1. AAA, through the MG/cannon lines
2. SAMs, somewhere very late in the rocket/missile line
3. Stormbringer, in the laser line (in itself a T3, late game research line)
First, I'll address the AAA (yes, there's a third A, as AAA is what we call it in my profession). We have the Hurricane, Cyclone, and Whirlwind turrets. In my opinion, they are not different enough from each other. Let's put aside for now the deficiency of AAA resulting from the recent projectile code rewrite, as I believe this will be fixed programatically fairly soon.
In RL (again, I acknowledge the danger comparing WZ to real life, but this is applicable as it has gameplay perspective) there are 3 basic ways to fire AAA: Aimed, Curtain, and Barrage fire. Curtain fire is what it sounds like - throwing into the air a stream or "firehose" of rounds from a high cyclic rate of fire weapon, in the hope that the target aircraft will fly through it. Most curtain-fire systems are light AAA (up to 30mm) and of course - small arms. Next, Barrage fire is employed by the medium and higher calibers of slower-firing flak-type AAA, usually fired in bursts of 3-5 rounds with intermittent reloading periods. These weapons generate large explosions at various altitudes over a wide area, again, in the hope that aircraft flying through will sustain shock or shrapnel damage. Finally, aimed fire is the most difficult to implement, as the gunner must calculate a lead-computed firing solution based on the (optimally non-maneuvering) target's altitude, range, and velocity, then fire off 1 or 2 expensive rounds at it and hope the target doesn't jink or maneuver before the rounds get there. Aimed fire is most effective when it's radar-directed, but there are many techniques, including various typed of optical sights. It is nearly always used with the higher calibers (57, 81, 100mm AAA) due to the low rate of fire - though aimed fire systems exist for all sizes of AAA.
The three AAA systems in Warzone use a sort of mashed-up combination of all three types of fire - with the Cyclone turret leaning toward Barrage fire due to its effect. But as a trend, all of the weapons pretty much behave the same way. Here is my suggestion on how to re-tool them to make them more different from each other, and yet more specialized with the simulation of different types of fires. It may also make AAA a little more effective without having to build 50 emplacements in my base just to kill one enemy VTOL
Now, because air units in Warzone are non-maneuvering (i.e. they don't jink to avoid threats on their ingress/egress... they simply fly blackline from their arming pad, to the target, and back) we should be able to simulate these different firing tactics fairly easily.1. Hurricane turret. As the most primitive AAA system in the game (other than small arms), this should be the pure curtain-fire weapon. It already has a high rate of fire; just have it lead the target VTOLs a little more and don't self-destruct the rounds until they get a bit higher (Warzone AAA tends to miss short/low, for some reason). Allow its ROF and damage upgrades to continue making it a viable weapon that doesn't get obsoleted by Whirlwind, and always a strong defense against fast, light bodied VTOLs. Keep the various small arms (MGs) able to fire at VTOLs - if anything, increase their effectiveness a tiny bit.
2. Cyclone flak turret. Make this a true barrage weapon. Give it a rapid-firing 4-6 round clip, with medium duration reload (long enough that it will only get off 1 volley at a passing medium-speed VTOL), then decrease its accuracy wildly, while enormously increasing its splash radius and damage amount. This way, you can build true "Flak traps", more effective against medium-speed medium-body VTOLs, less effective against the fast ones because they fly out of the barrage zone quicker.
So far, the first two suggestions sound like "just specialize those two turrets to the extreme of what they already are." True indeed. The next proposition is a little more radical.
3. Whirlwind turret. Right now, behaves just like a "Hurricane 2.0" kind of weapon and does the same thing as Hurricane, only better. My recommendation: Re-tool this to be a heavy-caliber aimed AAA with extremely high damage, long range, and very long (howitzer-like) reload time. Give it only 1 or 2 shots, but enough bang to wipe out a light VTOL (though it could never hope to hit something that fast) or handily put a serious dent in a heavy bomber. Combine it with the air-defense radar I suggest in another thread, make it an indirect fire anti-air weapon, and you can now effectively shoot nonmaneuvering (i.e. straight-line-flying) VTOLs 2 screens away (this is NOT unrealistic). Expensive, slow to build/produce, but a viable threat even in T3.
These suggestions specialize the three AAA systems in a way that would keep all of them distinctly useful against all different types of VTOLs throughout the game. More importantly, it would allow AAA to remain a viable alternative to SAMs: because the two technologies are along vastly different research lines, it would allow a AAA player to be competitive while his opponent may specialize in missiles and SAMs.
Ok, on to the next half of this suggestion. Thanks for reading this far.
SAMs. We have two. Three if you count the MANPADS-like capability of cyborg rockets/missiles (which I think should be made more effective: If a rocket cyborg lands a hit on a VTOL, it should cause a good bit of damage).
Avenger SAM. And Vindicator SAM, which is literally just double Avenger - otherwise, the missiles are the same, they do almost the same damage, fly the same speed, except you get four of them instead of two. This is kind of lame, in my opinion; it doesn't really introduce a new weapon, just give you a twin version of an old one. First I'll address one common thing - these missiles are too slow. Real-life (there it is again) SAMs fly half an order of magnitude faster than aircraft - so everytime I see a Warzone SAM chase a VTOL all the way across the map and end up hitting it at the rearming pad, I chuckle. They should fly roughly 2x as fast as the fastest VTOL - or perhaps as fast as the Lancer/TK/Scourge weapons. This will by itself also eliminate the second problem of infinite range; short-range tactical SAMs have a relatively short boost stage with minimal or no sustain, burning out rather quickly. If one did try to chase an aircraft halfway back to base, it would eventually lose energy and fall out of the sky.
Here's my suggestion for re-tooling the SAMs.
1. Give Avenger 4 shots (i.e. turn it into Vindicator), but otherwise leave it as-is. This will be our short-range, point defense, tactical SAM system, which will be the first SAM you get after advancing far enough in rocket/missile tech. You'll get a 4-shot salvo of short-range SAMs in this system.
2. Re-tool Vindicator into a long-range strategic SAM. Give it a turret that looks like the tube launched strategic SAMs (think Patriot, or SA-20, or something like that) or perhaps big missiles on an external rail ("3 fingers of death" SA-6, or a Hawk missile site, or something similar). Make it an indirect fire anti-air weapon like the heavy caliber AAA above... though it would be able to shoot at things within its own line of sight, if you emplace an air defense radar two screens away it could launch a missile and shwack an approaching VTOL at long range. Only 1, maybe 2 shots per salvo, with 4-5 second firing delay and long (RippleRocket-like) reload time, but now you have a strategic SAM that can kill incoming heavy bombers, just like the heavy AAA that I describe above.
With this modification, you get 2 distinctly different air defense SAMs, which are effective against different types of VTOLs, but in a slightly different way than the modified AAA is. Instead of what you have now, which is just 2-shot or 4-shot versions of the exact same thing (once you get Vindicator, do you ever build Avenger anymore? No!) Now, of course there will be some kinks to work out - as I am not sure that a weapon can be both indirect-fire and homing at the same time, for example, or if AA weapons can even be made indirect at all. But maybe; I confess that I haven't cracked open weapons.txt in many years!
Finally. Stormbringer AAL. I obviously can't provide a real-world analogy, but I bet we'll have this in real life shortly. Since there's only one type of AA weapon in the laser line, it needs to be pretty versatile, and effective against all types of VTOLs. I don't think it would need to be modified in order to remain balanced against the AAA and SAM implementations I'm suggesting.
Thanks for reading this far (I know Whipper probably did
). Please reply with thoughts & discussion.
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