight level" toggle. If set to fly high, they are e.g. faster by 20%, have 30% improved range on bombs and rockets, and fly above most flex AA. But then all real AA has 50% better range vs them. If set to fly low they fly at gunship level and get hit by everything as usual, but dedicated AA has "normal" range. This would make for interesting plays where e.g. raven can fly over ogre to kill emissary, but now that bomb takes so long to fall emissary may have enough time to drive off. Same with likho, it can drop nuke from further away, but ground units have more time to scatter/jump away. Phoenix set to fly high would be downright useless unless target is stationary. Raptors would be able to catch gunships more easily and trade some survivability vs AA for that speed bonus, also they would be able to chase bombers into enemy lines without fear of cloaked felonball just erasing them in milliseconds. Swifts would be forced to climb to high level before using boost (as they are fast enough already).

quote: AA that is not actually intended as such:

Moderators, phantoms and juggernauts should probably be added to such a list.

But I think that is a separate discussion. Except ogre and desolator none have AOE that can kill any number of planes in one shot.

Yes, probably a rethink would be good, but is there any short term solution to solve the AOE problem?

Two ideas would come to mind:
- (if possible) make a missile have a damage that can be spread against what is in area of effect (so 1 missile has 100 damage will deal at most 100 damage to all units in AOE, not 100 damage to each unit in AOE)
- leave AOE only for Artemis (which is kind clear as a "complete air denial turret")

quote: A player should be playing what works

That's a good observation for a player.

I think the discussion here is about "what should a game designer do to make the game better". Is it fine that some AA units have AOE and some others don't, while air units tends to pile-up on top of each other? Can something easy be done?

For me just saying "micro-manage your air-units so that they never stay close to each other" is a subpar solution.

Yeah AA should just shoot units above it and not just air. It's a bit of magical-status-thing now.

quote: And it did not appear like the plane player had any chance to counterplay vs tridents there.

Maybe not attacking AA with air is an option?

quote: Felon kills anything that flies, and has shields to tank bombers. Lobbed felonball can eat like 20 fighters in seconds.

Luckily yes, because vandals don`t.

quote: Basically because gunships play more like an actual normal factory, they basically force making aa as part of a normal unit comp. Which badly affects viability of air fac.

I don`t get the logic behind that statement as it is worded. I guess you mean "gunships are better air than planes atm." A normal unit comp would have aa anyway, the thing is that most front-players cannot afford enough aa. I regularily lose all my troops to phoenix, then when I build aa, I get overun by ground-forces. Or my aa gets killed by licho, phoenix or revenant before it can reach the numbers to actually fend of attacks.

In general air is so strong at the moment that I would really be up for some slight nerfs. Revenant is absurdly tanky and can dish out so much damage that it is an absolute staple in teams right now. Idk why not more people complain about it. Phoenix counters almost the complete cloaky-factory, I have seen it burn fencer-lines and even hermit-swarms. On top of that, air got more flexibility with the addition of magpie, and even more on top of that, odin is so good that it allows an air-player to simply win the game singlehandedly by bombing supers or singus as soon as there is any opportunity. And sometimes that opportunity comes be just pushing the front a few meters... If you as an air-player think your factory is too weak, you should be forced to play only cloaky for a month or so. Because it seems you lost all perspective.