Is T2 air the most effective strat atm?

At least for FFA looks like it. Imho the anti-air ground defenses available just can't hold a organized gunships attack. What are you guys opinions?

T2 air has always been the strongest strategy in PA, Peregrines will shutdown anything (just send 1 or 2 and the AOE will beat 10 other Peregrines and demolish T1 air in laughable fashion)
And the gunships and bombers will shut down any sort of ground push because there is only T1 anti air from ground (although naval T2 Stingray has pretty decent anti-air now, but its naval, not like thats going anywhere lol).
What you should watch out for is any T2 flak cannons because they hard-counter air in the extreme but just starve your opponent out because they cant move out of their base anyways.

Its good against any unprepared or unexperienced players.

But it's effectiveness drops off against players who are actively preparing for it.

In my opinion, yes.

It's way over powered. It's way fast, and way too powerful when compared to basic air.

Ground AA has had improvements, but it's still not balanced quite yet.

Sincerely, i don't think so. Just make stingers with your army and static anti air in your base. During mid-game, you will also have your own t2 air factory and even if he has complete air dominance, 1 peregrine kills 3 or 4 peregrines so you have the defender's advantage.

Currently the only way to fight T2 air is with your own T2 air.

Yes flak cannons are effective, stingers and stingrays are quite effective, but you cannot have effective G2A coverage everywhere at once.

I challenge anyone to win a game that lasts more than 15 minutes in which they do not build a T2 air factory.

That's easy, you leave the planet, or spam AA and flak turrets in large lines over vast distances.

I challenge people to win a game lasting over 15 without going T2 at all.

Ok, leaving the planet I can accept, but I don't think spamming flak is viable in the long run against a skilled opponent. It's just too difficult to have AA covering all your expansion without your own fighters. Maybe on a tiny planet, but not on a normal sized 2 or 3 player planet.

I have had more success rushing vanguard and attack when you have around 10-15. And you bring AA from T1 vehicle you had. I have met people that have T2 air but they havent been able to kill me unless they hid the T2 air outside their base and they sniped my commander which has happen twice now T_T

T2 air doesnt directly counter vanguard rush if you bring AA. But it you can delay the attack and win with mobility that way, but that doesnt make it overpowered.

True, however it more a comment about spreading out.

Even with only limited air cover, a spread out base with any amount of AA is much harder to destroy and harder to find and kill the enemy commander.

Far too often players try to focus their defence into a central location, one that is very easy to see, even from space.

And that the use of constantly moving and produced units, along with expanses of defensive AA towers, even if distributed all add attrition to an approaching snipe.

Snipes work best when they can get to their target quick, approaching from a relatively undefended angle.

So when defending the best solution, is to BE in every direction, have so have no decipherable starting location, and have no place that is clearly a fortified location, turn your bases into sprawls, bursting with units and life, patrolling fighters, engineers, AA and dox and you might find that your enemy's will struggle to breach or even scout the boundaries of your continent spanning base.

Intel as always is key, deny it to your enemy.

Keep suicide T1 fighters to mop up scout planes, and be watchful for enemy radar satellites.

People can't snipe you when they can't find you.

Yes it is, if the Planet is large scale 3 or bigger. On small moons its not.
Air is fast, can raid everywhere and there is no mobile counter (exept other air). Its too strong atm, i've won many games cause my Gunships raided all MEXes and killed the Commander befor his vanguards even touch my base.
btw. the FLAK is bugged it can one shot 5 bombers or only kill one gunship in 20sec.

We desperately need mobile T2 anti-air, T1 anti-air, while decent at repelling T1 bombers, is simply torn to shreds by gunships/hornets.

No, the solution doesn't lie in introducing more overpowered counters because the original is badly designed.

If a AA option can't do it's job, then they need to be fixed, not superseded by a higher tier copy with better stats.

T2 air, as it stands is completely borked and unbalanced when in comparison to T1 air and AA are both measured, fun to use and counter and both are integral parts of their gameplay.

T2 air doesn't support T1 air, it doesn't add new gameplay to of that T1 air stared or implemented or enabled.

T2 air replaced T1 air, completely, once you are there you no longer need T1 air, period.


It needs to be effectively nuked, kill the T2 fighter, reign in the T2 bomber and gunships to T1 bomber like magnitudes, and introduce more utility and special units like the transport.


Simply saying that the current problems with aircraft can be totally, utterly and fully solved by introducing a moving T2 flak turret is an affront to any attempt to have the basic units in this game even bother to matter past the first 5 mins.


Most of the T2 level needs a serious change is this situation is to be addressed.

Not bloody hur dur T2 mobile AA.

"T1 bomber like magnitudes"? What do you mean by this?

T2 needs to be more powerful than T1 to justify the extra metal cost, so if by "T1 bomber like magnitudes" you mean "pretty much as powerful as T1 bombers" the only thing that'll change is that T2 will not be used in favour of the cheaper T1.

I like the idea of T2 air being mostly specialized/utility units, but that doesn't mean that the offensive units should be illegitimized.

It's true that the tier balance issue is there, no one of sound mind would deny that, but equalizing the two tiers is a beyond insane idea that would just reverse the problem rather than fix it.

If I'm wrong in this, then please specify what you mean by "T1 bomber like magnitudes".

"T2 needs to be more powerful than T1 to justify the extra metal cost"

This is where your idea went wrong.

T2 should absolutely NOT be stronger then T1, because if it is, then there is so point to having T1 at all.

And by T1 bomber like magnitudes, I mean to make the gunship and T2 bomber into a similar stat range as the T1 bomber, to by effect, make the difference between the gunship, basic and advanced bombers a choice by the player to what units they want to use to counter a situation.

The advanced bombers and basic bombers have no reason to be so wildly different in their capability's of one being able to snipe engineers, the other to snipe entire tank columns.

They should be a choice about doing the same overall job, in different ways.

The gunships do this already, they are ground support but are agile and can easily raid enemy positions and a heal face turn to jump away from resistance, but are considerably powerful in their HP, stacking on other aircraft (In a way that makes them clip into other gunships) and firepower that makes them ideal to replace any role for the basic bombers.

Advanced bombers do damage that is greater then several of the basic bombers, with additional HP and speeds that invalidates T1 bombers from a point.


But compare the T2 air game to the T1 air game, basic bombers are good against T1 opponents, but have weaknesses that can be exploited enough to make them units that you need to think to use, as they are easily dispatched by a opponents AA and fighters, but are strong enough to support your ground efforts.

T2 air has the speed, HP and damage to strike with unparalleled speed and range that they don't support other levels of play.

And most certainly do not pay for their inherent advantages of mobility and speed, they gain more HP and damage for a cost that when considering their effect and access to T2 economy buildings, makes them not only superior to T1 air units, but even to their T2 ground counterparts.


Getting T2 units should not give you better units, it should give you more choices, choices that change the game, how air units operate, how they support, giving alternatives to basic choices, but never replacing them.


T2 should unlock truly unique forces that are not as clean cut as the basic troops you have, they have advantages, nuances to be used against a opponent who will expecting a conventional attack, but also disadvantages to these ability's, to measure them, keep them from simply being better then the standard model, to make them interesting choices and additions to the standard basic army.

T1 forces should be a conventional force that covers all bases in the more direct way possible, it should do everything in the way you expect it to.

T2 should give the player access to ways of modifying this T1 force, different and exciting ways of using it, or breaching traditional roles and defences, different ways of fighting an opponent, ways of improving your standard force, giving you the tools to make the basic units better, and cover their weaknesses. T2 Air should take the conventional air force, and add to it, adding in different unique ways of scouting to supplement the T1 scout, additional fighter types that help the T1 fighters in more specified ways, or give fighters that are better against specific enemy's or tactics, New and exciting bombers that change the way you bomb, bombers for armys, bombers for ships, bombers for buildings, bombers that look like bombers but are really armed with capture guns, gunships that raid, gunships that repair, gunships that ambush, transports that move units, transports that abduct units, transports that can swim underwater.

There are so many wonderful ideas for T2 aircraft that help add to the T1 aircraft, that change how air battles are fought, that change how the navy fights and the army fights, that supports the navy and armys own fighting, that supplements their own weaknesses and gives them new and exciting ways to be plaid.


But they should never replace T1 air units, the bog standard the expendable rather bland and straightforward units.


Because if they do.....then what's the point of having a T1 force at all? What does it add?

In that case, T1 air doesn't add anything useful at all, it's pointless to even include because in that instance.....it's so much worse that isn't not even worth building at all.

Igncom1 is spot on.

As I have mention in another thread Air in PA has none of the weaknesses real Aircraft have. This makes them completely over powered vs ground. If air had to have support structures etc, then how they currently are would be fine as you would need a true air base to support your aircraft swarm.

An example of what could be done...

T1 Bombers I like as the single target, make the T2 the carpet bomber (like now) but reduce it's damage. So per hit the T1 bomber does more damage. But the T2 in groups takes out armies faster. This suddenly gives both bombers a reason to be built.

Likewise the Gunship I like but it currently trumps everything, it needs to be toned down. I also feel that the gunship should be slower then other aircraft. Think attack aircraft like a A-10 vs an apachi attack chopper.

Spamming Flak all over the place is not a viable "fix" to aircraft imbalances and constantly putting in band-aid on a served finger is only going to get you so far.

i learned that a swarm of Gunships can go through any defenses while wiping most of the things in their pats..........

god the suggestions in here are hilarious. get rid of peregrenes completely? HA.

combat it by spamming out spinners behind vanguards and watch your opponent try to micro around that one, spread out your units aswell if he has bombers, also you'll need to have your own peregrenes to support your spinners - t2 bots wont work against an air spammer as you need the vanguards to tank the majority of the brawler damage

Yes it is. As soon as I have T2 Air up (around 6:30) I build 3 advanced cons, one straight to fusion plants, the second to mohos, the third to flak spam literally everywhere - people often comment on "Why so much flak wtf" - because I know what a pack of 100 brawlers can do to a base. They are also incredibly cheap compared to TA and build so freaking fast. In TA Flak took 20 times longer to build than in PA.

Fire with fire, really.