Unfortunately we had this discussion before and Neutrino himself said the he wanted Fighters to be the best AA. As you say, given the advantages of fighters (mobile, etc. independent of their damage) it makes no sense to have ground AA to be so weak. Beer4blood: the t1 fighter does 80dps, the ground AA does 20dps (the tower does 40dps). Also those ground AA units can't atack anything besides air neither...
I think the balance is quite good. Think t1 air should shoot slower and t2 the same as now. Bombers should be Able to drop their payload if high value targets are guarded by a couple of AA Pds but die right after. AAs should be spread around your base not just beside the high value targets. This is pretty expensive ona globe i suppose. There is plenty of time to see a big group of bombers coming with today's radar and the best defence should remain reacting and intercepting with your fighters.
Currently, yeah the fighters AA missile one-hit-kills other planes, the rocket turret and other AA ground units can take up to 4 shots to kill a T1 plane. I'm fine with them doing the same damage, but their has to be a cost for the obvious superiority. That cost can come in a number of ways, you can make ground AA stronger than fighter AA, they can only defend a smaller area due to their speed and mobility but defend that area better. Or you can rack up the cost of the fighter quite a bit. AA turrets, Ground AA units, and fighters are all unique units, and their effectiveness should reflect that. Turrets are immobile, and should be the best at countering AA at a specific location. Ground AA should be second best, able to hold areas temporarily, or provide cover fire for armies, but not out-perform static defence. Lastly, fighters can engage bombers before they reach their targets, and even chase them down afterwards. Their damage should probably be the lowest, either that or make them glass cannons, or more expensive, as a trade-off to their obvious advantages. If I want to attack an area where my opponent has powerful air support, my basic strategy should probably be to push in with a ground army with ground AA and cover my engi's while they set up static AA turrets. Fighters react well to unforeseen threats, and should be used to attack my opponents air reinforcements or to guard bombers as they attack ground reinforcements(coming from the opposite side of the territory, and obviously out of reach of my attacking ground forces). These are strategies that no other AA unit can pull off, and should be the focus of the fighters balance and unit design in order to make sure it's unique. The goal is to preserve the advantage of each unit, or just remove them if they become redundant.
I was simply stating they aren't redundant..... perhaps the aa tower range should be increased and fighters damage should match aa towers ...
Rather then just buffing the ground AA I would like to see them have a weakness as well. I would suggest increasing the range but reducing there rate of fire. Probably keeping the dps the same. Also slowing down the missile speed a little. I would also add a second type of AA. Something that does instant damage. The down side is that its range is short and it costs a little more. It is a lot harder to balance with only one type of AA. Its either too good of too week. Bombers will either be used too often or vary rarely.
I don't think ground AA needs a damage buff, they do hit pretty hard considering they're T1. Maybe just a role adjustment. They should be able to attack ground units at reduced damage and structures at extra damage. Think about the implications here. This heavily reduces the viability of bombers vs ground AA if they are able to take out turrets and production structures. Made in large enough numbers, the player relying on Air would lose pretty hard if his opponent is spamming ground AA. It forces the player using air to produce something else or focus on building a lot of turrets. Either way, his air production slows down.
I like the idea of ground AA being able to alt-attack ground structures. They shouldn't be too effective, but it makes them far more viable.
You are supposed to use all types of units. If I liked the fact that you can just spam bombers and always win I wouldn't have made this topic. Besides, whats the point in bombers which shoot at the AA before the AA shoots at the bombers, effectively making AA useless?
Also I believe aa turrets do attack ground units for now.... at least they have in every game I've played since alpha......I think they deal a little much damage to said ground forces as well but then again all current units are made of aluminum foil
There should be no need for t2 aa. It got a buff recently. I can say since AA got a buff I like how rockets double at land defense too albeit not the best, yet they still don't stop air as well but they do alright. Ground units too, I think I actually like the bot AA but the vehicles do some work too, I just like the lower rate stronger shot one. Ask for air itself, fighters sadly seem to always have the highest edge, which sucks because fighters are air. Meaning if air doesn't win, then it is only because air won. I am not the only person who sees a problem with this either. Idk though, everything else going on in the game, just recently I found better success with bots and vehicles than in the very beginning. Heck, with space travel I rank bots higher than air, because if you can manage to hold off air with bots and the turrets, they build a lot more efficient and once landed they build faster to cover more area. Dude, t2 fabber bots pump some fast build.
I like the t1 missile towers atm, they're a cheap, quick to build, all-rounder defence tower, with lasers taking up the role of more expensive/ serious defensive fortifications, plus the tac launcher thing for extra trolling. i don't think the missile tower needs that much of a change if it stays general purpose, maybe give us a SAM launcher in the Adv. tier that can deal with Adv. bombers. Out of the two extremes though, either AA being super weak, or AA being crazy strong, one-shotting bombers, i'd probably prefer it to be more toward the latter. I feel like one of the advantages of bombers is their mobility, and ability to hit easily from multiple directions. I feel like AA, at least Adv. AA, should be scary, but someone using bombers should be looking to come in from angles to avoid the AA towers, rather than being too reliant on overwhelming with numbers. This also give yet another important reason to have your radar and scouting up to snuff.
They have one third of the AA dps per metal of fighters, and almost double the up-front metal cost, and because they're built by vehicles and not factories, almost double the energy per metal cost of fighters. They're anything but cheap. Especially as fighters can potentially defend anywhere and AA towers can't move.
AA is meant to be strong against air, not the other way around. If you do not build air units there is no chance against someone who only uses air, except if you manage to kill him in the first 5-10 minutes. Why is everyone flaming about what isn't the point in my statement? Tip: it was about bomber range > AA range. Even advanced tanks have a lower range than the basic laser towers (except for artillery).
before I make AA turrets, I make fighters that have assigned patrol paths around regions of my base. Cheap and efficient.
The advanced bombers are supposed to be good for precision strikes. The missile turrets are not supposed to be the ultimate doom of air, but a good deterent. Air superiority is about being superior with AIR. It is dead easy to kill bombers with even basic fighters...And strangly satisfying
