My thoughts is to make the aircraft factory more a support than it is now. Remember this is an idea, numbers mentioned don’t have to be final and are up to balancing.
The general idea is that the air factory gets more supportive and planes get a more specific role. Also give the possibility of late-game air.
Currently fighter plane is used to scout, scout plane is pretty useless in land battles, licho and phoenix kill everything, especially lighter unit groups. Most planes get redundant fast after a bit of ground aa, and licho is only possibility left. Also winning the vamp fight is crucial in most current fights.
By reducing the line of sight (LOS) of fighterplanes they can’t just kill easy vamps/planes in enemy territory. Early fighters/attack planes are much safer with a place to hide. In addition making planes generally less lethal and more hp they are more likely to survive longer and less commkillers early game. And with the higher survivability you can build up your air force to scary proportions late game, just like the flow of the rest of the factories.
Also static aa need to change, especially the screamer, which is in fact a large no flight zone. No fun for air players.
* crane
Job: constructor
More hp (4 times) as it instant dies to everything currently, a little bit slower to counterweight.
***Radar plane
job: Scouting
Increase line of sight (about 1.5 of current), more hp (3 times), remain radar range and sonar.
Use to scout enemy factories early game instead of fighter.
Also gives LOS for planes in enemy territory and LOS for unprotected flanks.
* Avenger
Job: anti-raider, light anti-air
Almost no LOS, better laser (1.5 times more damage) to better kill ground units.
* Vamp
Job: anti-air
Almost no LOS, get 3 times more hp and 1.5/2 times more damage. Remain 50 % slow when firing.
Vamp can easier escape other vamps without being destroyed. You don’t need mass of them just to counter enemy vamps.
* Licho
New job: the anti-heavy.
Less cost (around 1200-1500) less damage, less AoE and much more impact (which is the coolest part of the licho bomb anyway) so it can do huge fall damage to heavy units and not really worth it to use a bombing run on small units. Remains its LOS.
Skilled players can maybe influence the direction of the impact with attack ground’ to send the unit to a specific way.
***Shadow:
New job: anti-building (anti-static units)
More hp (1.5/2 times), small LOS, less damage (0.5-0.2 less than current) The bomb which the shadow drops has 5 seconds between drop and impact. It becomes less of a commkiller. Maybe add a parachute for visuals :D.
Skilled players can use it together with emp or predict the path of a unit and hit a unit with ‘attack ground’ ahead of the unit. Or can use them to do eco-bombing runs to destroy enemy singularity.
* Phoenix
Job: Area Denial and area damage
Less burn damage, more damage when inside napalm.
Napalm stays longer (4/5 times) so it becomes Area Denial to give some extra time to defender against upcoming attack or defend unguarded areas. To prevent it from instant killing all raiders and do more damage to bigger units (as they are generally slower to move out of napalm)
(Has to be balanced to not become good structure destroyer)
* Screamer
Less range, much less damage, less cost. Creating an anti-gunship spam instead of ‘no fly zone’. About 2 hits to kill a banshee, half range and 1000 metal cost.
* Stiletto
Job: emp
Works fine (maybe a bit more hp)
Extra ideas:
- repair hub
A repair pad which can only repair ground units. It repairs it fast and efficient (less energy use than normal). Give transport planes to air factory (can be same as gunships). Transport planes pick up units and move them to repair pad and when repaired bring them back.
Much like the system used in the game dune 2 if you surrounded your repair facility with buildings. If dune 2 had that cool feature it must be possible in zero-k too.
- A plane that drops mines and creates a mine field. It is used as area denial weapon to protect flanks and unprotected areas.
Possibly even some flying anti-air mines.
- new anti-vamp plane (good against vamp, bad vs other planes)
- maybe add new planes efficient on sea (torpedos)