I keep dying to people sending 30+ T1 Bombers at my Comm. Typically this is early-mid game, at around 12-15 minutes. Before I can get Flak up. I have plenty of AA, but T1 rockets can't take out a direct mass run at a Comm. Are T1 Bombers too cheap? Do I not have enough AA? Does T1 AA need a mild AOE? I'm not sure what I could have done differently - I had 3 Factories pumping out Fighters, and quite a bit of ground AA. The person who attacked me focussed T1 Air so had more fighters, and T1 ground AA is no match for mass T1 Air bombers converging on a single target.
If they go mass air, just add a bit more AA to your armies and be super aggressive. If you feel you are being overwhelmed, get two air factories up and pump out tons of fighters. Maybe even assist each with an engineer to speed it up. Remember, because they went heavy air, they'll be heavily lacking on the ground. Use dox to distract while your tanks take territory. AA prioritizes bombers, so he'll start taking some heavy losses if you have 4-5 AA in all your armies. As a last resort, build aa towers all around your base and 10-11 Spinners around your comm. That will make almost any air snipe next to impossible.
Aha, but you should be sending in large groups of tanks (that bombers suck against), that the enemy who is spamming air is forced to use his bombers on because he spent so much on them he has nothing else to defend his base with. Bombers and air factories are pretty expensive already, so if you're losing the air game by a long way, you should probably be winning the others. Here's a few extra tips. If you're losing air control, keep your planes near your commander and other ground anti air, so that if the enemy tries to engage, they lose a lot against ground AA. Always have a mix of Ants and Spinners in your tank blobs. The number of Spinners depends on how many bombers are coming at your unit groups. Minimum value, if you haven't seen any air from your enemy, 1 Spinner per group (could be anything from 4 to 40 Ants). Maximum value.. probably half Ants half Spinners if your enemy is really spamming the air. Your commanders AA is really good early game, try to keep any fabricators in your base near your commander (e.g. build a line of energy near the factories your commander is building). Ideally the fabricators outside of your base should be expanding with an army nearby, so you can easily send some defence over to them if you see enemy units coming to kill them. Oh one more thing! If you're scared of bomber snipes, it's better to try to get the enemy planes to fly over your anti air. So building a large ring of AA around your commander is probably better than having it all right next to him.
Also, now that ground AA targets bombers, spinners in groups of two or more are practically guaranteed to pay for themselves if attacked by bombers. If you keep them around, it can be very hard for an enemy to ever really get lots of bombers unless he keeps them in his base, never using them offensively. If I see the enemy is amassing a dangerous amount of bombers, I will tend to set a single vehicle factory to build spinners on an area patrol around my commander. As the bombers fly in for a snipe, they are not as tightly packed and will fly over a larger amount of AA. 20 or so spinners will totally wipe out 15 or so well grouped bombers before they can even drop bombs, and another 20 before they can get a second pass. If the opponent hasn't balled them up and they sort of fly in a line to your com, it gets even worse.
If they have three air factories, build four and pump out interceptors. 10 air factories, pump out eleven. Also if you still feel threatened, get t2 air and make the t2 fighters. flak is great too, you can never have too much.
