The future of ranked

Kiwi, Surprised you didn't pull him on the fact hes Uber #1 and he said "Here are the 2 cents of one of the 'most air heavy player right now:"

watch my recent ranked games

Now dance the Kestrels. Then dance the Kestrels and have a land force engage. Are the Gil-E still useful? Can the Gil-E track as quickly as the Kestrel can circle?

38 gil-es and some accidental comm fire against 50 kestrels, that's slightly more metal on the gil-e side already. Added 50 or so ants to be more similar to your test (which the kestrels would have won if they targeted the gil-es first, let alone flew over them to abuse slow turning speed, which will always be a no-no for aa.)

Now I do get where you're coming from on this, long range aa is more appealing than speedy aa in my opinion as well, but the gil-e needs a complete overhaul to fit this role. Needs an accuracy fix, faster turn speed, new target priorities as you said and maybe a small health boost.

The better player is usually going to win, it's what makes them the better player.

If anything, small maps allow for less mistakes while large maps allow for more, so small maps would snowball faster.

Small maps encourage more ground use and large maps encourage more air use, and air engagements tend to both be faster and more decisive so I'd argue that it's easier to work your way out of a moderately losing position on a small map than on large one.

Anything that requires less macro skill (small maps) is going to be highly dependent on making small mistakes because there is only micro skill left.
Question: assuming both players go the same build order, do you think the player that makes more small micro mistakes is going to get snowballed by the other player faster on a smaller radius? More of a rhetorical question, but the answer is yes if you ask me. People can make up for small mistakes like fabber snipes on large planets simply because there is a much longer travel time and less intel.