Jammers, scanners, slammers

[yurch]

The following is a long winded musing on the dynamics of sensors, jammers, and AA and their effect on play. Usual rules for yurchposts apply. Read/ignore at your own risk.

I think AA is underpowered in this game.

I’d stop there, but that wouldn’t exactly be worth the price of admission. Sure, I could probably sex it up with the promise of making the game better and whitening teeth while you sleep, but that’s not really how I do things.

Some of our objective maps feature a hill (twin peaks, haven) as the objective. Fighting that occurs on this hill is close ranged, awkward and generally very fatal, which is quite favorable to attackers. Since attackers are deciding where the attack takes place, this usually results in localized attrition or at the very least long delays with attackers in range of the point counter.

Defenders should obviously be fighting the attackers at arms length around the hill, but this never seems to occur. Why? Because attackers are literally falling out of the sky. There’s too little time to gun them down in the open when they’re already closing from a bit further than 2000m. (the maximum range AA available on either of those maps) More will come in while you’re busy struggling to keep 20mm off your flank.

The advantage of having AA is apparent. On ice fields (which I’m starting to consider one of the more strategically oriented maps) the Cobra missile defense tower (with a radius of 5000m!) is an imposing and well respected unit despite never firing on ground vehicles. On this map the attackers lack their drop-in advantage, and actually get torn up pretty bad if defenders begin using aggressive strategies from the first example.

To counteract this, attackers would need to set up an AA network of their own. I think this illustrates the difficulty of our current system quite well: At least one player would have to get into a command track, and dump AA turret after another in widening radius, with corresponding jammers for each turret. Failure to include the jammer will get the turret destroyed in very short order either by chance enemies in the area or by the ever present ctrl-m mortar carriers in that map. A turret in enemy LOS can be destroyed fairly easily out to 6000m, by 20mm or ion fire in particular. Allowing an enemy into the area will often mean replacing a significant portion of the turrets.

My initial reaction is to increase the AA range of all (or nearly all) units, simply to drive up the volume of covered area, placing a greater emphasis on ground movement. This comes with its problems, of course, the main one being what to do with the commonplace ‘jammed turret’.

I have come up with what I think is a solution that allows greatly increased range, but it changes many of the dynamics of how turrets, sensors, and jammers work. Here are the rules:

1) A turret does not immediately show up on the tacmap when placed, like a jammed turret does now. The radius should show up as you’re placing it. If possible, show the effects of terrain on the radius.

2) Sensors and turrets act in conjunction. Allow turrets to fire intelligently with sensor information, be it leading units that are out of LOS (so a shot is already in flight before a unit clears the corner and/or ground/AA turrets can arc over hills) shooting projectiles, or a better accuracy deviation. AA turrets should become more proficient at hitting distant air targets that are spotted by sensors, either through general accuracy, increased range, or both.

3) Turret positions flash when they fire on targets, in a manner much like the counter-battery computer on the artillery. If possible, flash their AA coverage on the tacmap as well. This includes the hermes autogun. This is a compromise between having permanently jammed turrets and completely revealed turrets. The flash should have a substantial fade time for the user friendly factor. This could be described as short bursts of detectable radar usage or other such emissions from the turret for targeting. While not totally newbie friendly, it certainly is an improvement over the jammer/AA combo with no death message that is used near universally.

4) Sensors have a dual function. The first being their current function, (short-range seeing through terrain) with the second being a longer range line of sight restricted version of the first function. Sensors may not be jammed. They probably should not show up on the map until they are in LOS, however. If a team wants to hide it in a hole for the AA usage alone, that is their decision. Bots definitely need to fire on spotted sensors.

5) The most controversial: Sensors unjam targets, including dropships. If this is done sensors should remain unjammable. This puts an automated stop to weird strategies like the ‘jammer highway’, and adds a bit of danger to the hermes-viper combination. Turrets still cannot fire on jammed targets without assistance of a sensor.

6) AA turrets become more ineffective over distance. To assure takedown, sensors or redundant turrets will need to be deployed.

7) A 20mm sensor paladin or shrike as a patrol vehicle, because keeping stationary sensors alive could obviously prove quite difficult at times. This would also be unjammable, and for gameplay reasons, a fairly soft unit. This would effectively be the opposite of the hermes.

8) One of the current buildings (like the one opposite the AA tower in ice fields) could serve as a longer range sensor station. I would love for some of the other structures besides the AA tower to have some strategic value.

9) Since the air defense towers feature 3 turrets, mixed variants featuring both missile and point defense would make a great deal of sense.

10) A smaller defender deployment radius for the objective gametype definitely needs to be enforced. How is this set for standalone games? The deployment radius does not seem to apply for the objective gametype.

If anyone sees glaring problems or omissions with this, please be sure to say so. Allowing AA to have an improved coverage volume allows for better placement, as well as less hair-pulling to actually cover enough area to allow some manuvering. You obviously can’t dig pits for 10 positions, especially while on the attack.

At the same time, air defense shouldn’t be an all or nothing deal. If a player (or several) want to risk dropping expensive units inside the known ineffective range of an AA turret, that’s up to him.

[Dark_au]

Great Post Yurch,

I was talking to Toby Haynes earlier in game and suggested something that would work with what you are saying.

What about allowing a Point air defence mode for Ion armed units?. Slave the unit to AD and it just sits there hitting shells and dropships and ignoring ground targets (if a bot is in it) or removes control of the gun if a human is in it. You could easily limit this by giving them a much lower "target overload" value than for the Towers.

[tankibanki]

Yurch, you are suggesting an integrated air defense network. I think that implementing such a system is overkill if its just there to prevent dropping too close to the objective. However I like the idea very much as it sounds "realistic" (after all that's the way air defense is supposed to work in the present) and creates a more interactive battlefield.

As an easier partial solution I would suggest a design feature to enable the scenario designer to limit each teams drop zone. Besides, this would create the possibility for scenarios with a defined front line.

[PFMM]

I should qualify my following statement with the fact that I have only played the current demo release, but I have about thirty matches under my belt, and am used to being an impromptu commander now.

yurch, I totally disagree with you. What you propose would lead to stagnation. Both sides with their respective safe zones sending out well rehearsed and timed ground assaults, and fending off same, would lead to repetition that few would find interesting. The ability to spam air defences, to stage daring raids, to make a swift lunge for territory, and that no defense is "safe" are what breath life and create interest into this game.

I also doubt the casual player would have the patience to wait several minutes before charging off to their doom.

[yurch]

Originally posted by Dark_au:

What about allowing a Point air defence mode for Ion armed units?

Not sure. It wouldn't quite work the way point defense works (thor certainly can't traverse that fast) and those ions are much, much further ranged.

Originally posted by tankibanki:

As an easier partial solution I would suggest a design feature to enable the scenario designer to limit each teams drop zone. Besides, this would create the possibility for scenarios with a defined front line.

This is very static, and would be problematic with current units. A team could stop another team from dropping entirely by occupying thier drop zone.

Originally posted by PFMM:

yurch, I totally disagree with you. What you propose would lead to stagnation. Both sides with their respective safe zones sending out well rehearsed and timed ground assaults, and fending off same, would lead to repetition that few would find interesting. The ability to spam air defences, to stage daring raids, to make a swift lunge for territory, and that no defense is "safe" are what breath life and create interest into this game.

This really doesn't lend to stagnation, and I could argue it does the opposite. Air defense in this game is not very sturdy. I can scream in with a tempest and remove 70% of a team's AA turret coverage, with that number approaching 100% if the turrets aren't jammed. Needing less turrets to cover more area means less fiddling with jammers, fiddling with coverage, and waiting for dropships one at a time. It allows the AA coverage to be put back up with less hassle, allowing a team to bounce back. Usually nobody even bothers. I fail to see how a well covered area (nay, a region) is 'uncrackable' given that simple 20mm paladins are fast, cheap, and good at destroying the light turrets and sensor related objects.

The big towers go down to a single 76mm paladin unloading it's HE, and automated AA never fires at anything jammed. Dropping a galaxy on a hermes pretty much gets you a makeshift dropzone no matter how many automated units are nearby. None of this will change with the new proposal, other then the fact the hermes will have to shoot out or avoid nearby sensors.

The mobile sensor units will be more useful for attackers, who need to deny defenders from dropping by sniffing out thier usually jammed areas near the objective. Part of attacking is stopping defenders from dropping back in.

If the bots had any semblance of accuracy or sense you could just park two of them in ion units a few thousand meters behind the action and they could burn dropship after dropship through focusing thier fire. I know I've done this with fellow players, and this is at double the range of the standard AA turret. This is a boring job to be relegated to, but it could be done with current game mechanics. I fire 120mm on any dropping ship I have a potential of destroying, and I have downed ships as far out as 6800 meters. Our dedicated units completely stop trying at 2000m or if the target is jammed.

So you know, the two demo maps are somewhat unique as they have defensive towers directly on the objective. In many of the other maps, teams rely solely on deployable AA turrets for defense of the objective. Since the attacker points ramp up much faster than they decrease, attackers usually win these maps, despite defender deployment.

[poesel]

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by tankibanki:

As an easier partial solution I would suggest a design feature to enable the scenario designer to limit each teams drop zone. Besides, this would create the possibility for scenarios with a defined front line.

This is very static, and would be problematic with current units. A team could stop another team from dropping entirely by occupying thier drop zone.

</font>

[aittam]

Originally posted by poesel71:

Where I go with yurch is the digital behaviour of AA: if youre inside the radius, you get killed, outside you land safely. Rather having a gradient with decreasing probability to get shot or get hit would be more interesting. You would never know and maybe get lucky.

Another interesting thing would be if the dropship could abort the drop or chose another landing spot if under fire. That would make it harder to land on a pixel.

I like this

For the rest I understand both sides arguments and I think they are valid in a map dependent way

What would be useful is a movement sensor to integrate the panel, a kind of stone-like, uneasy to spot, unsofisticated that tells you :" enemy coming this way or just movement from these coordinates"

[tankibanki]

Good point, I didn't think about blocking the oppositions drop zone. Still I think it would be a good design feature to be able to restrict drop zones.