High-altitude bombers OP and some advices

[Quadrupole]

I have been played this game for some 20 hours, and through the conquest mode gameplay, I have realized how OP a bomber with a service ceiling of 280m or above can be.

1. It is extremely powerful. Bombers are super effective against slow-moving ground targets since the bomber can easily maneuver to the deadzone of the cannons of the landship or the building. That is what the bomb bays are supposed to do. But on the other hand, anti-air in the current version seems underpowered. According to my tests, land unit must give up most of their anti-ground ability to defeat a bomber with similar construction cost, making the former vulnerable to almost anything other than bomber.
   
2. It is extremely versatile. Beside its good performance against most land units, the high-flying feature made the bomber also capable of fighting against airships. All you need to do is to climb to your service ceiling and watch the enemy boarder/rammer/fighter/etc. that cannot reach such height wander helplessly below you and then explode. This situation is deteriorated in the conquest mode since AI is unlikely to produce airships with high service ceiling. As the result, I can win the conquest mode in hard difficulty with only bombers.

I know that high-altitude bombers are definitely not OP in multiplayer, but win the conquest mode with one single corps does not sound right. So here are some of my advices on how to nerf this bomber.

1. Increase the tendency of AI of building high-service ceiling airships (or improve the AI, making them build units specifically to the units of their enemies based on the information they have, but that is certainly not going to happen within a few versions), and increase the highest altitude in the map, say, from 300m to 500m.
   
2. Buff anti-air. Increase the damage of flak gun.
   
3. Decrease the ammunition efficiency of bomb bay. In a normal-length battle, a four-cannon fighter needs two ammo stores yet a five-bomb bay bomber needs only one. That is unrealistic.
   
4. Since the service ceiling is proportional to the lift-weight ratio, why not let the coal consumption of the suspendium chamber also proportional to the current height? As the airship goes higher, the lift produced by suspendium chamber attenuates, thus the suspendium needs more power to maintain the lift and counter gravity. This can make extremely-high-service ceiling bomber completely unpractical (By the way, I think this game could have a recon system using unarmed reconnaissance airships). The developer could also add something like “turbocharged” suspendium chamber, whose lift attenuate slower than normal one, say proportional to the square root of its height, and require a city like most of the special modules.

I also have some other advices that are not directly connected to the bomber.

1. This game could have a spare part system. Whenever you want to refit an airship, you don’t need to pay for the weapons installed if you have that kind of weapon in storage though you still have to pay the workers. (By the way, why I don't have to pay the worker independently when building the ship)This is good news for general-purpose airships. They can now change their weapons when facing different kinds of enemies like a real-world aircraft changes its payload.
   
2. This game should have diplomacy and trade system. Trade system was mentioned previously by tigershark13 and it definitely need a diplomacy system accompany it. On the other hand, as many strategic games, the conquest mode becomes much easier and more boring as the game progresses. This could be alleviated by the diplomacy system, too since the factions alive may form a coalition against the player. Certainly, these two systems require a lot of work to do and are not going to be implemented within a few versions, too.
   
3. This game should have a campaign mode. I guess the developer is already working on it but I am still writing this down because I am really looking forward to a campaign mode.
   
4. The Chinese translation of this game sounds weird. For instance, when the two forces battle and tie, the text on the screen reads ”绘制”, whose main meaning in Chinese is “plot” or ”sketch”. Please stop using Google translation if that was what you have done. You can count on me if you need translators.
   
5. This game should allow player to edit the hotkeys. I have to say that 'M' for move, 'R' for ram, 'G' for landing is distributed across the keyboard therefore hard to be reached in the first time. I hope I can modify these hotkeys to some better locations, say QWE, which is definitely more convenient.

[Zarkonnen]

Thanks for your feedback! I'll have a look at the balancing of high-altitude bombers. Increasing ammo use is probably a good way of balancing things. I also really like the idea of making coal use dependent on how high up a ship is.

Honestly, I think the spare parts system would not add that much. You do however get a part of the construction cost of removed modules back when you refit ships.

Diplomacy and trade will get addressed in dev 10, the release after the monster-focused one currently in development. :)

Can you expand a bit on what you mean by a campaign mode? Like a series of specific missions in a more or less linear plot?

Chinese translation: It's a fan translation, so there's no Google translate involved, don't worry. I very much welcome corrections and improvements, and I can also put you in touch with the translator so you can discuss individual translations.

Hotkey editing is planned, but because the GUI is still constantly changing, it won't happen until a lot closer to the final release.

[Quadrupole]

Sorry for replying this thread so late. I was writing paper for most of this week.

About campaign mode: In my imagination, gameplay in campaign mode should be similar to the gameplay in the tutorial, achieving specific objective (say, capture/destroy enemy forces or retreat with minimal loss) with limited budget and some other requirements. So basically yes, with a generally linear plot. Just like Besiege and some other sandbox games.

By the way, in conquest mode, if an enemy unit surrenders upon attack, it would be treated as destroyed after the battle was over. (The unit vanquishes from list of units) I have never tried boarding so I don’t know if this case also suits boarding. I think you can add a feature that the surrendered units belong to the winner.

Speaking of surrender, I also think the current retreat mechanism could be modified. In my opinion, when you press the “retreat” button, all non-reserve units will surrender, only the reserve units can return to their home. This conform to the retreat objective in the campaign mode I mentioned hereinabove. Say you need to build a fleet of airships to cover a retreating landship against enemy airstrikes. The enemy should also be able to retreat once they found the tide of the battle have turned away from them. This would necessitate the advent of hook to stop them from retreating.

[retrograde_orbit]

Answers to high alt bombers:
FLAK
High Alt Interceptors
MORE FLAK

[CelestialAllure]

I think you may be overreacting here a little bit. Every worthwhile design strategy is OP in conquest. The stock designs are not exactly the most effective, and the AI is no genius in how it plans and places defenses.

I've found flak guns to be very effective against bombers- I don't think their offensive statistics need to be wiggled at all. They have higher DPS than bomb bays and are MUCH easier to hit with than bomb bays.
However, they're fragile (just as bomb bays are) and somewhat expensive, so making "AA nests" will leave them sitting ducks and won't be cost effective.
Rather, you want a small flak support "PT Boat" that can accelerate once in a while to throw off bombers' aim.
Bombs have a sloooow projectile speed, so it's very easy to make them miss with a little mobility. Flak guns on the other hand are fast and fairly accurate.