Should change name to Dogfight Annihilation

Dude, why is it that NO ONE doesn't mass air. I completely understand that air is good blah blah its PA mass erthing blah blah. but seriously. EVERY SINGLE GAME I've been in, had has 90% of players ONLY massing air. And they win with that is the sad part....Turtle tell t2 Air.


I really enjoy this game but its seriously gotten boring when i have to wait 40 min to find a game and get it going, then once the game starts the other team just turret spams and wall spams until you cant touch them. Just turrets and pelters and air units those are the only thing i see nowadays. And I'm not exaggerating.


There is no point to ground units anymore... NO ONE uses them unless its for fab bots.


AT least you have flak to TRY to stop the Air spam. But you cant bring build flak wherever you go and i don't feel like building flak all over the place because honestly that wouldn't work against t2 air spam anyway X). Its so frusterating because to be quite honest, I don't even flippen like the air units anymore X) don't get me wrong we need all of them in game, BUT the only counter to air is more air. And that IMO is really, really, really, dumb.

And don't eve tell me that the ground units that attack air are a viable thing because no, they aren't X) build those prototype air units that shoot ground Boom EZ. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I like a game like this where the Terren of the planet mattered you couldn't just fly your ENTIRE army over everything, GIANT 100 unit battle ragging things exploding building being destroyed units dodging and redirecting to different positions to try and overcome your enemy!! D

Nope. actually you just fly in there with all your ****, HOPE you've been spamming harder, and if you have you win. That's boring.

All the units have yet to be brought in and balance has yet been brought to the force. Uber probably already knows that mass air battles rage half the time. They are working on it(all).

Sit down with a nice cup of tea and take a few deep breaths.

Uberpenu, i like your rage. Altough, i think it might be worth mentioning the advanced air factory buildcost.

We played a game last night where we banned T2 bot factories and T2 air factories - it worked out quite well.

Not sure why it's taking you 40 mins to find a game though, you're a Realm member, just hop on the teamspeak and you'll have one in very short order.

I beat air last night. Though I intentionally exploited t2 flak which had fairly unintentionally high numbers given to it.

Also, during peak hours there is usually a page of games searching, but people are shy about hosting games, and also you could host and it would fill up with at least 4 people quickly, and also you can find games in your community (Realm, PAMatches, Here)

how do you join a teamspeak server, I've never used it before :/ I usually use Steam chat

I get that its expensive but that doesn't stop them from doing it I have to get better at scouting it and getting flak up honestly because flak is strong.

Download Teamspeak 3 from the teamspeak website. Its free.

When you open teamspeak, find the 'connect' option and enter the IP of the server you want to join.

Our teamspeak IP is on the private members area on the forum - I'm fairly sure you're registered?

Yes i am haha. I will have to try that out!

You'd better!

I dunno....I kind of laugh at T2 air spammers now.

I'm kind of expecting flak costs to rise in which case they may get the last laugh but for now there is no reason you shouldn't be building enough flak to totally protect your vitals. You don't have to ring your entire base in them (which is silly) but I should see scattered groups of 4 flak guns, making sure there's no clear path to reach something like an anti-nuke.

I mean since the flak change, nobody bombs me out anymore. I see a herd of 20 T2 bombers come in and they evaporate on the way in.

For offense I do one of two things:
A) Send out my usual ground force. Grab every fighter I have and queue up a bunch of assist orders on units in the ground force, so that the fighters hover overhead and follow the ground forces around. (It's important to queue up multiple assists so that when the first assisted unit dies, the fighters move to the next one. I usually end my fighter order chain with an order to "patrol global" so they fan out or a movement order to come back home.)
or
B) Flak creep. Grab some fabricators. Start building dotted flak in the direction I want to attack. Typically I'll create a "hard spike" in there with a cluster of flak, a 3-barrel laser turret behind a V shaped wall, so help resist a ground attack but typically my army is following along. Once I get in range of the enemy base it's another hard spike with a T2 radar and a Holkins. If he tries to come out and get me with his bombers, well, that's not going to work too well.

Basically flak is stupid-cheap right now. Build lots of it.

Its a problem that we need to rely on a single unit, and doing so basically invalidates most aircraft.

There is no gameplay it that.

Slamz, you are justifying bad mechanics with the existence of other bad mechanics. If you read the OP he explained (very nicely) why that is a bad idea. Nobody is arguing that it is impossible to beat air, just that every game revolves around air and how that is NOT what people want.

I'm saying it only revolves around air when playing people who have not gotten the memo about how OP flak is. I will go so far as to say that "Good players are not air spammers (since the Jan 16th patch)".

I find good players rely far more heavily on bot rushes these days.

The only time I really feel the pain of air spam is when it comes to planetary invasions.

My planetary invasion build order is:
Teleporter
Flak
Air factory
Air fabber
Adv air factory
BOMBERS EVERYWHERE
...because that's just the quickest way to secure an empty planet.

But for a regular single planet game? No, I do not find that the game revolves around air. The people who try to make it revolve around air are usually the ones I beat the easiest.

I don't disagree with you entirely. I manage to win FFAs quite often without ridiculous air spam (only use fighters to defend against enemy air) and I do most of my work with t1 vehicles and t2 bots.

But regardless, you are missing the point. You yourself said "I'm saying it only revolves around air when playing people who have not gotten the memo about how OP flak is." Don't you get it? Don't you see how binary the situation is? It is not about win/loss. It is not about end game. It is about THE game. It is about how the game is played. It is about the fun that is had in playing the game. I don't know if you are completely blinded by just finding that winning is the fun part, or maybe that finding the optimum path to winning is the fun part (neither of those are bad things at all). It's just that you don't seem to grasp *WHY* air is problematic. All you see is an end (flak) to justify the severely bad mean (air).

Again, I don't mean that as a bad thing. All power to you. You are probably very good at the game, and you most likely enjoy it. That is great! I am happy for you. However, I, and as you can clearly see, others do not find the same enjoyment because of the state of aircraft.

So please stop telling us that "air is not a problem" because you are wrong. It is a problem. You are happy with the solutions that exist; we are not.

well, i got onto the channel and everything but idk what to do in all the tabs I'm not allowed in x) i saw where the PA groups are but, I've never used this before :/

I play a lot of Realm, who feel it necesary THEY rush t2 air because they are unsure if I use t2 air or not. I use flak, which usually makes them discuss afterwards that they now know how overpowered flak is.

Despite this, this isn't expected to be balanced. You aren't playing DogFight annihilation, because you aren't playing Planetary Annihilation. You are running games in the engine in order to beta test it. You are testing units. You can call them absolutely stupid in balance, you aren't insulting anyone, they were never given numbers anyone sat down and thought about. Scathis will be the first to do this when he does his first pass on it, and even then it will get immensely better while not being perfect and taking multiple passes.

Basically though, this isn't an unbalanced game because it isn't a game. It is a program that runs. Some people arbitrarily use this program in competition, like PAStats, by setting down rules and collecting wins and losses in a background program, and that only counts because players arbitrarily agree to a competition using the in-game set before the game.

Let's qualify the statement "air is not a problem".

Air IS a problem in that it has a dangerously small niche of use, its counters are amazingly effective and I think if Uber invents a decent flak tank then nobody will use air at all because it will be useless.

Air is NOT a problem in the sense of this game being "Dogfight Annihilation". If you log in to play a game right now the only thing that should upset you about air is how useless it is against anyone who knows what flak does. I was an air spammer prior to the last patch. I stopped immediately because it was clear how easy it would be to stop. I use air for defense and harassment and that's about all I find it good for.


So yes, there is a problem that should be addressed but it is not the problem the OP describes.

If anything, the complaint should be that this is "Flak Annihilation".

We are learning how to deal with t2 air spam all the time. Flak and some fighters work fine. Of anything it has maid me a better raider as not I bunch in groups of 6 instead of 20 and send in more directions.

Air is still great for defending flaks from unit blobs but seems like just. Defensive unit to me.

To the first sentence in the above quote: Wait, you use air for defense? Please tell me how to offensively deal with defensive air use (creeping defensive structures is not an acceptable answer). Defensive air use is part of the problem.

At your second sentence in the quote: It IS addressed in the OP. He clearly states (and everyone agrees) that flak is an issue as well. Of course, you don't see this because you have the point of view that air spam is acceptable.

Again, I wasn't trying to make a personal attack, I am just pointing out that your opinion is extremely bias and it really really shows. Everyone here wants air to be good. Everyone here wants air to be fun to use. Everybody here understands that flak is an issue that makes air not very offensive. Stop acting like we all want air to burn to the ground because we don't. We just don't want air to act like it currently does, and we are content with the fact that flak turrets stop the game from being 100% t2 air for a temporary time.