The main problem is the snowball, the Galata turrets are great against 4 or less bombers, but if you have say 7 bombers, you can one pass the Galata turret and sweep up the expansion it was protecting without a loss. I think a cheap unit like TA's defender could be nice, cheap, weak and could attack land too. Not as good as a laser but nice if spammed and sorts some of the paper scissors rock we get with point defenses in PA: Torpedo + aa: send 1 hover tank Aa + turret: send 1 sub 2aa +2turrets +2 torpedo: send 3 destroyers/ 8 tanks / 10 air
I would say that in our games the other day, I had air superiority in both and *lost* to a concentrated tank push. Careful expansion + turrets on a smaller map totally shuts down air. I had more eco than you, but I'd spent it on bombers / fighters whilst you had a nice big tank blob with stingers... end result my base was levelled and I couldn't really defend against it It was probably because the maps were smaller though, I agree on bigger maps air is more of a problem.
SupCom handled this nicely by giving air units great speed (especially late game) but crappy turning and acceleration. It meant you had to micro your air force for the desired results, but it also meant you couldn't just send the air force in willy nilly. It would bleed into enemy air defense and get shot down. That said, air didn't die quite so fast in SupCom, either.
I'd agree. Air superiority is good for slowing expansion and getting yourself an economic advantage. But that advantage needs to be quickly converted into something other than T1 air (T2 is ok, but the kestrel and wyrm don't survive that long against flak or storms). The commander and a few aa turrets or spinners is enough to prevent the air player from doing any serious damage to a base and the time taken to build up enough air for a commander snipe is usually enough to get up a t2 vehicle factory and a Storm at which point your air is meaningless. Air can also be a risk. If you lose your early bombers and fail to shut down expansions then you can struggle to actually mass up enough bombers quickly enough to take out defended targets later on.
My thoughts on air: 1. Slow everything (Other than Icarus and Wyrm) down 10%. 2. Remove the T1 bomber's ability to devastate dox armies. Make it single target, high damage. 3. Either give air more health or reduce aa damage. 4. Make the Galata T1.5, add a new weaker T1 anti-anything turret so that defending against air is easier. 5. Add micro to air battles. Give the hummingbird a light anti-anything machine gun that can only fire forward and add a new, more expensive T1 fighter that only fires forward with more range, damage, and speed than hummingbirds. Slow down missiles so that their effectiveness can be reduced with micro. 6. Add more AA options to the game and make the current ones more interesting. 7. Give the Icarus more HP so that it's viable as a combat unit. 8. Change the Hornet to a medium health low damage high area of effect carpet bomber. 9. Increase Wyrm speed so that it's fun; lower bomb speed. 10. Give the piranha AA missiles; give the narwhal flak and move it to T2. Ten points that summarize what Galactic Annihilation does to air that are completely applicable to vanilla.
I don't think the biggest problem is AA. Both galata turrets and spinners do a great job at countering any planes and they counter bombers quite badly despite being quite cheaper. The problem is that t1 air is very snowbally and the maps have the metal very spread out, which makes the guy with more map control have a lot more resources. Air is the best way to mantain map control so that's what people do. Also most maps don't offer enough metal to go t2 without having taken a lot of the map already, so flak cannons come too late to the party and hummingbirds are the better choice vs air. To add insult to injury t1 air fabbers are so good that not sniping them early game gives your opponent a big advantadge. But every t1 AA unit despite dox is very slow. Also t1 air doesn't have any defensive AA options, like bot factories have the tesla now. Making the icarus good vs fighters or making the angel t1 and repurpose it to counter hummingbirds would make the air play much more balanced. Tldr; More easy to access metal would make air less mandatory. Something that can snipe air fabbers would make hummingbirds less mandatory. Some slower AA unit to defend yourself if you don't have air supremacy in the t1 air factory would make air control more interesting.
Or we could restrict expansion via air by tuning air fabs. Maybe make them slower to slow expansion out the gate. Force players to develop on the ground for security reasons.
Air Micro is a mechanic that would enable a player who's losing the air war to retake it if they play their cards right. It's a mechanic that becomes less effective the more fighters you have and thus isn't easily abused by the person already winning air. It's also another choice as to where you spend your attention; do you lose the battle so that you can win the economic war or do you win the battle to try to snowball an advantage? I am completely disregarding any post that's five words or less. Expand; if you can't elaborate on why exactly you think a suggestion is or is not good then your opinion is useless.
takes away t1 air having any antiblopoption ... i don´t see how a worse aa unit should make defending air easier ... also why give this anti- anything when you have already a number of antiground turrets ... why should players be forced in having to build a good and a bad version of a fighter ... can´t we just have a good fighter for its purpose? adding more aa options makes it simply more difficult to differentiate aa and adds the risk that options become redundand .. rather focus on few options that are consistently used .. disagree with that as this unit is meant for high priority target sniping also considering point 2 this way you are forcing t2 ... i don´t see the fun in this to a unit that is meant to be basicaly a floating heavy tank ... does it help with balance? would lead to seas being litered with piranha´s that are otherwise rubbish against seaunits unless in massive numbers ... basicaly seadox with better AA ... also why have the narwal t2 when the stingray is its aa successor? the weirdest thing is you ask for more options yet then also ask for options being taken away .. why is it ok to have aa across the board but its not ok to have an early air antiblopoption or not a t2 anti-aa snipeaircraft .. why force people to fly their aircraft into aa in order to kill them or to use ground units to do so? this is about balancing air ... not making air entirely horible to use ...
That's the problem with T1 air. The bomb should have a little splash, but single target for T1 is just easier to balance. We need dox blobs to be viable raiders again. This means that you can have one turret providing both anti-air and anti-ground, so less metal spent on defending expansions. If Galata is moved to T1.5, it should also have a range increase. This isn't about a good fighter and a bad fighter. This is about a general purpose fighter that can also attack ground that doesn't require micro to be effective vs a fighter that can only attack air that can be very powerful if micro'd but isn't very powerful without micro. Let's look at the different types of AA that I can think of Moderate damage anti-anything missiles High damage low rof flak Low damage high rof flak High damage volley fire missiles Long range low damage instahit Long range medium damage lasers (see legion mod) Very long range moderate damage missiles Long range aoe low rof missiles I think you get the idea. The hornet is useless atm and unless it gets a huge health buff it will continue to be with its current long range missile gunship role. You aren't forced T2; you merely need to go T2 in order to get better than decent anti-army. No one uses worm because it's freaking slow and unfun to use. Yes, I like to see seas being littered with piranhas. Stingray needs to find a role. It can't be anti-orbital, anti-air, and anti-ship all at once when it's fairly bad at most of those roles. Cutting AA from stingray seems like a good idea that can justify it getting decent anti-ship. I give more options than I take away. Early air anti-blob is killing early game raiding. Anti-anti-air sniperaircraft? You wat m8? What? What I am asking for is literally what I did for Galactic Annihilation air. While I recall that you had several complaints about GA, I don't think GA's air+anti-air was one of them. Was GA air horrible to use? I'll see about getting it back onto PAMM today if you need a refresher.
