Air is overpowered and annoying

Its not even fun when you're building and you've got bots sending bombers every few seconds. Even building turrets doesn't seem to help too much because the bombers just slowly destroy the turrets. Please increase the build time for aircraft!

Build ants

Build fighters

Build Fighters. Also AA points got a 33% reduction in cost this latest patch. A Commander can build one in less than seven seconds

Bombers really shouldn't be an issue anymore.

---

Also that's not how "build time" works in this game. You can't increase it directly, only indirectly by either lowering Air Factory Build Power or increasing the cost in Metal for bombers.

Both have farther reaching consequences than you might imagine.

Fighters fighters fighters! Get them patrolling the outskirts of your base and keep them coming.

Hehe, pretty much. I go with an air factory first off now, then use patrol paths around EVERYTHING.

Also, send some out "assisting" your fabbers/commander when expanding your resource base to protect them, and the new buildings. Then set some patrolling completed installations after you complete them. I use to go with spinners since the vehicle factory is more efficient, but I'd end up army trading too much.

EDIT: this was a game I played on a maximum-allowed-size planet:



As you can see, fighters everywhere. As the ground army found its way to the enemy, I added fighter patrols. Also, that's about as low as the FPS got for me..... It too up SO much ram tho :shock: Even with the 8GB I have I couldn't run much else without ram fill hitting 100%. I was able to run all my temp/system monitors tho :mrgreen:

Spam T1 fighters, if you build an air factory early, set a Patrol route around your base, and then que up a bazillion T1 fighters, you will be 100% immune to bombers.

The enemy probably won't be able to catch up with the amount of fighters you will have by the time he finds your base, and he probably won't bother building T2 fighters to clear the sky above your base.

Since this post of somebody who I can't remember got lost during forum migration but I echo their sentiment so I'll post it for them:

Replying to a comment of air being overpowered with the solution to just build air yourself somehow doesn't address the issue in question.

Well I would argue it pretty much answers it perfectly. He's complaining he cant build turrets in time and it's been suggested that he should be building patrolling fighters which are more efficient and more versatile.

Fighters counter bombers best, since they can't be targeted by the bombers, and aa bots/vehicle/turrets counter fighters best for mostly the same reason.

I don't really see air being op. And if you're fighting the ai, you should be able to easily prep fighters in time

air isn't op at all at the moment. I actually think all the units bar navy are very balanced.

There were some other posts in this thread which now disappeared so I guess my point doesn't make so much sense anymore...

Not really, bots >>>>>> tanks with the last changes. (ants got pretty useless now if the enemy micros their bots)

Anti-air ground units still bad; higher cost of t2 (which results in lack of mobile arty) means that turret rush is not defendable on small planets; etc. etc.

But thats to be expected given its alpha so I've no worries.

air is fine not OP, you need to defend approaches to resources & factories, 5 missile turrets is usually enough per group

the balance between air offense and air defense feels wrong, as soon as they tweak AA it would feel better (for me)
but good to see that im not the only one who dislikes the current air-balancing
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/bombers-aa-my-opinion-suggestion.50139/

As a note - if the balance on almost anything felt truly right yet, I'd say it's lucky happenstance.

Scathis has done a fantastic job of doing a rough first pass with a good portion of the game still not being done yet. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Don't want to quash balance discussion if that's what you guys want to do, but of the things to talk about, balance at this stage is probably one of the more fruitless things to spend too much time talking about in specifics. Generalities, yes. That's always useful - more a "here's how we think it should go" big picture.

Personally, I think balance discussion at this point might be better if we stick to discussing what counters feel right, but general discussion is alright imo if it's asking about a current counter to something. It should lead to a more fun experience, even against sorian's ai

Well, along those lines the question to ask about air power is, should countering it require building air yourself? Should a purely ground/naval based AA strategy be viable for base/army defense? Or should you be expected to at least build fighters to effectively counter air based strategies?

Right now it's simple, you must build air fighters. I would like to see the game explore making a viable alternative to this however.

Sooner or later, navy at the very least needs better AA. Frigates dying to T1 bombers is going to be a big problem, especially since they're your only AA option and they're slow to build. If you're on a planet that's mostly water and you don't have enough land to spam aircraft, your navy's not going to survive. Hell, at that point there's no point in building a navy and its strictly air combat on a water planet.

I think it is good to collect some feelings during the "birth" of the game, so we can experience changes, can see how it was "before the balancing"
Its simply...Alpha.
Expecting a fully developed and balanced gameplay would be wrong

Not really. You just need more land based AA than you would need fighters if you wanna go against bombers with it.
Building multiple rings of AA turrets is almost essential vs. T1 bombers IME, and you almost have to keep a fab or 2 on repair/rebuild duty. Fighters is just the most efficient counter to bombers. Although with the (lack of) efficiency of air factories/fabbers compared to their land equivalent, it could be argued that both are equal in terms of cost and time.

Like I said, easiest/efficient/best = land based AA>fighters>bombers

and if you wanna continue in a circle: land army>land based AA>fighters>bombers>land army