Right now ground based aa has little to no effect on the Zeus and the only way to destroy one is with fighters and even that does't work well unless you have air superiority and if your opponent is using zeus they usually have air superiority causing you to take lots of damage and not have an effective way of countering one because you lack air dominance. My solution: Buff t2 flak Dps, and range, as flak has a meh fire rate but the range definitely needs to be buffed as well. For the Zeus slightly decrease its range and health and maybe increase the recharge rate of its weapon.
Guys, I'm telling you. The problem with the Zeus is that it vaporizes crowds of anti-air at once. If we reduce the splash radius on its weapon, then the problem becomes greatly mitigated.
No, the Zeus already has a high ROF and high damage, both need to be turned down not just one, but ultimately the problem is ground aa has absolutely zero effect on the Zeus
ye ground AA can't touch the Zeus. And actually, it's hilarious that Doxen are better AA for taking down Zeuses. They still suck at this but at least they can deal decent damage.
Actually Colonels are the best way besides fighter spam. Colenels shrek Zeuses, but are very expensive.
im pretty sure the point was that ground aa has the same amount of trouble killing an air titan as land defenses have against a land titan. This seems reasonable to me. It is pretty easy to kill zeus with fighters if you attack it in 3 directions at the same time.
Considering the cost of the titan and it's aoe attack. Advanced fighters seem the best counter, or otherwise orbital units who cannot be shot back at it.
The problem though is that you can fly a zeus over aa without issue and fighters work well but when seeing mass zeus the enemy usually has air control and you can't put out enough fighters to do enough damage to the zeus
I hope the Zeus can be kept as the current setting. The best way to kill the Zeus is to attack it by fighters with few ground units. Or you can send the fighters to attack the Zeus when it is attacking your ground units or building. Since the Zeus has a higher priority to attack the ground units than the air units, your fighter can kill the Zeus much more safely. If the Zeus is nerfed, I think the T1 and T2 fighter should also be nerfed. Zeus is designed to sweep the ground targets. If the ground based AA unit or turret can defend the Zeus easily, the purpose of Zeus is missing. But turning the Zeus into a strong anti air unit may be a worse idea in my opinion, that ensures the players to hold air superiority with Zeus spam. And the low tier fighters become useless in late game. I personally more like the current Zeus. Strong anti land, weak anti air. Thus, it has a specific usage and a clear method to counter. If Uber really wants to nerf Zeus, I suggest to reduce the anti air ability of the Zeus instead of nerfing the anti land ability. Though the anti air ability of Zeus is already quite weak. Since spamming the fighters is much more useful and easier than spamming the anti air vehicles, I prefer to keep the counter method of Zeus to be the fighters rather than the anti air vehicles. Anti air vehicles are just too slow to react the enemy air units which can decide to engage or not. On the other hand, the fighters are much more mobile. Unless you start on the planet with no other enemy, you probably always need some fighters for scouting or anti bomber. Thus, the fighters are so available. If you can't hold the air superiority, just retreat the remaining fighters into the coverage of your anti air turret. Increase the air factories and resupply more fighters to go out later. It is very difficult to fully control the air unless your opponent doesn't increase the air factories or even has no air factory. By the way, the Zeus is also a good unit to punish the player who plays too turtle. It is due to the land based AA turret can't defend the Zeus efficiently.
What kiwi said is true. Colonels are really good if you mass them you shoot down Zeus in no time. I also want to note that sniperbots can also shoot them from range and manhattans ofc. If you don't got any of that and also no air you can make orbital like SXX, anchors omegas or helios. Also when Zeus is massed and attacks your base you can kill many of them with 1 defensive nuke, and then reclaim them.
This replay http://pastats.nanodesu.info/chart?gameId=380586 at about 28 minutes we had storms, flak and fighters. The storms and flak did no damage to it and they just flew the Zeus back when we sent fighters and the Zeus proceeds to 1 shot all of our fighters that we sent in to kill it because no aa unit (including fighters) has greater range than a Zeus and have good dps. The problem is no unit is an adequate counter to the Zeus if you don't have dominance in the air or aren't massing colonels even if your in your base because the Zeus can continuously maneuver around your base slowly making its way into your base slowly killing you off and the enemy can just roll over you. And here is another example: http://pastats.nanodesu.info/chart?gameId=379767 At about 23 minute I have to switch to all spinners to kill the Zeus but they do little damage to the Zeus in small numbers and the Storms never even fire a single shot off to the Zeus. My biggest problem is that the best ground aa unit has no effect on the most powerful air unit because just a small amount of micro can keep you in firing range of the storms and flak but out of their firing range. The Zeus offers little to no ability to rapidly end the game unless the opponent has completely neglected the air game and nerfing it wouldn't change this at all, but more importantly I want t2 aa to be universally range buffed and damage buffed in order to be more effective against the Zeus. Edit: Forgot that also Zeus when killed can cause fall damage to units below and does massive damage to anything below it.
I have tried to watch your replay. Unfortunately, the replay can't be loaded. I don't know why. Perhaps you can capture a picture. And I still keep my opinion about the Zeus. I can also provide many replays of how fast can you take down a Zeus. But I think it is also unable to convince you, right? Using Zeus and killing a Zeus by fighters both require some micro. Sometimes it is just greatly influenced by some random attributes, such as the formation of the fighters, the assault timing, and the reload interval of Zeus . The side who can really do the micro is the side who own the fighters. If he can manipulate the fighters well, there is nothing the Zeus can do. In my experience, if you have enough fighters, and most of them dodge the first shoot from the Zeus, then you can generally kill the Zeus without losing too many fighters. Fighters need to be spread out, and the attack should be launched from at least two directions. Or alternatively, sacrifice few fighters to absorb the first strike. Don't let Zeus one shoot all your fighters, and you can win!
Here I post some pictures. I hope I can convince some players that the Zeus is very weak to fighters. I just played this game few hours ago. My commander is killed, but the game still continues since it is a shared army game. Loot at the yellow Zeus. 17:53 The Zeus is full HP. 4 Seconds later, the Zeus has only half hp. 18:03 The Zeus is near to die. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- One more example: 21:14 The Zeus is near full Hp. 21:16 Fighters are coming. 4 Second later, the Zeus is ready to die. The Zeus may be powerful to ground units, but it is very weak for air units. The worst problem of Zeus is that its HP is too low. And fighters can bring it down in a very short time. By the way, the T2 fighters DPS is 450. 10000 HP / 450 DPS < 23 sec If you have more T2 fighters, you can kill it more quickly. And you can kill a Zeus in less than 1 second when you have 25+ T2 fighters.
No, it isn't. I also use Zeus, but sometime I just can't protect it with enough fighters. Or my fighters kill many enemy fighters, but the Zeus is still killed. And it turns out that who can get air superiority. If both sides of players have similar eco and production ability, the result is that no one can fully control the sky. It is very risky to use Zeus when both sides hold massive air units. The Zeus doesn't provide any air superiority, and your enemy can get more fighters instead. If you can clear the enemy fighters and also attack him with Zeus, you probably have a much better eco than your opponent. Player can retreat the fighters if he feels they are not enough, but it is often too late for Zeus to retreat. The speed of Zeus is quite slow, and its HP is very low. Thus, the Zeus is usually unable to escape from the swarm of fighters.
The replays showed that you can micro the Zeus out of the aa and if shadowed by t2 fighter you are completely incapable of killing a zeus, in yours yellow just moved the Zeus and didn't micro it at all and if he did your entire army would be gone and the air force would be easy pickings. In the hands of an experienced player the Zeus is nearly unstoppable because with some air support he can easily kill off the opponents army and slowly pick away at their base. His opponent will also have no effective counters other than massing spinners and colonels in a desperate attempt to kill it, and may I remind you that angels can shot down the missiles from the colonel, spinner, galta, and commander, this effectively would render any other counter useless.
The really unstoppable thing is the eco, not the Zeus. The player usually can't reverse the battle by simply building a Zeus. To support the Zeus with massive fighters, orbital units (against SXX), angle for repairing, the player needs to get an even greater eco to do that. When he really does that, he should win the game. You say a Zeus with well supporting units and micro is unstoppable. I think you better calculate the metal sum of both sides of air units. If the air units with the price of total 100K metal can beat the air units with only 20K metal, you can't call the side with 100K metal is unstoppable! You should think about why one side has only 20K metal air units. The player who get killed by Zeus may be: (from the best to the worst) 1 He knows what should he do. He increases the air factories, but he just can't get more metal to against the enemy. The problem is due to eco and expanding. And it probably is destined in earlier fighting. 2 He doesn't know what to do. He has some fighters, but he lost the air superiority. So he decides to fully give up the air units. He doesn't increase the number of air factories to take back the air superiority. Instead, he hopes the spinner, storm, and the AA turret can do the job. These ground based AA do their job until the Zeus appears. 3 He doesn't scout well to know the opponent is building the Zeus. And he has nothing prepared for that. 4 He doesn't use any air units from the beginning. He just uses land units, or even camp in a small base.
