Air first viable?

In terms of viable tactics, I think we should be looking at the wider picture.

For me, air and land are like your left and right arms. In the majority of cases you are going to need both for maximum effect. The issue I believe we are talking about here is cost and effectiveness to the player and I would start by basing that around a 1v1 situation.

In this example I would like to think about specialisation vs generalisation as well as land vs air. For starters, neither should be a guaranteed win vs the other. That is obvious.

However, let us ask the question: In a given situation where players would have the same resources available, should specialisation be better than generalisation and should land and air be equally viable?

The answer is not cut and dried. In pretty much every case it depends on the map as to what tactics a player employs.
Map size and distance from enemy. Terrain type/variety. Build area and mass availability (basically resources). Just some of the things to take in to account when choosing what factory to build first.

To elaborate on factories vs resources:
As we know, the cost of factories in SC:FA varied by type. Land cost more mass and air cost more energy. The same was true for the units they produced. This means choosing land means you need more mass available for production. Choosing air means you need more power and therefore, build space. Early game this is an important consideration. Particularly where mass might be less available or scattered over a large area.

That takes care of the viability side of things quite nicely IMO. Though it doesn't really answer the specialisation vs generalisation question.

I think early game, it was previously easier for players to specialise because it's cheaper and often provides a quicker route to higher tech levels. This allowed players to capitalise on the advantage gained by specialising, compensating for the disadvantage of omitting the other unit type. In a lot of cases this could equal a win because it would change to a battle of tech levels.

The difference here is that T2 units will not be the same as in SC:FA, which was the comparison I used to address viability. I imagine we'll be talking about more advanced structures rather than composing ones army with superior units. In that case, offensively things are slightly different but in terms of resource and defence I think things are going to be pretty much the same.

This presents more questions:
1.)Since offensive capability is presumably based on numbers rather than tech level, is specialisation nerfed because any engineer can build both land and air defences regardless of the factory it came from?
2.)Should going to T2 be more or less viable than building another type of factory from an offensive/defensive perspective?
3.)Are we looking at better defences to deal with larger numbers of offensive units produced by better resources gained at higher tech levels?

Because of a very specific problem that has recently become apparent in Forged Alliance as a direct result of making air-first viable.

If costs are such that it is possible to get a bomber out from a starting position without stalling your economy, then it is possible to win or lose on luck alone. If my opponent goes bomber-first, I cannot know this as I have not had chance to scout. It is therefore a gamble - do I make AA first and put myself behind with a potentially useless unit, or do I hope that he's not making a bomber?

It is too late to decide once the bomber has arrived because a good player will bomb the AA as it's being built.

If the commander had very crappy AA capable of taking out one bomber, this would have the effect of keeping air-first as a viable option and thus making the game more interesting and varied, without it turning into a guessing game.

Players should always be vulnerable to raiding, but not to the extent that a first raid can decisively win the game.

Because it was silly to see a few well placed artillery shots down an entire Czar.

Change the air superiority fighter, not the game.

Why not?

You mean like C&C(3/Generals)? Where 4 planes were enough to destroy almost any building?

Perhaps this game needs an Aurora Bomber, a plane that drops a Tac Nuke and cannot be damaged until it has done so?

This is rather offtopic. I would say as it is more about blind Rock-Papper-Scissor start. I saw a FAF game where the first combat unit produced was a mobile AA unit before he even had scouted the enemy. Now how much does a mobile AA unit cost? 28 metal? Thats like 2-3 seconds of income. Not much.
Should there be rushes in PA that are so powerful that you have to make counters before you have time to scout the enemy? If the counters are cheap and multipurpose I think it is okey.
Do you have replay of a good player losing to a single bomber?
I have seen some devastating damage done by a rushed bomber but I haven't seen a bomber rush totally dominate and supress all AA being built.

Except that games with limited payload don't include a commander. Being able to snipe a single unit to win the game imposes some balance limitations - fast moving units able to bypass terrain and deal massive damage in a single pass become much, much stronger.

I'm starting to think Zordon might be on to something with his chatbot comment... This is really basic logic here. If one class of units are dramatically more effective, that's the only class that will be used! You don't 'use them as support' if they're crap, you spend those resources on the good stuff instead!

Because that's not raiding, that's rushing.

And would make the entire rest of the game pointless if every game was decided in the first 5 minutes because of bomber superiority.

If you wanna do that, go play starcraft or CNC generals on one of those cheating maps where the guy gives himself 4 heroic aurora bombers and inst-kills you.

They have different uses, one designed to compliment the other.

They shouldn't be equal, because they are fundamentally different in nature.

If aircraft are equal to land units then you will never build land units, because why would you?

Wait, you think 'balanced' means 'identical to'? Ok, let me use simpler words. Saying that two types of units must be balanced means that when you take into account all their varied characteristics (range, damage, RoF, line of sight, speed, agility, terrain handling, health, etc etc etc) both offer a similar degree of utility for the resources expended to acquire them. So that, you know, there's actually a reason you might choose to use either of them. Sorry, I thought this was a term most gamers understood. Or at least those who argue about balance on forums.

I played Generals for abit. Generally you couldn't make cost in 1 run and the enemy would just keep making more AA putting his valuable structures in a no fly zone.
Aurora bombers couldn't make cost against a single building either if I remember correctly. If you lost them on their way back they didn't make cost.

Since you are interested in examples I'll mention Zero-K. Bombers have a single payload and have to return to rearm after that. Planes can bomb targets and return to refuel even if their cost in AA is there unless it is dedicated anti-plane AA there(difference between Plane AA and ordinary AA is that plane AA has very high alpha/upfront damage but a long reload time which doesn't make it as effective against gunships.).
A napalm bomber which is antiswarm cost 330 metal while raiders cost anywhere between 20 and 135 metal. This makes it impossible to make cost in a single run against raiders if they are spread out enough. It got huge splash so it can make cost against swarms of low HP targets or very fragile expensive units.
Precision bombers deal damage to a single target have alot of HP making them good at sniping targets and returning home for repairs. There few targets at which they can make cost in 1 run.

Aurora bombers didn't get their value back, unless you used them as part of a larger force, in which case their ability to hit hardpoints was invaluable.

Also this doesnt exactly turn me against Supcom style aircraft (ignoring their fuel for now) as they have the same weakness you described, namely that they are very weak to AA. The only difference is that because they don't have to return to base they can press the advantage if the enemy has no defences. This isn't OP planes, this is poor scouting.

Semantics...semantics...

Rushing isn't synonymous with unbeatable.

The difference compared to SupCom where the cost in AA will destroy most bombers before they can even drop their bombs.
Airplanes in Zero-K has more a support role than in SupCom though.

So plan your attack better?

I think if possible any unit type first should be viable based on the maps. With all the units being the same it will be about using the best units for the map. Also I would like the commanders main weapon to be good against everything especially with energy support from the economy like FA's overcharge. I really think a command unit should have no weakness against any unit type not even orbital should be safe from a commanders weapons.

So I think any rush attack that doesn't use your commander should just feed them mass. If the commander has a personal flying transport like in the kick-starter trailer and can shoot from the transport like units in FA he will be a air unit that turns into a ground unit if shot down.

In FA going air first is best if you want to keep your enemy from expanding even if the commander can defend against air he cant expand and defend at the same time so it slows expansion.

I should have worded that better. An initial raiding unit should not be able to destroy a base on its own. Ground raiders can't do it because the commander will shoot them.

We stil want the commander to be vulnerable to air so any AA he has must be near-useless, but I'm arguing that there needs to be a way to stop a single bomber decimating a base in the early game, and this is the best solution I can think of.

No, this is exactly what the OP is talking about. As for a replay showing players losing to bomber-first, they do exist and there is a thread over at FAForever where a few have been posted. I can't link it now but I'll find it later.

I just need to point out that having late-game air with lots of health is definitely a bad thing. Even if it "can only survive a few seconds against late-game defense" it's still bad.

Why?

Because that sort of massed air is a 100% effective commander-sniping tool. The only way to combat it is by preventing it from building up in the first place.

If you do that, then you're mandating that people build swarms of interceptors/ASF.

That's not a choice or calculated decision by the player.

How much is a lot exactly?

FA strat bomber amount of health? More?

FA's strat. bombers easily meet the definition of a lot.

Game isn't even playable yet and we get the prelude of Balance-talk already.

I hope all of you have paid up for alpha access if you are so interested in shaping balance.

I guess they went hand in hand with shields, if you didn't have air control you would keep your commander further back in your base (or hey, another planet!) and under shields, drawing damage away from you and also killing off as many enemies as possible. That said, I haven't played too much multiplayer FA myself but I have noticed in a lot of replays the ACUs are hidden underwater to avoid such attacks, which speaks a lot to their effectiveness.

Just one of those things that will have to be balanced.