The cheap cost of air is not logical

Today I faced the same opponent spamming Bumblebees 4 times. First I tried having a ton of spinners and turrets at base, that didn't work because apparently the spinners are loaded with spit balls now. Then I tried to rush him before he could build up bombers. 2 well placed laser towers behind walls + 15-20 bumblebees thwarted my attack. Next I took to the seas, again building turrets, Narwhals, Hummingbirds... I had even rushed advanced naval and had Stingrays... aaaaaand here come ten thousand Bumblebee's... Then there was another combination of air and land trying to rush his economy while still being able to defend against bumblebee raids and that also failed.

An equally matched opponent that spams air has a ridiculous advantage. The only viable way to fight an air spammer is to either put all your resources into anti air(which may or may not be enough) or to air spam better than them.

Air is already fast, but for it to take 5 or 6 shots from a spinner to put down 1 plane is ridiculous. The only viable defense is the Flak Cannon but you would need to rush advanced and even then probably not get enough up in time ( a t2 mobile flak unit would be nice btw...)

There are a couple things that could fix this;

- air units take more metal to produce. There is no reason a bomber plane should cost less than half as much as a tank. A fighter jet in real life costs 2 to 3 times more than a tank. A bomber costs about 10 times more. Not to mention they are far more complicated to build. Planes require more technology, moving parts and are even heavier than tanks believe it or not.

- if you really don't want to jack up the price of air then make spinners stronger. If a Bumblebee is going to cost little more than a Dox a spinner should be able to put it down in 2 shots maximum, 1 would be preferable.

- make anti air structures stronger, specifically the missle turrets. Either more powerful or longer range, like a pelter.

A game is not fun when everyone has to cater to one strategy. As it sits a player who wants favor tanks can be totally controlled by a player spamming air

These are the current costs of units. You may have misread a tooltip somewhere perhaps.

Tank = 150
Spinner = 150
Dox = 45
Fighter = 180
Bomber = 240

So you see, even if you built 1 fighter for every bomber he built (which is unnecessary since 1 fighter will kill infinite number of bombers), you will still have spent less metal.

Ah, I must have checked an old wiki. Even so, the games I played were today so his bombers beating me no matter how prepared I was is up to date. I am glad they are working towards spending balance but the planes need to be more. they should try 450 for bombers and 320 for fighters

The thing is it still takes time for the fighter to kill a bomber.. like 3 shots, unless you have pretty much the same amount of fighters as he has bomber(plus he does have fighters in with them as well). Hes not out flying them around where I can get them either, he just stocks up in his base and flies them out when he thinks he can take the commander. It only takes him 1 swoop at the commander to finish the game. I am telling you one game I had **** tons of AA... I had literally spent the whole time producing AA because I knew he was going to mass air. I had anti air navy, I had turrets, I had fighters circling the commander... didn't matter. In the number of shots it takes any one of those things to kill a bomber (3-5) the cloud of bombers has already reached my commander and dropped the payload.

Oh don't get me wrong, I can definitely see how you're finding bomber snipes hard to defend. When this strategy first became popular, people took a while to figure out how to defend against it. Rest assured, it's not as powerful as it may initially seem

Some tips i can give you is build a firefly and scout him. If you see early on that he builds alot of air factories and bombers, then you can build alot of fighters or aa earlier to counter it. He must have built a hundred bombers if he is able to get past the ammount of aa you are building. You must try to attack him with hummingbirds so that he can never get that many.

If you build radar tower, you can also see when he flies his bombers to your base and from where. Then you can attack them with fighters before they reach your commander.

Also if you are having trouble getting enough units to defend, try to build less fabricators so that you don't need to build as many power generators. That way you can build more air factories and aa instead.

Don't give up!

another thing i noticed. You said you made it to t2 with your naval.
If you place down a couple of flak turrets they will pretty much destroy any bomber force approaching your commander due to the high aoe damage they have

I had just finished it after rushing it, at like 10 minutes or so, only had time to get out 2 ships. But yes I did regret not going right for a flak but I didn't think I would need it with all the norwhals I had.

Well yeah I could just build fighters but then why even have land or sea... If the person building bombers is always going to win unless you go fighters they should just call this Air Annihilation

There shouldn't be only one response to a strategy... that's what games like starcraft are for.. this game was supposed to look past that micro **** and allow you to build a massive army of your liking.

Maybe it might be useful to look back at the costings of units
Fighter = 180
Bomber = 220

What this means is bomber sniping is under no circumstances ever a viable strategy if both players have full information. If both players have scouting information of each other, then you would not even attempt to bomber snipe since the metal required to counter it is much less.

Again, i suggest you try scouting your opponent and reacting to what you see him doing. If he builds alot of bombers, counter it gg now he looks like an idiot. Next game, he will not build bombers anymore, and you will not need to build air units either.

Unfortunately, if you play against human beings, you will be forced to use some strategy and not just build any army you wish. This is a fact of life regardless of what game you play. If you want to do that, i would suggest you play against the AI on easy mode .

the difference between the fighter and a bomber is a dox and base defense structures would easily be able to defend a dox counter attack. Maybe you are in a higher rank than me, I am only silver. I am not good enough yet to constantly scout and harass and counter and defend everything perfectly. However, I can spam bombers and win 90 percent of the time. I even tried it with a friend last night... told him I was only going to build bombers and he still lost, and hes better than me.

Plus my main point is that I shouldn't be roped into building air units to counter air units just because its the only way. Spinners should work better, and turrets too.

Then I apologise. All i'm trying to do is help with the issue that you're having so that you can have better quality games.

You won't hear from me again

if you werent trying to be condescending then I am sorry for taking it the wrong way

FYI elodea is the number ONE ranked player. So you just got some free personal advice from THE best player.

Just to troll:
Spinner = 150
Bomber = 240

Unlike fighters, spinners aren't worth the metal they're printed from.
Fighters could cost 300 and they'd still be the best T1 counter to bomber snipes.

Uh... no he isn't?

The best defence against air, is space.

Not like literal space, but the area you control, because planes are fast.

If you spread out your AA defences in a wide area around your commander, along with your radars and scouts, them you should be able to intercept the bombers before they can even attack.

Elodea is arguably the best 1v1 player of Planetary Annihilation right now:

• Ranked #3 (Rango is a smurf, so really he's #2) on Uber's ladder
• Ranked #1 on the Uberskill ladder
• Holder of the King of the Planet title (which he won and held in clean sweeps)
• One of the best tournament win rates of any player of the game

So you should listen to him, he knows what he's talking about. Of course, you should also adjust your attitude or else no one will ever want to help you.

For those who haven't figured it out

.exodusesports.com = Elodea.
exodusesports.com = CptConundrum
Rando is of course Yaegz.

I haven't been keeping up to date

Who is Yaegz? As in what's his history in past RTS games? Is he ex Supcom/FA?

His eXodus profile says SC2 grandmaster.