Did anyone else notice...

... that Kestrels are way too strong and overused?

I may have noticed this...
Just a little.

If by overused you mean, used by every single player, than yes. I have noticed.

Hopefully some of the changes to advanced air will fix this.

However, the biggest issue with gunships aren't gunships, but are Peregrines. The only way to effectively counter Kestrels is to have one more Peregrine than your opponent.

Actually people are beginning to start using t2 bombers because they get a chance to get off a bomb with all of the AA turrets and AA bots being effective air counters.

Well, imo Gunships are good enough vs turrets. They destroy them quicker than you can build new ones.

So maybe a huge buff to anti-air turrets would be appropriate imo.

fighters do beat gunship fights better, but he is right, stingers particularly tend to give gunships harder times than they do bombers.

stingers are outright > turrets

I build aa turrets. I defended that choice when they attacked ground for sure, and carried it over with a larger blend of single/double laser towers. Now, I wonder if I am mistaken and instead should in fact just be building laser turrets only, and after fabbers I should build stingers and just station them scattered (put them on area patrol and after they are fairly randomly spread just issue a stop command)

The problem is that air combat is INSTANT. If you blink, your entire air force dies. Take a wrong turn into some flak or peregrines, *poof* gone. Because of this, kestrels were given insane damage to counteract their instant death. Now you can fly over armies with a fleet of kestrels and not even stop to shoot and the army is vaporized, but if that army has stingers, then your air is vaporized. How is that fun in any way?

The balance for air has become an arms race to the level of extreme absurdity. Reduce the ROF/DMG/AOE of everything related to air and all air units by like a factor of 5 and I bet the combat will suddenly be much better. Once we can actually see what the heck is going on, then we can start balancing individual units, but right now it all dies so fast you can't tell what is OP and what isn't.

dont stop them, just let them randomly move around all your area. That way any gunships have to constantly take losses while flying over your area.

Against unit blobs, sure, but who builds unit blobs anymore?

IMO T2 air has become less and less important over the course of this build. It feels like a proper support tool right now, and I'm glad to see that T2 bombers have been finding a role again.

Against anyone mildly competent enough to build stingers.

So is building stingers something mandatory, like building anti-nukes, building umbrellas, building T2 artillery and units?

I feel like there's just more and more being added to my build order, without me having any choice about it.

Like, I build T1 fabbers, mexes, power, air scouts then fighters, then I have to build T2 eco, because if I don't, people that do will have an advantage over me. Then I have to build T2 units, because if I don't, people will just kill me. Then I have to build stingers, because if I don't... you get my drift.

Um, yes, if you don't keep growing your eco you're going to lose. If you don't counter their air you're going to lose. If you don't build a land army you're going to lose...

If you don't build stuff you are going to lose!

Yeah, but shouldn't I have... idk... options?

I mean different units should fit to different strategies.
Stingers shouldn't just be > turrets. T2 fighters shouldn't just be > T1 fighters. And what about the t1 anti-air vehicles, aren't they good for anything? Why did everyone say stingers instead of those?

Options, people. I want more of them.

I want to be fine when building some anti-air turrets around my base, because of them being stationary, they should be able to defend better against air than anything else. It's sad to see that the thing that they're supposed to be good at, is good against them.

I want to invest more into air, if I have a strategy that requires me to clear the air space over the enemy's base. For example if I want to drop some vanguards in there with air transports. But I don't just want to build them because if I don't then it's game over.

I want to build stingers, when my focus is on ground armies. I want to use them as dedicated anti-air support to my unit blops. Not because if I don't build them then it's game over.


It's the same with anti-nukes and umbrellas. If I don't build them, it's game over, because either I'm getting nuked to death, or lasered to death from above. No, I want to have the choice of building anti-nukes, umbrellas or totally neglect doing that in favor of another strategy. But basically, there is no strategy that allows you to not build anti-nukes, umbrellas, other than destroying your enemy.

Less mandatory strategies, more options please.

Greetings

I agree that a static turret should be > a mobile defence to defend a rather static base.