Air is overpowered and annoying

With the current effectiveness of ground based AA, no that can't really be argued in all seriousness.

The only benefit of ground based AA is that enemy fighters can't take them out while they can kill your own fighters when outnumbered. But in all other cases t1 fighters are just so much better against bombers that ground based AA is totally useless (unless its the very early game and you didn't get an air fab running yet).

And the cost of a single t1 air fab (which is all you need for a decent fighter cover) is really not that much compared to having to build dozens of aa turrets around your base. Just have a couple of eng assist the factory for some cost efficient AA.

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I agree that having to go air to fight against air isn't something I'd be happy as the final result. Fighters have lots of advantages by their design alone (very mobile AA, fast to react to unexpected situations, able to get bombers before they can shoot) so that they don't also need to be so much better at killing air then ground or naval based AA (Ie. they one-hit kill bombers while vehicle AA needs 2-3 hits with less range, much lower mobility, etc.).

I agree that AA missiles should be uniform based on their turret design, working within the same balance area.

However fighter craft should always be superior in AA actions as due to their very nature have advantages that surface AA cannot achieve.

I would prefer it if AA missiles were all strong enough to 1 hit kill like fighters, but with a longer cool down (Even with the AA units having multi barrelled missile launchers.)

They already DO have advantages as they are capable of intercepting enemy aircraft at a much larger distance due to the fact that they are mobile. No need to boost them even further with superior stats.

This was me.

thank you so much!

It was me. I assume at this point either the forum move or the mods get rid of my posts, which i don't really look twice at because it isn't like i care which or either way.

I like how at this point the only way to win a game is to spampatty it up with fighters immediately, then bombers, then aa tanks, and if enemy artillery then bomb them with a heavy forwarded anti air point guard, and otherwise bomb their base similarly using a forward of fighters and aa tanks followed by bombers.

Only way. Occasionally artillery wins only with heavy fighter support. Which is still really air.

My point was to bring the AA turrets up to the fighter weapons stats, and then bring the rate of fire down for all of them due to their high burst damage.

But in most if not all respects, fighters should be superior to all AA methods.

In real life when launching a missile from a fighter, and the exact same missile from a ground based launcher, the fighter's missile will allways have a longer range because it will start with a higher altitude and velocity.

Of course it is also possible for a turret to carry larger missiles which could make up for this, a turret could also carry more of them.

Something to consider when balancing Fighters vs Turrets for anti-air. And It's not that hard to just build one air factory, set a patrol route around your base, and then que up a million fighters. It's a lot less micromanagment than spamming AA turrets and offers better flexibility.

Exactly.

I too agree that the fighter starts at a better position to aa with.

However, i argue that queueing fighters and seting patrol, and queueing turrets and leaving a bot to repair, are both low micro. Just one you could move.

I'm not arguing the order of power, I'm arguing currently aa towers don't function, they outright do nothing but sponge. Aa tanks only do something because they are mass produced cheap mobile aa that fighters cannot target, which still dies to bombers but along side fighters does a better job at countering enemy fighters.

Does that actually work? I tried setting assists from a factory one time and it didn't work. Haven't tried with patrol points tho......

Patrol out of factory does work. A factory will be likely able to assist another factory in the future (a la SupCom Factory Assisting), but a factory will never be able to patrol. Unless it's a Fatboy, but I don't think PA is really in need of a mobile bomb-spewing factory.

Cool! I figured assist command from factory would make units built there assist whomever. Tried it with an air factory to have fighters auto guard the commander. Simply ended up with planes that just sat outside the factory. Gotta remember to use patrol next time. That'll make things simpler

air is extremely easy to defend against using fighters. I would maybe agree that the ground defense vs air isn't great but all you need to do is have patrolling fighters and they will defend very well even if they have more fighters than you

The trick is to set a patrol route from the factory and then every fighter built by it will start patrolling. If you just leave this running you will eventually have a giant ring of fighters orbiting your base. Because you won't be sending these fighters to attack, they will usually not get depleted unless your enemy tries to attack them (above YOUR base, good luck) and will be able to cut any bomber attacks to shreds.

If you build two of these factories you will have even better protection.

I have actually noticed the opposite, in that I built a bunch of bombers (tech 1 and tech 2) and sent them against my opponents forces. They were evenly matched for the most part, and my bombers got torn to shreds, and most of his army was still standing after the attack. I think the problem with air lies not in the fact that its either overpowered or under powered, but that the mechanics for it aren't perfect yet. They weren't "perfect", by any stretch of the imagination in Total Annihilation, but the air units in TA worked because of the variety of aircraft. You had the Brawlers/Rapiers as gunships, able to amass and destroy most ground forces. You had bombers and strategic bombers, very capable at leveling bases or massive targets. Then you had your anti-air/fast attack aircraft, such as the Hawk, which would be paper thin, but work because of the sheer speed of the aircraft. It wasn't impossible to hit them, just really hard to. Neither group of aircraft type was better than the other in certain aspects (Gunships had destructability, bombers had base leveling powers, and fast attack craft had survivability with their speed). I think they need to add gunships still to the game, and then start tweaking damage/health on aircraft. Hopefully we can get the same level of mechanics for PA as was in TA, where neither unit type (Air, Vehicle, Bot or Sea) was more powerful than the other, it was just how you approached it/what you built.

Right now air units kind of suck against anything that's not buildings or commanders. Send them against tankblobs and the tanks will cut them to shreds against all logic.

People who complain about air being overpowered just don't know how to protect there commander.

Air is also extremely potent when...
A: Taking out early explorative Fabbers
B: Murdering Bots en masse
C: Murdering Navy en masse
D: Murdering Air en masse
E: Building on islands or in inaccessible areas
F: Providing the cheapest route to T2 Structures
G: Disabling Artillery, especially Pelters

Oh yeah, air is pretty nasty vs navy. I never tried it against bots though. But for some reason tanks rip them to shreads. Unless that's changed, I'll admit I haven't tried it in a while.


Also are they really the cheapest route to T2? I thought air fabbers were the least efficient?

Air Fabbers are the least efficient, but a T2 Air Factory only costs 2k metal; compare that to the 5k that other T2 factories cost.

I hope they throw some decent AA on the navy soon, it would be good to have more epic navy battles, I know there are much more pressing concerns within development but I am hoping for this.

Im going to say i disagree with this post beacuase

• It is not that hard to build AA anymore
• Just build fighters
• Umm ya

I agree with this post beacuase

• I found out with the whole AA thing is that you allmost 100% need fighters to be able to take down T2 bombers without turret losses i was sat there with about 40 turrets and the T2 bombers about 5 would allways die as the dropped a bomb and kill a bunch of my defenses
• Navy turrets are very slow so defending a navy base is a pain