CNC Zero Hour

Thus, AGM has answered and we should think about balancing USA-AF in a right way.
I took AF cause I think its the most dominating in teamgames and overall the most op-army in ZH.
In this threat I like to talk about changes concerening AF-only !
We should setting aside all other changes we obviously should do to USA (Pathfinder f.e).

The 1st question for me is - what should AF be able to do or how should AF fight with.
My answer would be that we should see that AF fights mostly with air-units, not with Vees only !
Same as Infantry should fight with infantry - and it works !

Here are the changes from Sparky & me we already posted:






What about a change in the Chinooks ?

2 versions
1) one without 950$/1000$
2) with PLD 1100$/1200$

The CC will stay at 1200$ !

Concern's not any China -only early Rocket-trooperspam can not be pld'ed.
Will have an effect in nerfing AF against other USA's.
GLA ist stronger vs. AF - GLA can harass Nooks and USA is not able to use 950$-cheap Nooks for pld'ing infantry early.

R4v3n

I don't think it has any downsides, apart from the fact that you need an icon that shows a PDL Nook. Shouldn't be a problem. Though USAF will get owned by other USA's (rofl) when you do this AND get Vee's at $850 and Bomber at level 3. That's too much. I think applying ALL the suggested changes is overkill, but I'm not sure. It still has PDL to nullify TOW though... It shouldn't be a big problem. I like the idea.



This post has been edited by -SparKy^: Apr 16 2006, 18:42 PM

^ I think he means you have either the pdl nook or the non-pdl nook, you can't choose in-game, it's a patch thing.

Oh, ok. But I was pretty sure he meant two available versions though, because he explained them in such a way.

Guys, USAF needs $950 dollar chinooks to be able to start with Comanches. It also needs PDL nooks to fight off tech RPG if it does start with comanches.

The solution is simple. Make it so laser lock projectiles require two zaps for a PDL to kill them. Problem solved

To make it complete : I mean both versions.

I feel that USAF will always be op untill that carpet bomber is nerfed vs avengers to the point where they eat them alive or the USAF just doesn't get that boom boom power.

Perfect. What about TOW Missiles?

This post has been edited by -SparKy^: Apr 17 2006, 11:54 AM

Here's the breakdown of USAF:

What's good
Airforce is the most strategically diverse army in Zero Hour. No other army gives you so many opening strategic choices. You can essentially play USAF without ever building a WF if you chose. Or you can play USAF without ever building an airfield. You can effectively mix both. You can chose to make firebases or not. You have OPTIONS as USAF. Do you think you would have a chance as V.USA or Tank if you went for air power only? No. Do you think you would stand a chance as V.China if you never made an airfield and focued on ground power? No.

Does this make USAF overpowered? No, not necessarily. The reason is because you can't afford a FULL airforce AND a FULL ground force. You have to pick and chose which one or have a little of both. It's not like you can commanche spam AND humvee spam at the same time. Both are just too expensive. The only time it creates a balance problem is when you don't know what strategy your opponent is going. Picking the wrong starting units could cost you the game. This is correctable.

This makes USAF FUN to play. The goal should be to preserve this as much as possible. You don't want to completely remove these strategic options from AF and that means CAREFULLY balancing it.

What's bad
Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points. Gen points.

I cannot stress enough how much of a problem these are. Just when you're starting to get ahead of your AF opponent's production curve, BAM. You get whacked with a carpet bomber and Comanches or MDvees clean up what's left. And then when you've fought that off and you're starting to recover, WHAM. You get slapped with a Spectre because of the XP the Carpet Bomber gave him.

Gen points disrupt the flow of the game. They make it feel un-natural and turn the tide of the game too abruptly and artificially. Superior tactics should turn the tide of the game, not destroying your opponent's base with a point and click special attack.

How AF's strategies work
Humvees are strong early game and become increasingly weaker as the game progresses, in theory. Things like OL/ECM, BN Migs, and Buggies are all far better against Humvees than early game gatts/quads/techs/rpgs.

Comanches and airpower overall are just the opposite. Because of their slow build speed, and weakness before upgrades, going comanches makes USAF fairly vulnerable early on. Gatt/TC and Quad/RPG often can kill AF. But later on, air power actually triumphs over things like ECM combos, Migs, Buggies (the usual Humvee killers).

What needs to be done
When I say that Humvees are weak late game or comanches are weak early game, Im not saying they're underpowered. Im saying they're weakER than at other stages of the game. But despite this they can still hold their own.

So AF clearly needs nerfing, but it needs nerfing with respect to when it's Humvees and Comanches are at their strongest and ONLY their strongest. You can't just beat them with the nerf stick a few times and expect to balance AF.

There are four clear issues to address

• Other USA armies suck vs USAF. But that's obvious, everyone can agree on that and what needs to be done.
• Genpoints are simply overpowered. There's no denying this. I've been saying this forever. In fact I would argue you could reasonably balance AF JUST by nerfing the gen points significantly.
• Humvees do not have a good enough early-mid game counter from either China or GLA.
• Comanches do not have a good enough mid-late game counter from China or GLA.

The thing to note about humvees is that it's ok for Humvees to be rediculously strong when they're used defensively. Fighting off gatt/tc and quad/rpg with a few early game non-S&D humvees is VERY hard. Humvees are only a pain in the ass to stop when they're in your base running ramapant and by the time you chase them away, 5 more are in your base. Generally if GLA or China cannot maintain 100% pressure on USAF to force the humvees to remain in the USAF base, they never survive long enough to get tech units to actually defeat humvees. Defensively Humvees are fine, offensively they're not. They just tear through a base too quickly to stop.

So here are the proposed changes. There are 5 specific categories
1.) Gen points
-Move spectre to 5 star, give it level 3 duration.
-Move carpet bomber to 3 star

2.) Humvees vs GLA early game
Since offensive quad/rpg is already tough to beat, GLA needs a better defensive option. Tunnels are the obvious choice since all GLA players build them.
-Make TOW missile do less damage to infantry so RPG popping counters humvees
-Make tunnel gun do more damage to humvees
-Possibly make rocket infantry do less damage to tunnels. Would also help vs BB spam, Outposts, Helixes, and Combat Nooks.

3.) GLA vs Comanches late game
-Radar scan is the obvious mid-late game counter to comanches. The trouble is you rarely survive long enough to get it. Just make it more accessible, make radar vans a little more accessible.
-For mid game, make comanche counter measure armor less resistant to quads.
-Make comanches less damaging to tunnels and buildings
-Comanches do not get promoted as easily
-Comanches give off far more XP when shot down.

This way Comanches are NOT nerfed early game when they're at their weakest. They're only nerfed mid-late game when they're overpowered.

4.) Humvees vs China early game
By far hardest thing to fix. Tank and Inf seem to be "ok", but V.China and Nuke suck donkey balls.
-Make humvees more vulnerable to radiation so without S&D, Nuke BMs and migs are a threat.
-Make humvees more vulnerable to regular napalm and make non-upgraded migs reload faster. Also make Helix more resistant to TOW missile and the laser lock damage type. Then gattlix can be a useful counter to humvees for V.China.

5.) Comanches vs China mid-late game.
Not as much of a problem as Gatts > Quads at killing air units, and outposts > radar vans. Also Chain guns are more accessible than AP bullets. China simply has a lot of options. What it DOESN'T have are tunnels to quickly transport its gatts the way GLA does. Plus stingers are more feasible than gatt turrets. What GLA lacks in unit firepower it gains in defensive structure capability. China is sort of the opposite.

But this is also what makes it hard. It means offensively speaking, China is very very good at countering Comanches early game, and it's later on that they start to have trouble. So nerfing the comanches early game in any way is just not an option.

I think here that if comanches simply do less damage to buildings, and they are not as easy to promote, they can be countered by China more easily. A set of comanches will have to stay in the area longer to kill a building, making up for China's mobility issues.

^ I'll amen to that

When MiGs get BN, will they still reload faster than without BN, if you increase the non-upgraded loading time?

Now that's what I call a post

Before nerfing KRs to death, we need to remember that they're only a major pain vs other USAs and in team games vs buildings. As long as the damage vs buildings is reduced and other USAs have an cost-effective option to kill them then KRs will be fine. Avengers work to a degree, moreso for laser, but the problem is that as soon as you build enough avengers to shut down the KR threat, you get humvee'd to death. Reducing their price will make them OP vs other armies. Making LL missiles take two zaps to nullify is an interesting idea and I think it might be good to apply this to the KR's pdl. It would make MD drops doable for a little less money. If you managed to get a MDvee near an airfield with 2 or more KRs on it, you could actually evac and kill a KR before it took off. If you saw the KR coming and had some MDs nearby you could even kill it this way.

AGM

Great post, great analysis. Fully agree.

bravo agmlauncher. looks like a sound plan to me. i hope this gets implemented and i can finally play uasf without being called a lamer

I would say that MiGs without bn need to reload faster, on that way it will be easier for china gens (except nuke) to kill humvee's. MiGs with the bn upgrade should have the same reload time as they are now If those bn MiGs get a faster reload time, they will be op, you can say that it will be a kr2 then

AGM that was a really nice post of you
Nice observing, i agree with your things

This post has been edited by StefanDeath: Apr 18 2006, 10:09 AM

Very n1ce, I thought about one more change, but that makes INF more harder vor all USA's.

Maybe I can't play as good as many others, but I think v.China needs a small boost which is maybe not the point here.

Well we all know that tank and nuke got more expensive than vchina.
Maybe air his inf should be a little more expensive too. Air already has op air units, it's strong on the ground with the humvees and it still has cheap inf units
I should say that air his inf should raise a little in price for example the missle defender from $ 300 to $ 325 or $ 350. I know myself that it has a huge effect. On this way the air gen will have less control on the ground with it's humvee's, it can build less rockvee's then
Only problem will then that air has an expensive cnook attack, not that they are used very much since the build time of cnooks went up

What do you guys think about it?


Ye, it needs to be boosted up, in 1v1 games it totally sucks, all gens are better than vchina but in 2v2 games it is getting stronger, that is just because of the bn migs. In 2v2 are migs more often used than in 1v1 games. You won't spam 8+ migs in 1v1 very easily, but in 2v2 you have a bigger chance of doing that

This post has been edited by StefanDeath: Apr 18 2006, 20:03 PM

Nice suggestions agm


This was the only one I didn't really like

If you do this inf helix's will own against non-air usa's even more. They're already hard to counter if micro'd properly untill you get Tow because avenger's can't keep up with helix's speed. I do agree with making helix's more resistant against LL missiles, though.

Yep, maybe don't change Inf Helixes since they are a different type (they're named Assault Helixes or similar). People often overlook Inf when it comes to balancing the game since they're so underused, thanks a lot 1.02

I was actually thinking of switching the reload times. Currently it's 8 seconds for NON upgraded migs, and 2 seconds for BN migs. This is silly.

It should probably be more like 3 seconds before upgrade, and 6 seconds after the upgrade. BN migs are overpowered in team games. Anyone who's ever played against V.China and a toxin camping them up would rather fight off KR spam than BN migs spam. A longer reload time so they can't be used the instant after they land would be just fine without ruining China's chances against BB spam in 1v1. It would also make non-upgraded migs actually useful

Gotta be careful about making them reload too quickly because it's very feasible that you could mig abuse GLA supplies. That's why a reload time of 2 seconds instead of 3 makes a bit more sense.

But anyway, I don't think inf Helixes will ever be a problem against non-AF USAs. Im not talking major nerfs to TOW and LL, just minor ones. TOW missiles currently completely remove the option of going Helixes as any China. That's not a good thing. We shouldn't really make the Inf helix WEAKER than the regular helix. The Assault implies it should be more heavily armored. So even though it's technically different it's also better. I think it would be fine, testing would reveal any problems.

KRs should also not kill a helix in one hit. They should slow the helix down to the red so it doesn't travel as fast, but gives you time to either evacuate your troops or get the hell out of there. In 2v2 random games, if you're infantry, you CANNOT risk going helix first. If he's AF and you have no way of knowing that, you're screwed.

So that way in 1v1 random games, if you make a helix expecting Vees and he makes a KR, it wont really ruin your entire start.

Yes, it won't ruin your start, but it would be a game winner because that Assault Helix rapes bases as fast as Gamma Busses. If you manage to drop the 8 infantry inside, USA will have a VERY hard time stopping them, even with Flashbangs. And if a KR takes it in the red, you will be able to.