T2 air seems bad

A weapon that massacres dox.

so do shellers ... and bombers .... and vanguards ... when they hit ...

dont slammers eat dox for breakfast?

Shellers aren't really riot weapons as their shots are easy to dodge, and vanguards aren't because they themselves are easy to dodge.

Generally riot units are limited either through low health, low range, or both.

I think it would be pretty interesting to see a Kestrel with the following stats:

Give it the ability to shoot at air
Speed bumped to 75 meters per second from 60
Damage: 10 Per Shot, 8x shots per second from 20 per shot, 4x second
Keep the range the same.
Increase health by 25-50%.
Adjust metal cost based off of performance.
Increase vision to 180 from whatever it is right now.

Change Target Priority: 1 anti-air ground units and structures, 2 other ground targets, 3 hummingbirds, 4 other air units
Give it the same dynamic movement as hummingbirds and t1 bombers so it does strafing runs instead of sitting over a target circling like an in your face AC-130.

Gives this unit more of an A-10 CAS role. (Which is how I tend to use them anyways) Increases survivability and pulls it away from the static gunning down which is uesless to when you have a hornet than can sit beyond most visual range and plug units in a more effective manner.

AA gunships are a bad idea. They completely broke late game Forged Alliance.

I made some changes to the Kestrel. It's now more mobile, can see further but has the following tweaks:

Areal circle and constant fire changed to dynamic attacks (like fighters and bombers).
Speed increased to 75 from 60
Sight increased to 180 from 100
Health increased to 400 from 300
Range left at 80
Damage decreased to 6 from 20
Bullet velocity increased to 200 from 150
ROF increased to 15 from 4
Added the ability to target air

Personally I like this version of the Kestrel as it has turned away from a line melter to a more close air support role and quick response unit late game. It doesn't overpower the hummingbird, and will require hummingbird escorts to keep units in one piece (most of the time). Not to mention it isn't strong enough to take on bases or commanders even groups of 8-10. This leaves more use to hornets which have the range and firepower to really do the damage.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m6j4cs1hzxal0ly/Gunship-Mod.7z?dl=0 - Is a link to the modded unit. Feel free to give it a try.

Excuse me good sir, are you mad?

The math works out to only 90 DPS up from the 80 DPS. But add in the strafing it ends up spreading the damage out more than just simply raining down constant fire. You get short burst of dynamic fire vs static constant fire it did in the past.

But the lag though bro...

My personal tests didn't hinder performance... I can understand the apprehension, though.

*reads first half of sentence*

*reads second half of sentence*


That's just not true at all. Diversifying the current unit roster would mean adding more roles and variety, not bring units closer together. Levelers are just bigger, slower ants right now, for example - my personal preference would be to give them AOE and a faster turret speed so they are good at shredding bots.

what would be the role between an intercepter and a superiorityfighter when they both use aa to destroy other aircraft?

Make one faster than the other by a significant amount, give it less health, same DPS. Interceptor! The other fighter would be slower and tankier, but cost more.

And so you bring in units that are only slightly diffrent in stats and call it a new unit. Like a slow firing spinner with heavy dmg and a fast firing stinger with low damage and aoe.

This is bland design. units do the same, the is only very little reason to use one over the other in some circumstances but for the rest. yes you have 2 units whoop die effing do.

I do agree there are units in the roster who are upgrades which is also meh and bland. But if you want interesting design start with studying the Gil-E and BlueHawk

Ehhh not really. It was the power of the AA, not the AA itself that made them a bit OP: those things could actually go head to head with ASFs and survive. They also could melt fighters of lower tiers - which can't happen in PA because there is only one tier of fighter. Still, I'm not quite mad enough (yet) to propose that gunships get that kind of AA firepower.

Basically a unit that has a weapon that deals low Damage to a wide area around it, the point is to deal with large groups of units, normally low health units. An example of a riot unit could be a unit with a low range flamethrower that has very wide spread and slowly cooks units.

Crispy~

well, inferno cooks things quickly, does that count?

Sort of, I'd say the closest we have to a riot unit would actually be the vanguard.

inferno needs to be buffed a bit and made t2, vanguard needs to be put at t1 and needs to have a spread flamethrower but with lower damage and slightly longer range.

Was just chatting about this in IRC and @burntcustard linked me to this comment of his: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/build-76843-pte-now-up.67298/page-8#post-1057166

Which highlights that, metal for metal (I think), t1 bombers are better than t2 kestrels. And apparently, in general, t2 air is not deemed effective.

Certainly the last time I went t2 air I noticed that the units were horrendously slow and don't put out as much DPS as you might think.

T'is a shame really, and should be probably be addressed in future balance changes.