Air superiority currently pointless?

Since the new patch out iv started playing again
How ever iv noticed one thing now that ground aa prioritises bombers over fighters, is fighting over the air layer now a waste of metal (apart from to protect early game fabbers and mexs) as even if you have a massive air battle victory and then fly your forces to decimate the incoming land army. You are essentially only sending the bombers as the fighters have 0 impact on the stingers targeting.
Mid to late game you start to get some stingers and aa around your mex sites that you cant afford to loose at which point the fighter cover becomes irrelevant and so you need to spend alot more metal on bombers than you would have to normally.
i think either remove the targeting priority or the aa damage needs a reduction or something :s

Air should be used for taking out targets not protected by AA and metal.

If something was called "anti land" I hope it would target tanks instead of spinners.

You are mistaking 'air superiority' with 'fighter screens'. One has a place in this game, the other does not.

If you were placed in a mobile AA unit, and you saw a bomber flying your way what would you target? The bomber or it's escort? Think about it.

If you were in a fighter jet flying towards a bomber with an escort of other fighters, what would you target? It's about targeting the units with the higher threat level. I also think that bombers should spread out and target AA units when you attack move towards a group of units.

Bombers still kick ***. With their new tighter turn radius they are easier to control. Plus, you instead of targeting AA units, just fly a formation of bombers over the group of units and a wide spread carpet of bombs will be dropped automatically by the bombers when they have a target underneath them. So yeah the fighters do nothing now except protect the bombers from other fighters I guess. Air is still important and useful. Good update in my opinion.

Yeah you still gotta build fighters and have air superiority, because otherwise your bombers will get decimated by the other players fighters. AA was useless before the target priority was changed. And bombers are still good against raiding parties of dox. Balance is gradually getting better in this game.

what im trying to say.. is that mid to late game the main point of having air dominance is to harass / destroy the enemy's armies with a slight bit of mex raiding but the emphasis is on the armies, and before this patch you had to fight to get superior air to both destroy the enemys fighters and provide some cover for the bombers.
with this patch it removes the point of wrecking armies with air as if you space out a few spinners through your army they invalidate any and all bombers so you cant even harass the incoming / retreating armys rendering the main point in having carpet bombers useless i.e if they were mainly for anti structural why carpet bomb. and if they instantly get targeted and destroyed before they can start their run they drop 0 bombs or the first one which lands infront doing no damage

I don't think Air should be relied on to destroy enemy land armies.

Although, late game you could have T2 air, and that's still very good against ground armies.

ive only done 1 v 1 ranked so i havent had a chance to try t2 air yet admittedly. i didnt see that gunships have had a buff?

Not sure about the gunships, but the t2 bombers are brutal against tanks. They just sit out of range and toast everything.

Air is still really useful, you just have to be a bit more intelligent with it than before. If you have forced your opponent to be producing tons of spinners to defend his tank groups from bombers, then those blobs are easy prey to your groups composed 100% of ants.

Having air control is still extremely helpful to allow you to keep up constant scouting.

I like this changed, because bombers are OP. Bomber snipe was how I win 90% of games. When nothing I tried works, I just stop land production and build tons of air, fly bombers to enemy base and win. Air is fast, it is not affected by terrain, etc.
I am glad there is now less opportunity for this. You can still do this, of course, just need more bombers. More bombers - more time for enemy to counter.

Tbh I disagree that bombers were op. Just set up one or two flack cannons and it's basically impossible to bomber snipe and if the enemy has a large enough bomber force to do this to you. it just means you haven't built ebough air factories or just switched them purely to fighters to win back the air game and destroy any incoming bombers and their escorts.

If anything bombers are now underpowered and maybe need a health buff or something

It doesn't seem that way to me - you don't need tons of spinners, and anyone who bothers to get 'air control' with fighters is just wasting their metal. Neither do you need alot of surprise fighters to counter someone who builds bombers. There is no need to build air factory other than to counter early ninja air fabbers or scout marginally earlier, and even then dox serve both those purposes just fine. So the question then is, am i willing to give up 30 to 50% of my land unit production simply to scout earlier and gamble on a risky bet that my opponent is dumb?

Also if you look at naval vs naval, while it's imo better than land gameplay now due to much more interesting unit interactions, air is even more of a joke. Both mathematically and in practice, building bombers is a dumb move. Against 2 frigates, 3 bombers will be dead before you're able to even drop any bombs. And to kill just one of those frigates, you've lost another 3 bombers. 1440 metal to 450. Even the hornet can't outrange a frigate.

Bottomline: the metal required to defend against bombers is much less than the metal required to use the bombers.

*Also, what happened to appreciating special tactics like using fireflies or other units to tank shots for a bomber? Why are people so hardon about 'realism' and the 'imagine if you were in an aa unit' nonsense. That view prevents seeing the creativity that's being stifled, because ultimately you arn't in an aa unit. You're playing an rts with a mouse and keyboard.

If I was a robot, my choice about what to target

1) May not be a choice
2) May be different

Current military procedures involve with not putting the humans who make these decisions at the time in a situation where a decision will decrease the survival chances for the personnel, so targeting the bomber and not the escorts could be regarded as a suicide mission, and not asked for, and possibly would not be carried out like that if such orders were given anyway. In this game, there is not some kind of survival calculus that's applicable to preserving the life of units.

Making aircraft prioritise bombers would be a nice option in PA, but I can see why the default is to target the fighters first.

i think ground aa priorytising air antiground is the right move ... next step is simply buffing air either with hp, higher damage or making aa missiles slower so aircraft can outrun it when microed ..