I did not. You responded with the continued attitude that this balance issue is not an issue because there exists some way to deal with it in game. While I generally agree that many balance threads come to be because of a lack of understanding of how to deal with a problem or strategy, but this particular thread is brought up with an extremely valid premise and set of solutions. You had nothing to add to the discussion of balance (in this case, as I remember your name with a rather positive connotation--so I assume you have given good/excellent comments in the past)
The scout comment was an offhand jab at your sarcasm. Now, to be serious: Vehicles and Air both have the same *problem* (I prefer *characteristic*), in that they are prone to snowballing by either side. For example, if one side stacks vehicles for a massive tank push, unless you do the same (or something that costs more metal, like leaving the planet or T2 or defensive turtling) you will lose ground and possibly the game. The same is true of air units - with one notable exception: you can afford to only build fighters to counter any bombers he sends. The other option is to go for T1 AA turret spam. This is a fantastic option because it's cheap and super cost effective. I like to do a mix of both, personally. The only problem I see is someone dictating the course of the game by going pure air with only a few factories. Unfortunately this is similar to the old T2 Air rush back when gunships first came into the game - whoever went for T2 air first was forcing the opponent to do the same or lose to gunship/t2 bomber spam. It's a difficult issue, but usually it irons itself out after a few weeks of strat experimenting and 1v1 play. The meta changes Vehicle snowballing does have a lot of different counters in the early game, but in the mid and late game it tends to be far more difficult.
I also get the air problem when I encounter the Uber rank player in 1vs1. The opponent just keeps sniping my anti-air vehicle. If the spinners die faster then his bombers, he can destroy my entire ground force. Unfortunately, bombers usually win. Otherwise, the bomber can avoid the fight. It turns out that I must build fighters to react my opponent
I also noticed intensive air spam in 1v1's (especially skilled players). Played a game on Lock which is a tiny puny moon yet I had a lot of trouble to crawl my way back up into winning the game. What kind of changes have they made in titans that air spam is back in business?
2/3 air facs is in retty much every 1v1 game needed. more if your enemy also does this. You only make fighters in the beginning until you know you ahve air dominance. than you can mix in some bombers but you still need to be very aware of how many fighters/air facs your enemy has as air dominance can chance in a single flyby. When in this situation. a couple of spinners already do significant damage and AA turrets are also cost effective. When I see an AA turret I just dont go there period. I think the problem is more with fighter health than anything else. Bombers are situational and have target priority so that allready hard counters them. I just find that it takes a LOT of shot from ground AA to kill a fighter and I think that is the reason why air is so snowballing. The sad part about it is they need to make changes to bombers, fighters, ground/naval AA and everything just because fighters have to much hp or in other words, ground AA takes too long to kill a fighter. Just to make it into a list: Fighter vs Fighter: Feels good Fighter vs Bomber: Feels good Ground AA vs Bomber: Feels good Ground AA vs Fighter: Doesn't feel good
I think the galato feels good but the spinner usually dies to the bomber. In larger armys this is most obvios you can barely stop mass air with spinners because they die in a rain of bombs.
I still think it's about movement speed, not hp or anything like. Air plays very differently to land because you can blob everything up and still be anywhere you need to be. You can attack and scout and be back for breakfast to defend what you need to defend. Imagine if you had to choose whether you wanted to blob all your air and go running around the map but leave yourself vulnerable, or leave a few fighters here and there just so you could actually have a hope of defending things. This means that in order to maximise your air advantage, you would have to play it more defensively and/or wait for the enemy to attack into you. Air would truly become a supporting unit with a lower movement speed model, and you would then be able to design or tweak it to have better synergy with land armies. The high movement speed basically causes force superiority to actualise and cement itself alot quicker. And it causes us to go down the wrong path of further and further increasing aa effectiveness, or increasing the swiftness and ability of land units to counter-attack air spam. That way is basically bound to fail because we are trying to balance a variable in a way that is not responsive to differences in maps. You then end up with binary situations of air is either good in a situation or absolute crap, with no gradient inbetween. Which is why you get people creating massive air spam armies and using them like God cannons. *Another thought for consideration is the effectiveness of fireflies. With a high speed model as currently, these things are only useful in the very early game because you need a heap of attention or the reflexes of a jet fighter pilot to be able to avoid fighters manually. While the vision buffer is big, the high speed of air basically makes this negligible. Decreasing speeds gives players more time to react, and increases the utility of using air scouts during the mid and even late game.
I don't agree that air must be slowed down perse, but it would give the spinners more chance to fire at them and maybe this balance will be better then what we got now. Maybe its worth the test.
I 100% agree with this. Dox vs air is annoying right now for both the Dox and the air player (its hard to click to attack on them wiggly little ground units). Also, Stingers+Dox blobs would be (I mean it is, I've tested it) more interesting than pure Dox. Stingers would have to be fast and pretty crappy, and then Spinner HP buffed slightly to differentiate them. One of the two units could also be made "burst fire" (which actually works really well since Titans by the way).
