The future of ranked

Hi guys! First post in a while. I've been playing a few games lately after about a year-long break of not playing at all and about a 3-year break of basically playing zero ranked games. I've been playing on a smurf (WeThoomin) trying to relearn the game, again.

I just have a few development suggestions, if there are any resources still being put into the ranked aspect. I believe these changes can greatly add to the longevity of ranked and casual play.

1. Player profiles
   • Showing lifetime stats of the player, like ranked wins, win %, or even wins in casual games. There are a lot more stats that can be brainstormed.
     • Something like the overwatch player profiles
   • Displaying the rank of a player, organized by a menu allowing the viewing of each season and its stats
2. Leaderboard UI improvements
   1. Allowing the viewing of replays for any ranked player, but not just the most recent game.
   2. Scroll-able top-10 list.

Also, as expected, air is still overpowered and zeus titans have no counter except t2 fighters... still. But this post isn't about balance

Good ideas, spinners wreck air though kiwi, just go more tanks like the old days and air is GG on maps that aren't air dominant by nature.

I think their gonna have a hard time making the storm any more valuable without making it OP, maybe the idea sucks, I mean they just released titans and that was it finalised for a long time, no focus on unit viability and working on that, just focus on wrapping up really. Maybe now they're back they should take a look at the units and maybe replace and rework a few of them. Sparks for example, one or 2 can totally reduce dox viability to almost nil. As soon as sparks are out the mobility advantage isn't there anymore, your dox are prettey much useless past fodder. I get the feeling titans is a compilation of the units they didn't want to put in classic.. I feel its the case.

Air can still be micro'd so easily. Tanks are just still way too unreliable on larger maps unless there are large choke points. A map like forge or blitz? Sure, air is worse but it's always been that way. Air's strength lies in its speed and zoning potential, literally like a swarm.

For this reason, I think there should be a much higher damage T1 AA bot with low rate of fire, but I think new units have been out of the question for a long time now. This bot could either automatically shoot down bombers, or it would need to be manually targeted (not sure which one would be most balanced).

The current system is all aa units priorities bombers if in range.

I'd personally like to get a lower damage but much more mobile dedicated aa bot to compliment the mobility of dox. Dox aa doesn't really work given the various limitations, and the fact that dox shot land targets as a priority over air (so are fodder for bombers if there is anything land based near them). A dedicated aa bot resolves that, spinners can be the slower more powerful aa option imo.

what if air became more expensive? this way you would have less air and make the spinners/galata more effective because there is less to kill? this combined with a small decrease in speed making the air less of a massive blob that is everywhere.

Making air slower would also have an effect similar to increasing the firing rate of anti-air, yes? And give dox a better shot of hitting those pesky bombers

it would do more as its slower to move around the map. and hopefully allow/require you to split up your air.

Increased sim load.

gil-es miss almost every shot against all air, including Zeus, hornets and wyrms. I would rip my scalp off if they prioritized gunships with no other change.

I see where you're coming from, but I disagree that a mobile, cheap bot aa unit would invalidate air. I think if we added that unit you also need to remove Dox aa.

That results in quite an interesting dynamic in my opinion as land based expansion / raiding is based around Dox. Including aa bots protects you vs Air, but at the same time reduces your land based fire power vs a player only building Dox. Then again if you are against a player with high focus on dox you can really punish them with some well timed air.

The danger being it makes play all about Dox again.

I really don't think air is op, the advantage on the ground and a smaller air force NOT USING ALL AIR HOTKEY can make a lot of difference, I think the only OP thing would be expansion potential but then again you can think where he's going and when and send a single fighter or bomber out to snipe while diverting him elsewhere with a fighter bomber combo, you don't need a lot of air, your extra ground forces and your attention diverts should close the gap in no time, if you let them get to the point where their air is uncounterable is that not your fault for playing the game wrong?
Not sure what to think of an AA bot, sparks prettey much negate an all dox opener so I dunno if it will bring back all dox openers only, sparks, ants, a few infernos and a few grenadiers, dox will fall like a hot knife through butter.
I say we test it out and then we have a good idea rather than speculation.

Here are the 2 cents of one of the most air heavy player right now:

Imho Air is not OP. It IS strong, and it IS easy to play, and that's about it. OP would mean that it destroys everything else, whereas that's definitely not the case. I find myself using less and less of it on maps like Roc and Amplus and banking on proxy T1 factories and Galata sprawl more and more.


Here are some notes to all of the less experienced players when dealing with air spаmmers:

1. Use small clusters of dox and boombots (and sparks if the target is close enough) to raid enemy expansions. A major problem of air heavy play is that it cant be everywhere or it becomes vulnerable, so exploit that and attack from multiple vectors before your opponent can dig in and place turrets.

2. Up scale your AA. if your opponent is going 6-8 air, it doesn't hurt to set 1 or even 2 tank factories to produce spinners only. Really soon they will find out that all those tens of fighters and bombers are useless to area patrolling spinners

3. Be aggressive with your fabricators and protect them with mobile AA. 4, 3, or even 2 fabricators dedicated to sealing areas with galata that you have captured with your tanks as soon as they arrive means that's off limits for your opponent to raid until they come with an actual land army.

4. Hunt their air. I find radars one of the most valuable tools, not because my air is insufficient to scout the whole map (for most players below top uber level that should be the main reason to build radars everywhere), but because it tells me where my opponent's air is (and is not). If you see them stop, bring your air force (even if smaller) to snipe the bombers and harass, or send some dox. Dox area paroling eath through air the same way locusts eat through power generators.

5. Dont attack (more dedicated than just raiding) unless you are sure your army has enough AA to scare away your opponent. There is no use in bleeding ants, infernos, sparks, etc. The more they can get away with, especially early game,

6. Pressure. If your opponent has 6 air factories and you have only 3, that means you have 3 more ground factories than they do. Use that, especially early on before T2, to get total map control. With the right unit mix (infernos, sparks, ants) you can probably breach most of their defenses once you've gathered a large blob. if one area is fortified or there is a commander there, dont bother, just go around and find a softer target. It will take quite a while for them to collect any sizable counter force since you have the factory advantage and their air is useless

7. Use all the AA capabilities of PA. Late game a single colonel is enough to permanently deny all air on its own, combined with its speed and ability to build T2 metal and Flak, that thing is monstrous on maps like amplus if you get to the point where you can afford it. Same goes for the Mend (T2 combat fabb), the mend can rush galata in an instant and fortify it with walls (that actually deflect Kestrel shots really well. Make proxi tank factories that produce annoying AA clusters near your expansions, and you wont even need galata



However I do recognize a couple of major problems that need to be addressed:

1. Once you give up on it, getting back in the air game is close to impossible, even if your opponent has lost all of their bombers. That's so since all ground based AA has been ballanced around countering bombers (as far as I know), which means fighters lack any real ground based countermeasure, and therefore can stack easily

2. Kestrels are disproportionately tanky considering the lack of scaling T2 mobile AA on the ground early on. Gil-Es still miss vs air, storms are soft, have low damage, and very limited range, and both the colonel and Mend are really expensive (and the mend has low HP). All that is left is spinner spam.


I offer two approaches to solving those problems.

1. To fix the Kestrel menace, either nerf it's HP (must remain a 2 shot kill for Phoenixes) so that ground AA can take care of it/ sniping it with T1 air is more doable.

An additional change could be to buff the Strom and the gil-e by increasing the storm's HP and range so that its punishing to split your kestrels away from your air just to snipe it. To the gil-e, i'd suggest increasing its turret turn rate and fixing it's accuracy (one proposal was to make the projectile homing with very low maneuverability so that it's unnoticeable on the outside but still corrects for the arc displacement that currently makes it miss so often)

2. Decrease Hummingbird and Phoenix HP.
This can happen without significantly altering how air-to-air combat works and applies to all sill levels and game mods. Decreasing a humming bird's HP by (a radical) 20-33% would mean that it's still a 2 shot kill from another hummingbird but now damage dealt by flying over AA for a couple of seconds brings that down to 1. Similarly for Phoenixes (even though due to the belated nature of T2 they need it slightly less), decreasing their health by a conservative 50 Points (16.6%) (I'd suggest around 90) means that flying over Dox and AA weakens them enough to make up to the other player for having way less air. This way ground AA investment can translate to a better chance at regaining air control, or even rendering your smaller air force more useful => a better more varied air-ground dynamic.



On the matter of adding a bot AA, I stand firmly against. All of the testing i've done with the legion AA bot (slower than Dox) results in totally decimating up to 4 bombers alone due to micro, and I can imagine that even a version with significantly lower Damage output will still be unkillable when in the hands of a player who knows how to wiggle it out of harm's way.

If for some reason everyone is so keen on making an AA bot, just increase the maximum firing angle of the dox, they are already effective at dealing damage when area paroling under a bunch of bombers

A storm range increase could be deadly, they already hit kestrels at their full range, not great damage though, maybe a slight damage increase will help, but increasing range/radius, I dunno.

The problem with the Storm is it has no range, only splash. So your Kestrels get hit, but are at the edge of its splash, so easily kill the Storm before it can do much. I like the idea of allowing it to tilt (which the model supports) which would allow it to be more effective, but only in one direction. This would encourage splitting air, because if it's shooting the front blob it's doing nothing to the blob coming from the other side. This would be best supported by a fix to the Hornet to allow it to engage from its proper range so it can really deal with ground AA like it's supposed to (while being limited by its speed).

I think this makes the Storm more effective against the Kestrel, doesn't make it more powerful against bombers than it already is, and allows for slightly more interesting possibilities in the air space.

It's worth noting that the DPS of the Patriot is twice that of the Spinner. Legion AA was always intended to be more powerful than MLA AA.

The reason we don't see larger 1v1 maps is that they would be all air and maybe some bots (1000+ radius). Air is too effective both of the two major skills in PA: raiding and unit confrontation/engages. It should only be strong at one, which naturally means it should be weaker at raiding and stronger at trading in metal-for-metal engages like tanks vs bombers. Currently it is too good at fabber sniping and too easy to spam on non-small maps. If we want to keep playing on super tiny planets, i guess air is fine