you may actualy read again then ... also if you want to actualy look up the posts: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/not-yet-updated-galactic-annihilation-released.68872/page-7 yes these are old posts and i don´t know what you may have changed since then ... but yea i HAD complaints ...
now to tackle your point´s they stil are especialy if you use fighters and control the air so why should players use the other turrets then if turns out to be just better? why should players not just spam those then? sounds like having a bad fighter to me still doesn´t change my second point how about fixing the unit instead of changing it again .. "You aren't forced T2" then "you need to go T2 in order to get better than decent anti-army" so why can´t i have good antiarmy-air in t1 to begin with? why has it to be just decent? which are arguebly not neccesarily good and the options you take away may be too severe ... i have seen people succesfully raiding even with such units in play .. ENGLISH!!! you speak it???? the way you want to have airunits has absolutely no option to attack groundbased aa from range .. it completely turns the airplay to what most comenters say all the time even if bombers manage to drop their load before getting in range of AA they still tend to fly into them being shot down .. that way trades are forced .. you can not destroy ground aa without trading airunits in the process ..
I have been looking over the balance for air & anti-air. These are my current changes I am looking at and would like some feedback in regards to it to see if it is heading in the right direction. Spinner - Decrease metal cost from 150 to 120 Spinner - Increase range from 100 to 120 Fighter - Decrease HP from 150 to 100 Fighter - Increase metal cost from 220 to 225 Bomber - Increase metal cost from 320 to 345 Galata Turret - Decreasing HP from 1000 to 800 Galata Turret - Increasing metal cost from 225 to 250 Galata Turret - Increasing DPS from 75 to 100 (adding another shot a second) Galata Turret - Decreasing vision from 155 to 150 (to match range exactly) Removing the 10 splash damage from most anti-air weapons (flak will not be affected by this) *Considering buffing the splash dmg and radius of the commanders AA weapon. Full dmg in radius of 1, spash damage of 50 in radius of 5* The logic behind my changes are as follows: The spinner needs greater range as most times they are inside a cluster of tank. Boosting their range will make them more effective as even the ones at the back will be firing sooner and gives a bit more time to preemptively attack incoming fighters. The spinner metal cost I did not feel as thou the units value should be equal to a tank as a tank is a lot more worth the metal. Lowering the metal cost will make it easier to put them into tank compositions. The thing that I notice about fighters is that they normally after engagements the bombers are all dead but their is still a cluster of fighters. Reducing their health buffs ground AA (spinners/galata fire 25dmg bullets) but will not change the fighter vs fighter (fighters do 80dmg per bullet) as it will still take 2 shots for a fighter to kill another fighter. Increasing the metal cost of bombers and fighters just to slow down production slightly. This also punishes early eco hard as they are slightly more demanding. It also is to balance out what you get from these units per metal. You get a lot by having solid air so the metal investment should reflect that. Changes to the Galata Turret are a bit more extreme. Raising the DPS of it will making it better at taking down air. To make them not so OP I felt like decreasing the HP and increasing the metal cost was fair. This way they can be mowed down by land forces easier. I have noticed that when trying to bomb them it takes fair too long as you lose a fair amount of bombers especially early game when you don't have many bombers. Bombers are raising in metal cost also plays into it. The lowering of fighter HP is also a big factor. The Galata is receiving a massive buff. Thoughts?
So I hear air is still an issue. Have we been given a reason by the devs as to why it's still like this?
Definitely still an issue. It's pretty much exactly as I predicted, over a year before PA was even available to play, as it is essentially the same central issue as the air units in TA experienced. Air blobs' speed and the fact that they ignore terrain means air blobs control the map, especially on maps trying to make interesting land warfare using terrain, choke points, water, and so on. And of course on sufficiently big maps, air will rule all. The VOD posted by andreasurne is very demonstrative of the problem. The air problem is really, really bad. To solve this problem air units should be more valuable, less numerous, and more dependent on ground interactions to function. This forum has discussed this air problem to death, and there have been endless discussions about air staging, limiting fuel and munitions, and limiting munitions, at least, with air staging is probably the best solution. But it seems PA is not going in that direction. What I would do instead is make the terrestrial "planes" into a more helicopter-like low altitude air force (same altitude as current PA aircraft). Faster than land units, but slower than "fast mover" planes. Helo units are capable of hovering in place, traveling/shooting in any direction like ground units, such as flying backwards while shooting, allowing kiting, such as staying outside of range of enemy AA and firing from range. Gunships, 'flying tank' type units, missile snipers, raider gunships, and so on. The current PA air factory would be completely retooled to contain units with these types of helicopter-like behavior, similar to the gunship factory in Zero-K. These helo air units can be pretty similar to current PA air units, but the important change here is they should move significantly slower and carry different weapons. For example, a helicopter type gunship isn't going to be dropping bombs directly beneath it; that's something a plane does from high altitude. Proper "fast mover" planes would then be the realm of the orbital layer, from a separate factory from the low-altitude helo-like aircraft. The proper fixed-wing planes would mostly have no vision of land units (spy plane exception?) meaning you need some type of ground unit to get vision of a target in order for a plane to kill it. Furthermore, planes would be used to intercept both air and orbital units. These planes would be expensive, powerful units, that are relatively few in number compared to current PA aircraft, but might carry a lot more payload than current aircraft possess. Because you have to spot using ground units, bombers might actually drop some shocking large explosives without breaking the game, meaning you don't need a giant bomber horde to do severe damage, just a few well-executed hits will do devastating damage. Air to ground missiles can be very high damage weapons with long range, since you cannot just build a horde of these planes and fly the entire group towards an area where you know the enemy must be, or you will get shot down by units you can't see. Anti-orbital would then become, essentially, anti-plane AA, and would need to be significantly tweaked to make it cheaper, more available, longer range, and more effective, including mobile variants on at least one standard factory. This AA can be more expensive and higher-end than what currently passes for AA, but the Umbrella is way too costly for too little coverage. This will also give us two types of AA. The bot factory, for example, might have a Stinger bot which can attack 'air' (helicopters) but cannot attack 'orbital' (incl. planes as well as satellites/ships). For that, you would get a SAM vehicle of some type firing missiles at long range. The difference between orbital and surface vision is the huge mechanic being leveraged here. Orbital and surface layers have different vision, allowing us to design planes that act as true air support to help ground forces that have made contact with the enemy if they are unable to spot their own ground targets. And likewise, land units can have very large orbital vision/radar, potentially allowing for very long range against planes without giving them broken range against ground units.
