#T2 Supersonic Spyplane

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

raven stag
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  • Extremely fast top speed. Fast enough to evade all ground AA except Screamers, and even then able to see a lot before getting shot down. Fighters need to be head-on to get a shot.

  • Extremely poor acceleration, turn speed, and speed while turning. Will easily get caught turning at edge of map.

  • Costly. 1000+ metal. (To offset potential spam abuse mucking up AA targeting)

= A way to gain lategame strategic vision, when teams have walls of flak and fighters. (And something for Screamers to actually do.)

chilly heart
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there's also the spy satellite/balloon idea, which is literally above all the mess. LRAA would be viable, maybe taking a lot of shots for balance calibration

raven stag
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Maybe. I'd be worried that they simply couldn't get over enemy lategame, and back to status quo.

Could have the spyplane high altitude, too.

chilly heart
calm flower
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What if the plane would be blind and only use radar? Would be less op if you see where stuff is, but not what it is.

echo ibex
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i like the idea of a blitz of mostly reliable scouting
we can make it so that the spyplane scouts just a certain corridor -- reasonably wide but doesn't see everything

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giving players options for gaining vision is good imo
matchups played too blind is kinda ehh

calm flower
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Maybe something like LRPC that shoots a radar bot?

karmic bridge
chilly heart
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we've had this discussion before, camera catapults feature often, as do telescopes, spy satellites, and omnis/antijammers
can't recall where though, one of the antispam threads

lusty bloom
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I don't get it
the whole reason aerial vision is easy to shut down is vision is very potent, and even getting a good look at an enemy's base gives a lot of potential game ending advantages, like bombers lining up good runs on enemy afuses, or spotting an area not covered by anti nuke
if you desperately need vision, you have the option of making spybots and infiltrating to what you need vision on. I don't think remotely being able to gain full vision of areas is a good idea

chilly heart
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because done well it would end up better than spam, without giving huge advantages for the player, and end up less terrible for latency

echo ibex
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500-1000 metal cost is an ez way. no one is gonna be spamming that

lusty bloom
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it doesn't need to be spammed, just one good peak lets you get off a perfect nuke, or a perfect bombing run with no flak in your route, or a surprise LRPC barrage that pops an afus
I'm telling you, vision is too important to be accessed with the click of a button. units having to fight, spybots having to maneuver, scout planes having to slip by fighter walls, all of that difficulty associated with getting good vision is there for a reason

lime schooner
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Vision is a potent offesnive tool, which is why its probablematic that its super hard to access in the very late game. We want players to have good offensive tools in the late game so games don't turn into indefinite stalemates. IDK what the best solution is but the fact that vision gets harder and harder to aquire the later the game goes isn't healthy.

raven stag
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Ain't anybody slipping any spybots passed when the field is covered with ticks and grunts and thors and shet. xD

For rts games to not become infinite campfests, offense is supposed to have the slight advantage in choosing when and where to fight.

Need to find out if they are building a lolcannon? Currently you have to basically sacrifice your entire airforce.

Cost could go up; they aren't intended to spam, just get strategic-level information in lategame.

echo ibex
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indeed. playing blind makes offense harder. well it also makes defense harder cause you can't tell what they are doing
at 500-1000 metal a piece how are they waste enemy aa

raven stag
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In super late game lolcannon stalemates, they could be a win condition to dope enemy AA before your fighters and bombers. Price accordingly.

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Spectated a 90 minute game the other day. Junos were used to destroy a backline. (hundreds/thousands of missiles at once, at 1 damage each.) Would rather not get to this point. xD

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Also, there would still be counterplay, in the form of forward Screamers. They would need to be substantially forward, as intended spyplanes would be fast enough to make it halfway or more past the Screamer before struck by the AA missile.

languid charm
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Could also add the Aeon Eye from SupCom FA; lategame structure, moderate metal cost, huge BP/energy cost, spend (ridiculous amount of energy) to activate ability, gives you uninterruptible vision of one spot anywhere in the map as long as you pay the really high energy upkeep. It would be like a T2 version of a Juno almost

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Another option is to copy/paste the Soothsayer T3 perimeter monitoring system, another FAF T3 structure that provides vision. This is the Cybran version, and it just has a massive vision range. It can almost cover small 1v1 maps by itself.

Honestly I like the spy satellite idea the best though, just because it’s cooler

chilly heart
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scry, soothsayer and omni type solutions feel like they have little counterplay
even if they are effective and anti turtle, it's not likely to be a satisfying mechanic. spyplanes and sats are at least still stoppable units

echo ibex
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have the sight be temporary
like 3 seconds if at all

raven stag
echo ibex
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the vision should specifically linger for a little bit
Basically a scouting flare

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to send one every 5 seconds would be 125-250 metal per second. a huge metal commitment and it only provides vision along 1 corridor

subtle hedge
raven stag
raven stag
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Junos at 86 minutes.. replay says 1 Hour 41 Minutes total. xD

vivid mountain
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There’s good conversation here but… this is a 1-map issue at a specific level of play

languid charm
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I feel like it’s worse on choke point maps like Strait because you can make it impossible to sneak spy bots through the choke even in T1, but even on more open maps you still aren’t getting regular or even intermittent vision of your opponents base or army starting at the very beginning of the T2 phase and ending when they A-move a Thor into your base. That’s one of the reasons tickspam is so good, it’s basically the only way to get consistent vision of the enemy army to spot for your ranged units.

The issue is that vision is so powerful. Basically nothing outside T3 is tanky enough to survive more then a few seconds in enemy vision before it dies to Mausers, Sheldon’s, snipers, starlights, vanguards, or catapults. Scouting the enemy base is even more of a balance issue because a single tick slipping past can chain-react all of your buildpower and a single spybot slipping past lets it EMP your antinuke and destroy your base. That means there’s basically no way to scout the enemy base without just destroying it outside of scout planes, and those get shot down instantly by a fighter wall or T2 AA.

Bases are so fragile that the balance team can’t allow a way to scout because a single scout that gets in can destroy a base.

chilly heart
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the main reason I'm interested in vision options relates to tick/t1 spam; it is basically needed and the only counter is usually counterspam, which is just bad for everyone
there has to be a better way to achieve comparable game effect, without murdering CPUs in the process

subtle hedge
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Yep, just 32 minutes, confirmed

lusty bloom
# vivid mountain There’s good conversation here but… this is a 1-map issue at a specific level of...

How's that? Any map that has sufficient guarded lines or that permits an air player has this "issue"
The root complaint is,
"Its too hard to get vision after fighter walls and defensive lines are formed. We need a unit that defeats that, or a building that provides an ability to remotely gain vision of an area."
I for one just don't think its an issue. Most games where its easier to gain vision don't have 3 different ways of ending the game when you have Intel on an enemy base layout
Spybots, scout planes, long range radar, and junos all work together to form the gameplay of the Intel war that occurs
I just so happen to think the existing tools are plenty because each of them involves counterplay and an ability to gain remote vision would result in extremely bad gameplay

echo ibex
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vision that lasts a few second under a specific corridor for a steep price seems fine
makes it strategic: where do you send it

vivid mountain
raven stag
raven stag
chilly heart
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comsat a little OP but that was mostly the instant detection aspects

lusty bloom
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both ways involve actually moving units over
meanwhile in BAR

build a batch of LRPCs, aim them at the afus
build bombers, know exactly where the flak is
build a nuke, know exact anti nuke coverage
it's not comparable, especially because an afus popping in BAR is in no way comparable to "some workers die"

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and again, you still have options to gain vision. it just involves more relatively micro intensive activity
for example,

launch a dummy air raid on one side of the map, send a batch of scout planes into the enemy controlled space via the other side once enemy fighters react
micro spybots around front lines
launch junos to defeat jammers and fight for areas where you can achieve good radar coverage
basically all of these methods actually involve interacting with enemy units, which is good. an ability where you click and receive remote vision has no interactivity, and disproportionately rewards users of it by the above mentioned methods which are all quite capable of instantly ending a game

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and yeah, there will be plenty of situations where the enemy is just too fortified. there's too much flak for any number of scout planes. there's too much counterintrusion and units defending against spybots. etc
tough. I don't see anything wrong with rewarding defenders for securing their lines by making enemies have to physically beat through them if those enemies want a clear picture of what's going on in their bases

raven stag
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I'm not advocating for something like cc scan, xD.

My suggestion here does have counterplay options that depend on map control.

lusty bloom
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well why bring it up then lol

raven stag
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as an example of an rts game where it's easy to get vision

lusty bloom
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yeah
but then, you know, all that stuff I said

raven stag
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a lot of rts games actually make it easy to get vision. an rts game i grew up playing (Stronghold: Crusader), both players have full vision, and it's still highly strategic and tactical

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having vision lets things happen. no vision, people either camp or gamble roaming.

lusty bloom
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I'm not going to go defending or discussing gameplay decisions in a game I have absolutely no knowledge of, but I am at least reasonably sure there was no way to remotely destroy an enemy structure that in turn blows up everything around it in that game

raven stag
languid charm
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Counterpoint: spending 10 or 20 minutes blind-firing at radar dots and then seeing who’s computer crashes from tickspam first isn’t fun. I want to actually see the units I’m fighting because it’s more fun, not because of any balance decision. It’s not like vision of the frontline is even that much better than radar in the lategame anyways, I know exactly where the units are because of pinpointers and I already know that the dots shooting purple laser beams at me are starlights. Vision would just make the game look better at that point.

I think arguing that there are ways to end the game without vision is counterproductive, if you can already end without vision then what’s the problem with letting people get some vision?

Vision of the backline is really powerful yes, finding AFUS location can end games, but if the vision option is a spy sat that dies to screamers then you can’t use it for that, only frontline. Using ticks, spy planes, or spy bots is still better than a spy say if you can get them through, since the cost a lot less and in the case of ticks and spy bots can actually win the game by themselves. Ticks can chain-react nano turrets and energy converters, and spybots can let you get a nuke through anti. The satellite is only vision.

subtle hedge
lusty bloom
# languid charm Counterpoint: spending 10 or 20 minutes blind-firing at radar dots and then seei...

Ticks can chain-react nano turrets and energy converters, and spybots can let you get a nuke through anti.
yeah, that's my point. you already have the tools to do what you're saying you want to do. the only difference is levels of interaction with enemy units
you're saying this could take the form of a "satellite" that can get shot by screamers. functionally all you're describing is a mobile unit that is immune to all attacks except those from screamers, and presumably has a large vision radius. okay, so now people build screamers and satellites can't get close enough to give vision. so we're back to square one
we're getting into the weeds but fundamentally I don't see the difference between this proposed "satellite" unit and t2 scout planes as they currently exist. they're countered by anti air, too. it would not really shake up the vision counterplay game as you've described its implementation, it would just require people to build screamers to achieve the same gamestate

chilly heart
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problem is the vision endgame just devolves into launching infinite spam into their front, just as they are into yours.

echo ibex
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scan is bs ability. no counterplay

chilly heart
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scan would only work if it were T4 tier expensive, and small/localised

raven stag
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