Scalpels are roughly even vs. Buoys but you were throwing them into a numerical disadvantage; Stiffening your line with a few Halberds in front of the Scalpels was a good idea you gave up on too soon; the main problem with the air switch was that you overinvested in its bp and starved your main factory and it was otherwise effective, probably more so than the Lance I would've gone for in your place.

I'd judge that you were still in a playable position when the game ended; You were kicking SmiletoLife out of the reclaim field (and you could at least bring a Quill over from the plane fac pretty quickly), you had a window of opportunity with bombers uncontested by AA, and you could've evened the income by getting Daggers back into the top-left.

You would have benefited a lot from a small overdrive investment in your middle high ground mexes. Look at SmileToLife's high ground setup, then look at the overdrive graphs. This was actually a bigger deal than the reclaim.