VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

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Rommel
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VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by Rommel »

Greetings!

I have heard tell that HMG VTOL can be quite effective against enemy VTOL and I am wondering if anyone has had experience in defending with HMG VTOL against other VTOL, say with a VTOL strike tower or something - could this be as effective as AA? I ask this cause many times I have been caught with my pants down and haven't made AA, even then it is quite a distraction having to mass AA defenses with trucks when you need them for frontline defenses... it would seem much easier just to churn out bug HMG VTOL and have them defend the base...

TIA for any info you can give on this!
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by NoQ »

You should consider rocket VTOLs as A2A instead (lancers, tank killers, sunbursts, scourges). They hard-counter any heavy bomb strategy, when the latter isn't supported by enough mobile (or slowly pushed stationary) AA. Of course, it still provides less damage per $$ than AA emplacements, but much more mobility and ... survivability?

Anti-personnel weapons have poor modifiers against VTOLs (not as bad as cannons though), but rockets are pretty good. On the other hand, if you're making pure MG, your generic ground army already offers a reasonable anti-air defense.

Strike towers are currently useless; use patrol order instead (alt+click).
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by Rommel »

Cheers for that info NoQ
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by raycast »

If you need to churn out some AA quick, test lancer cyborgs.

In early game, i've found them to be quite good at supporting AA. But balance may have changed since. Anyway, give them a try. For human opponents, it will certainly look as if you have some AA somewhere if they see the rockets go up. Plus, you can actually move them to your battle group as support AA there, and in early game they can be quite devastating to tanks, too, if you protect them from flamers.

Usually when I'm attacked with VTOLs, and I'm not super short on oil, I'll churn out AA tanks, cyborgs and order some AA bunkers to be built. When the bunkers are ready, either recycle the cyborgs or move them to your MBG and outposts along with your AA tanks. Or even just to draw fire when you finally attack. If the enemy attacked with VTOLs once, he will probably be constantly looking for weak AA defenses, and you'll need AA to back your MBG.
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by Rommel »

cool thanks for that raycast - I think I will have to open the old cheat console and do some testing :)
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by Rommel »

hmmm is there something up with teh debug console in 3.1? I set up a skirmish game, enabled the debug and then chose an enemy player - this all worked and I could make stuff and such, but even after bulding a command center I could not access the unit designer - the icon wouldn't even come up in the command area, no mini map as well...
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by Rommel »

Oks I did some testing, and in regards to lancer vtol being a viable defense against heavy bombers, I guess it would depend, I was testing like 20 heavy body bombers (the blue body, can't remember the name) against 20 lancer light bodies - the lancers would knock out like 4 or 5 of them each run, but I believe the bombers would still make their target - guess it depends on how far out the patrol starts attacking them - the same went for tank killer and scourge, each upgrade only marginally better.

The most devastating was sunburst, they absolutely annihilate the bombers, you could probably get away with like 10-15 light sunburst vtol patrolling your base and stop any bombers getting in. I would say a quick defense (if you have the vtol factory up) would be say 15 sunburst bug vtol patrolling your base, in some ways I think you could get away with minimal aa if you use this approach.

It is quite a thing to see a small group of fighters annihilate a large heavy bomber group lol
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by NoQ »

heavy body bombers
You should also consider the fact that usually VTOLs have medium bodies, for they have a huge explicit bonus in speed. Speed is essential to break through a stationary AA, which gives a continuous damage over time, but doesn't help against A2A VTOLs that deal a large amount of damage at once and then won't hit the second time until reloaded (so if they were not enough, just make sure they don't land at all before the remaining bombs were thrown). So if you see heavy bodied bombers against your A2A, then the opponent has already expected you to have some.
The most devastating was sunburst
Sure, since it can't hit ground ("presumption of balance" is an easy way to predict effects of anything: if something has some obvious weakness, then it would be better in situations when this weakness is irrelevant).
even after bulding a command center I could not access the unit designer - the icon wouldn't even come up in the command area, no mini map as well...
You need a command center for your original player when you're switching players via debug console. One of the unexpected drawbacks of the current way of moving this functionality to rules.js.
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by aubergine »

We'd need an eventSelectedPlayer(player) to make rules.js update when using debug mode. It can alternatively be handled with a timer, but that timer would be somewhat wasteful use of processor time, see 2nd example code here: https://warzone.atlassian.net/wiki/disp ... esign+Mode
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by Stratadrake »

NoQ wrote:Strike towers are currently useless.
Why is that?
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by NoQ »

They aren't broken, just patrol or circle order is better most of the time.
1. You don't need any turret to issue an order.
2. Vtols stay where the target is supposed to appear, not hide inside the base, during peace-time.
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Re: VTOL defending against VTOL effective?

Post by aubergine »

I've never found the VTOL strike/cb towers any use, by the time the VTOLs get to the scene everything is already destroyed by the enemy. And then, to make matters worse, they go back and land in a field somewhere, making them something like 300% easier to destroy IIRC. Complete waste of time those towers.

That being said, vtol strike tower has slightly longer range than ordinary sensor tower so it's useful as a stepping stone to WS sensor.
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