kamikaze planes

Its a valid strategic tactic used in war yet It's a mechanic that I don't remember ever seeing in the RTS genre. (unless you count the aeon czar falling out of the sky. although that's not a real targeted suicide attack)

Could this work as a concept in PA?

In SupCom there's the Aeon Mercy T2 air unit, but it's more a guided missile than a plane.

All SupCom air units have crash damage, but in most cases it's rather insignificant compared to their weapon damage and the health of the enemy units.

In terms of UI, it could work by giving the suicide command (CTRL+K). The air unit would then attempt to crash into the enemy unit it was locked-on to from a previous attack command.

to be honest, i dont like kamikaze style units in a game, where assassination is a possibly victory condition.

The mercy in SupCom FA has only one valid use: Sniping ACUs (sometimes also a last resort vs Experimentals), this is because it has quite low total damage output / cost. Its not valid to use against buildings or other targets. On the other would you make it valid vs other targets, it most likely would be totally imba vs ACUs. Therefore I pledge for "pls no kamikaze units"

this

How about a kamikazi rocket with a nuclear warhead?
Or a kamikaze battleship made out of an asteroid?

I don't really see the distinction between a kamikazi airplane and a standard missile. Both are "robots" that "suicide" when they fly into the enemy and blow up.

Considering you can CRASH PLANETS INTO EACH OTHER...

While it CAN work, I'm struggling to understand WHY you would want to do this. If a plane can pierce enemy defenses, then it can retreat, regroup, and do it again. A few passes of gunfire will still kill the enemy.

Kamikaze weapons already exist. They're called missiles. They're cheap, easy to use, and easy to replace, something that an airplane can't claim to do.

If something is too effective for sniping, then it's going to be a problem everywhere and not just with ACUs.

Let ACUs worry about themselves. They have their own set of survival issues, and it is better to address them separately.

I don't think its particularly fair to equate planes to missiles, because that's not their primary purpose.

Where i think suicide could be used effectively is if you see that your plane has little to no hope of escaping its current engagement. and so rather than just let it be gunned down, leaving its wreckage as a reward for your enemies, you can at least give its death some meaning or purpose maybe take one of them out with you.

Whats the difference? A plane is supposed to survive while a missile blows up? Okey. Why mess that up by allowing planes to act like missiles as well?

Sounds really micro heavy. Do not like.

However it sounds fun if physics would always apply to collisions so that you could always turn your planes into kinetic projectiles.
Although planes would have to be balanced to both on how they perform as missiles and as planes.

Yep, but there were several suggestions to make the mercy more versatile in its use (which were, of course, all ignored / denied in faf :lol: ). I wouldn't say a kamikaze unit is impossible to balance or categorically bad gamedesign. Just dont give those units high damage single target weapons.

I think anything made possible by the physics engine should be allowed.

Blur the line between what things 'should' and 'shouldn't' do.

That's probably the easiest thing to deal with.

Planes make bad missiles.

I'm not so sure about that. Realistically 2 equal units hitting eachother would take the same amount of damage. This means that if I'm about to lose my unit I should suicide it into one of your units.
If I am doing a bombing run and it is certain that the bomber won't make more than 1 bombing run I should suicide the unit to deal extra damage.

Not necessarily. A plane can manage to cross defences lines and strike its target, but not survive long enough to then leave it. For such suicide-runs, it would actually make sense for the planes to then crash into things rather than uselessly die while leaving, crash next to the enemy base and let them a nice little bit of reclaim.

Also, I'd like for my nuclear missiles to be able to not follow a straight (ground) line, to avoid antinukes, depending on how they work.

Perhaps. But for a bomber, most of the lethality is in its bombs. After the explosives are gone, crashing down isn't going to do much more damage.

If bombers have limited ammo, their first priority after bombing is to return to base. That gives ample opportunity to repair, rearm, and get ready for the next wave. Another run is totally worth not throwing the bomber away.

The most damning reason against it, is because of reclaim. If you drop the bombs and then the bomber, you just gave him a big chunk of metal! That's probably the worst outcome possible. You'd be better off letting them explode in a huge rain of useless shrapnel.

I bet a bomber crashing into a tank at full speed would destroy them both. What if the bomber still have its' bombs loaded? The bomber would be able to deliver them much more accurately than dropping them from high altitude.

You are making a cost/benefit analysis on future bombing compared to bombing plus kamikazi-bomber. Do whatever you find most beneficial.

Realistically, why would shrapnel be much more useless than reclaiming a whole wreck? Because the metal is really spread apart. I doubt much of the plane would be left in a high speed collision. In a high speed collision most of the plane is vaporized where the remaining pieces would be spread far around like it would if it exploded higher up.
Even if a suicide airplane might not be good against concrete walls it would be good against anything with the same structural integrity as itself.
I guess HP could be a good qualifier to how much damage a suiciding plane would do. It could reflect how strong the structure of the plane is and do damage accordingly depending on the delta speed of the impact between 2 objects.

Or just don't build you SMLs in line with the SMD? Honestly being able to choose the missile's path just seems either way too strong or just hard to balance period.

Mike

Then it DROPS the bombs and flies away. The only problem is making sure the bomb hits where it was aimed, which shouldn't be any problem for a bomber. In every single iteration of TA, bomber accuracy was never an issue.

You should also note how little damage the concrete wall took from that hit. If that was a factory, it'd shrug it off. Compare that impact to say, a real weapon and the difference is enormous. The moral of the story is: You don't use planes as missiles.

Even using "realistic" crashes, most of the plane material is still going to be very close to the direct point of impact. A shotgun of shrapnel at max altitude could end up anywhere.

Since planets are round, a nuke can technically attack from any angle. SMD range would have to be fairly large to cover a base, like TA sized. Not Supcom2 sized.

In SupCom you can dodge strat bombers, especially Aeon.
In TA most bombers spread out their bombs in a line where many would miss a small target.

It really depends on the price of the plane. Japan used kamikazi pilots in world war 2. V1 rockets were basically unmanned jet planes. Cruise missiles are essentially unmanned planes as well.
Usually a war machine is either a delivery mechanism or the projectile itself but you might still be able to use them as both.

Okey, so a plane blowing up on high altitude gives 10% of its metal in reclaim while a suiciding plane leaves 20% but the suiciding plane also destroys something so suiciding might still give a net loss on the receiving end.

A system that runs into its target and explodes is a MISSILE. A missile that shoots other missiles is a cluster missile. A system that shoots a weapon and returns to reload is NOT a missile. There are fundamental differences in their design that makes one thing completely inappropriate for the other.

20%? Really? The plane totally crashed, right there. Anything less than 50% is sad.

Also, your assertion that the plane will destroy something simply doesn't hold up. The damage output of an empty hull is simply awful, and your video shows just how bad it is (protip: not 1-shotting a target in real life is a catastrophe). Using that hull to deal damage doesn't make sense. Go get another bomb.

Yes. It was an awful strategy that cost Japan dearly. Learn from their mistakes.

Wait. You're using bombers on mobile targets? I found your problem. Use a gunship.

Alternatively, a smart bomb can guide itself into its target. There is no reason to use the entire bomber platform as a guidance system, when the bomb can have the same thing.