T1 bomber snipes are not an issue. Flak cannons shred bombers and fighters are far cheaper than bombers. If you're not building any AA and you don't scout enough to realise an enemy is massing bombers you deserve to die to air. Would you think I had a point if I died to land units because I only built air units? Of course not.
If the commander is so strong that 50 T1 bombers, which are not being defended against, can't kill it... then why even have units? Random and unexpected snipes are kind of par for the course with FFA aren't they? That's kind of the fun/misery of FFAs, that you have no idea who might decide to attack you from where and with what, so you have to be prepared and scout, etc. Personally, if I dropped 50 anything on a commander and it just AOE'd them into oblivion I'd be calling OP on the commander.
It's FFA... If someone does some high risk super cheese thing and doesn't get attacked while building up to it, they win. Bombers or not. *I also highly doubt they can kill every single other commander just spamming bombers. They'll get one or two, and then either not have enough bombers left for everyone else, or everyone else will have reacted by then already. Commander explosions tend to kill alot of bombers just saying
I would like to move my comm just a little bit out of my base to build more facs or energy without taking the risk of being sniped. It is very easy to build enough bombers in a super short time, and there is nothing you can do once they have enough to get you. T1 AA is not a good counter; mainly because it takes too long for the missiles to reach to bombers... if they even target the bombers. Fighters are also just meat shields to protect the payload behind, building more than your opponent helps but it is highly luck based and random.
I unno, to me AoE completely ruined bombers over enemy base with commander to the point, where I did not build any bombers at all. Now I can build bombers again, still the are not as OP as two months before, they are in good spot now actually. In fact, current unit balance is pretty sweet. Vanguards not OP, bombers not OP, dox not OP. I don't know about boom bots yet, I haven't had many problems with enemy spamming them, but tie will show.
bombers attack in a huge stack anyway, even if range was tiny, one shot could still kill lots of them
If you get sniped 14 min in than you didn't scout propperly. And you say it was on a 1000 radius planet, than it's almost a no brainer to get some air scouts and fighters because dox and skitters are too slow to scout with. The dude with the bombers saw your weakness of having no AA and punished you for it. Learn from it. Balance is getting closer and closer and thus it takes more time to see if certain features are OP or not and in my opinion the commanders AA has been OP for quite some time.
I'd rather have the comm OP than the air units OP. The comm has a uber canon for ground but nothing special for air.
Was wondering how long it would take for people to realise this was an issue. I sent a message to scathis the day of the change. Let's face it the commanders aa was much much too strong before. Killing any air that came within its large radius before the units even realised he was there. Somewhere on between and it will be perfect.
Would you rather have an OP comm with no viable early air game or an early air game with an not OP comm? I choose for the latter as air can be dealt with in many ways. I however do think the RoF of the Comms AA launcher needs to be back at 2 from 1.