Modest Proposal(s) - Air; Anti-Air; SM; etc.

First, for those who have not had the opportunity to read Jonathan Swift's Modest Proposal, please take the opportunity. It will lighten your day.

http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/swift/modest.html

My proposals are nothing like that.

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My proposals have to do with air and anti-air units. Specifically, I'd like to address the Sky Menace 'strategy' and the anti-air unit in standard maps. I'll offer some background and analysis first that may amuse or not.

You can read this thread first if you want. http://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=418 It really doesn't quite get to where it needs to but it does start to explain the problems and has a few examples of 'SM Players'*** and their usual responses.

__At-War Aircraft are Surreal

At some point in any thread where someone suggests a 'fix' for bombers or whatever, someone always seems to point out that 'you know it's not really just bombers, its fighters and EW and a whole air fleet', and presumably therefore nothing needs to be fixed. I get that. But we should look at just what one of these air-fleet looks like.

It's most important feature is that it never has to re-base. Ever. If this doesn't make any sense, the alternative is that each fleet has the ability to blast a landing site into whatever terrain (or water) it finds itself over at the end of each turn and to then transmute whatever local materials into appropriate fuel to allow it to move and repeat the process at the end of the next turn. That's incredible!

Air units are also distinct from all other units in AW in that they are not hampered by any terrain. Tanks need help to pass over water. Destroyers must remain in water or in water-contiguous cities. Bombers go where they want. They move further than anything else and are not constrained.

So the bomber's incredible range and flexibility is balanced* by the fact that it's lousy for offense and only passable for defense. For the money, every strategy has a better attacker and a better defender. So why do we use it?

It's surreal range and flexibility allow large stacks to be assembled quickly and thrown at targets. Even for non SM strats, mid and late game is often dominated by stacks of bombers.

__Sky Meance Balance Questions

SM takes this aspect of the game that everyone already uses -- really has to use -- and makes it into an offensive juggernaut. Bombers (etc.) move further and trade a little defense for a lot of offense. They also get even more range and they get cheaper. Typical strategy is to stack a mountain of bombers (etc.) with a single air transport and a militia. Because the weakest offense unit fight last, the Militia will be the last to attack (well the transport will actually be last, but if it gets to that point, the battle is lost anyway) and so will take the city against 0 opposition.

I should point out that as the game goes long, _everyone uses tactics that look like this. SM is able to do this sooner and better (which is fine), and faces no effective organic in-game counters or limitations** (which is not fine). It is supposed to have one... weaker defense for bombers (etc.). This is supposed to permit an opponent with a similar number of bomber units to ambush the SM air fleet and fight it in a situation where it is the defender per-se. This _does happen, but because of SM's range advantage, it only happens when the SM makes a mistake. In short, good play by all sides yields an enormous SM advantage. (Flawless strategy???)

Many 'SM players'*** are quick to point out that the SM strategy is TEMPORALLY balanced -- weak in the early game but strong later. Bullsh!t. Everyone is weak in the first 8-12 turns. Everyone has to throw perfectly good units into the maw of the neutrals. With small unit counts, 'luck' is statistically significant. If it took until turn 100 or even until turn 75 for SM to hit stride, I might buy it, but SM is usually rolling by turn 20 and I've seen sooner. And because infantry and militia defense is not reduced, they aren't wearing a 'kick me' sign in the first 8-12 either... or at least not more than anyone else.

SM is unbalanced until and unless there is an organic in-game counter that works assuming good play on all sides. Period.

__Anti Aircraft, the broken general air counter.

The in-game counter to all this air power is the anti-aircraft unit. This unit is 3x the cost of a base infantry, 1/2 the base defense of a base infantry, 2x the defense against air (bombers), and effectively 0 offense. This unit is practically immobile and only has value if an enemy is 'foolish' enough to attack it. Even then it is not cost effective. Sure, bombers would rather fight infantry than anti-air, but on a damage per cost basis, they'd rather face AA. Other unit types would also rather face AA.

By design, this unit can only target air. It should be awesome vs air and suck against everything else. So far, we only have half of this equation right.

If we want to keep the current offense/defense/bonus, the cost of this unit should be lowered to be the same as the base infantry cost. I prefer a different solution, but include this because it would also work...


__Two Modest Proposals

The goal here is to make the smallest change(s) possible to correct the balance. I'm avoiding suggesting new mechanics as this might involve significant reprogramming (and at that point it'd be a different game...). Ideally, these should be quick tweaks to the database. Ideally, if the devs like them, they should be able to setup a test game/test server in an hour or less.

__Strengthen/change Anti-Aircraft Unit

If we want to keep the cost of the AA unit high, we should increase its bonus vs air units. I suggest a bonus value of 25 (twenty five) vs bombers and SFs and 8 against all other air, all for the existing cost of 180. The base defense should be reduced to 2 (3 with upgrade) to make it's specialization complete. Yes, I'm serious. Let me explain.

25 plus the upgraded base of 3 is a total defense of 28 against the target units. The 'average' defense roll of an AA (not factoring arb/crit) would be 14.5. This means that an attacker would expect to lose ~2 air attackers per round, and would need 2 rounds to kill each AA. Actual kill ratio for the AA unit would be >3.5:1 against the intended target. Of course, it would still have low performance against anything else and effectively zero offense. Oh, and the bomber still has to choose to attack.

How would this change the game? When the bomber stacks start to come out, AA could be built at critical locations, incorporated into walls, etc. Bomber stacks would still work, but would be less effective, leading to the counter-counter of more ground or 'other' units and more balanced tactics all around.

SM would still be effective in that they'd do the bomber stack tactic better and earlier than anyone, but they might need to mix in some ground units more often. All bombers all the time would fail just as all tanks all the time fails for TC.

In the long run, having an organic in-game speed brake on air power will be a good thing. This isn't about realism - as I explained earlier, there is nothing realistic about AW air-power.

__Change Sky Menace (a bit)

SM is built in the image of 'strategies' that are not massively unbalanced. Some designated units get stats that are better across the board, and in exchange, other units are weakened. The problem is that SM's strengthened units are the main unit that most players build after turn ~25 regardless of 'strategy'. SM has basically the Scissors vs Paper scenario (with it the Scissors) from turn 25 on with no possibility of ever meeting a Rock.

My proposal with the AA unit might _begin to address this, but SM really does need an organic weakness to balance its strength. I propose that rather than nerf any unit for SM, that we strengthen one... namely the Air Transport. I propose new stats of 9Atk/6Def/7Crit for SM Air Transports.

How would this change the game? SMs would be unable to escort and protect their ATs, even in cities. While their ATs would surely give good account of themselves, they would be the first to die on offense and defense. SMs could mitigate this somewhat on offense by using more SFs, but this would not be a sure thing. More importantly, SMs would find that they would have to replace their ATs after any attack of a really protected city.

Is this Balanced? Well... yes. It gives the SM a true organic weakness, but the weakness is already mitigated somewhat by SM's strengths. SM ATs move further than others, so they're easier to keep out of harm's way. SM ATs are substantially cheaper than others so even if they had to replace them often, they should be able to afford it. Finally, SM could include some AA (like those above) in their AT load to prevent intercept by small <10 bombers from having this effect on huge stacks.

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Anyway, all this is worth doing, IMO of course.


--me


*No, it's not 'balanced' for gaming purposes, but it may be balanced for real life... maybe. There is a reason why real militaries build air forces. OTOH if their air forces never had to refuel, they'd surely build more.

**Tank generals get tanks that are great for attacking but are unlikely to survive a counter and which can't really hide. Naval Commander gets good water units but has nothing to capture Moscow. Iron Fist hits hard and holds on tight, but arrives 2 turns after it should have. Etc.

***'SM Players' not wanting their strategy balanced is selfish. "It works for me and I win a lot so it must be balanced because I'm that good and I'm supposed to win a lot. If they were better they'd beat me. But no it wouldn't be much fun if they all used the same tactics, but I shouldn't have to change mine. I'm awesome." Don't be selfish.

PS: I'm awesome too. Lol.

While you do have a very long and well-thought out argument (I'll really give you that), you seem to be underplaying how much of a disadvantage having a main unit that can't take cities is.

For one, the air transport lowers a bomber stack's range by 2, so it's not AS bad as you think it is unless you have pure bombers going out to attack something.

At a cost of 350 (minimum cost, this is with the -200 from SM and -50 as an SP upgrade) the air transport is incredibly expensive. While 350 may not in reality seem like very much, it is coupled with a main offensive unit that is 130, and is practically the only way to take a city with a bomber stack unless you happen to have an infantry close to the city you're going after. So, the only way to take a city is to have that expensive unit flying around, and at turn one it means that you're going to have to buy one of them per city you expect to take. If you want a good opening, you're typically going to have to buy around 3-4 of them, which is over 1k down the drain JUST to get to the cities. Buying the offensive units to TAKE the cities is going to cost extra, and at an early level this digs into funds extremely quickly and only leaves certain countries open to even be feasible for an SM starting spot.

My third point is also that air transports are practically the only way to take a city. While it sounds like i'm being redundant, I do have a different point. I stated earlier that a good SM opening is 3 or 4 cities, which means you have to buy 3 or 4 air transports. The next turn, you'll have 3 or 4 air transports, so you can also take 4 cities, provided you have the bombers for it. At this point, you won't have money for more air transports, so you have to do what you can with what you have. As the turns drag on around 3-7, taking 4 cities (max) per turn is getting pretty tiresome. You either have to devote your entire stack to take a city with 1 or 2 militia, or don't take it at all. There are much more important choices that need to be made in this regard when it comes to SM, as you want to take the largest cities first, but you also want to get a country bonus for that little extra boost of income. You can't just buy an air transport and bombers to take that tiny little city, it'l cost a fortune, where normally you could buy a tank or two, or even divert two tanks from one of your larger stacks and take two cities with one original stack. This also becomes a huge problem when attacking somebody. SM may seem like its large range makes it extremely useful while attacking, the range is making up for the fact that you can only take one city per stack. For instance, if you were attacking Ukraine, with normal units (marines, tanks, even infantry) you could take the cap of Kiev, but also several of the outlying cities if you have a stack large enough. With SM, only taking Kiev is possible unless you're insane and brought two air transports with you, which may be a viable strategy once to break up a stack you predict having to be broken up, but if used repeatedly would quickly bankrupt you. While this may not seem important, your opponent could place 50 tanks in one of the cities, knowing that you can only take one city. Take out the tanks, or take the cap and risk having your bomber stack destroyed the next turn? (in this case, I'd take out the tanks, but if it were a more reasonable amount of tanks that would be a tough choice) With tanks, you could send 8 tanks to Kiev to take the cap and send the rest to the reinforced city and win both battles. I also would like to point out that you can't 'swarm' with bombers, as you can with so many other strategies, for the same reason as I've been going on about. If you see massive walls of tanks coming at you, it's going to be hard to defend everywhere, but if you see a huge bomber stack coming, you can tell where it's going and prepare that one spot against the bomber wave.

My final reason is going back to the cost of the air transports, costing anywhere between 35-60 per turn to keep them in the air. This requires people using SM to think several turns ahead of where each stack is going (obviously this is normally required of any strategy, but it's needed on a larger level in this case) because if the logistics are bad, and air transport could end up taking a city where it would take several turns to get back into action to take another neutral (or hostile player) city. If done with normal units, it's not a large drain, and getting those few back to where they needed to be won't be a big deal, but it is if you have to get back an air transport AND the bombers back. It also requires a larger amount of skill to play the strategy and isn't 'mindless bomber spamming at the enemy' like so many think it is. Where's the single best place to attack, that will be both hard for the enemy to reinforce, good to take, and also practical to take.






I'm not trying to say SM's the hardest strategy out there and should never be used. It's a great strategy and the incredible range of your stacks makes it amazing if you aren't a retard and know how to properly attack with air stacks. However, it comes at the price of it being costly, with a much slower opening than many comperable strategies, and has more skill requirements than the average strat. Also your 'balances' are way too OP in the first place, 25 is ridiculous, they could make a fortress with that in Europe if America was sending bombers, and having to buy a new air transport for each attack is bullshit.

Zombie, it's not that hard to take over the world with just 3 or 4 air transports total, filled with infantry. Just put the trans near a city, unload 1 inf, rinse and repeat. I do agree with your point that SM isn't just bomb spamming though.

For the same reason, Mr 7, buffing the air trans is unlikely to work. If air transes were buffed such that they'd attack and defend first, the easy way to get around that is to unload units next to cities and never actually attack with it. And to get around the defencive problem, just load a bunch of infantry to protect the trans (which should already be on there to take cities).

On your AA point, it's clear you've thought out the Math, but unfortunately, 28 offence doesn't work like you may think it does. Fact is, when you pack that much offence into a single unit, it will behave extremely unpredictably due to the 7 HP. Consider what would happen if the AA happened to roll less than a 7 (the bomber stays alive), and the bomber on offence rolls a 7 or 8. The AA would be practically useless. I've done some tests on way overbuffed attack/defence, and it's just too unpredictable to be feasible. It may look great on paper, but it's very different in practice.

Rather than trying to buff the AA to oblivion, I think it'd be simpler to just decrease the cost by 10 or 20. You said you wanted cost effectiveness, so the easiest solution is to decrease cost.

PS: AAs are not transportable as far as I know. I'm not sure if they can create walls, either.

EDIT: As to your claims of SM's extreme strength, it's not as strong as you think it is. It's way OP against tank strats, other SMs, and any expensive strats, but to major producers like PD, IF, or Imp, it will fall to gigantic infantry stacks. An SM will rarely be able to use all of his reinfs due to the cost of bombers and air transes, while an infantry spamming strat owning just half a continent can spam over 50 infs every 4 turns, for a couple thousand bucks. This means that if an inf spammer expands early and quickly, it can slowly overpower SM just by defending where necessary and attacking when the SM goes bankrupt.

I have to agree with Terminal about the use of ATs by non SM strats. I have a whole world game going right now where I have 11 AT's going. The cost argument against the change to SM ATs really is specious. SM gets low cost ATs and currently doesn't have to build many.

@ MathDino: Please take a look at the thread I mentioned at the top of my post - http://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=418 - In the first post the situation describes a stack of 44 AAs. I realize that a high def bonus will produce unpredictable results for small stacks. For large stacks, this should not be a problem. Another way of looking at this is that right now, small stacks produce unpredictable results with all unit types.

Regarding Mobility, I do think AA should be transportable whatever their stats.

Regarding the idea of making AA cheaper instead of buffing them: I looked at that and feel it would cause other balance problems. AA at cost 70-100 with current stats would be more balanced on a cost basis, but with def of 4, might be built to the exclusion of inf in many situations. If we make it more expensive, the cost effectiveness as an alternative main defense would be compromised. But if we make it more expensive, we really need to pump it up...

Maybe there is a middle ground with cost/stats?

लिखा द्वारा clovis1122, 05.03.2013 at 16:00

Seems legitm. specially went AA already doesnt move too much like tanks. and went light tanks have less weigh.
T-26 - 10,500 kg
9K22 Tunguska - 34,000 kg

whats that? a tank with 3 attack?

Ok, I think we've reached a consensus that AA's need to be rethinked, that's a good step.

लिखा द्वारा Mathdino, 04.03.2013 at 03:19

Rather than trying to buff the AA to oblivion, I think it'd be simpler to just decrease the cost by 10 or 20. You said you wanted cost effectiveness, so the easiest solution is to decrease cost.

I agree with this idea. The main problem is not with it's stats, that are fine at the moment, but the way it can't handle the continuous bomber spamming 'tactic' from SM.

लिखा द्वारा Pinheiro, 06.03.2013 at 07:15

Ok, I think we've reached a consensus that AA's need to be rethinked, that's a good step.

लिखा द्वारा Mathdino, 04.03.2013 at 03:19

Rather than trying to buff the AA to oblivion, I think it'd be simpler to just decrease the cost by 10 or 20. You said you wanted cost effectiveness, so the easiest solution is to decrease cost.

I agree with this idea. The main problem is not with it's stats, that are fine at the moment, but the way it can't handle the continuous bomber spamming 'tactic' from SM.

what about decreasing air units attack againts AA.

लिखा द्वारा clovis1122, 06.03.2013 at 14:30

लिखा द्वारा Guest, 05.03.2013 at 19:55

Have you even even driven a SP AA? or a SAM? A 9K22 Tunguska can go 65 km/h! I'd like to see infantry walk that fast. Also a T-26 is from the 30's mate! 9K22 Tunguskas are from the 70's sothat is a 40 year diffrence between machines. You comparing very old tech to newer tech which include heavier more advanced weapons and more armour. You also want to know what the top speed of a T-26 is? 31 km/h. Half the speed of a 9K22 Tunguska. You need to face it. SP AA and sams are pretty much just battle tanks with a different mount in most cases. Also the tanks unit i figure accounts for main battle tanks, since light tanks are a rare unit.

I am not talking about efectiveness, I am talking about weight. you need to face it.

dude..... tanks weight more than AA
ww2 AA are long Gone.