Air-Ground Combat is a lot better, but this happened to me the other day.

...tsk...

I would like to make you a challenge. I want you to try to kill just my commander with just your grenadier, then I want you to try to stop a single bomber from killing your commander by himself.


because of ubercannon, no amount of micro saves the grenadier. However, right now no control trick of the player can gurantee a single shot on a single bomber if they fly at a certain signature angle, the commander shot never lands...

It's an easy way to kill the enemy commander by doing something unexpected.

The only way to counter it is to expect it, and that puts you in the disadvantageous position if your opponent does anything else. A standard amount of missile turrets (~3 to 7 spread around the base to deal with incoming hummingbirds) aren't enough to take out more than 40 bombers, and flak is out of reach early game, so there's not much you can do.

Uber cannons can do a vertical loop if they miss their target, though it usually only happens on smaller planets.

Aircraft finally needs collision reenabled...

Force them to spread the same way as ground units. Maybe let them push them on top of each other (that works in 3D space!), but prohibit them from firing whenever not at the correct altitude so that only the bottom aircraft can attack.

That way bombers are forced to either perform a carpet bomb or to line up properly for a snipe. Either way, the threat of an early bomber snipe can be reduced, without screwing with the numbers.

1st case: Bombers are unable to snipe a single target.

2nd case: Having bombers attack one after another effectively caps DPS vs single target and also makes them more vulnerable to AA.

Efficiency when performing a carpet bombing remains entirely unaffected.

You do realize it takes 60 t1 bombers to perform such a snipe, right? You don;t get that many by just accumulating them with 2 -3 air factories. It takes a concentrated effort, which takes away from the front lines.

Yes, but it's quite difficult to deny such a snipe. Undeniable damage spikes are always a bad thing because they mean that you can end the game at will, despite your actual economical advantage.

That's as if there were nukes, but no antinukes in the game. Potential game enders with no working counter which can be deployed at will.

Of course your enemy could attempt to intercept you with an equal amount of fighters, but forcing him to build such an defensive force in advance just because you might eventually attempt a snipe...

Also note that with combat engineers, producing sufficient amounts of bombers is actually quite a simple task. And so is sending a bunch of cheap fighters ahead for increasing the survivability due to the unavoidable overkill issue.

The issue isn't so much the amount of damage the bombers are dealing, but the intensity and the reaction time you are granting the opposite player.

This has been discussed at length before, and Scathis explained giving Air 3D dimensions in this way would be a complete (unnecessarily) pain in the shaft:

I now think overlap can be controlled more easily by having a formation specifically created for those instances when somebody sends 60+ bombers against a single target, so that we don't get the same degree of overlap.
The whole situation's gotten a lot better as formations and AA's balance have improved anyway, so it's not like that isn't happening - the game's balance is miles better than even a couple of months ago, which is so much fun.. *turns PA on*

I do think the Commander could do with a similar way of engaging Air as it has for Land and Naval.

The odd Aircraft collision could look very pretty - it's just whether that can be accomplished without too many headaches for Uber.

Scathis just lacked the right idea
He always thought that he had to stop air units entirely when collisions occured.

The trick is not to prevent stacking entirely, but only to disable weapons if stacking occurs and to enforce vertical stacking. (Latter one not only to "signal" stacking, but also to prevent issues with AoE AA becoming OP accidentally!)
If only one of the units is approaching its target, the other (friendly) unit is to perform the evasion maneuver. If both are approaching a target, it doesn't matter, one has to back off. Stacking with already stacked units (you know, when it's getting REALLY crowded up there) would be mostly cosmetic.

That way path finding doesn't need to be changed, aircraft doesn't need to slow down, and intensity of single target strikes is still limited.

As for multi target strikes: "Stacking" isn't any issue in that case since in only has an impact on units which are about to attack. So units may stack as much as they want during turn maneuvers, as long as only a single bomber attempts to bomb a single target at the same time.