Right now, the air-to-air game in PA is very simple: take your fighter blob, throw it at the enemy fighter blob, and whoever wins has air superiority. Peregrines are simply better than Hummingbirds: they have 5x the rate-of-fire, 7x the HP, and same maneuverability for only 2x the cost. What I propose is a way to redesign air-to-air play, with the goal of making air-superiority less binary, and introducing more tactics into both air-to-air and its interaction with the rest of the game. This proposal involves 3 units, the T1 Hummingbird, the T1 Wasp (a new unity idea) and the T2 Peregrine. Here are the stats: T1 Hummingbird - Interceptor: HP: 50 Build cost: 135 metal Max speed: 110 Acceleration: 180 Braking rate: 90 Turn rate: 180 Range: 50 Damage: 60.0 DPS: 60 damage every 1.00 seconds (1.0 shots per second) Muzzle velocity: 150.0 The idea behind the Hummingbird is for it to be a fast, short-ranged interceptor, able to quickly charge in and hit exposed air units. However, its low HP would leave it vulnerable to ground-based AA and the tougher Peregrine heavy fighter. T1 Wasp - Long-Ranged AA Missiles HP: 30 Build cost: 175 metal Max speed: 55 Acceleration: 80 Braking rate: 90 Turn rate: 70 Range: 400 Damage: 80.0 DPS: 120 damage every 1.50 seconds (0.67 shots per second) Muzzle velocity: 80.0 The Wasp provides a way to shake up air play, with long-range AA missiles, but poor maneuverability and low HP. With Wasps in play, proper use of ground-based AA becomes more important, since it can allow the Wasps the opportunity to push their anti-air umbrella forward. However, their slow projectile speed means that Hummingbirds can outmaneuver their missiles, and take them down quickly if they're caught out of position. T2 Peregrine - Heavy Fighter HP: 500 Build cost: 375 metal Max speed: 60 Acceleration: 120 Braking rate: 90 Turn rate: 200 Range: 100 Damage: 400 DPS: 50 damage every 1.50 seconds (8.00 shots per second) Muzzle velocity: Instant The Peregrine is designed as a short-ranged air-superiority fighter, able to take on any other aircraft with its rapid-fire forward laser once it gets into range, and weather enemy flak to support an aerial base assault. However, its slow speed renders it vulnerable to Wasps, and many other aircraft can simply run away from it. So there you have it. On its face, my proposal involve a rock-paper-scissors design (Wasp beats Peregrine beats Humminbird beats Wasp), but the air-game doesn't just happen in isolation - it works alongside everything else happening. For instance, if you fall behind in the air war, you would start building Wasps to provide the area around your bases with some protection against bombers and gunships. The Wasps could venture a bit forward to provide ground-based raiders with air cover, but if they go too far out, Hummingbirds come in and kill them. But if some fabbers throw up flak along the route of your push, the Wasps can venture further forward, and the opposing player must destroy the flak, or commit to making Wasps of his own while getting radar coverage of your Wasps. In short, things are more interesting than "make a bunch of air factories, and hope to get enough fighters to recover air superiority". Anyone else like this idea? Think it needs improvements, or see any flaws? Share your thoughts in the comments below! Thanks for reading!
Something is missing. Oh, that's it! They're all the same damn unit. Anti air flyer = anti air flyer = anti air flyer. It's a complete waste of space. Try something new.
I believe his idea is to try something closer to the ground split. Hummingbird - Dox-ish. Wasp - Artillery. Peregrine - Inferno-ish. Personally I can see what he's trying to do, but I do believe that air might actually be too fast at a base to allow for this. On a similar note, I don't believe I've seen you pull the same argument for the land units yet.
I think you are glossing over the whole post and subjecting a very narrow idea of what would be good for reworking air to air relations. Considering that was what the topic of the post was. On topic. I like the idea of a long range air fighter, it would give some incentive to have air scouts in your air formation so you can utilize the extra damage. I don't like the 500 hp "brawler" aircraft. IT doesn't fit the role of a Fighter at all and more of a blimp with flamethrowers attached to it. Also. Its power level is extremely high considering its only "advanced" not "better" then the interceptors. I like to think the interceptors should be good all around. Offer zero uniqueness but get the job done of being an anti air unit. A advanced unit should have a weakness of sorts ( you wasp is a good example of a potential advanced unit) that needs to have supplemental power of the t1 inteceptors to do real damage.
i do personally detest the idea of air being its own counter, so the inclusion of variation within the air roster is a welcome change. but i see something like this being ideal: Light fighter: a bit slower, but very quick turning, and can excell in a close range dogfight, but not a prolonged air battle. would be ideal to escort bombers against enemy air, but not to attack enemy swarms. Heavy fighter: faster and harder hitting, but it cannot turn fast enough, and also cannot fire omni-directionaly, being forced to face the opponent to attack, resulting in a plane that conducts strafing run-style attacks against bombers and gunships, with interceptors being able to get behind them and do damage after they pass, chasing them down in an attempt to stop a second run. they could perhaps also be given the ability to deal damage to ground targets, using their speed and firepower to eliminate key buildings (like enemy artillery or radar, and perhaps the occasional flak cannon if you feel lucky)
You detest the air being countered by air and then propose another way of countering air by air? Just like the OP? No, every layer should provide at least one effective counter for every layer.
But I have, at least for the scout. Right now the ideas for ground units are very basic and bland I'll admit, but there is an enormous amount of untapped potential in the ground theater. If I could use all the cool tools to make exciting ground play I would, but we'll just have to wait and see what Uber does. Solving air with air is the narrow idea. It's a waste of space. Use a different idea, if not the half dozen ideas I've hammered away in every other AA thread, then something else.
that's not exactly what i meant. what i meant by that was that i don't like the idea of a specific air unit playing counter to itself. you shoudn't have to counter hummingbirds with more hummingbirds, peregrines with more peregrines, etc. granted, i do see now the fallacy in the way i worded that statement, but my position still stands. though i wouldn't mind at all, the addition of say, stronger mobile AA. THAT would give ground a fighting chance against dedicated air spam.
Just to note, I agree with many people that the current mobile surface-to-air units are considerably too weak. Given that air has the ability to move quickly to attack whichever position is the most vulnerable, it makes sense that surface-to-air units should be able to defeat many times their value in air-to-ground units, and have enough range to protect a decent area. My own proposition is meant to be supplemental to improved surface-to-air weapons - in particular, Wasps were meant to interact with them by using the positional advantages they provide to push forward an anti-air umbrella (though they need to beware of radar coverage backed by enemy Wasps). Hopefully, if Uber introduces some more roles in the air-to-air game (and keep in mind, Doxes, Levelers, Gil-E's and Shellers are all ground-to-ground, but I haven't heard any complaints of them being too similar) while giving a serious buff to surface-to-air weapons, air play will become more interesting than rushing to Peregrines and throwing them at each other in huge clumps.
It sounds really nice. We might have also anti-ground and at the same anti-air unit that is well rounded in doing both of tasks. Just an another idea to make air more interesting
I personally have been hankering for some kind of long-range SAM for some time now. The challenge is in getting it to functionally, not literally, behave in the same way artillery does against ground units lest it end up as a some OP no-fly-zone nightmare. i.e. Thin out blobs on a direct attack vector.
Err... Not just from a literal "Flak is AAA because the German word for AAA is Flak is Flugzeugabwehrkanone" point of view, but from the point of view that the whole point of flak is to thin out the swarm so the point defence can do its work.
Functionally, artillery thins out units because it does straight up damage at range against an area. It thins them out to the point that the point defence can deal with them. That's exactly how Flak *should* behave. Yet it doesn't. In current PA, this is exactly what the flak does not do. It behaves the same way as the OP pelters. It doesn't just "thin out" units, it acts as a thin red line. I agree with long range SAM over Flak - because long range SAM would have a maximum number of "banked targets", so it could never thin red line air units. If air units had volume, they could never get to the density that would invalidate flak.
U its not terrible. Ground does use same heirarchy. hummingbird is basic range and speed, wasp is t2 slow long ranged able to fire behind ground aa safety, and peregrine can be inferno where its slightly slower than hummingbird and can only fire point blank but has devastating dps to quickly cut down multiple planes in chainkills. I can back that idea. At least then a straight upgrade to peregrine can be worthless by itself and require one use a variety of units for results.
