Mobile AA should shoot ground units

I wish they used the hornets AA missiles, as they seem to be at least fairly effective.

But really, I wash advanced planes had the same HP as the basic ones.

This is way I think that AA is Imba.

I agree with the sentiment that ground AA should fire at other ground units just as they did in TA, and I think they currently do a nice damage amount per shot, but should fire more quickly for a better damage per second. If all types of ground AA shot weak missiles with a more decent rate of fire, it would be easier to mitigate their damage on ground units with repair on say, the commander, than a large group of tanks.

That said, AA shouldn't be dominant on the ground vs other ground units like they're famed to be in TA. Personally, I don't think either of the vehicle AA were too imbalanced since they were both slow at turning on top of having a large turn radius. I do think, however, that because AA K-bots had a steeper wall-climb ability, smaller footprint, very agile, and were pretty fast themselves, that in itself made them pretty superior. Not that superior, but superior nonetheless.

Remember, the missiles have trouble tracking aircraft moving, so perhaps they should do the same thing for fast moving units on the ground. Units like skitters and scampers (Yeah, I'm a rebel, bite me) are very nimble and pretty quick, so just like aircraft, headfirst or from behind is an easy shot, but from the side would require the missile to turn around and hit it from behind. At this point, aircraft are fast enough to avoid the missile again, but ground units are not, giving ground AA a weakness even with the RoF increase.

The thing is, currently when someone gains air superiority, there's no way out. Ground AA is next to useless vs them, you'll never be able to get enough fighters to take their peregrines, and any ground attack will get murdered by hornets. There's basically no escape from it once it begins. Ground AA needs a buff, yes, but T2 air needs a serious HP nerf and possibly remove the peregrine entirely.

I dont see the problem, mobile AA perhaps needs a buff, but i build it when i am struggling to get the air wars under control.

What specificity is wrong with the peregrine?

It has no use other than killing basic fighters for less cost than hummingbirds would per DPS. Hummingbirds have no problem disposing of hornets, but against peregrines they're useless.

Surely en mass they should be effective?

It takes 20 seconds to make a hummingbird, 30 to make a peregrine. A peregrine can withstand 3 shots from a hummingbird and has 20 more range meaning that the peregrines will kill hummingbirds before they can even shoot. In order to out them you'd need an eco much greater than theirs, which is unlikely when they're T2, especially when they're already in control of the air.

I'm hoping that eventually when ground AA is balanced, you can go ballistic with them if the game is all but lost and you've got a massive air raid on your hands. That way, at least if he has air superiority, that's not the end-all-be-all. Granted, there possibly needs to be a decent counter for mass ground AA, be it other ground units or gunships of some type (AC 130 much).

The way I see it, if his force is filled entirely with AA, your aircraft shouldn't even think about flying overhead unless you've got some obscene amount of bomberspam that just wouldn't be viable in any way imaginable. Him having a force composed of approximately 90%+ AA shouldn't be approachable by aircraft, but easily dealt with by ground units because ground-based assault tanks should be superior in a 1v1, 15v15, or 50v50. Range is definitely ground AA's main strength.

From your post, it seems to me that the Peregrine is just flat superior. I think that there should be some type of balance between Hummingbirds and Peregrines, whether they'll be units that dogfight in two different ways, have two separate roles, whatever. Anything that makes them both viable.

The problem isn't one of inherently not being useful, it's just that they are not good at their job right now. Mobile AA is fine as a concept, but if it's poorly implemented then nobody is going to build it.

Because of the mobility of air units, anti-air needs to get kills, not just damage, in order to actually serve as a deterrent.

This means dedicated anti-air needs more range and stopping power for cost. Air units get immense mobility and immunity to anti-ground weapons, and they can kill you. Anti-air serves purely as a defense against air units, and is not as mobile or as dangerous. Consequently, dedicated anti-air needs to be very efficient.

Generalist anti-air that can attack ground units is more flexible, which mitigates a lot of the problems of dedicated anti-air. A few types of units that can attack air and ground should exist, but they should be inefficient to mass because of the possibility of a generalist ground combatant army just crushing them. Against a ground army you are essentially wasting a lot of resources paying for that anti-air capability.

The basic factory should probably have a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun unit which can attack air and ground, as well as a dedicated anti-air missile unit. The advanced factory would then have the SAM dedicated anti-air unit with fantastic range that gibs most air units, but with a very limited rate of fire.

You need several kinds of anti-air spread across a significant amount of space to create a robust air defense network. And all of it needs to actually get kills on air units.

You know I don't like the idea of having everything shooting at everything. (Because then the game is just about finding the best dps for cost and the best health for cost units, amassing them and only "teching up" if you can afford to)

In saying that I do the see the problem. I think that mobile AA should have a T2 variant which is able to both engage multiple targets and focus fire one target (to make it able to engage both T2 bombers and massed T1 bombers)

Of course, there is an additional issue. If your opponent gets air superiority, then you have to build more mobile AA, and then their superior numbers can steam-roll your army..

So yeah. I do see why people advocate for a generalist unit. I personally would prefer for generalist unit to be separate from mobile AA. So you build lots of anti-land and lots of the generalist, or lots of the anti-air and lots of the generalist.

That's not quite true. Ground AA units in a ratio of 1:19 mean that the enemy can't eliminate an entire army with one lone t1 bomber, and gives your fighters a bit of a "homefield advantage". 1 T1 AA is reliable against T1 bombers. Provided the t1 AA isn't the target of the bombing run. However it won't do well against massed t1 bombers or t2 bombers, singular or massed. Which is to be expected, because it's t1 vs t2 in a 1v1, or t1 vs many t1/t2.

However, a compounding issue is that spinners are so fast compared to ants, and both AA units require quite a bit of player time in managing the build queue so that the chosen ratio is produced.

you mean Flak.

if AA should be able to attack ground units, then it should deal less damage to ground units than it does on air units

Not really..... Unless the Flak is AoE, damage over time.. I'm thinking MLRS

so you mean this:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/wicmw/videos/world-in-conflict-pac-3-ftm-1#imagebox

Basically I'm just thinking of the Stinger/Spinners's much older brother. Very boring and uncreative of me.

Differences in unit health between land and air would negate the need for special damage ratios.

That's really not true. 20 range is nothing, by the time your missile hits the t1 fighter they've got in range and fired a shot off. Trying to micro that range advantage is incredibly difficult and mostly relies on them not paying attention.

The real advantage of t2 fighters is that they kill t2 bombers in one hit.

On topic, I feel like it would be nice to have ground AA able to shoot ground in the same manner as the AA turrets, it just feels right to me. Then they would be more used because they could have mild effectiveness for bots or engineer harassment.