T1 Air, Good Job Uber :D

I like what you did on T1 air. The bomber are powerfull, but also counterable . The air play is well integrated to the game, but it doesn't encroach on the ground.

Normally i write to complain, so i thought that a good word would be welcomed so there it is, bravo !

Keep going !

T1 air is pretty nice right now. Bumblebees are possibly a little too powerful... but at the same time, people need to learn to counter them.

Is anyone else noticing issues with missiles having a hard time hitting their targets? Especially with Spinners?

I am quite liking the way the balance is evolving. T1 air was powerful in TA as well (ignore AA at your peril) so it feels reasonable to me.

Yes T1 bombers in large numbers are dangerous- however they're easily countered by AA or other fighters.

Ya in fighter to fighter fights some times they just continually miss and circle each other.

I've noticed it too. Ground AA turrets seem less reliable since the latest patch. The rockets just whiz around the target.

I do think that basic missile defense towers could use a range boost.

Either that or we get another anti-air with longer range and lower rof.

Yeah, a lot of AA is really kinda ineffective with the missiles not hitting their targets.

No not really. t1 air is dumb atm.

It shuts out alot of early vehicle openings. Way too much dominance of bomber and hummingbird to the point of commander snipes being pretty common in the meta now adays. I think you know you have a problem when people are doing nothing but viably spamming bombers to snipe commanders. I do it myself when i can't be bothered dealing with crap planets.

And dont give me stuff about "just build anti-air". Not only is there not a timing for it if you want to go land based, but it's an absolute scourge on team games.

Cloakable commanders will stop a lot of cheesy tactics and then I reckon the air is balanced ok. The counters to air need to be a little better. Bots have none and ships have poor t1 aa. Early bomber harass is time consuming, luck and skill. I'm happy with it.

Yea the early harass is fine, but the power of the spam is just too much for most of the reasons you have listed!

Guys, if you think current air-balance is bad. Look at current airbalance on lava planets, above the lavelakes. Ground to air isn't even an option there. Because there usually already is very hard terrain to fight, with lots of bottlenecks etc, ground units are pretty bad already , because they can only attack in a few ways, so they are easily countered. This makes it that you basicly have to go air, and constandly try getting more fighters then your opponent. Because they are so fast, and somuch faster then bombers, its only the numbers that counts. You can maybe try making an orbital factory, orbital worker and some anchors, but count the metal that it costs and you probably see its not such a good idea. In my opinion that is broken combat and it doesn't change much untill one of the 2 players definitly has the most fighters.

Oh gosh the shadow stacks coming at my commander, completely ignoring my FF/Avengers.
No, the T1 fighters were nigh useless in TA

BUT, GOOD JOB, UBER! I love how air is right now.

I like the balance, too, but somehow I think that if you really spam out fighters and bombers in a rate of 3 to 1(3Fighters for each Bomber), then the bombers themselves are pretty hard to kill. This makes it easy for a bomber rush on the commander, while the bombers are hidden in a cloud of fighters.
I've got overrun by that tactic several times already, and the static AAs are pretty useless, if that strategy is used. The only thing you could do is to build as much fighters and AA as possible.
But I have to admit, I have used that tactic myself, too. I rushed with my T1 airunits through the defenses of my enemy who was far more superior and even through a large field of enemy units including many AAs. Even then I have succesfully destroyed his commanders, but he also didn't look at that.

Current air balance sucks. You basically have to open air first in order to defend bomber first. Opening with vehicle factory right now just feels inferior because bombers are just too good right now vs engineers and land aa. Denying opponents air engineers that expand very fast is also hard.
Air openings because of speed of aircraft introduce much more build order poker. If I go interceptor first and my opponent goes bomber, I'm incredibly ahead. If I go interceptor first and I face greedy vehicle opening, I'm seriously behind. And then if you blindly open with aa vehs and you face bots or veh factory tank push, you are behind as well. And some more.

Basically if you have air dominance and ~10 bombers, you are immune to ground harrass and even most main army attacks, because bombers snowball very fast. It's not hard to defend 1 bomber, you need a couple of aa around the map, but to defend 10 bombers you need 10+ aa's in 5-6 different areas(which gives like 50-60) and even then, some of your mexes are unprotected. Plus, land aa is just very immobile.
So the only efficient way to destroy bomber forces is gaining air dominance, which leads the game into boring interceptor spam, although, some t2 attacks seem to be working nicely, but then you have to do one big attack instead of harrass and macro play, which i think is a bit shallow strategically. So we need either more mobile ground aa or decrease mobility of air or bomber nerf or ground AA buff.

Also, I've been vocal about this already, but my point still stands, fights over air dominance are very dull strategically, It's basically whoever masses more t1 fighters and a-moves them into opponent. I think taking away t2 fighter made it even worse, we need some interesting fighter micro or more Air to Air units to make things more deep.

I wouldn't be worried about commander bomber snipes, they are definitely easily counterable if you just make a lot of t1 fighters. It's just one counter though and it would make game more interesting if there were more ways to do it, like at least with mobile aa(big resource investment ideally) or with static aa(small resource investment ideally).

Plus, ground and especially naval Anti-Air is pretty bugged, missiles don't hit air too well, but I believe Uber will fix this soon.

I agree with Matiz on this, but i would like to add that it is possible to dodge bombs with ground, especially earlygame that can be very helpfull.

Would introducing a better series of fighters be beneficial?

Like having Interceptor<Heavy fighter<Light fighter

Would that be funner?

We need diversification of AA.

In Statera, we have the following:
Smasher (Gatling bot): T1 anti-anything gatling bot. Slow aim speed, but large amount of damage. Excellent vs gunships, but less proficient against bombers. Also decent vs land targets, but has low HP for its relatively high cost and needs to be meat-shielded by ants YOLOs or vanguards.
Slasher (Re-named spinner because spinner was poor name. -_- ): Long range anti-anything T1 mobile missile launcher. Slow, but fairly DPS effective. Fast aim speed. Fairly good against any air and also low HP land targets (These are essentially the defense against dox rushing for veh first).
Stinger: T2 flak bot. Insta hit projectiles mean that this unit is excellent against bombers, but low damage hampers it vs gunships.
Hummingbird: T1 fighter. Good missiles do a decent amount of damage with an average RoF. Longish range.
Peregrine: T2 riot fighter. For its cost, the missiles that it shoots out do a low amount of damage, but they also do AoE, making them effective against clumped air units. The range of this fighter is rather poor.

Our air units:
Dragonfly: T1 AA gunship. Slow, but with a large amount of HP. Equiped with a short range anti-anything missile as well as two anti-land cannons.
Bumblebee: Excellent T1 single-target bomber. This bomber is proficient against high health targets, but is less effective vs units.
Pelican: Single unit T1 transport. Nothing to see here.
Kestrel: Fast attack T2 gunship. The definition of glass cannon. Low HP for its cost, but massive amount of damage. Useful for attacking outlying mexes, but generally easily destroyed by AA.
Hornet: Anti-army bomber. Effective vs massed armies, this bomber carpet bombs, dropping low damage but decent AoE bombs that are very effective at destroying units.

I think slightly less damage per bomb would be nice. But air really is coming along nicely. It's way better than the old T2 bomber micro snipes.

So, good going, Uber.

I also believe early T1 air is a bit too much of a cheese at the moment, more like, the only proper way to counter air is air itself

In my opinion bombers should probably require more resources, time to build and be less fast (kinda like artillery units) while T1 air should get a early light gunship (Helicopters?) which would probably die quite fast becouse of the need to stay still while shooting, kinda balancing it out

Oh and bots need AA, it makes no sense not to have cheap, fast and very light units to spam against air

Also i hope in the future i hope we can build some kind of space carrier for planes only. Early planetary invasions always go Space -> Air -> ground right? It might actualy ease up the stalemate when 2 commanders completly control 2 different planets


Finaly, in regards to commanders, while they are super effective against cluster of ground units i believe they need a similiar ability against air, like that blue plasma thing that blasts AoE, except air version

Well both the commander's AA capabilities and the missile tower got buffed, so let's see how it goes.