[Revived Suggestion] Plane Altitude

[towedarray]

Regarding the deck slot limitations, Really if you have a card of manpads, a card of ASF and a card of Mid-High AA then you are set. I usually have A card of Hawks, A card of Chaps, a card of pivads, a card of Stingers, and a card of F15C. That seems plenty. Most decks already would be set to deal with this change as is.

Presently, a cluster of manpads can take out pretty much any jet that flies directly over them. Setting aside for a moment whether or not that's realistic, it provides a level of balance in that the jet is not able to fly directly over an AA unit with impunity, while also the manpad unit has only a very small envelop in which they can practically engage such a jet, so the chance to make a kill on an ASF with a manpad is very narrow. That's how it is balanced in the current game.

As a result, people can and do get away with only having to take one or maybe two cards of AA units and still have a basic chance at denying a segment of air space (however small or large depending on the AA unit's range) to enemy aircraft. In the current game, everyone has a way, with even a single SAM card, to threaten all jets. That is actually a good thing and maintains balance.

In practice, what happens when you completely prevent certain AA cards from even being able to engage certain jets (based on "altitude", likely providing the sort of "Invalid Target" feedback when the user tries to tell the unit to attack the target that is at an altitude it can no longer target), is you are requiring every deck to bring a minimum number of AA cards equal to the number of altitude variations that are present, if the owner wishes to avoid a scenario where the enemy can bomb them with impunity (and most of us DO care to avoid that) when there exists no AA units that can hit it.

Thus, regardless of the nuances or the non-sequiturs, the practical impact of the implementation of multiple altitudes for jets. when tied to preventing various AA units from being able to target/hit them all, means an increase in the minimum number of cards in each deck that must be dedicated to AA units. This is quite directly an additional constraint being placed on an already constrained deck creation scheme, and thus a hardship on the player who is already facing a much more restrictive deck creation scheme than existed in ALB.

[Scanny]

!regarding aa range!

Just adjust the AA ranges accordingly, IGLA has a ceiling of 3.5km, it might not need to be that high in game but buffing it would be good because now we are considering aircraft on a 3d plain, it would also still be highly effective at hitting the lowflying aircraft such as aardvarks, cas planes going on rocket runs/dive bombing such as the harrier or l39 ect.

[Mako]

Half the point of this change is to stop MANPADS only ADNs from being viable...

[Morluck]

Spoiler : :

Regarding the deck slot limitations, Really if you have a card of manpads, a card of ASF and a card of Mid-High AA then you are set. I usually have A card of Hawks, A card of Chaps, a card of pivads, a card of Stingers, and a card of F15C. That seems plenty. Most decks already would be set to deal with this change as is.

Presently, a cluster of manpads can take out pretty much any jet that flies directly over them. Setting aside for a moment whether or not that's realistic, it provides a level of balance in that the jet is not able to fly directly over an AA unit with impunity, while also the manpad unit has only a very small envelop in which they can practically engage such a jet, so the chance to make a kill on an ASF with a manpad is very narrow. That's how it is balanced in the current game.

As a result, people can and do get away with only having to take one or maybe two cards of AA units and still have a basic chance at denying a segment of air space (however small or large depending on the AA unit's range) to enemy aircraft. In the current game, everyone has a way, with even a single SAM card, to threaten all jets. That is actually a good thing and maintains balance.

In practice, what happens when you completely prevent certain AA cards from even being able to engage certain jets (based on "altitude", likely providing the sort of "Invalid Target" feedback when the user tries to tell the unit to attack the target that is at an altitude it can no longer target), is you are requiring every deck to bring a minimum number of AA cards equal to the number of altitude variations that are present, if the owner wishes to avoid a scenario where the enemy can bomb them with impunity (and most of us DO care to avoid that) when there exists no AA units that can hit it.

Thus, regardless of the nuances or the non-sequiturs, the practical impact of the implementation of multiple altitudes for jets. when tied to preventing various AA units from being able to target/hit them all, means an increase in the minimum number of cards in each deck that must be dedicated to AA units. This is quite directly an additional constraint being placed on an already constrained deck creation scheme, and thus a hardship on the player who is already facing a much more restrictive deck creation scheme than existed in ALB.

Generally with 60 AP you get slightly under 30 cards of units but over 20.
So the expectations of a minimal of 3 cards of AA would be saying you expect players to bring 10-15% of their forces as dedicated AA...
Is that seriously a bad thing? Especially in Mix maps with free slots.
The bigger problem would be the heavily restricted specializations. Even with access to all types of engagement they could be shoe horned into predictable and therefore easily counterable choices. I.E. only Radar AA.

[Iris]

You can have 4-5 cards of AA in any deck quite easily.

MANPAD
AAA / IR AA SAM
RADAR SAM
ASFx2

is my typical setup in most decks already. 13 AP at the highest or 5 at the lowest to get 4 cards of AA depending on how you want to look at it. That really isn't that bad.

From there AA is pretty card efficient... with a lot of cards having 2x as many AA vehicles as plane cards have planes, or most threatening helicopters have helicopters.

You'll survive.

[Saavedra]

These changes may also add some depth and utility to airborne decks.

[towedarray]

Half the point of this change is to stop MANPADS only ADNs from being viable...

And as I said, there's nothing wrong with that concept. The problem lies in the execution. The way it has currently been described, you'd be changing cards that are currently optional into a necessity. This results unavoidably in an automatic reduction in deck diversity potential because more slots are being filled with required units just to have a complete force.

It's clear that some of you wouldn't mind because you already play AA-heavy decks with lots of AA cards. But forcing everyone to do so is the problem. No one should be forced to have to build their decks with the same number of AA cards you do, and yet they'd have to just to be certain that the enemy doesn't have a set of jets they can no longer counter. That's not fair to them, and if the situation were reversed and this thread were discussing a unit type that you don't care about and rarely place in your decks, upon hearing that you would soon have to take multiple cards of them just to make a decent deck, you would be rightly upset about that, too.

Once there exists certain classes in aircraft that can no longer be hit by a given AA unit, that unit no longer suffices for AA coverage, and the player is forced to bring additional units just to have the same ability to hit the enemy unit that they had previously with just one card.

My only point, which some are still missing, is that in creating a new altitude schema, we must take care not to further infringe on deck creation by effectively pre-determining even more card decisions for the player's deck than Eugen has already done in RD (heavily restricted specializations, less freedom in standard deck creation, etc), since it is already more restrictive than ALB, and many people do not like it already. Making it worse by necessitating multiple cards of any type is not acceptable without also providing more slots (and perhaps more AP) to go along with it. The effect of a concept where some AA units cannot hit some altitudes requires taking enough AA unit types to cover each altitude. Not everyone wants to be placed in a new situation where they have to do that just to ensure they don't get bombed with impunity. That is not currently the situation, but introducing a radical change to create multiple altitude bands and associating AA units with only certain bands would do just that.

[Seer7]

Sounds really neat but i think there would need to be major changes to unit cards and interface to make the implementation workable

I disagree.

There wouldn't actually need to be that many changes.

I'll make a conservative estimate of bare minimum 2000 changes.

Modders? It's in your hands now.

[Yakhont]

Who wants to bet Eugen would actually try it?

I know the chance is virtually zero but the idea is fantastic.

Good luck debugging brave modders!

[MILINTarctrooper]

Half the point of this change is to stop MANPADS only ADNs from being viable...

And as I said, there's nothing wrong with that concept. The problem lies in the execution. The way it has currently been described, you'd be changing cards that are currently optional into a necessity. This results unavoidably in an automatic reduction in deck diversity potential because more slots are being filled with required units just to have a complete force.

It's clear that some of you wouldn't mind because you already play AA-heavy decks with lots of AA cards. But forcing everyone to do so is the problem. No one should be forced to have to build their decks with the same number of AA cards you do, and yet they'd have to just to be certain that the enemy doesn't have a set of jets they can no longer counter. That's not fair to them, and if the situation were reversed and this thread were discussing a unit type that you don't care about and rarely place in your decks, upon hearing that you would soon have to take multiple cards of them just to make a decent deck, you would be rightly upset about that, too.

Once there exists certain classes in aircraft that can no longer be hit by a given AA unit, that unit no longer suffices for AA coverage, and the player is forced to bring additional units just to have the same ability to hit the enemy unit that they had previously with just one card.

My only point, which some are still missing, is that in creating a new altitude schema, we must take care not to further infringe on deck creation by effectively pre-determining even more card decisions for the player's deck than Eugen has already done in RD (heavily restricted specializations, less freedom in standard deck creation, etc), since it is already more restrictive than ALB, and many people do not like it already. Making it worse by necessitating multiple cards of any type is not acceptable without also providing more slots (and perhaps more AP) to go along with it. The effect of a concept where some AA units cannot hit some altitudes requires taking enough AA unit types to cover each altitude. Not everyone wants to be placed in a new situation where they have to do that just to ensure they don't get bombed with impunity. That is not currently the situation, but introducing a radical change to create multiple altitude bands and associating AA units with only certain bands would do just that.

Or in a weird twist to this argument...what if it promotes unique anti-air strategies.

1 Player plays a long range SAM deck set.
2) Player plays short range SAM deck set [OSAs/Strelas]
3) Player plays AAA deck set.

Or a unique mixture of different types.
It would make for more intriguing threat envelope capability.
But, I would also argue that plane cards would have to be increased back to ALB deck standards.