Peregrines. That one unit which, if you have 8 of, can only be countered by other peregrines unless the other guy sends them without any gunships into masses of ground AA. The main problem is this: If you have around 8 peregrines, they can kill nearly unlimited amounts of hummingbirds without dieing. They cannot be countered even by massed T1 counterparts. Ants can kill levelers if you've got enough of them. Doxes can kill slammers. Infernos can't kill vanguards, but that's another balance problem. And even if your opponent spams those and gets control of the ground layer, you can still use gunships to take them out. If someone gains control of the air layer and has a T2 air factory up, they become invincible. This is an issue which is spilling into other things to create more balance issues. Gunships become OP to the point where it takes insane amounts of flak to destroy them. Flak you can go around. Gunships can go anywhere in seconds. Even if the opponent has enough flak to repel you, you can easily destroy his eco by destroying his mexes. You can force the opponent to turtle so hard to the point where he can't get the eco up to make nukes/anti nukes and then you yourself can simply nuke them. Pelicans with vanguards also become OP simply because they can't be shot down due to all of the peregrines, allowing for snipes on demand. Were invasions in SupCom this easy? Peregrines need a change. Option A. Just remove them from the game; Balancing them just isn't worth it. They add nothing to the game at present and never will. Option B. Take time to balance them. It's a lot harder and could be more disruptive to tourneys (Although to be honest I don't think that anything could ruin tourneys more than current T2 air balance... except for old T2 air balance where gunships and peregrines were dirt cheap) but could result in a better air meta eventually. Possible ideas are quick response aircraft that is shredded by hummingbirds or very slow aircraft that can spam missiles to take out many hummingbirds at once but will lose/tie to one in a 1v1 used to escort gunships. TBH I'd prefer option A. I really don't see many niches for the peregrine that wouldn't either a. Shred hummingbirds as hard as they do now, just make them take longer to do it; or b. Be completely inferior to hummingbirds. TA's Hawks were straight upgrades as well, but aircraft were tankier in that game and it was less of a problem because the freedom fighters didn't die instantly. SupCom is all about straight upgrades. Let's not talk about it. Thoughts?
I think the peregrine's rate of fire needs to be drastically reduced. Gunships also need health reduction so basic missile defense towers are a threat to them. They should be glass cannons and right now nothing counters gunships other than having more Peregrines than your opponent.
Flack Cannons work wonders against Gunships and T2 air in general. Had quite a few games where I had my commander in the middle of a lot of Flack Cannons to stop gunship sniping. As soon as those gunships stopped moving, they imploded due to the AoE that is the Flack Cannon.
I think you either have high rate of fire or you have AoE, you don't have both. I think tower priorities are a big part of the problem here.
Stingers are actually better for cost than Missile Defense Towers(Strength Per 1 Metal:Stinger 0.2469, Missile Defense Tower 0.2083) http://people.dsv.su.se/~akbj7812/pa-db/table/everything.html I don't like the whole kamikaze aspect of Peregrines versus Peregrines. Peregrines fires so fast and do so much damage that even if you send 1 Peregrine against 10 Peregrines, the lone Peregrine is probably gonna kill 1 or 2 enemy Peregrines. A fight between 2 similar sized groups of Peregrines usually ends up in mutual destruction with no survivors. In general I think that the balance favors t2 units way too much. There is a reason everybody are rushing t2. IMO buff t1 Hummingbirds or nerf Peregrines and make them substantially different without one always being the better option.
What if the peregrine ran off of an ammo system kind of like the bombers. The humming bird could be useful for longer engagements as the peregrine would be useful if you needed something in a certain area dead immediately, it would take a while, (maybe 10 sec?) for the peregrine to reload so if you use them as your only fighter, your opponent could send in some spam-able units for your peregrines to waste all of your ammo, then send in your own peregrines to make the kill. You would have to pick your engagements carefully. The hummingbirds would stay as they are for longer engagements. This would save peregrines for high value targets such as gunship blobs.
Solution: Remove Peregrines. Problem: Solved. Move on with your life. Enjoy PA. Stop worrying about the air game. Oh, and don't forget to smile.
AOE AA needs to be toned down drastically. Losing entire flights of air units in the blink of an eye is one of the most frustrating things in the game right now. It's not just the peregrine at fault for this either. The T2 missile ship, the Stingray, will decimate any force of air units that dares get within range. This completely nullifies any interaction between the different combat layers and makes the combat very stale. Its very much "If you have this unit, you win, if not you're toast". Also, there is no way to easily spread out your air units to avoid this, which is something that I feel must be added to the UI if this style of AA is to remain. I don't think range is being explored enough as an option for balancing units. What if the Peregrine had superior range (like 3-4x normal) but much lower ROF/AOE? This means it would be a good skirmisher unit, dipping in and out of combat, but in a straight up fight, the Hummingbird would win. Other ground AA could get a range boost as well, at the expense of DPS, to slow down engagements but broaden the field of combat. This would also help nullify the "Alpha Strike" bonus that bombers have by enabling AA to get the first hit. It would also significantly increase the importance of radar in air engagements, since most units wouldn't be able to see out to their range. This gives a defenders advantage since most (if not all?) radar is static and ground-based (other than orbital). This also opens the doors for all kinds of mobile radar units to be much more useful. Currently, air battles take place in an instant and over tiny distances, but I think it would be more interesting (and more realistic) if they were slowed down some and given some longer ranges. Fighters shooting missiles at each other at essentially point-blank just looks weird to me. I want to see those long arcing missile trails like in classic dog-fighting movies (although to be fair those were pretty close quarters engagements as well).
If peregrines had good dps guns, and not insta death missiles, you could get some nice air battles going where peregrines dog fight in the air, and attempt to shred enemy bombers.
If AoE on anything that isn't a slow arcing shell (or flak) was removed I wouldn't mind in the slightest.
