The tier 2 bombers are way way to OP in my opinion. It doesn't matter if i had 30+ air and tech 2 turrets if you send in 30 of those bam half of base exploded and commander usually gets hit to. It's really frustrating that we dont have anything proper to battle those with defensively (aside from aircraft..?) I feel like there should either be more defense options/shield options at home base, or a raise in damage on the anti air turrets, OR drop some of the shield on the tech 2 bomber. So many times the game is won with the person who built the most tech 2 bombers first.
Is it a case of Bombers too strong, or just plain old lack of equivalent defenses? Considering we KNOW we're missing appropriate T2 AA(unit AND Structure based) lets get that added in first so so we can judge the bomber balance fairly. Mike
I am sure you are aware that alpha means: Balance isnt very important right now. It will probably be redesigned so much in beta that what we have now doesn't really matter much. But to help you with your problem in the current balance: I've been successful in defending bomber attacks by spread out ground aa towers around my commander (spread out so much that the bomber die before reaching my commnader) or by spotting attacks with radar and air fighters to intercept bombers.
Might I add a balance idea above here? Air is already played out as a decision of higher resource use and risk, so why not continue to play in on that, and make bombers and such leave crashed debris upon death? That way you can recollect the debris for metal. or spread out units of AA vehicles/bots. I personally use a scout vehicle and 4-8 aa rocket tanks, and hide those in plateau crevices amongst the map. If an enemy air scout (always an air scout, people are so cliche and predictable) sees one, shoot them down swiftly and/orfailingtodothat move location to a scout's vision away. And stagger them. Have some far out and some closer but accumulatively in a circle so there is no straight torwards you lap of vision. Hell, even add a little artillery on them later when they are tucked away in a plateau crevice, so they can peck on land passerbys and then flee or leave the artillery and maybe a tank to fight and lose while the AA flees to a new location.
One time I was bombarding my opponent with those T2 Arty Tanks, Shellers I think. Isn't that the same name as the T2 Long Range Arty though? Whatever. Point being, I had maybe 10, 15 T1 Hummingbirds flying about them, and my opponent sent around 20 T2 Bombers to kill the Shellers. 80% of the Bombers were decimated before they could drop their payload, and the remaining 4 were picked off by the Hummingbirds. Gods, that is a weird word, hummingbird. It just looks wrong. Anyways, point being, is that the T2 Bomber is a Glass Cannon to the absolute max. They are highly specialized weapons, and that's a good thing in my opinion. Easy to kill, but if they get in range of anything you hold close and dear, wave good bye!
They just kinda buffed all air, with the speed increase, so anyone knew would probably have that opinion. But all of us who have been in for awhile have seen wild swings all over the place in terms of balance. Some of the sea units use to one shot anything and have ridiculous range. Its def. an alpha, and while I'm proud of the current state of the game and the progress we have made, I suppose some people are going to keep expecting a finished game.
You people are way to quick to jump on the hate band wagon shut the ... up and re-read the post. You all are assuming im throwing a tantrum over here about balance and "expecting a finished game" I know its a alpha, i have played many alpha and beta's this is not my first one. I was only asking of opinions about the T2 bomber in its CURRENT STATE. It SURE feels a little to strong. Point taken that we do not have a T2 AA gun though which will probably help. It's just so fast, that even when i had 30 + T1 aa guns, all of them went right through those and destroyed everything. Ive played 20+ games and while it's not a lot it's not like i played 1 game and qq'd instantly. Im asking opinions people stop instant assuming its a "finished game" bandwagon because thats what the "cool kids" are doing. Edit - If someone would like to provide CONSTRUCTIVE criticism and ways to battle these OP Bombers, i would be happy to hear it.
Patrolling interceptors shred them. If the bombers reach your base then something has gone terribly wrong. AA turrets deal with the 2nd payload but are not meant to deal with the first payload. Interceptors fulfill that role.
I didn't mean to offend you. But they patch the game every other day at least. And literally by end of today or tomorrow what you are talking about might be completely different. I agree they are a little OP atm, but I have successfully defended against them. Personally I have noticed that many players don't think big enough. They are content with one or two factories. You need more more more of everything. If you don't think ever expanding and someone else does they will probably beat you. I like to play to win as much as the next person, but I'm mostly looking for bugs and trying to figure out what changes the devs have made in the recent patch and how it changes the game, etc.
I actively work on balance every day. Balance is important. If it wasn't, we wouldn't want you playing. Currently, at T2 there is no AA base defense beyond many, many T1 AA turrets. Which can still be effective against T2 bombers when many are built. However, the most effective defense for Bombers are fighters. Fighter's sole purpose is air-to-air defense. I tend to build an air factory, give it patrol orders around my entire base and queue up over 100 fighters. That usually does a decent job.
It's just so hard to talk about balance when 90% of the players abuse alpha-exploits. I am not blaming them for it, it's natural, but it has a drastic impact on balance. Adding in real mex that cannot be stacked will probably change a lot.
I'd be more concerned with T2 bombers invalidating T1 equivalents myself. Currently, if I have the Economy to support it (and late game I always do), there's no tangible advantage to build T1 bombers over T2. Basically all T2 units are currently behaving as a direct upgrade to T1 units in terms of power, and just cost a bit extra. I'm not seeing the Hornet act in a different way to the Bumblebee , nor having a specialisation or specific task you would build it for... she's just a better bomber than the Bumble. But, this is Alpha. I hope that Scathis is just keeping things in check until new systems come online and other behaviours for both weapons and units are available to differentiate T1 and T2.
As an avid user of T2 bombers I must say they are a little OP at the moment, even sending in waves of 4-5 into a pretty well defended base can wreak havok, and can pretty much snipe the commander. On thing I feel really shift them towards balance is the fact that the metal output of air facts/fabbers is LOW, but you still need quite the energy farm. It feels like you need 2-3 fabs or my commander at least assisting the T2 factory, and that you absolutely need 3-4 factories in order to make it worth while. In other words: Teched-up Rush play. If someone attacks first before you get your factories up (totally feasible since you need a lot of fabbers to build in a reasonable time) = done. Almost had that happen one game. If I hadn't had a ridiculous amount of turrets up.......... The player did take out my T1 fact, cutting off my ability to produce cheap air fighters, and more importantly, scouts. I guess my point is that there are counters, but the tend to be counters specific to the build, and not general practices.
Whilst it's a strong unit and you can just build up a lot of them to take out commanders en masse something tells me anyone just sticking with that build is either going to grow tired of it and try other things or they will not learn any new tactics. Having your commander sniped is something people will get tired of. Personally I think t2 units are awesome and the artillery tank is just as strong because it can just tear through a base, as is the leviathan. My first game against players I cheated the economy system I think at one point everyone is going to exploit a glitch to win but it's less fun after time. In my last game I had my commander sniped by bombers despite air defences etc but they did a quick recon of my base and in comparision to them I'd been building building they were terrified of me so it was the only logical way they could think of winning
Then fix the two big ones and like you said: Fix the building stacking issue and get metal points working. But ATM, its like we are on the fun metal maps of core prime!
I had a game the other day with a guy that did nothing else than produce bombers the entire game. As a result, I figured I needed anti air, so I started to dedicate a single T1 factory to nothing more than building T1 AA and have 2 T1 bots constantly building new AA turrets. Result? His bombers couldn't push through only taking out a smaller number of turrets and T1 AA at a time. I simply sent some tanks his way and he couldn't do a thing.
