Overall Plane Remastering

[Hyacintho]

I've heard a lot about planes needing an overall change, if not all planes then some planes.
Here we shall discuss that.

I'm going to post some of my ideas soon, once I get in some research.

[Midonik]

My proposal is to heavily lower the damage to begin with. We don't want figters slaughtering infantries. Bombers aren't that effective by any means, same as the close air support. Anit structure and ship damage is fine, but against other units it's too high. More that 10 damage to infantry is unacceptable for anything, same for artillery. For vehicles it can be higher, but no one shooting (way too much stuff one shoots other in this game). Maybe a buff of AAs should be considered.

[Hyacintho]

Base damage is calculated by the stats XLS, so for a comprehensive debuff I would suggest removing or modifying existing bonuses.

That brings to mind, is it possible for a 'negative' bonus? Like a plane deals -50% damage to infantry? If so, that would make things much easier.

I'm going to test that out.

II think I'd also back an AA and Artillery health or armor buff, seeing as how they are useless with an escort to protect them planes. In the war, I'm pretty sure it used to be the other way around.

[Stratego (dev)]

Xls expressions can be altered so all planes will have lower damage at once.

I suggest not using negative bonus, looks weird. I suggest giving lower base damage abd giving bonus on some targets.

[samuelch]

For plane rebalancing, all damage to land units should be lower but dive bombers should keep the bonus against vehicles in not too high amount. For slow moving vehicles, dive bomber should deal bigger than normal vehicles. Also I think aa should deal more damage. Maybe one hit kill bomber. And three hit kill normal plane. The same for all aa including the moving one. So the pros of the stationary one should be way cheaper and longer range. If aas are made stronger, planes could be cheaper.

[Hyacintho]

Interesting ideas, and they will be sure to be discussed soon. I'm heading into decreased activity mode again due to the onslaught of more external work I need to finish, so I won't be able to weigh in too heavy on this topic for the time being.

I will say this though,
I like the idea of strengthening the AA guns, and also the idea of lowering plane to damage to some ground units, especially infantry.

The one thing that I will pursue vehemently though, is the rebalancing of the Messerschmitt 109.
I don't care what it is exactly, just make it weaker!
You can essentially ensure air superiority regardless of strategy by spamming these planes, and occasionally making a Ju88 for ground attack purposes.

[Dagravian]

There was a post around here somewhere that was suggesting as balance to airplanes, to add vanishing to them, then add delay vanishing aura to airfields+aircraft carriers and also reducing the cost of the planes in overall... That idea got killed? Can't find it atm... But i think that with a few updates could be really cool.

[Midonik]

Well Stratego's disagrees. However... For the air warfare, operational range... Airports and carriers (btw, if we do that the aircraft factory and the airfield- not effect by factory limit must be separated)... These factors are so crucial here that I think we should make an exception (definitely don't add something like this to tanks and ships, that would be too much of a pain in ass).
I would still lower the attack a bit tho. Maybe lower cost then.

[Dagravian]

Like to cap planes limit to like 2 or 3 per airfield? Idk how that would apply to aircraft carriers since it is a naval unit that can be build "limitless" unlike a buildings... But i guess we could add hangars as building to increase the plane cap, while aircraft carriers increase the cap by 1 plane...

As for AA, i think Daniel should make another layer level between the "highlight" effects and the "unit layer", maybe "unit layer 2" for air units, so more features could be introduced and also fix mines problem with planes by moving airplanes to layer2 and moving AA dmg focus to layer2. So if we add this AA could receive nice improvements, like affect layer2 like a minefield (something like pick any AA and surround its attack range with mines), so when airplanes reach AA range, they will automatically start to be damaged (like entering a heavy flak zone) and therefore, no need to increase their dmg.

[Field marshal Mick]

I think that the whole game should probably have a few adjustments to make multiplayer games a fair fight that won't drive players away. BUT! For the against the AI part I think I might like the it the way it is. At first I was frustrated with my armies being wiped out by a blitz of enemies. Then I thought of the actual war and what they did to survive it. During the Battle of Britain did Churchill whine to Hitler that his air power was to much? No he stood up and told the world that England would never surrender. They tried to make everyone play fair after WW1 and the only thing that did was make the path to WW2. I could go on till next Tuesday about this but end saying those who dont remember history are doomed to repeat it on this game.

[Belfry777]

This is something that needs to be fixed. I personally think the damage that aircraft have is ok, but the cost is too much and the reality isn't their. Firstly, lets make each plane like a mercenary in aos in that they would have to re-fuel. By giving specific planes more time, we can simulate their fuel efficiency (such as the P51.) And by giving less time for planes such as the ME 262 we can make the game more realistic. Airports would have an ability much like the courer known as "Gas" and would instantly replenish supply. Whereas the Airfield could just keep planes from disipearing. Aircraft carriers would also work the same way as Airports just on the high seas.

As for cost: Planes are just too expensive to make mass quantity's of them. I mean look at all the B17's who carried raids carried on Germany!! Their were approximately 12,000 built, yet in AOWW having 1 or even 2 is a lot. If we had the B17 at a lower cost, (possibly 6) that would make it easier to build them. However suppose we had a bomber raid pack for 9 turns that produced anywhere form 2-3 bombers? (This also makes another problem in attack damage but that's another post for another day) The same thing goes for fighters, fighter bombers, interceptors, ground attack, reconnaissance, transports, torpedo and dive bombers just in a different form. For fighters I suggest making them around 4-5 turns. Certain nations such as the Japanese made really cheap planes known as the Zero which wiped the butt of the older american Hellcat. For the Zero I think 3 turns is good. However once the Americans got into the war P-47's, P51's and P38's simply destroyed the Japanese air-force. So we do need to consider carefully where to put these types of planes in the War years techs. And in the most historically friendly way too. Their is so much I want to talk about and so much I want to fix!! I will post later about the Bombers attack damage and how it should be lowered, but for now please do these two things:

1. Think historicity! Think about how to make the game more historically accurate without making the game complex.
2. For airplanes we really do need layers as suggested in another topic so please check it out and help out if possible.

[Stratego (dev)]

refualling is not an option, i was literally quit a good strategy game because of that - no one (at leat me) want to hassle with fuelling.
operational range should be represented by speed.

reducing plane costs: we can do it but we need to reduce some stats then because this would lead to a "planes only" game.
halving HP and attack would do i think id a 8 turn bomber goes down to 4-5 turn, and figters down to about 3 turns.

[samuelch]

How about if planes don't need refueling instead they will be summonable by airfields? So all planes will have timer called "returning". Some planes can have very high returning counter. So just say you can't see the plane returning. For fighters, I don't think it's fair enough when againsting land units. It should be reduced. Also a new building called huge airfield could be added with double action (2 planes take off the same time), fewer cooldown for plane summoning, and more plane types perhaps. The cons of huge airfield is that it's a huge artillery target and longer to build.

[Stratego (dev)]

ok, firts please bulletpoint list the problems with current please (sorry if in big thread i could not find out)

i only understood that they are too expensive, i gave suggestion to that by halving cost and some stats

[samuelch]

Current problem of planes:
-Cost too high making it very few in numbers
-The attack of the planes are too high against land units= fighters should only good against air units, fighter bomber (dive bomber) can be good against only buildings and tanks, bomber can only be good against buildings but the attack does trample
-Maybe aa needs to be stronger in dealing planes if the numbers are gonna be more
-maybe the vanishing plane might be good idea (just maybe)

[godOfKings]

We should take hints from how civ 5 implemented planes,
They r like the most realistic air warfare I ever saw in any turn based game

Plane can only b placed on garrison able places like town, air port or air craft carrier, within their operational range, they can attack any single target then return to their base until next turn,

Sams and fighters can automatically intercept any enemy plane within their range as they r about to attack their targets

I m not saying to implement any of the features, but just take hints from one of the best turn based strategy games and brainstorm new ideas for aoww

[Stratego (dev)]

ok, my suggestions
make
1. fighter planes (i checked messersmit bf109 as reference)
- cost 4 (5->4)
- half damage (about 8) (16->8)
- double bonus against air units (so same attack will be against air units)
- reduce HP 28->20

2. bombers
actually we have 6,7,8 turncost bombers now, we can modify all to 6 turns
- hp down from about 40 to 25 (in case of b17 60 down to 45)


3. fighterbombers
- cost down to 5
- hp down (from about 30 down to about 20)
- power from 13-16 down to 10-13


(reducing HP will help AA to get them down)
(i try to avoud vanishing plane thing)

so u see the XLS? we need to put the rules there so all new planes will have the rule we set.

[Midonik]

Eh can I ask a question? Why the heck b17 has 33 attack? It deals full damage to the air units so it can literally attack other planes very well... And that definetly can't be done with bombs. I suggest lowering damage and eventually decreasing the bonus.

[Stratego (dev)]

the only reason was for high attack: it was a "fortress" with 13x 12mm guns compared to the other 2 plane having 3-5 guns maximum.
but we can reduce all bomber damage in same rate.

[Field marshal Mick]

Years back before I found AOS. I was playing a game called Tactikon2. It is like AOS but very simple. Only 9 units,1 building and a random map generator that has a few options to change things like sea level, number of towns,fog of war,ect. There was 3 kinds of aircraft that had a set range when it was trained. The fighter and bomber were powerful and expensive . The range was represented like the planes of this game. As the aircraft flew the range decreased with the remaining tiles shaded yellow . To refuel you had to land s a1and crashed. You consumed fuel even if you had not moved. The chopper transport was ableto land on the ground between turns. I know that refueling is not a welcome option. I thought I would just mention this as a simple
Idea that could work. I personally think that each nation should have 1 unit of each type with equal status and then work on units with specific traits for upgrades. This game is full of OP issues and it needs to be balanced out so it can be a great game

[Stratego (dev)]

mega lol!

i tell you a story:
- i have played (a lot) a game called taktikon, it had infantry, tank, boat, battleship and 2 kindof planes, i played many multiplayer games
- then came to me that the game should have few more units - at least i would like to have some new
- so i wrote to them to put in new units, they said no
- than i wrote them i will put in then just hand me the source - lol, they naturally refused.
- they just came out with taktikon 2 and i saw that they have totally ruined the very very good game with this fuel thing, and also with graphics i did not like (taktikon 1 had more pixelly graphics but had a good "feeling")
- at this point i created AOS... on same mechanism as taktkon1, but in the "theme" of AOE/AOK my favourite rts game.

lol

[Field marshal Mick]

I had figured out the strategy and it got bored so I found AOS. I have yet to grow tired of playing

[samuelch]

Planes also have armour right now which feel unnecessary also planes shouldn't be able to counterattack because the first attacker is usually the one that go down first.

[Hyacintho]

I think that Stratego's plan is pretty decent, the only black spot I could find is that the Messerschmitt will still be unbalanced against other planes, though perhaps we have an easy way to remedy that, with Samuelch's stance on the counterattack ability.

The Messerschmitt's greatest strength is in its counterattack, which is so powerful most other planes are immediately destroyed upon attracting the Messerschmitt. We can remedy this by simply weakening or removing the counterattack, as Samuelch has suggested.

However, I would say that a few planes can retain their counterattack abilities, and those are the larger planes that were equipped with turrets and as such could logically counterattack an enemy plane. This basically means that the counterattack ability will be weakened or removed from all planes save the heavy bombers and any others that were equipped with defensive turrets.

Concerning armor, Samuelch, I can't really see much of an issue there, though perhaps that is just because I'm uneducated on the matter.

Overall, I say we implement Stratego's plan, while also weakening or removing the counterattack ability for non-turret planes. We implement this, we test it out, if it works we keep and of it doesn't we change.

To do this, one simply needs to duplicate an Assets pack, implement the changes on one of them, and then test it out. If it fails, then switch it back to the original assets pack.
In fact, I think this is why development tends to go slow on this game. Everything is always under discussion yet there is no trial and error, no testing. I'd test this plan, but unfortunately I've lost my Assets pack, which @Stratego (dev) I'll be emailing you about soon.

As for those more advanced ideas like operational range and stuff like that, I'd say we should hold off on those ideas until these more basic changes are decided upon and implemented.