Missing units?

[Salami Tsunami]

So, purely in the interest of discussion, I'm wondering if anyone has any concepts for units or structures which should have been in the game, but aren't. Because I do feel like there's some gaps in the existing lineup. For example:

- Anti air flak artillery. One of the main reasons experimental gunships are so popular is that they have a tremendous amount of splash damage, but anti air and fighters only inflict point damage. Thus, gunships are tremendously more effective against clustered units, but suffer no drawbacks from being clustered up themselves. For this reason, an AC-1000 or Soul Ripper spam is practically unstoppable by ground units. Some sort of experimental flak cannon would be lovely for inflicting splash damage against air targets.

- Experimental fighters. Filling a similar niche to the previous suggestion, a dedicated air superiority unit would be amazing. As it is now, an endgame gunship swarm can defeat an entire unit cap worth of fighters, and having an alternative would do wonders for game balance

- Multiple launch rocket system or ultra heavy artillery. Essentially, a unit or structure that has a long range, manually deployed attack, similar to nukes. Purchase rocket volleys or artillery salvos, and then deploy them against specific ground targets for wide area damage. Sort of filling in the gap between the existing artillery, and nukes.

[Zesc]

Any? I have a whole pile of ideas, and the people i discussed them with even more. But i'll keep short to the most obvious ones:

• Land Scouts

  They're fun to use, and can gain you a substential edge in the early game for relatively low costs. Would add a whole new layer os tactics into the first stage of the game.
  

• More Ships

  Currently, we have Submarines, Crusiers, Battleships, Destroyers and carriers. (And a Dreadnough) There are so many interesting things you could add, like Submarine Hunters or Frigattes.
  

• Torpedo Turrets

  'Cuz a factory addon ain't doin' it.
  

• Sustained fire Laser-whatever

  The only wepons dealing a continous stream of damage are exclusively mounted on Cybran Exps. The concept of a constant, never-missing HP drain is to got to be ignored like this.
  

• Walls

  *"All These Walls" by Abarax playing* Just think about the possibilites. Like writting insults with them on the map. Or using them for defensive perimeters, ofc.
  

• Missile Planes

  Besides Exps, aircraft is limited to Fighters, Bombers, Gunships and Transports. Why not mount more exotic weapon systems on them, like TMLs?

[Salami Tsunami]

Torpedo turrets are sorely needed, yes. It would be an excellent counter to the borderline game breaking early naval rush.

And walls. Walls would be amazing. Especially experimental walls, for those who want to make SC2 great again.

Come to think of it, I'd love any sort of variety for aircraft. They're very droll and uninteresting at present, which is a shame considering they're far more powerful than land units.

Imagine some sort of sustained fire laser, similar in function to the Loyalty Gun, but dealing damage instead? Magnificent.

[Kyso4ek]

Not walls please. Walls produce a lot of otherwise unneccessary sim sity micro.

We could use flak AA but in the end UEF can defend itself by spamming lots of fighters, Cybrans have the bomb bouncer which does the same. And Aeon have pulinsmash and the AA exp bot.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

An actual navy for the Illuminate. It was present in the first two games in spite of the floaty nature of some of their land units there too. Why can't we have any plasma artillery-lobbing naval fleets here too?

[Zesc]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

An actual navy for the Illuminate. It was present in the first two games in spite of the floaty nature of some of their land units there too. Why can't we have any plasma artillery-lobbing naval fleets here too?

Because their previous navy was straigth out imba and casued sadness and despair to the competetive scene. The fact that Aeon can still reign naval (naval gazing, huh?) without having a navy tells you how powerfull they are.

A compromise i came up with on the unofficial Discord server was giving them dedicated Land and Hover factories. Like in TA. So they could have reasonable land forces (probably Walkers like Harvog and Airnomo) and construct more expensive but powerfull Hovercraft on the other.

[Salami Tsunami]

Although to be fair, the reason Aeon wreck on the open water is probably due to the lack of naval based counters toward that sort of behavior. It's uncommon to see in an actual game, but the UEF dreadnought from the DLC will absolutely wreck face against teleported clusters of floaty tanks. I think if the Cybrans had a similar unit, naval warfare would be far more balanced.

Also, for that matter, everyone would benefit from the addition of some sort of dedicated AA, CIWS warship. Land units, air units, and structures all have the option for purpose built anti aircraft guns, so why should ships have to make do with a mediocre anti air capacity tacked onto non AA ships?

Also, it would be great if bombers didn't suck. Just saying.

[Zesc]

Originally posted by Salami Tsunami:

Although to be fair, the reason Aeon wreck on the open water is probably due to the lack of naval based counters toward that sort of behavior. It's uncommon to see in an actual game, but the UEF dreadnought from the DLC will absolutely wreck face against teleported clusters of floaty tanks. I think if the Cybrans had a similar unit, naval warfare would be far more balanced.

Also, for that matter, everyone would benefit from the addition of some sort of dedicated AA, CIWS warship. Land units, air units, and structures all have the option for purpose built anti aircraft guns, so why should ships have to make do with a mediocre anti air capacity tacked onto non AA ships?

Also, it would be great if bombers didn't suck. Just saying.

Well, actually, the AA thing is only an issue for Cybran. The UEF got the AA on their Cruisers, which is extremly strong, and all their other ships lack AA. (Yes, the Battleships have no AA, that thingy is just fireworks.)

Regarding Bombers... the UEF ones are actually pretty good when properly upgraded (stronger than their GS, atleast), but Aeon and Cybran both got these hybrid thingies that could perform better. If bombers were actualy Bombers (no tracking on the projectiles, but real AoE) and had the salvo-payloads from the campaign... that would make them more bomber-ish.

[Salami Tsunami]

Originally posted by Zesc:

Originally posted by Salami Tsunami:

Although to be fair, the reason Aeon wreck on the open water is probably due to the lack of naval based counters toward that sort of behavior. It's uncommon to see in an actual game, but the UEF dreadnought from the DLC will absolutely wreck face against teleported clusters of floaty tanks. I think if the Cybrans had a similar unit, naval warfare would be far more balanced.

Also, for that matter, everyone would benefit from the addition of some sort of dedicated AA, CIWS warship. Land units, air units, and structures all have the option for purpose built anti aircraft guns, so why should ships have to make do with a mediocre anti air capacity tacked onto non AA ships?

Also, it would be great if bombers didn't suck. Just saying.

Well, actually, the AA thing is only an issue for Cybran. The UEF got the AA on their Cruisers, which is extremly strong, and all their other ships lack AA. (Yes, the Battleships have no AA, that thingy is just fireworks.)

Regarding Bombers... the UEF ones are actually pretty good when properly upgraded (stronger than their GS, atleast), but Aeon and Cybran both got these hybrid thingies that could perform better. If bombers were actualy Bombers (no tracking on the projectiles, but real AoE) and had the salvo-payloads from the campaign... that would make them more bomber-ish.

True that.

At the very least it would be nice if there were some sort of toggle to have bombers spread their payloads across a wider area, or randomly target units in a given formation. As it is now, they just kill the absolute hell out of one tank, and then get kited to death by any anti air present.

What about an experimental bomber? Wouldn't that be lovely? Maybe even a nuclear bomber?

[Zesc]

Originally posted by Salami Tsunami:

True that.

At the very least it would be nice if there were some sort of toggle to have bombers spread their payloads across a wider area, or randomly target units in a given formation. As it is now, they just kill the absolute hell out of one tank, and then get kited to death by any anti air present.

What about an experimental bomber? Wouldn't that be lovely? Maybe even a nuclear bomber?

Problem with Exp bombers is that they are extremly hard to balance. If their attack is extremly powerfull (as you said, nuclear) you have to compensate this with RoF by giving them absurdly long reload times. But what happens if they get shot down before they can deliver a second payload? Wouldn't nukes have been cheaper then? This is partly the problem of the Seraphim Air Prototype in FA.

Ironically enough, the best solution for an Exp bomber would doing it Darkenoid style. Besides its beam weapons, that thing drops pinwheel artillery bombs, which just spread solid DPS over a large area. So a good Exp Bomber should work similar to this, and go for quantity instead of quality.

Plus, you can shout "Let it hail fire and death!" when using them.

[-BritishEcho-]

The main thing the game needs is for AntiAir to not absolutely suck. That would break the meta of just going straight for an air force because it overpowers everything and anything. Other than that I suppose just a more varied and specialised amount of units would be nice since games quickly devolve into whoever can spam more of this unit wins.

[Zesc]

Originally posted by -BritishEcho-:

The main thing the game needs is for AntiAir to not absolutely suck. That would break the meta of just going straight for an air force because it overpowers everything and anything. Other than that I suppose just a more varied and specialised amount of units would be nice since games quickly devolve into whoever can spam more of this unit wins.

Whilst i'm not entirely sure fo which meta you are talking (yeah, upon release, GS were OP), this somethign we probably all can agree with.

Single AA units are very powerfull in the early game, but follow the law of diminishing returns. One AA tower can make it a no-fly zone if your opponent has 5 planes, but if your opponent has 200, you can hardly match this with build 40 AA towers.

What we either need is flak artillery, or having some high RoF mediocre range AA units (like the Airnomo) that can protect their direct surrounding.

Thing is... there are, besides Figthers, no offensive weapons against air, only defensive ones.

[Salami Tsunami]

Originally posted by -BritishEcho-:

The main thing the game needs is for AntiAir to not absolutely suck. That would break the meta of just going straight for an air force because it overpowers everything and anything. Other than that I suppose just a more varied and specialised amount of units would be nice since games quickly devolve into whoever can spam more of this unit wins.

Further compounding the issue is that experimental gunships (prime offender being the AC1000, which can enter mass production after five minutes of gameplay) have massive AOE damage. Now, it can kill 8 AA tanks clustered together in the same amount of time it would take to kill 1 AA tank. 2 or 3 AC1000s will wipe out a blob of mobile AA before they manage to get off more than a few shots.

Imagine a scenario in which you're producing AC 1000s, and I'm producing Cybran AA bots. Your AC1000s become exponentially more effective as you build more because of the cumulative effect of their splash damage, while my AA bots become only marginally more effective as I build more, because 50 of them will die as quickly as 5 once you have enough gunships to kill them in a single volley.

[Zesc]

Originally posted by Salami Tsunami:

Further compounding the issue is that experimental gunships (prime offender being the AC1000, which can enter mass production after five minutes of gameplay) have massive AOE damage. Now, it can kill 8 AA tanks clustered together in the same amount of time it would take to kill 1 AA tank. 2 or 3 AC1000s will wipe out a blob of mobile AA before they manage to get off more than a few shots.

Imagine a scenario in which you're producing AC 1000s, and I'm producing Cybran AA bots. Your AC1000s become exponentially more effective as you build more because of the cumulative effect of their splash damage, while my AA bots become only marginally more effective as I build more, because 50 of them will die as quickly as 5 once you have enough gunships to kill them in a single volley.

I am feeling offended by this post. (jk)

However, your example is very badly choosen. The AC1k is the only Exp GS with AoE. Also, your example would actually rule for the ADVs, because with increasing numbers their ability to shrug of damage becomes insane. (I don't want to do filthy self-advertising, but i wrote a guide on this.)

The actualy issue about AC1ks is their crazy range which allows skilled players to... out-range AA, which is just stupid.

Sooprizers themself are just "get's the job done" Assassins, and Soul Rippers... well, they got AA, and aren't that bad, but the standard Cybran GS is out-classing them.

Really, look at Renegades, with their insane 35% RoF increase. They are DPS monsters, and can be spammed to swarm any given fortification with ease, which brings us back to the original point.

The UEF migth have the Hornet, but the Cybran are the ones who will make you shoud "Not the bees!".

[McDonald's Employee]

I always wanted a replacement Exp. Bomber, since the Seraphim (or however they spell it) are out of the game. Maybe for the UEF, could go with their Exp. Gunship and have some (slight?) anti air.

[McDonald's Employee]

or maybe both a Exp. Fighter and Exp. Bomber, since their units seem to stay seperate.