AU Mod: Modern Armor

[ducki]

If MechInf had "real" bombard - range 1 or 2 - would the AI use it, or would that be a human-only benefit?

Edit: The reason I ask is that I don't recall us ever trying to give "normal" units a "real" bombard ability. I know the AI is rotten at conventional bombard units, but it already builds Inf and Mech Inf and takes them along with their MA - right? Something the human does to a lesser degree? So if the AI is able to use the bombard ability with a unit it already builds/uses, would that be close enough to stock while aiding the AI? Is it possible that MI is the "problem" unit as opposed to MA?

[Risa]

More and more radical...

If MechInf had real bombard, what were the point of radar artillery?

[nbarclay]

As I said before, boosting the MechInf would cause balance problems when MechInfs are attacked by tanks or other pre-MA units.

I'm not really convinced that there's a problem here. In raw stats, MAs have an overwhelming advantage over MechInfs, but keep in mind that the MechInfs are often in metropolises rather than mere cities. Further, the metropolicses may very well have civil defense city improvements, and will almost certainly be under the cover of radar towers unless and until the radar towers are taken out. So the MechInfs end up being much tougher nuts to crack than their raw stats make it look like they ought to be. Without the "bigger stack" phenomenon, in which winning defenders get injured and hence become easier prey for the next unit to attack them, MAs would often find themselves seriously overmatched.

The romps where MAs seem ridiculously overpowered are normally against infantry, not MechInfs. But anyone who watched news footage from Desert Storm a decade or so back shouldn't find that kind of lopsided result particularly surprising.

Nathan

[ducki]

Originally posted by Risa
More and more radical...

If MechInf had real bombard, what were the point of radar artillery?

For the AI, no different, as anecdotal evidence suggests the AI blows at using bombard-specialized units.
Which was why I asked if it would use "real" bombard if given to a unit it normally produces and uses in combined-arms fashion.

Yes, more radical, but I still wonder if the AI would use bombard "better" if it wasn't just a bombard-specific unit - i.e. it doesn't have to build a stack of artillery doom, it just has to know to use the bombard ability of the MIs it already builds anyway.

Boosting MI is probably not the best idea, and yes, this thought excercise is fairly radical, but from Theseus' 1st response, followed by his 2nd response, I'm just brainstorming on ideas that might be better than "better than nothing". I'd rather not have to settle for "better than nothing".

[pauli]

my question is, how well does the ai use tow infantry against ma?

[alexman]

TOW infantry is just a no-resource defender in the Guerilla upgrade path. It's not supposed to have any special ability againts Modern Armor in the game, despite its real life purpose.

[alexman]

Under consideration:

Yes/No: Reduce defensive strength to 14

Voting on Friday.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by alexman
Yes/No: Reduce defensive strength to 14

Yes.

[alexman]

Yes

[lockstep]

YES.

[ZargonX]

Yes

[Kuciwalker]

Why not reduce its attack as well? That seems to be where a lot of the problem actually comes from.

[Theseus]

Y

[nbarclay]

Reduce the MA's attack value and you give players even more reason to bombard away most of the defenders' hit points before attacking. If you look at the kind of defensive bonuses a MechInf gets defending a metropolis, are MAs really overpowered offensively? Consider, especially, that cavalry can retreat from musketmen but MAs can't retreat from MechInfs.

Certainly, MAs are absurdly overpowered against infantry, but state-of-the-art offensive units are always overpowered against obsolete defenders: knights against spearmen, cavalry against pikemen, tanks against riflemen, and so forth. That's the reward players get for building up a large tech lead.

[Theseus]

Just to make it clear: We are soley voting on reducing to d14.

I agree with Nathan re attack value.