Mobile Anti-Air Tech Comparison | Supreme Commander Science
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- čas přidán 25. 12. 2022
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the primary reason the T3 MAA were added to FAF as far as I know was to prevent strat bombers from being oppressive in later stages. you used to see people building sams as they pushed cause a few strats would destroy an entire army. now we have these t3 maa that allow us to deal with a strat. I think that the testing is cool and gives an idea of what these units could do in a scenario that is fair. but in most gameplay no one flies asf over these units and patrols. I don't know how you would test this more reliably... maybe do something like have a huge map and let the ASF fly in and out of the range of the different AA a certain number of times, then count the number of dead ASF since that's a more real world test. the gunship test was good though since it was actually something that could happen.
Yea it seems meaningless to test units that have entirely different uses. Without t3maa strats would be instant loss if u only had a t3 hq. Now u just need to invest a good amount of mass into t3 maa. Also I think its important to note that t3 maa is much harder to micro away from, with flak u can easily fly out of the fire without taking much or even any damage.
So if you send a stream of strats at a target and it has 5 kugers in front, very few strays will drop bombs. Unlike static t3aa, they do damage almost instantly and still have enough aoe to take down a bunch - good chance that, if the strats are bunched up, only half makes it. Seen this quite a few times. T2 Flak doesn’t seem to be able to pull this off - due to muzzle velocity, range, or accuracy - or probably a combination of those.
I think lightning tanks can do it, too. Not sure about the cybrans and aeon to be honest.
I feel there is a scenario for the T3 AA you haven't considered - You compared them Vs 2 scenarios that created a near perfect raw DPS scenario, ASF circling overhead and Broadswords circling - you did not consider the other main scenario AA is needed for - flyby attacks.
I personally would love to see for example how much mass investment in MAAA vs flak is needed to reliably down, or atleast blunt, a Strat bomber snipe (i think thats 5 bombers?), a corsair snipe, or a torpedo bomber rush - the sort of attack where you have a window do burst damage, but not a sustained engagement as they need to rearrange for a 2nd pass
Yeah, range is a big deal here. Also, is the DPS of flak assuming that the entire volley hits an aircraft? I'm sure there is falloff, so I'm curious how that might factor in.
Agree; I think most of the time Duelist is right (since these units are used to defend armies, and attacks on armies should resemble test conditions) but for the purpose of taking out fly-by units, you're right, flak almost always misses T3 air while the T3 MAA missiles track.
Agreed, I think willow also made that point - this is what t3 MAA is for and t2 flak can’t pull it off.
This is my first video I've seen of this channel but wow this is extremely in depth and you conduct all of your testing in a highly consistent and quality way. You really put a lot of effort in and I'm definitely going to check out some more of these videos!
I personally believe that the more abilities a certain unit has, the more it should cost.
Certain AA can hover, and therefore easier to micro and, the more important thing... They're multirole.
Looking at the Aeon and Seraphim units.
They hover so they can be used on water, so they should cost like, 20 more mass each. Hover is strong against navy as it requires only surface ships or gunships to take out a small group. Pair that with hover shields.. now that's OP.
the hover units already pay for their ability to hover but not with mass, making them pay for that with mass would be silly cause it would mean it's never a good idea to build them. instead any unit that hovers either pays for this ability with much lower HP, Range, or both compared to their land only counterparts.
@@WillowsDuality
Well, specifically the AA in this instance.
Maybe not every unit.
Aeon hover shields and hover flak is quite the combo.
Being able to multirole as a navy unit and unable to be counted by torps is a little strong.
Their land counterparts for the other 2 are not nearly as useful as Aeon and Seraphim.
@@benjaminrobledo5466 the aeon is kind of forced into asylum ascendant since their cruiser sucks and every other ship (except the shard and Keefer) doesn't have aa although I agree with the seraphim point since almost all their ships have aa. But also it's hard to balance the t2 as cause how do you make the hover units not hover without looking dumb. If you increase the price of the aa it means that they can't protect land armies from gunships or t1 bombers. It's kinda just a catch 22 imo
@@WillowsDuality
Having different mass costs would be the best bet in my opinion, as it lets the MAA (& Mobile shields) keep their hover and balances out their strength with a slightly higher mass cost.
They would reflect on how T2 gunships work. All faction's have them but they're all different mass costs because they have different strengths.
I mean, what's better? - The UEF Parashield or the Aeon Asylum?
The Asylum by a long shot is better! And their costs don't make a difference in their strength and they should.
@@WillowsDuality Infinity is trash? You'll have to explain that one to me, I quite like the Infinity. As to the drawbacks of hover, I thought the drawback was that they moved slower than their non hover counterparts
This may have been a result of the T2 buff patch bc it was noted how often players just skipped T2.
Groups of T2 flak is the way to go.
They're useless against strats but even if u kill strats chances are they already got their bombs out and killed ur exp or ACU.
I wonder how effective carriers are compared to cruisers.
Sure their better with area denial with the greater range. I tend to ditch them bc hey're less maneuverable and tend to get targeted first but also it feels like the DPS and accuracy of the cybran and seraphim is never quite good enough (aeon is ok though)
the problem with your test is that if asf or spy plane would not circle around your AA it would pretty much fly be the t2 AA and wouldn't even get hit , especially against solo spy plane , you could put 25 t2 AA and they wouldn't be able to put that thing down , when T3(for example Aeon AA) would launch guided missile that 100% would put down the spy plane
but lack of dps per mass and tiny AOE make t3 really but against non fast moving targets so they suck against anything below t3 and especially gunships
If you want to u could use hold fire to remove the need for shields to protect the firing units. This might make visibility of the tests better. Also from my experience with this kind of testing, hold fire takes less effort than creating shield templates then copying/pasting them.
You missed a critical part of usefullness of T3 AA vs T2 AA, which is sad : T3 AA have far faster projectiles than T2 AA, and a far longer range, which means they are far more likely to kill a T3 bomber or an ASF *before* it does harm, provided you have enough of them.
You should try this : have a strategic bomber go to attack an unshielded group of T2 AA and an unshielded group of T3 AA, and see which one fares the best. If you want to consider the mass cost, then try to see how much mass you need to kill the T3 bomber *before it kills your AA*.
You studies are nice, but you completely miss the point of it and the larger picture IMO. It makes your conclusions completely irrelevant, if not disinformation. First, this is for all units, but especially for specialized ones, you need to analyze them in their faction doctrine and roster, rather than against other factions' units, because it is an asymetric balance game ; factions are asymetric, hence you can't compare a unit from 2 factions directly.
best RTS ever.
Thanks for this test. 👍I think the gunship tests were fair, however I also kinda agree with some of the comments. I would be curious to see what changes in fly-by tests at higher mass numbers. For example fly 100 asf and 10 strats over 30 flak / 6 t3maa in a single pass. I think the flak may still do better but I don't think it would be as one sided.
Also another test I would like to see is the fatboy test. Get a fatboy and have 30 flak / 6 t3maa assist the fatty. Then take gunships, strats, fighter bombers, etc and attack the fatty. See what t2 flak or t3maa is better at defending a experimental / land army. Again I expect the mass/mass flak to be better but not as one sided. 😄
Lastly, all t3 land units die to t4 Ahwassa. You need like crazy amount of flak or t3maa to kill it in one pass and you will ALWAYS lose your units. The only real counter is shields + sam's or ASF.
The Fatboy defense idea is brilliant.
These T3 AAs actually have almost the same dps at about 200 if you observe their blueprint file. For Cybran Aeon and UEF they all deal 1.2k damage in a firing cycle of ~6 sec. Seraphim T3AA has 240 AA dps so it's 20% more expensive than its counterparts.
While interesting to note, I still really dislike the bouncer due to the hang time on the missiles. The redeemer is functionally my favourite as it is a fast missile with short TTK, though the cougar is my favourite aestheticically
I think a fun science video would be giving rough estimates of how tall buildings would be if built in the real world
i noticed that if you want to make lots of t2 flak vs ripper then ripper can kinda kite blob of flak and kill flaks at the edge without engaging with all t2 flak and it also will do extra splash damage to t2 flak... so vs ripper t3 maa might make sence... but it does have less dps... yea it is weird, but main idea behind t3 maa was that before t3 maa you could not attack without air support, opponent would just strat your flaks and then strat everything else. Afaik to not disrupt anything else in game t3 maa was made to be kinda weak, but main advantage that it actually does hit targets
whenever asfs fly over me theyre in a random formation, but as you showed with patrol order they are very close together, also i think a player will react quickly to get their asfs out of the line of fire as soon as they see aa, which is where t3 shines, because its has higher range so it will hit running away asfs farther and also it is guaranteed to land a shot
also t2 cant kill recon because of projectile speed
Flak is clearly superior against aircraft flying directly overhead, but aircraft that only stray into range for a second or two are not likely to get hit at all, while in that scenario T3 mobile aa will still get a hit in.
Typically a Bouncer will deal with a spy plane much better than 4 Bangers would.
One aspect of your comparison is lacking - there's a difference in functionality. T2 flak can't even *scratch* t3 planes that are *not* loitering. Strat bomber making passes? Flak won't touch it. Spy plane? nope. ASF just passing through? Not a scratch. T3 MAA is capable of engaging these targets.
not at all surprised
And I don't think it makes sense to make range/mass comparison because 1): A unit with twice as much health and DPS is already twice as strong in combat, even without extra range. 2): The value of range does not increase linearly...
I'm not sure I understand these graphs but got the gist of the results. T2 does more damage and is more mass efficient against enemy air lingering overhead. But as the comments have already pointed out I think the point of T3 MAA is to counter T3 Bombers. How is the performance of both T2 and T3 against circling strat bombers?
bombers would not circle around , and flacks can't do a lot against fly by the resons for that is 3t units flying high and fast . most 3t untis have atacks that would 100%reach the target while flaks projectile is very slow plus 2t units have smaler atack range
I use T3 mobile AA because T3 aircraft fly too fast and mobile flak projectiles often aren't fast enough to catch them. Even static flak is better.
I don't get why T3 mobile AA has to be so gimped, I may as well just build Sam's as I advance, if an ASF cloud isn't an option.
Higher-tier units also have longer range, I guess? A longer range increases areas of coverage in the case of AA (although it probably cannot make up for much less DPS/mass and HP/mass, not to say lots of overkilling and the lack of AOE). It allows you to attack sooner with more firepower in the case of land battles. And it also allows you to kill T1 point defenses for free...
what about buildpower? i image that is a bigger bottleneck late game than mass.
You can just make more engineers, and the UEF and cybran even get engineering structures, allowing for really dense bricks of build power
I dunno this seems like it's a bit all over the shop and you made this video far to complicated.
My guy, I get that showing funny images and clips over "boring" data is an attempt at comedy, I don't think it's your style. Stick to the point, please.
Sorry if I missed it but I didn't see testing results for T3MAA vs gunships.
I get that mass for mass you probably won't get enough T3MAA to defeat the 5 Broadswords used in your test, but I'm as interested in faction to faction comparisons as I am in tier to tier or mass to mass.