Air balance is so frustrating.

[Ecthelon]

My latest game experience:
I started off spamming lots of land. I claimed large areas of land, being sure to surround and defend everything with AA turrets and vehicles. I moved into advanced factories, and started building flak as well once I had advanced fabbers. At that moment, approximately 400 trillion bombers sniped my commander. WTF. Seriously, I had maybe 15 AA turrets in range of the swarm and it barely scratched it. Why are bombers so cheap and quick to build? If the game is constantly going to have a problem with everyone having too much eco then the balance is just going to suck. Its not fun to just spam air and nothing else, but it seems really effective.

[kasixLv]

Well most games have air powerful but vulnerable. Dont just rely on anti air turrets and vehicles, build atleast some fighters, t2 fighters eat anything in matter of seconds.

[Quitch]

I'm assuming you mean T1 Galata Turrets, because T2 Flak Turrets absolutely destroy bomber swarms. As the game goes late you really have to remember what the win condition is and look to your Commander's safety.

[Sagi]

i imagined flak turrets came into game for this very problem.
You also failed to do the very basics of rts games, SCOUT!

Know what your enemy is doing before he is able to do it.

[Ecthelon]

I think I only managed to get down 1 flak turret before they got to me, the rest were all t1. I should have scouted, but I would never have expected such a massive air force by minute 9. I guess I should get used to PA.

[Lula Mae]

Questions to ask yourself

- Did I watch the replay of the game to learn from the experience?
- Did I consider what I could have done to prevent the other player from amassing all those bombers?
- Situational awareness: Did I even know the other player was building so many bombers?
- How well did I raid my opponents economy?

[Ecthelon]

I feel like you just gave me generic "get good" questions rather than reading the thread. What's the point of watching a replay of a guy spamming bombers in his base? The only way to have got to him on the large planet would be to have my own air force, which I already discussed. I wouldn't have imagined that it was possible to build bombers that quickly, which I already discussed. I should have scouted more, which I already discussed. I didn't raid that oponents economy becuase he was on the other side of the planet to me and I had other problems.

[Quitch]

Originally posted by Ecthelon:

I feel like you just gave me generic "get good" questions rather than reading the thread. What's the point of watching a replay of a guy spamming bombers in his base?

How else do you expect to learn how to stop people without reviewing the game and learning from your mistakes?

[Ecthelon]

Your logic doesn't really hold there. I expect to learn to stop people by having seen that they build loads of bombers. I played the game. Bombers were a thing. I learned.

[Lula Mae]

I didn't realize you were having other problems.

Here's the thing though, if in addition to your other problems, you had time to claim large areas of land, have lots of vehicles, and static defenses, and move into t2, all the while leaving your opponent uncontested, then they *lots* of time to build bombers.

Many players, including most Uber & Platinum ranked ones that I know, will not play on large planets because everyone has to go heavy air to survive, and then it becomes a sim-speed killing slug fest that drags on forever if the game lasts more than 20 minutes due to the high unit counts.


Air is not unbalanced. Admittedly, it can seem that way if you don't have any. :)

As an example, I was recently in a 3v3 where it became 2v1 against me, and the player in white had massive air and I had none. Although it almost cost me the game, I made a conscious decision to forego air and adjusted my tactics accordingly.

The game was casted by Marshall and you can see me get hammered at the times listed below.

18:45 - Marshall discusses my decided lack of air units
21:00 - First air snipe attempt
21:30 - Manhattan sent into my base
23:20 - Second air snipe attempt
27:00 - Third air snipe attempt (I'm now at 8% health)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC5zPrnTVjA

[Ecthelon]

The snipe was made against me at 9 minutes into the game. I was advancing steadily that whole time and was about to roll over another opponent. I should have built air, but that doesnt change how surprising it was to me that a massive bomber force could be made that fast.

I see that air can be easily countered with more air, but thats strange to me. The disconnect between land and air play is quite jarring when t1 AA is so useless but other methods work so well.

It stifles variety. Instead of the option of going land with AA defences and accepting that you might be a little less adaptable against air threats, you are forced to just build air every single time. This makes it hard to assign roles in a team for example, when everyone must go air due to the extreme vulnerablity without it even for a short period.

[Magna0pera]

Im just a nub, but teir 1 anti air is not useless. I have seen a couple of spinners shoot down countless aircraft. I feel if you want to forgo air you need vehicles with spinners in the mix. If you go bots then you need air, becuase while dox can shoot down aircraft, they aren't great at it. Not like a spinner. But building an air factory and having some fighters on a hotkey can save an awful lot of grief.

Seems like your opponent just spent all his money on bombers. You should watch the replay, maybe you can steal his strat, if it seems effective. Win or lose I always watch my replays to see what went right or wrong.

One thing it did notice, from watching my last replay, is that a boombot running at full speed cannot be hit by a t1 bomber, so if the enemy turns out with bombers to deal with early dox then it may be worth switching to boombots.

Air is powerful because it is fast and flexible, but it's easy to make a mistake and they all get shot down so fast.

[Kyso4ek]

Air has always been OP in PA:T.

People often build 3 bots and like 3 air at the start of the game.

The reason for this is that when you build lots of air the whole enemy domain becomes very vulnerable. Air blobs threaten too much stuff to cover with flaks and galatas not to mention that it would require a disproportionate amount of time and micro to set up those galatas everywhere on the map. You are much better if you just spam more air. And then the opponent starts spamming more. And then you. Hence the neverending air spam and whoever spams the most always wins.

As soone as you won air the game becomes very lopsided because you can collect infinite amounts of metal for free and the opponent can not move out of his base. You can just build a nuke or whatever.

Some problem is also too much metal on all maps and sometimes they are too big as well and it works in favor of collecting huge air blobs.

[Kyso4ek]

It would be cool if we had an air nerf. For example, the bombers simply can not deal damage to the ants and levelers. That would be an instant nerf to air and an instant buff for tanks (and bots still stay vulnerable).

Right now people spam more air to counter air. And if we had this change, people would actually use air against bots, bombers and for transport/scout. Vehicles would shrug off t1 air and the land war would be more active and early in the game.

[Lula Mae]

Originally posted by Max Damage:

It would be cool if we had an air nerf. For example, the bombers simply can not deal damage to the ants and levelers. That would be an instant nerf to air and an instant buff for tanks (and bots still stay vulnerable).

Right now people spam more air to counter air. And if we had this change, people would actually use air against bots, bombers and for transport/scout. Vehicles would shrug off t1 air and the land war would be more active and early in the game.

Another alternative is to go into Community Mods and disable any or all air.

[loganjamesalex]

This helped me a lot

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=634979152