Guys - I would like to ask you for some honest and serious feedback on a change we are planning:
in the recent months we have more and more come to the conclusion that having the ability to airlift basically all units is really detrimental to the overall gameplay
a) detrimental for defending players because active players can quickly relocate their entire attack force including tanks and steam roll
b) detrimental to a naval units because essentially they watch from the sideline instead of doing their job of protecting sea lanes and keeping air sup over water(edited)
c) detrimental for tactical gameplay because ports and harbors, islands and straits really serve no important war time purpose on a tactical or strategical scale
We would therefore propose the following:
UPDATED 01/12/18
1) we need some gradual system allowing air mobility to increase - after all modern C17 Globemaster actually can carry an M1A2 or 3 Bradleys + equip and personnel
One idea we could consider which would be easily implementable is to tie airlift to the level of unit research. We could then have most inf and some light units have it day 1 (tier1) most mid weight equip day 10-15 (tier 2) and and the heavy equip starts flying late, around day 25 (tier 3)
Downside to this is the fact that units which are not upgraded accordingly will be not able to airlift, but I really would NOT like to start new researches for non-military units such as transport planes and ships etc
Additionally we could provide better ranges for air transports as well - but that's kinda besides the point. Even in the 80s Reforger the idea was to fly in the soldiers via transatlantic / intercontinental and ship the equip by boat. After all a 747 is rather "global"
This would allow us to retain our current setup without much change or deep coding, while essentially simulating air lift focus (if you don't upgrade your tanks you probably dont put much emphasis on them, meaning you probably won't have a big fleet of heavy lifting C17s or such)
Main game design reasons NOT tying airtransport to buildings or research is twofold:
a) we don't have time/day unlocks on buildings meaning a paying player could easily unbalance the whole early game by building eg. Airport level 5 day 1 and zoom around - something no-one would ever rightfully expect or have any viable counter against
b) if we'd use airports or transport research as the unlock the player again would need only one high level airbase or one research and once again ignore shipping completely (not realistic because even the USAF isn't able to eg shift a whole corps via air and loads of stuff is still shipped (see current buildup of forces in Europe)
2) There needs to be a substitute to move heavy equip by land/sea until airlift becomes viable (late game?) Proposal: Increase the role of military logistics (and no they aren't broken - they are invisible to other players currently but this would then be overhauled)
We could "simply" add one or two more levels of logistics, color coding and beautifying it a bit (no more spider web), simulating military rail and road, warehousing and supply chain - making travel via land faster than now
Sea travel is already very fast once you hit deep water (we deliberately sped it up so ferrying across the pacific doesn't take a week or such in game - but obviously we could also look at increasing naval transport speeds over time - tbd, but not a real problem (faster shipping)
3) current Air Transports are to powerful and have to many HP - propose nerf to 10 HP (used to be 5 - now 15 - middle ground is probably the sweet spot)
4) potentially we could increase the Airport building HP a bit and make them damaged on takeover, which is realistic as they would normally need at least some maintenance, even if not destroyed, so it would take at least a few hours depending on the fighting damage to repair and shuttle in troops
in the recent months we have more and more come to the conclusion that having the ability to airlift basically all units is really detrimental to the overall gameplay
a) detrimental for defending players because active players can quickly relocate their entire attack force including tanks and steam roll
b) detrimental to a naval units because essentially they watch from the sideline instead of doing their job of protecting sea lanes and keeping air sup over water(edited)
c) detrimental for tactical gameplay because ports and harbors, islands and straits really serve no important war time purpose on a tactical or strategical scale
We would therefore propose the following:
UPDATED 01/12/18
1) we need some gradual system allowing air mobility to increase - after all modern C17 Globemaster actually can carry an M1A2 or 3 Bradleys + equip and personnel
One idea we could consider which would be easily implementable is to tie airlift to the level of unit research. We could then have most inf and some light units have it day 1 (tier1) most mid weight equip day 10-15 (tier 2) and and the heavy equip starts flying late, around day 25 (tier 3)
Downside to this is the fact that units which are not upgraded accordingly will be not able to airlift, but I really would NOT like to start new researches for non-military units such as transport planes and ships etc
Additionally we could provide better ranges for air transports as well - but that's kinda besides the point. Even in the 80s Reforger the idea was to fly in the soldiers via transatlantic / intercontinental and ship the equip by boat. After all a 747 is rather "global"
This would allow us to retain our current setup without much change or deep coding, while essentially simulating air lift focus (if you don't upgrade your tanks you probably dont put much emphasis on them, meaning you probably won't have a big fleet of heavy lifting C17s or such)
Main game design reasons NOT tying airtransport to buildings or research is twofold:
a) we don't have time/day unlocks on buildings meaning a paying player could easily unbalance the whole early game by building eg. Airport level 5 day 1 and zoom around - something no-one would ever rightfully expect or have any viable counter against
b) if we'd use airports or transport research as the unlock the player again would need only one high level airbase or one research and once again ignore shipping completely (not realistic because even the USAF isn't able to eg shift a whole corps via air and loads of stuff is still shipped (see current buildup of forces in Europe)
2) There needs to be a substitute to move heavy equip by land/sea until airlift becomes viable (late game?) Proposal: Increase the role of military logistics (and no they aren't broken - they are invisible to other players currently but this would then be overhauled)
We could "simply" add one or two more levels of logistics, color coding and beautifying it a bit (no more spider web), simulating military rail and road, warehousing and supply chain - making travel via land faster than now
Sea travel is already very fast once you hit deep water (we deliberately sped it up so ferrying across the pacific doesn't take a week or such in game - but obviously we could also look at increasing naval transport speeds over time - tbd, but not a real problem (faster shipping)
3) current Air Transports are to powerful and have to many HP - propose nerf to 10 HP (used to be 5 - now 15 - middle ground is probably the sweet spot)
4) potentially we could increase the Airport building HP a bit and make them damaged on takeover, which is realistic as they would normally need at least some maintenance, even if not destroyed, so it would take at least a few hours depending on the fighting damage to repair and shuttle in troops
"Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion." Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
The post was edited 2 times, last by Germanico ().