Why are air transports so cheap? They are obviously the most powerful unit in the game. They should be the most expensive aircraft.
Yes, but the vanguard is the broken unit of the two. The transport just makes things faster, a force of vanguards can cut through enemy defenses and kill a commander without transports.
Actually I think the Vanguard is pretty much fine... at least as far as a high-level concept goes. It's the transport that has major problems.
Units should have a weight, and the transport's speed should be affected by the carried units weight.
Honestly I still think they should be T1. T2 just seems to powerful. It should then also be balanced as a T1 unit ( maybe make it a bit slower), but in high-level play, I still don't think that this would be OP.
This. If they want to make an OP-at-short-range unit that is supposed to be balanced by its speed, making a unit that completely a totally negates its slowness is silly. Slowing the transport depending on the unit is at least a step in the right direction, in my opinion.
If Vanguards are balance by their speed, transports are balanced by their health. In fact, more so, because Pelicans are the most fragile unit in the game and can be one-hit by every weapon in the game short of the Skitter's laser (now that the Firefly is weaponless), whereas Vanguards are the speed of a normal tank.
Totally true, but this is why the real limiting factor is speed. If I can pick up and drop off quickly, the health is less of an issue. Therefore, to balance an OP-at-short-range unit being transported by a paper plane, make the heavy weight of the unit slow the flight of the plane to give the health balance a chance to be relevant.
The thing is that someone who is scouting can easily defend themselves against transports, they just need to build either stingers, rocket turrets, hummingbirds (T1 plane, if I got it mixed up) spinners, peregrines, narwhals, or flak towers...
Maybe. The main reason it went to T2 was to stop comm rushing, when comms were stupidly powerful. This is no longer the case, so pelicans in T1 would not be game breaking (in a way I can think of right now). It would allow high level players to do some really quick expansion. I'd like to see it re-introduced to T1 as an experiment.
As would I. If needed, you can always make air be T1.5, which would also solve the issue of air first.
Having it T2 makes it too expensive to transport a large force. Perhaps T1-T2 Transports which carry their Tier's Ground Units would be more easy to balance. That or taking units' weights into account and slowing, thus making it easier to spot and intercept incoming dangerous forces like Vanguard Drops. I despise Vanguard drops due to their micro, and focus on Commander-sniping. Perhaps if the UBER-Cannon shattered a single Vanguard with each direct hit? Imagine that blue ball entering a Vanguard and it exploding all over the place!
TBH I don't think it's an issue now. Comm rushing for a snipe or infastructure crippling is not viable now that the uber cannon has been heavily nerfed. The defender has another advantage in the form of nearby build power, making comm rushing a pretty crap idea, unless you're in a team game and have comm bomb as a fallback option I guess. Inferno drops may be powerful if pelicans were T1.
Does anyone know if stingers can actually hit pelicans if they're carrying vanguards? E.g. Does the vanguard's bulk block anti-air fire?
The reason they are OP is simple. They are fast and cheap and build stupidly quick. Transporting vanguards is not a problem in my opinion because the risk is you'll lose all your vanguards that cost you a lot of money and time to build. Transports are OP when transporting infernos or other t1 units. Infernos are far far cheaper than vanguards, negating the risk and time required to build a decent transportable force. Infernos are also just as effective at killing a base when they land smack bang in the middle of it (with the exception of the commanders Uber Cannon, just don't land in his range). The other bonus of infernos and the cheap transport is that you can swarm them pretty effectively. Unless your opponent has more t2 fighters than you, which they won't if you rush t2 air, you can simply overwhelm the AA in any given location of the enemy base because they have to spread their air coverage and you can concentrate your force. So there you have it! Transports are OP because they themselves are too cheap and fast to build.
