Is T2 air the most effective strat atm?

In PA it was the T2 fighter, the Hawk/Vamp (Although the Arm F.A.R.K. made the arm Hawk much easier to spam out than the Core Vamp), which decimated bases. Brawlers were much worse in comparison.

As I recall, flak had a really long build time but was actually really cheap per tick, so you could easily assist build it.

The issue remains though, in TA do you remember what pathing was like? On a competitive level one could not have more than 5 assists at a time (with the exception of air cons) so the issue was with build time, not with cost. In PA, build time lengths can be shorted massively just because of pathing - I've had 400 con vehicles assisting one adv air factory - obviously there is no point (having around 8 is optimal) - but its possible.

With TA - trying to get up flakers was a serious effort - in PA its literally set it and forget it and you'll have your anti air complete automatically for you so incredibly quickly. (if you assign 2-3 cons to it)

I believe the idea behind "assisting" is that it allows you to quickly alter your strategy by moving buildpower from one project to another, giving you crucial flexibility and the ability to react to a play that your opponent makes. In practice (and with the completely broken economy numbers and an average combat length in the single digits) it means that people just dump resources into a single project and have it done in seconds. It needs to be done as quickly as possible because an enemy can destroy your hard work in mere moments. The longer a unit or structure is alive the more it pays for itself.

Fix the economy numbers and combat length, and this problem should resolve itself.
The pathing ability of Fabs isn't the problem... it's the economy that's broken.

So you enjoy building flak everywhere? I and many other certainly don't. I like to play the game not worry about being required to flak an entire planet sphere so that my troops arn't obliterated as soon as they leave the base.

Having to spam flak is not a "fix", it's a symptom of a problem. You should never be forced to spam 1 thing to hard counter another to survive. It removes strategy and pigeon holds everyone into the same play style... aka Boring. Their is definitely a fine line that has been crossed, aircraft vs AA spam needs to be brought back over that line.

Doesn't less metal and higher hp just mean less units fighting for longer? Would be incredibly boring to play and possibly more micro intensive.

"Incredibly boring" is a subjective assessment; not one that I share with you.

Not a fix, a counter. One way to counter raids? Spam sentinels everywhere.. all your chokes.. flak is the same.. honestly its not a lot of effort - and the return you get (being safe from brawler raids) pays off very well lategame - also being able to not worry about it allows you to focus on other things more important.

This works fine if all you do is turtle around, and create "safe" zones to move between your bases. What about in the open field? It's not so easy to move a large army fast, build AA, and try not to get nuked or Aircraft massacred.