Balance (#2) - Hovers and Amphs (#67) - Message List

Hover slope tolerance seems to be a bit low. Unless things have changed recently, hovers cannot cross onto the clockwise-facing beaches (the two short ones) on Small Supreme Battlefield. After a game, I had a brief conversation with Licho about it, in which he said it was to try to encourage amphibious vehicles instead of hovers. I don't think low slope tolerance is the solution. I don't remember if Licho agreed with me or not, but in any case I'm posting here.

First, I do think hovers are generally preferable to amphs at current, for the following reasons: 1. Hovers and amphs cannot be superior to regular land or sea units in a stand-up fight (otherwise nobody would use the regular units). This means that a direct attack with hovers/amphs must be infeasible with even resources. Thus, hover and amph attacks tend to be raids. Hovers tend to be faster than amphs, so they are better at raiding. 2. Hovers are useful in sea. In fact, their immunity to torpedoes and depth charges gives them an important role. However, amphs (tanks at least) are completely useless in sea. 3. Hovers have different roles. There is a fast attack hover, a hovertank, hover arty, hover AA, and hover transport (and CORE has assault hover). However, amph vehicles only have light, medium, heavy tank, and transport (the last of which IIRC is not exactly cheap).

However, I don't think hovers are overpowered (even with better slope tolerance), or at least not blatantly so. Rather, I think the problem lies more with the amphs. Therefore, I believe amphs need some sort of boost (although as described above, it would have to be something other than a direct combat boost). Now for some ideas (which probably aren't very good, but I felt like it wouldn't be right to post this without at least suggesting some corrections):

1. Make amphs float instead of traveling on the seabed? The idea is to allow them to fire at surface vessels, which would make them useful at sea (but hopefully not *too* useful).

2. Give amphs some sort of anti-sea weapon (DCL or torpedo)? Same idea as 1.

3. Give amphs stealth? This would help in the raiding role.