1v1: Is air first your only choice?

I agree 1v1 pa stats I get my *** kicked if I don't go air first. T2 air factory needs to better doubled in cost as well as the gunship. Land is only viable if you spawn holding hands. Last night my opponent had t2 air at 4:20 Mark!!!! That's utterly ridiculous. 4 mex4 pgen and t2 assisted by comm. I'm so sick of air being the dominant force. It's entirely lame and not fun gameplay. This is and continues to be ace combat the rts common uber please!!!!

Played a FFA last night (pre-patch) where someone went 100% gunships. I was surprised at how well he did. I mean I was no slouch on building flak but he'd come up to a line of 10 flak cannons side by side and kill them all. I think the gunships do a decent job of spreading out and maintaining distance so that flak doesn't devastate them quite as easily as bombers.

I mean he still lost to my super awesome tank streaming concept and nuclear weapons from the moon but still, I was surprised gunships fared so well. I thought 10 flak would pretty well blow them away faster than even a large group could dish out damage. Nope. At one point I got into my tank stream and built a double row of about 2x10 flak cannons to help keep him from pushing back and he wasted that too.

Interesting footnote:

Walls actually help against gunships. As an experiment I built a wall in front of a line of flak and the walls took quite a bit of damage which suggests they were absorbing some hits from those gunships that may have otherwise hit the flak. I felt like the flak held up longer too though it's hard to say since I didn't surround them completely.

Have you played 62110 yet? AA bot/vehicle buff.

Air first VS AI results in AI building a single AA bot/vehicle and between that and your commander any early bomber run fails pretty miserably.

Oh yes, I would agree that as of Gamma the OP is no longer true.

I believe missile towers are good now, and the commanders AA helps prevent air dominance over your base in the beginning. There needs to be some kind of mobile counter to gunships though, the mobile AA can do it in large numbers if your opponent isn't paying attention, but all too often gunships can pick them off using Peregrines as a distraction.

I really do feel like gunships, already, have been given too much HP to be fair.

AA vs bombers is one thing, but gunships shouldn't tanking shots with that kind of fire-power and manoeuvrability.

Going air first is somewhat risky. You can't produce a mass of solid, reliable combat units. It works if the other guy doesn't point you fast and latches on to you with bots. Then you're in some deep trouble as he'll smoke your bombers in seconds and you'll be left with hands on your heat seeking moisture missile, with it not even being attached to your body. Now rolling with it as a second is a good choice, though.

Sorry, but what game are you playing? Going air first is not risky at all. Its actually risky to not go air first because of bombers 1 shotting fabbers.

I have first hand experience of it working very well against some of the best. Take the gunshin vs matiz game from the last Pace tournament as example, and even that was in extreme conditions with matiz right next to me.

I remember the gunship rush in supcom 1 and FA that worked a good 80% of the time, in this game its just starting to become gunship simulation. Flak isnt doing enough vs them

Might need an increased range and damage to help counter. I would like to see air put into check so that were not facing massive air attacks, maybe we could get some joint strike attacks like there should be.

Flak does a lot against them, but to counter a gunship rush you really have to get flak up sooner than is generally practical. You can rush air defenses, but you still lose all map control in that scenario. The only way to beat gunships is to either win before the opponent gets them or rush peregrines. Once you have enough peregrines, the only logical thing to do is make gunships and take out all the expansions from the other player. Either way, games end in gunships if they last long enough to reach t2.

As far as i have played Planetary Annihilation 1vs1 games.. it always ended up in a air game.. people come with thousends of tier 2 Bombers to your commander and try to aim it down.. I dont really like that way of playing it but to be honest it is part of the game.. and i ended up in other games by using allot of air too.

But i preffer just to make allot of anti air airplanes.. and allot of Ants like spam them.

( Might be a lil late on answering on this thread, but it seemt still active and i think the question is pretty much one you can answer even on the rl release )

for me, that's kind of an issue. a game that can only truly end with mass air combat gets a little stale after a while.

I have to agree with OP, air is OP. (no pun intended) Air scout is objectively the best scout at scouting, and it can attack ground units. The better scouting you get is a huge advantage. Couple that with the fact that t1 bombers have AE that is quite accurate, so its very effective at taking out engies, blobs of raiding tanks or bots, power production, etc. I think the AE OR damage of t1 bombers should be toned done, and we should have a t2 land unit with AE vs air. That unit would not instantly kill, but make it painfully for large air forces to fly over it. That should also counter the he-who-has-the-biggest-air-blob-wins-combat we have now.