Aircraft maintenance check

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)

disagree with much of this - I like how bombers work, but really dislike how fighter vs fighter works.

Scouting is a redundant role that all planes should rightly do, the radar plane needs to become an 'anti-cloaker' cone projector.

I like the idea of planes becoming tougher but less damaging - in particular, the napalm and EMP planes.

I like the idea of the more expensive AA becoming lower weight (eg, chainsaws still cover a wide area but much more weakly etc) and the screamer having a MUCH lower magazine/higher alpha.

Perhaps instead of disallowing cloaking in an area the anticloak unit could possess the ability to merely mark the current locations of the hidden units. An even weaker version, which I would prefer, wouldn't find motionless enemies at all. That way spies like fleas would still work.

The Vamp and Radar plane can already be used to spoof AA before a bombing run. They can survive a Hacksaw, so they are often sent in to soak up all the AA so you can bomb with impunity. More HP would make this worse.

The Avanger is great vs early raiders and rushing if the enemy has no AA, but useless as soon as they have even defenders. It used to be prone to rushing where you could actually prevent the enemy getting up defenders and just snipe them over and over. More DPS would make them better at the things they are already good at without addressing the fact that they're almost useless after the 2 minute mark.

A vamp with more HP also would be able to just sit over the enemy factory sniping everything that comes out, you can give them a landat so they go back and repair 1 by 1 even when there is AA. Again, already a problem, HP would make it worse.

I like the idea behind the Licho being anti-mobile and the Shadow being anti-static, but the shadow is important against units like the Penetrator, Banisher, Pillager, Mace, Firewalker and other low HP heavies that can be rushed or can sit behind a defensive line plunking at the enemy. The Shadow right now is the main 'sniper' unit for killing these things. The Licho would probably be overkill for them, but might work at 1.2-1.5k.

The Shadow you propose would also only be useful against Stardusts, Nanotowers, Fusions, Geos and maybe HLT's (It's barely worth it ATM since they have too much HP). That's a really limited role, and would either make it impossible to use any of those units if the shadow is good (IE, you just rely on winds and mobile cons) or just make the shadow not worth making at all.

The Pheonix has no ground effect ATM. The problem with this kind of napalm is that it's always good against buildings, there is no way to 'balance this away', if a unit cannot move out of the effect, it's going to do its full damage. The major problem with the Pheonix right now is how pathing makes everything clump up. Personally I think the EMP plane has way better mechanics (coordinating with your land allies to use this right feels great), but I feel right now it's only really good against massed assaults (that don't tend to be vulnerable to most AoE) or shields.

Also: It sounds like your Screamer is just a chainsaw or flak.

The first post has too many things which I really dislike

[crane]was discussed in many other threads...

[bomb thrower drone]
Planes should have something cheap to snipe one (with some luck even two) RAIDERS
or WIND/LLT and one MT to allow Glaives, Bandits and Fleas to get into a wind farm.
* Because of the low cost/hp, it can have some range without being OP.
* low los/hp (you basically have to scout with ground) it can't be abused as a scout too much.

[Avenger]
* As a multi role fighter, it should only have lasers, or it is too redundant with vamp
* * the missile also misses from time to time and one-shots cranes, Athena or other Avengers
* decent LOS makes it a cheap multi role unit for real

[Shadow]
* lower HP to make mobile AA and fighters better against it
* throw bomb a bit more to compensate.

[Firestorm]
* bomb thrower drones replace it partially, so it can get more weight

[Vamp]
* Should have enough weight so that they don't make Avengers redundant as fast as they do now.
* Maybe burst to separate their useage from Avenger

[Licho]
* A bit Slower! Vamps are heavy fighters, but always arive too late.
* Throw the bomb a bit less - like the current shadow does (less fail)

[Vulture]
* Remove some radar-range/cost but increase the LOS
* Maybe add stealth

Honestly, I'd just move the radar plane to the Gunship lab. Give it gunship handling so it's less prone to wandering out and doing something stupid. Gunships don't plunge deep into enemy airspace as much as planes do, so they have more use for a scout plane.

Totally agree with the Phoenix. It's too good as a riot right now, and it's having a seriously detrimental impact on ZK as a game... it's utterly ruined the skirmisher game. Which doesn't mean that the phoenix needs to be nerfed, but it needs to be moved a bit out of the riot role.

I don't like the stuff you're talking about with LOS - ZK lets every unit have LOS for its full range except arty, and breaking that would be bad.

Your shadow re-role is a nice idea (shadow commsniping is some players favourite sport), but it ruins the fact that the Shadow is also the underwater bomber. Underwater targets don't hold still.

As for the Crane, that needs to be considered in more detail - we need a second aircon anyways, since it's silly that the gunship lab and the plane lab share one.

Your screamer nerf is called the chainsaw.

Simplest solution is to remove the firestarting and bring back the fireball. The problem is that firestarting is a death-sentence for too many small units. The fireball is more of an area-denial tool than a riot weapon.

Maybe even take it further and have the fireball take hold gradually... start small and grow to full size. This would make the Phoenix useful for attacking static or low-mobility targets and for area-denial, but would make it less able to obliterate an advancing force of mobile, small units in a single shot.

quote: Your shadow re-role is a nice idea (shadow commsniping is some players favourite sport), but it ruins the fact that the Shadow is also the underwater bomber. Underwater targets don't hold still.

Replace the Shadow's bomb with a torpedo?

Patrol comand is bad in itself, you must use fighters when they are needed, otherwise enemy planes can kill your whole air with less air just because it takes too long to fly them back and its scenario 1 by 1.

Antelope - at least ZK has the advantage that ground-based AA units aren't terribly UP next to the fighter-planes. You can have fun drawing the enemy's air force into the fire.

In general, ZK's air play is pretty rough. I mean, the mechanic of using bombers to quickly strike anywhere on the map is fantastic teamplay, but the bomber/hacksaw thing is pretty hardcountery, and the Napalm bomber has prettymuch ruined the skirmisher game. Balancing the 3 flying AA units is a constant source of drama. Then you have the ground-attack gunships, where choosing between Banshees, Brawlers and BDs has been described as a matter of personal preference... you rush them out and do as much damage as you can and then tech-switch away.

There is now only one lab that lacks a dedicated AA unit and persists in attempting to keep its main AA unit as a flex-AA system... the Gunships, and there's always pressure to convert the Rapier into full-AA (which, lamentably, probably should happen for the sake of consistency). The main static flex-AA unit, the Defender missile-turret, is kind of a joke. The old dream of having a lot of flex-AA stuff in ZK is all but dead.

Still better than BA's air, though.