you know since the last patch air is king hands down. I hate using air, I mean I use it diversify but not mass air all the way. Even if I counter with wolverines and infantry in a mastodon I still get owned and every play through I watch mass air usually always wins or keeps up enough to harass and really guys it makes playing unenjoyable. I get if u loose u loose but I consider myself a decent player hell I have been ranked diamond for most all seasons and a few I was onyx and I still refuse to use the cheap way out I like to play to play and really utilize staretgy and I see there are others that share my point of view. So…with that being said I think I have the end all solution to the air problem of it being super dominant in all aspects. Here it is; leave it alone; at least on the speed and offensive front, hell give it a 50% attack buff so it’s super powerful, just like in real life. If a f-18 Stafes a base it’s gonna do some serious damage. Here is the caviot. Just like in real life if air takes one missle, maybe even two, it’s done the hornet/banshee goes down. Just like in real life. Have u ever heard of a black hawk helicopter floating over an insurgents camp raining hellfire and fury but at the same time taking round after round from the enemy for 5-8 seconds and still inducing damage and then at that the last second pulling out and leaving the scene with just a smoking engine and still making back to base? No you haven’t because the second any air unit just takes an rpg it’s done. And as awesome and realistic (combat style warfar) as this game is air can just sit there and rain hell on someone and take hell back and of course live to fight another day. So I propose doing just that make air so great it’s a risk, I mean if someone wants to go all air awesome but a group of marines or a few wolverines can drop a whole squadron in a few shots just like in real life. That way u get back to the basics of strategy.
Thanks for the option to comment!!!
The interaction between air and it’s counters is fine. The only issue that I’ve had with air is with decimus banshees. Boundless siphon is getting a nerf while air is getting a nerf in damage to AA. Marines and grunts are also getting a damage buff against air and banshees are getting a building DPS. I don’t know what else you want.
I have never lost a game to mass air that wasn’t decimus banshees that wasn’t due to my own poor micro/macro or positioning. Please consider if there was any other things you could have done better the change the outcome of the game. 6 wolverines are not supposed to beat 120 pop air. I know it’s hard to look at yourself and say “I did not play that well” but for most of the people that I have played with that have claimed that Air is OP, that is usually the case
you can turn on the sickness skull if you REALLY want to feel the realism
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> The interaction between air and it’s counters is fine. The only issue that I’ve had with air is with decimus banshees. Boundless siphon is getting a nerf while air is getting a nerf in damage to AA. Marines and grunts are also getting a damage buff against air and banshees are getting a building DPS. I don’t know what else you want.
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> I have never lost a game to mass air that wasn’t decimus banshees that wasn’t due to my own poor micro/macro or positioning. Please consider if there was any other things you could have done better the change the outcome of the game. 6 wolverines are not supposed to beat 120 pop air. I know it’s hard to look at yourself and say “I did not play that well” but for most of the people that I have played with that have claimed that Air is OP, that is usually the case
For sure. Anything I could have done different I would have. I am totally open to different Strategies. I just think that this game deserves a taste of realism; even though it is Sci-fi and on a make believe premise; the concept; combat warefare is the common variable that needs some adjusting. Just my two cents
Rather not have my base sniped by flying locusts the second I leave it. The main complaint in teams about air is already its ability to ignore all your units, fly to the other corner of the map, and snipe a base, then return before you an do anything. Your proposed balance to this is literally making them better at doing that. The patch before this one AA got a huge AoE buff vs air simulating kinda what you want. It was literally a joke how weak air was, even in 3s where air is the strongest it can be. The only air that could compete was Decimus banshees, but that’s only thanks to boundless siphon being super powerful and actually broken as it heals when not attacking. The problem with air in 3s right now is:
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Larger maps favor the agility and speed of air units. This is the main reason and it contributes to most other issues as well. On a similar note it is the reason why infantry is so powerful on most 1v1 maps while transitioning into air is almost a sure fire loss unless you really caught the other player off guard.
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Positioning. In 1v1 positioning is generally binary. Blue army here, Red army there. Unless you are horribly out of position, there are two main encounter types. A base is either being attacked and defended, or 2 bases are being attacked with no full defense on either (Base trade). In 3s, there are many more situations and it is far easier to catch people out of position. Likewise it is very easy to air to move to its strengths and avoid its weaknesses in a larger setting like that. In 1s if someone goes air, if their opponent is competent they will have a good bit of AA in their unit comp making engagements very dangerous for the air user. In 3s, if 2 people go mass air it means every opponent needs ample AA otherwise they risk getting caught in a position where their AA teammates are separated and their army gets wiped for nothing.
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Numbers. This ties a little into positioning as well. In 1v1 it will generally always be either one 1v1 encounter or two 1v0 encounters. In 3s not so much. In this case all 3 players could push 1 side, but 2 players are much more capable of handling a 2v3 than the enemy team that now opened up a door for mass air to snipe bases. This is the real crux of the issue. Defensive positioning against non-air opponents is a lot easier in 3s than defensive positioning against air. If all 3 players push one side with non-air, two players still have a large chance to hold or at least drastically dampen the strength of the attack. Meanwhile 1 mass air player can attack any base with literally zero opposition, and likely make it to the next base or two before the opponent makes it through the side they are attacking or retreats back.
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Leader powers. Air, with its agility, has an inherent advantage in dodging most leader powers (Though quite fragile to them if they hit). On the flip side marines, the soft counter, are considerably less mobile, and both infantry and AA are also quite fragile to leader powers. This is all somewhat dependent on the leaders used. Arbiter, for example, doesn’t really have any direct super damaging leader powers (Though his are broken in a different, indirect way). Infantry will for sure suffer some casualties from an eradication, while even the best placed eradication can be effortlessly dodged by air. True to form some of the best leader powers vs air are the ones that cast quickly and are brief in duration (Cryo+seismic, MAC, hunters brand to a degree), but those are similarly effective against infantry and AA. Going back to numbers it gets worse. 2 players defending with units, but the defense being bolstered by all 3 player’s leader powers is virtually a full defense. A good maelstrom+cataclysm+eradication+whatever is the attacking armies wiped, defensive armies intact and maybe now on offense, and the base sniping air happily flying through all your undefended bases.
Notice how none of your suggestions would help with this at all. Making air snipe bases better is only exaggerating issues 1, 2, and 3 (Using agility to snipe bases against enemies out of position). If you make banshees totally worthless against even a couple AA then air becomes useless period. No other counter in the game is that strong, why should AA (Imagine 1 cyclops mulching 4 marauders effortlessly)? Air would become and instant lose in 1v1 because all your opponent would have to do is have 4 AA turrets and tell a wolverine to hold position and RIP 11k supply of air. It would be an instant lose for the same reason.
Despite statements I’ve made previously about the Air vs Infantry interaction, Air does not actually beat infantry (Except maybe boundless siphon banshees or combat repair, haven’t tested that yet). 40 Banshees vs 40 Marines results in 20 vet 1 marines coming out on top. Air trades 1:1 with infantry (Banshees vs Marines) but at twice the cost and in larger engagements infantry starts to get easy veterancy making them trade better vs air as the fight continues. This is why air is so weak in 1s, because by the time both players are at T2, there will generally already be a decent bit of infantry on the field (Generally with upgrades on the way), while air production starts from scratch and is expensive. The coming buff to AA (Making it cheaper), to infantry (Big buff vs air in terms of damage), and the nerf to air (Reduced building damage, extra reduction to boundless siphon, reduced damage vs AA) is going to balance things out nicely in 3s, though probably at the near extinction of air in 1s (Again). AA production will not hinder upgrades as much, AA will last longer against air, and infantry vs air engagements will be much more punishing to air than they are already.
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> 1. Larger maps favor the agility and speed of air units. This is the main reason and it contributes to most other issues as well. On a similar note it is the reason why infantry is so powerful on most 1v1 maps while transitioning into air is almost a sure fire loss unless you really caught the other player off guard.
I think this is the core of the problem.
In the real world, Aircrafts have “Maximum Takeoff Weight”.The payload of the aircraft is always less than the vehicle.
AH-64D Apache Longbow can’t load ammo infinitely.
If AH-64 in HW2 3v3, they can launch only 16 hellfire missiles, and they need to return to base every times.
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> > 2533274852992145;5:
> > 1. Larger maps favor the agility and speed of air units. This is the main reason and it contributes to most other issues as well. On a similar note it is the reason why infantry is so powerful on most 1v1 maps while transitioning into air is almost a sure fire loss unless you really caught the other player off guard.
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> I think this is the core of the problem.
> In the real world, Aircrafts have “Maximum Takeoff Weight”.The payload of the aircraft is always less than the vehicle.
> AH-64D Apache Longbow can’t load ammo infinitely.
> If AH-64 in HW2 3v3, they can launch only 16 hellfire missiles, and they need to return to base every times.
This is similar to a super old real world military simulation game called Real War that came out in 2001. Real War was apparently created from a simulation game that was actually used by the United States military. Aircraft in this game had to land every so often to refuel and get ammo. A player needed an airfield to do this and it was a good tactic to destroy the airfield to prevent the planes from landing. The game also had some pretty strong Anti Air units (only could shoot air though) but they would destroy aircraft in 1-3 missiles/barrages (the Independent Liberation Army had the best AA unit). It was sort of like what OP is describing.
To be honest, I have no idea if this was even fair or balanced. I only ever played versus the AI, either in skirmish mode or campaign.
I am rather against trying to balance any video game on what happens in real life, except in the rare situations that the game is meant to be a simulation.
Air isn’t that strong. AA still cleans it up in reasonable numbers.
If we are going to balance the game by what’s realistic then your Spartan hero unit should get instantly killed by a single grunt wielding a plasma pistol when their shields go down like in the books
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> If we are going to balance the game by what’s realistic then your Spartan hero unit should get instantly killed by a single grunt wielding a plasma pistol when their shields go down like in the books
Or alternatively solos your army repeatedly as SPARTAN-IIs considered 1 vs 100 odds favorable, 1 vs 500 with some preparation and/or support. I mean Chief literally kills 100+ enemies including heavy vehicles and light air in individual missions. Even the opening to Halo:The Fall of Reach has 4-SPARTAN Blue Team killing literal thousands of grunts in a single engagement. To put that in in perspective, that’s enough kills in a single mission to match the career-long kill count of legendary historical soldiers (Audie Murphy, Chris Kyle, etc). Nearly 30 years of constant overwhelming genocidal warfare only killed a handful of IIs until Reach, a 15 minute HW2 match doesn’t really compare to that.