Chainsaw range is too great

If we compare anti-land and anti-air turrets and their maximum ranges (i.e. excluding a secondary, close-range turret like the Desolator's), we'll see something like this:

Anti-LAND
Metal ------ Turret Name --------- Range ----------- DPS
90 Lotus 460 72
100 Picket 610 25 (reloads slowly; deals 312 in burst)
220 Stardust 410 450 (with Splash)
250 Faraday 460 0 (1200 EMP)
400 Gauss 560 (terra helps) 100 (bunkers down when not firing, penetrates)
420 Stinger 620 189 (850 damage in a single burst)
1600 Desolator 650 400 (Requires power, 1201/projectile, large splash)
2200 Lucifer 1200 400 (requires power)
2500 Cerberus 1850 180 (I think the wiki page is off on reload time - it seems to reload faster than once every 10 seconds)

Anti-AIR
Metal ------ Turret Name --------- Range ----------- DPS
220 Hacksaw 480 80 (deals 1200 in a single burst; long reload time)
280 Razor 1040 149 (bunkers down when not firing; often misses)
450 Thresher 1000 264 (Has splash)
900 Chainsaw 1800 225 (225/shot, homing, one shot per second, HUGE RANGE)
2400 Artemis 2400 890 (1602/missile, requires construction of missiles beforehand)

When you look at those numbers, you'll notice that AA defenses hover at about 1000 in range, which is 1.6x the max range of most ground-based defenses. That's probably fine, since you want to get your shots in against fast-moving planes before they deliver their payload. But then there's the chainsaw - 1800 range is HUGE, and on a purely DPS level, it outdamages the STINGER (Yes, Stinger deals more-per-shot, but when an anti-heavy turret can't keep up with your long-range turret, something's wrong). With that, a chainsaw can target (and almost always hit!) targets that are in Cerberus range. It's anti-air artillery, which makes it impossible to keep flying constructors anywhere near the front lines, and makes it hard for a player to set up a sizeable airborne attack. Chainsaws are oppressive - they make players switch off of air factories too easily, and completely negate air-based strategies (like transporting units) in the mid-to-late game. Air players can't participate in building distant bases to take advantage of their mobility either, because their constructors are too-easily shot down. (Krows don't die to Hacksaws - players don't even BUILD hacksaws! - they're dying to the incredible range and overlap of current anti-air. Once you commit to a Krow attack, you literally have nowhere left to hide.)

Air planes and gunships are both factories that are not newbie friendly I think that a major factor in this is that anti-air defenses (like the chainsaw) have too great of a range. It's rather trivial, both in terms of resources spent and player skill to execute, to build a chainsaw and completely lock down half of the map. Moreover, if you can build a chainsaw somewhere even close to the enemy's base, you can shoot down their constructors and camp their factory quite easily. Suddenly, every single unit they've built previously is useless, because they can't stage an attack on the chainsaw when it doesn't leave room for a staging ground. This is also why you never see transport-based strategies except for cheese.

I see a few solutions to the problem:
-Make Chainsaw a high-damage, medium-range Hacksaw that doesn't have to reload. It would certainly fit the model better (those missiles on the model are HUGE). It would still have relatively low health and make it worth taking out, but it wouldn't lock down the enemy anywhere near as often due to range)
-Make Chainsaw cost more. If it's a 1500 metal investment to lock down that large of an area, then it's worth it to punish them for building it.
-Require an energy grid. This makes it harder to deploy offensively (where it's the most problematic).

Anti-air defense does have to be effective. It has to take down units of two very different classes: fast-moving airplanes and slow-moving gunships. Fast-moving airplanes are best taken down by high-damage bursts, though this is mitigated by the swarms of swifts available to the air player (requiring skill! yay!). Slow-moving gunships, on the other hand, get shredded by long-range damage over time, since it takes so much longer to retreat. Right now, the current turrets are very strongly in favor of shredding gunships (though it's still oppressive to airplanes).

We've already got a turret that's fortified and does well against slow-movers (Razor), an medium-range splash damaging turret that hits everything (again good against gunships due to speed vs. range), and a burst damage turret (better against air - you might take out one gunship/turret, but gunships stick around). Adding another turret that deals higher damage to quick attacks would go pretty far, so I recommend the first option, above.

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An alternative suggestion: move Krow over to striders and give gunships something resembling a stealth-generating gunship (or enable transports to carry a stealth generator and have it work) Oppressive ranges don't matter if your gunships can stay hidden. Stealth revenants, caused by irises on the ground, can be powerful, but right now are limited to defense since the iris can't climb surfaces like revs can. It also requires building and morphing a cornea or facswitching to cloakies. It's supposed to be a heavy raider, right? Let it raid!

Planes are still hurt by chainsaw ranges too, so the suggestion above doesn't fix the issue for planes...

past a metal/time point aa needs to hurt air allot to deter it.. because some targets 'revealed ulti' are worth loosing 3 bombers to.

if threshers cost a chainsaw.. then some air could make cost vs them.. chainsaws do less damage then thresher to groups but they have enough range that they can mitigate the extra cost and stay competitive with dps by hitting for longer (reduced numbers to cover same area ~ but with increased vulnerability of concentrating it into a single target)

.. they deter air but are not so costly as to allow air to prevent frontlines establishing . im worried because if air is less deterred by aa then its going to get nerfed again.. if you nerf air anymore its going to start walking

if chainsaw was less range it would be less common.. range is the best thing ever.. id take a flea with map range over a starlight with flea range.

true ^ chainsaw / artimus are a bit like anti nuke.. it can even be a good target for tac missiles. im going to need to remember to target aa with stronger priority.. but im not always sure how good the air players are.. if a good air player asks you to kill a chainsaw its much more important

the problem with chainsaw is more that is is an answer to the problem with ravens :

1 raven deals 800 damage, that is enough to kill most units its cost in 1-2 hits
so by attacking one time the raven makes cost

over a battle a good player can avoid loosing ravens
so 1 raven becomes 2, becomes 4, and eventually you have a murder of crows

A truly evil air player will use attack area with ravens to literally decimate entire sections of the front line with impunity

and once this happens you need a deterrent, this is the chainsaw
its not meant to kill air units, Its not even meant to damage them. once said air player sees a chainsaw they have 2 choices

recalim their air force, or build tacnukes. usually i would say pick the first option because at that point you have usually cause the enemy to build over 10k in aa and the air game holds no future profit.

That said, AA targeting grounded planes and gunships generally feels broken, irrational, and overpowered. Stationary defenses should not be used to spawn camp.

A chainsaw takes something like 12-13 seconds to shot down a single nimbus, meaning a single nimbus can operate within its range for 10-something seconds before having to retreat. That's a lot, and its just one. Imagine the damage a ball can make within that time.

And a single raven requires 5 shots, aka 5 seconds, to shot down. That's a lot of time for a bomber to bomb something and flee. If you have a moderately sized ball attacking an important target, chances are you will make cost well within its range.

Chainsaw has a huge range because the range within which it de-facto deters air attacks is smaller than it seems.

Also, its costs twice what a stinger does and can only shot air. Its high DPS makes sense.

In short, I think its fine balance-wise currently. There are two ways an air player can counter it: short precise attacks within its territory, or destroying the chainsaw directly with a sizable gunship attack/bombing run.

When you spam chainsaws, yeah, that shuts air down, but when your enemy spams AA, you stop making air. You have made them waste lots of metal on AA, that's an advantage.

I'd say bullshit flex AA is a much greater problem for air currently.

My experience as an planes player is that Chainsaw isn't that great. Likho can often ignore it and Thunderbird can reasonably hit things on the edge of its range. It doesn't have enough burst damage to be a devastating surprise on first encounter, and after that since it is static it is pretty easy to avoid or manage. It is also at a price point where it is a reasonable tacnuke target.

Artemis, on the other hand, pretty much entirely shuts out air - but at a cost where if the air player goes on using their air for defence and switches to building something else, the air player probably comes out ahead.

quote: it outdamages the STINGER (Yes, Stinger deals more-per-shot, but when an anti-heavy turret can't keep up with your long-range turret, something's wrong)

Chainsaw also costs twice as much as Stinger. (For that matter, Stinger itself is reasonably effective as flex-AA in some situations.)

quote: It's anti-air artillery, which makes it impossible to keep flying constructors anywhere near the front line

In general you shouldn't keep flying constructors near the front line anyway. Where possible you probably shouldn't build flying constructors at all. They die to a lot of stuff.

Chainsaw is with large range but low missile speed. It can be easy bombed alone and only start suppress air if there is at least two of them. Chainsaw even with his dps and range isn't so great and alone can be bombed easy. This all numbers is good only on paper. Two likhos can easy kill it and survive. You can fool chainsaw before bombing it with swift speed burst who gives you additional seconds to get close it.
Alone chainsaw is shit. It become stronger only when there is nearby support. On smaller maps at start its rush is more painful but in some cases its only defense vs small map krow rushes.