Tier 1 bombers are underpowered

Well t1 bombers in TA are well OP if used properly. T1 bombers seem pretty decent in the unit game, but are hopeless against any type of structure.

@gunshin What do you mean by" they are very bad at droping their bombs every run" be more specific.

All I know is that from my playing experience bombers worked very well in Supcom and I don't recall them beeing bugged any time.They could efectively damage the oponents base unless he built enough anti air. Furthermore there bombing runs where just the proper length and it took a while for the bombers after they droped the bombs to turn and drop bombs on target again.

Rushing bombers in the early game was very fun as you could gain a advantage if you did enough of damage to the eco, but if your opponent fend off the rush the you were in a lot of trouble.

You could also drop factories with bombers too.
I really would like to see some of the t1 bomber base rushing in planetary annihilation too!

If your bomber is directly over a unit when you issue a n attack command it will circle the unit like a headless chicken and never drop.

Which is why you should all be upvoting the following bug

http://pa.lennardf1989.com/Tracker/index.php?do=details&task_id=3095

They are not viable against units either if there is anti air in the mix.

Well if they were what would the point of anti-air be?

True.
However I'm just saying that there is only a very small window in which t1 bombers are viable. So they are underpowered. So they need to do more damage vs buildings.

T1 bombers, currently, are one of the most balanced units in the game.

S

How are they balanced? You must have a clear and logical explanation to call them one of the MOST balanced units in the game. I'm eager to hear it out and reconsider my point of view.

They are fantastic raiding and support units, but are utterly useless at holding a position, or brute forcing their way though enemy defences.

I can agree that they can be a fine support unit if you also go land units
and your opponent doesn't build AA.
However when it comes to solid raiding unit I'm not sure if I agree with you. Here you need to specifiy a little bit more since there are many types of raiding. When it comes to destroying fabbers at the begining of the game here is my outlook: If you send two AA bots or vehicles on patrol just before the working fabbers, with the use of radar you will be able to prevent bombers destroying fabbers. Simply, because you can see the bombers approaching on the radar, so you can send AA in the right direction, furthermore often bombers attack the closest targets ,in this case AA and can be easily destroyed. Yeah sure building few AA for patrol does slow your expansion a bit, but building bombers often means going air first and having less efficient fabbers. Additionaly building bombers in the early game also slows down your expansion.

I hope you agree with me that t1 bombers are not really good for taking out buildings, so they are not good in this type of raiding.

If you meant that destroying land units is raiding than I can agree with you as long as there is no AA. In my opinion AA is pretty powerfull in Gamma.

By the way do you like the way bombers float around the target in Pa with their short curves or would you prefer a TA or Supcom mechanic?

I agree that they are kinda terrible against buildings, which is a shame.

But as for the AA weakness, that what I feel is the price they need to have to really prevent them from being used to hold an area, making sure they stay as mobile as possible (As they are rather cheap anyway).

The turning circles feel kinda small, but I have more of a problem with the reload system that allows them to easily float above and drop bombs.

Overall, I love the T1 balance of aircraft in PA, as players need to keep their bombers safe until they are ready to commit them to an attack, and then strike their enemy as fast as possible before retreating.

I feel there is a small window of use for them. It all come down to "players need to keep their bombers safe until they are ready to commit them to an attack, and then strike their enemy as fast as possible before retreating" and early raids against fabbers. Additionally I think t1 bombers are no good after intial strike unless your opponent does not recover since AA will do it's job.

Overall I think it's hard to use t1 bombers effectively and most players will rather avoid them. This is my opinion and you don't have to agree.

T1 bombers are used for initial harassment and moon control and that's about it.

I don't know how about you guys, but I feel like it would not brake the game balance if t1 bombers would do more damage against structures.

Any other suggestions on improving t1 bombers?

Well, what's their role?

Is it anti-building, or raiding?

If the role of t1 bombers in Pa would be like the one in Supcom and Ta then they would have to be more effective against structures( destroying extractors, taking out proxy bases and attacking main base which could be effective unless there was proper defense) and taking out big blobs of units.
Right in Pa few AA mixed in a big blob of units can destroy a huge mass of t1 bombers. Which is not how it used to be in Supcom. Of course AA are the answer to bombers, but building few AA should not stop a big mass of t1 bombers.

I think the issue with bombers right now is that they stay too long within the range of AA since they make their short curves. In previous games they made long curves staying most time out of range of AA and taking less damage. However since they dropped their bombs less frequently they did more damage per run. They also did cost more than a t1 land unit(t1 bomber-80 metal 1400 energy,t1 tank- 56 metal 266 energy)- for the UEF in Supcom, other factions similar, but different statistics. This allowed t1 bombers to have a reasonable ammount of helf ( still less than a land unit) and do decent damage.

I'm open to any other suggestions on making t1 bombers more viable. I'm sure some of you have ideas.
I personally love the old mechanic in Ta/Supcom as early t1 bomber raids were my prowess. How do you like it?

Im not a fan of the frequency of the bombers being able to attack.

Also, the strength needed to take out buildings, while also being a kind of anti-blob unit is really mutually exclusive.

Otherwise you end up with a do all bomber unit.

So both of these tasks should be split up between the two bombers, but without creating a situation where the anti-building bomber can simply be massed to snipe enemy commanders in a single run.

Some games introduce a damage over time value rather then sheer burst damage to this effect, so that only limited stacking of bombers can occur, whist allowing a single bomber to still be very powerful.