katastrophe loses four Glaives around 2:30, the remaining four retreat to three Pickets and the commander starts making a Chainsaw. I guess I just don't think eight Glaives was doing much into three Blitz and two commanders.

At 6:40 seven Magpies kill seven Glaives being sent on a flank to kill Impalers. I tried godmoding to remove the Magpies, and the Glaives died to the Knights nearby, although they did kill one.

The Magpies weren't bad, but in the first 7 minutes they only manage the following.

• Kill 11 Glaives
• Put a Recon commander on half health.
• Kill 2 Pickets and 3 Bolas on a different front.

This cost about 2500 in planes and repair pads. A big part of Magpie, as with any air, is that they encourage AA. Apart from that though, I'm not sure that they're doing much more by this point than an extra land factory on the front. The AA factor is big though, although I think large games, especially on a large map like this, will want to have air players anyway.

Around 7:40, 8 Magpies try to finish off a morphed Recon commander, but fall short by 180 damage.

Then at 8:40 14 Glaives are sent north and kill a bunch of mex and a Recluse. Magpies kill 8, but the survivors go on to kill more mex, and probably could have killed even more than they did, as well as a constructor. I count 9 mex killed in total. The raid was still effective.

Then at 10:00 Magpies kill a Lance, fulfilling their job. Glaives are still able to rush in and kill Phantoms and Impaler in chaotic battles.

I get the feelsbad factor of Glaive vs. Magpie. An army of X Glaives just evaporates against X Magpies. There's not much to do, except make it bad at hitting Glaive, but that will be a bit annoying to judge from the air player, and Raven already has that role. I'm not even sure that its efficient, in that I don't think Magpie defense would be sufficient to protect naked expansion. And at 200 energy per shot, is shooting Glaive even efficient?

It is definitely something to watch though.

Magpie is a pile of garbage compared to both raven and phoenix vs glaives, as well as most other low-cost units. Vs lone medium-hp raiders like ducks or pyro it is okay. It is semi-ok vs kodachi and scorchers (especially if they are already low HP) and lone mexes. Problem is, vs ALL OF THESE they do not make cost (in terms of energy traded vs damage dealt) and spend 90% of their life rearming/repairing, killing your eco. I am not sure why there is even a question of magpie being OP.

quote: Sure our air played some small part in trying to stop the raids, but that was due to lack of aa with east raiding forces.

Yes because we all have unlimited ressources... AA is just not cost effective in context. If you don`t bring enough, they will still get killed in enemy-territory (see likho killing gremlins, then getting killed by the other gremlins), reclaim goes to defender, attacker ends up with diminished forces, in the worst case without an army at all. So, you need to be sure to have so much aa that air doesnt even want to attack you in the first place. But at the same time, you still need regular forces to fight on ground. Building that takes so much time that the front is porced up already usually, yes.

quote: I am not sure why there is even a question of magpie being OP.

There is not. It is a question of gameplay. It`s about this:

quote: I get the feelsbad factor of Glaive vs. Magpie. An army of X Glaives just evaporates against X Magpies.

which is understandable since every magpie costs a lot more than a glaive, but there is absolutely no interaction. You cannot dodge, pull back or even shootback. There is not even a point in spreading like you do when a licho appears. The air-player just generates attrition without losing even a single point of health.

Last edit: Listen, it is not that I complain about air being the prime raider-counter in clusterfucks. Swifts do what these magpies did for as long as I play. What I do think tho is that air doesn`t need to be even stronger by having something like odin. But thats too late now anyway, because odin is in game and is probably not doing the surfboard.

This interaction is very similar to Harpy. Harpy vs most ground units is 100% unfun for ground units. It also 1-shots glaives, and several of them can take down just about any unit with minimal losses. And it has a 5s reload which is free.

I would suggest giving magpie a more dedicated "sniper" role, emphasizing long reload and ability to strike mobile targets further. Specifically, giving it the same kind of missiles as those used by harpy could be interesting, as it would make it far more interesting as a flex support unit (rather than direct DD, as it is sorta terrible in that role). For example, instead of trying to directly kill single units, a pack of magpies could instead slow all of them down making the job easier for ground forces (or ravens). It would also make it far more useful in a general AA mix to intercept Odin, renevants and other fat nonsense that may otherwise require a fair bit of firepower to kill in a timely manner.

To compensate for the extra slow damage buff, making magpie about as slow as Raven (and, possibly, increasing reload cost) could be considered.

One more way to "separate" magpie from other bombers could be to make it fly REALLY LOW. Like, literally gunship low, maybe lower. This would further emphasize the "tactical" aspect of it, allowing it to hide behind hills/shields/cloakfields far better than ravens or likhos can, but also dying to stuff like mace and ripper.

Well ravens get annihilated by desolators even without the spires.