VTOL's: The Official Discussion Thread

[Molotov]

So yeah.
Airplanes.
Great stuff...
Sometimes.

I'd like to start us off with a question.
Recently, I've found that the only effective bomber-type VTOL setup is with a medium body, and VERY light bombs, (phosphor bombs, cluster bombs) and that ANYTHING heavier, like the plasmite bombs i REALLY wanted to try, slowed anything lighter than a heavy body down to an UNACCEPTABLE speed, and a Heavy body was simply too slow in the first place.

My question is:
How in the world can I make heavy bombers useful?

[HolyDragoon]

Use them as a close to medium range attack, they can lay waste in bildings and such...


Or, slap 'em with a VTOL sensor and use them as an improvised defense aid, since NEXUS likes to use hover tanks so much...

[Per]

I think the best strategy for VTOLs now is to mass an army of cheap, light body VTOL with bunker buster missiles (for structures) and/or cannons (for droids) and just send them to patrol over the enemy's most valuable assets, and hope you catch him unaware. If you inflict enough damage, he'll reel backward, go into damage control mode, and build AA defenses everywhere. That's when you stop building VTOL and go ground attack. If he doesn't yet have AA researched - too bad, he's done for.

When you are done attacking with VTOL, assign them to a VTOL tower near your base (or better, wide spectrum sensor). That is a lot better than patrol, in my experience, and once he builds AA, your VTOL are basically useless for attack.

Medium or big body VTOL are also mostly pointless, IMHO.

[Molotov]

Medium or big body VTOL are also mostly pointless, IMHO.

Actually, I find medium bodies make excellent attack fighters.
I usually use pulse lasers and phosphor bombs for defensive patrols, and i really like using railguns/pulselazers and scourge missile VTOLS for attack. Normally however, i dont like using VTOLS by themselves. typically, i will also use artillery to deal extra damage to everything and keep their unit count low. It also ravages AA.

My favorite setup involves building a sensor tower close to the base, and assigning roughly half to three quarters of the attack force to THAT. I assign the rest of the wing to a bug/hover/wide-spectrum sensor, and use it do direct precision scourge strikes to knock out superhard structures, superheavy tanks, artillery, and AA.

[themousemaster]

My question is:
How in the world can I make heavy bombers useful?

Step 1 is to stop thinking that heavy-bombers fly at an "unacceptable" speed.

In MP, the cost/production time of a heavy bomber is prohibitive, I'll give you that.

In SP mode, however, where you can basically amass unlimited funds, then you have the ability to pull off a strategy similar to Britain's/America's when dealing with Germany in WW2.

As in, fill the sky with them. A fleet of 30 HEAPS flying towards anything will result in the removal of said thing from the game. Including, but not limited to, entire attack groups, and whole swaths of enemy bases in 1 pass.

To absorb enemy SAM fire, have 2-4 minipod-bug VTOLS fly in right before the Air Armada gets within SAM range, so that their ordinance is expended on cheap dummy aircraft.




Oh, and the posts above me too. Read them.

[Rman Virgil]

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* Canon fodder "tactics" should be the LAST resort and not the ONLY resort. In WZ this represents a design failure stemming from a very simple short-cut in development reflecting parsimony of resources like time, money, man-power and retail release deadlines.

* Like Borgs, Vtols are horrendously imbalanced (all of T3 balance sucks for that matter).

* Like I said elsewhere:

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* Your siggy, Molotov, about Vtol Bombers can only really be addressed, IMO, by giving Vtols different Heavy Bodies than tanks. The bodies in WZ are the Power Plants and Vtol Bombers need very powerful power plants on a strong but lightweight fuselage. That is an entirely different engineering specification than heavy tanks. Mixing the 2 is absurd and any fussing around with the data specifications in the text files (Access DB) will simply not cut-it.

* The complete re-balance of WZ is a HUGE undertaking and nothing done to date comes closer than making a minuscule dent into the problem. We estimate to be done properly you're looking at 40 man hours per week for months. Can it be done ? Yes. Will it be done ? Yes. Is there a Modus to proceed with ? Yes and it's a 200 + page document / white paper that describes every single detail of the process. When ? It will proceed after the total GFX upgrade and make-over of WZ....and that time will come after the first of the new year - Q1 '09.

*

"But I love the original WZ GFX and Balance and GPMs !! I don't want it changed !!! I WANT good 'ol WZ !..."

* Not a prob... that version will always be available to satisfy such tastes and inclinations...

- Regards, RV

[themousemaster]

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* Canon fodder "tactics" should be the LAST resort and not the ONLY resort. In WZ this represents a design failure stemming from a very simple short-cut in development reflecting parsimony of resources like time, money, man-power and retail release deadlines.

I disagree. If we were talking real-life, then I'd say of course, but...

A) it's a game, so no real life people are getting hurt ;p.

B) I validate my "scrub vtol" design to myself by saying it's an unmanned drone anyway ;p.


But most importantly...

C) The cannon fodder bug-vtol would only indicate a lack of testing-manpower and resources if it was an end-all strat. It's not; you can easily counter the Scrub-VTOL strat by mixing in AAchainguns with your SAMs, or having some anti-air VTOLS of your own handy. It just so happens the CPU doesn't do this, and so do very few players once they have SAMs (if a game gets that far). Or, more specifically, whenever an AA battery is lost by most people, they replace it with a SAM if available, rather than maintaining a diversity. basically, you use whatever tactic is best to win. For people who skimp their Chainfeed-AA defenses, that happens to be using Srub-VTOLS followed by high-ordinance units.



That said, I'd also like to point out something about balancing any game involving both land and aircraft: it's a pain in the rectum, whether or not you use the same bodies . Technically, Airpower is in fact superior in RL to almost any landbased system (thankfully, WZ doesn't have Cruise Missiles ;p). However, given that there are in fact ample ways to counter air assaults, I don't find the planes horribly imbalanced. Just that most people don't know how to properly counter some strats with them. It's like the people who complain about Zergrushes in Starcraft, or QuickMerc Raids in Lords of the Realm 2 (remember that old game? ;p). They are only devistating to those who don't know how to deal with them.

And THAT said, I will say that the techs necessary to defend against aircraft are harder to tech up to than the ones to produce powerful airborne beasts, so yes, that's a bit imbalanced there (as the Aircraft aggressor just needs the body and some form of Rocket research, and the defender needs to go both up the MG and the rocket trees, in addition to whatever else he wasnt researched, to get both SAM and AA-chainfeed options). But that's a balance issue in the tech trees, not the methodolgy itself.




I'll agree with that "all of T3" statement you made, though. Since just about any T3 class weapon can chew through even the heaviest armor in seconds, it leaves heavier bodies redundant .

[Rman Virgil]

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* I started playing WZ in beta. After 10 years I know my way around all the ways to "win". But I believe in much more challenging gambits - like the Queens in Chess... which is also NOT RL... but that's NOT my point anyway as I am well aware of the diff between the 2 and the connections to dynamic balances GPM-wise as well the difference between a simulation game and an RTS.

* Basically, status quo WZ circa '99 (speaking of MP mode & NOT CAM Mode) is not only flawed but, even worse, boringly predictable, about as deep as a card-board cut-out of Chevy Chase (speaking tactically) and is incredibly inflated with nonsensical minutia that serve little or no purpose and only sorta could make sense if you were in a Fantasy world construct and NOT one ostensibly grounded in the Science Fiction tropes of the last half century.

* But whatever....

* For me WZ has been more about promise unfulfilled than it having achieved anything remotely near perfection of GPMs in MP.

* So WZ circa '99 can forever stand as is.... that's kwel. I'm really all about fulfilling the unfulfilled promise in tangible reality, so... that's what I do and occasionally I'll surface to chit-chat about it. It is how I roll with all this. Not the other way around.

- Regards, RV

[cruise]

The main issue seems to be (at least in MP) that any increase in body points is accompanied by a sufficient slow down to provide defensive AA enough time to remove aforementioned additional body points.

Realisitcally, the greatest threat to a bomber is - a fighter plane. Sure, AA will take down a few, but not as many as a good air force of your own.

If someone is attacking with VTOLs, I'd /expect/ the best counter strategy to be VTOLs of your own.

AA should be a harrassment tool, not a perfect "kill any VTOL coming near me weapon before it can fire" which it sometimes feels like.

[themousemaster]

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*stuff*

So, err...

Uhh...

I honestly have no idea how that last post follows what I had said ;p.

The main issue seems to be (at least in MP) that any increase in body points is accompanied by a sufficient slow down to provide defensive AA enough time to remove aforementioned additional body points.

Realisitcally, the greatest threat to a bomber is - a fighter plane. Sure, AA will take down a few, but not as many as a good air force of your own.

If someone is attacking with VTOLs, I'd /expect/ the best counter strategy to be VTOLs of your own.

AA should be a harrassment tool, not a perfect "kill any VTOL coming near me weapon before it can fire" which it sometimes feels like.

I disagree; with that last sentence at least (the part about a fighter being a bombers nightmare I agree with).

AA should be extremely effective against Aircraft. Otherwise, it couldn't fulfill it's primary purpose.

Of course, that purpose isn't to kill planes. It's to deter them from coming anywhere near you. The objective to building AA in real life to to prevent aircraft from attacking your stuff in the first place, not to shoot it down once it has.

Of course, this being a game all about blowing stuff up, not all RL aspects apply . As such, anything designed, and balanced, to be "anti-aircraft" in an RTS game should, indeed, be effective at shooting down the inevitable approach of aircraft.

I only wish GDI got this through their skulls...

[Rman Virgil]

The main issue seems to be (at least in MP) that any increase in body points is accompanied by a sufficient slow down to provide defensive AA enough time to remove aforementioned additional body points.

Realisitcally, the greatest threat to a bomber is - a fighter plane. Sure, AA will take down a few, but not as many as a good air force of your own.

If someone is attacking with VTOLs, I'd /expect/ the best counter strategy to be VTOLs of your own.

AA should be a harrassment tool, not a perfect "kill any VTOL coming near me weapon before it can fire" which it sometimes feels like.

* I agree.

* This is just one example out of many underlining our reason and methods to re-balancing WZ.

* Basically the entire tech tree is being dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up using an RPS ++ methodology.

* I cannot lay-out the details of these techniques because like every single game studio on the planet, balancing methodologies are closely guarded. Of course ours being a FOSS project our balancing techniques will be available for any who have the fortitude to scrutinize and study upon release our source / binaries and no doubt will be copied ad nauseum ... and that'll be fine as there will already be in place a clear primacy and public acknowledgment of the original creator of the innovations involved in RPS ++. I've already witnessed one too many weird, arse-backward, notions about coping others work and NOT acknowledging it for lame arse reasons like - "Oh anybody could have done it. The components were in the source they just put it together so I don't have to acknowledge primacy..." Bull-chit, straight-up and it ain't gonna happen in this case to be sure.

- Regards, RV



- Regards, RV

[Rman Virgil]

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* And an other thing....

* I don't care how many times you've played through the Campaign or how many Skirmish games you've played because NONE of that experience will qualify you to speak to the MP situation of WZ.

* Log at least a couple hundred hours of MP against strong players and then you'll have a true understanding of what this topic is really about.

* That's just the way it is. No way 'round it. All the yapping in the world won't do anything to address where WZ MP fails.

- RV

[cruise]

Naturally AA should do /something/ It just shouldn't do /everything/ which it does seem to do currently...

[psychopompos]

Naturally AA should do /something/ It just shouldn't do /everything/ which it does seem to do currently...

it doesnt do every thing at all.
aa guns in wz are very limited in compared to CIWS IRL.
which can be used on infantry, light vehicles, missiles and even arty shells.
think about the role aa guns would play in wz if they where used to do all that

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balancing wz is (i think uniquely) difficult if some ways.
not only do you have to balance one weapon against another, but the many improvements on said weapons.
and then against armour upgrades, and other stats that vehicles and propulsion have. and costs of all of those.
then skill levels...
speed boosts
rof boosts... ...

its like having an rpg with 12 races and 40 classes for each and a further 60 different sub classes each with masses of their own weapons, then balancing out all of that against each other, then having them level in a way that doesnt give one massive advantage over all others, and giving each an identifiable use...
vangeance-scourge anyone?
or is that vengeance-scourge+gauss now?

and before i forget, you also have to consider "hierarchical proportionality".
unless you want some shitty, C&C rock paper scissors thing going on...

[Rman Virgil]

unless you want some shitty, C&C rock paper scissors thing going on...

* Rest assured they are worlds apart.

* This would be the analogy:

* C&C RPS is to backyard nerf football amongst over-weight butterballs like WZ RPS ++ is to playing in the Super Bowl.

* This ain't no amateur effort, to be sure.

* But it is a lot of work - 40 man-hours per week for months. And while many can write a few sentences about it .... well, why belabor the obvious.

- RV