AA Spider seems a bit OP

Big range
High damage
undodgeable missile
fast movement speed
All terrain
reasonable hp
not that expensive

My biggest problem with aa at the moment is how unbelievably unforgiving it is. For all AA that fires missiles the only thing that can MAYBE evade is swift. Flying into missile aa is literally an instant death sentence. No skill will save you.
It would be nice to make air a bit more micro skill based and less on who has the most cloaked aa units.

quote: AA Spider seems a bit OP

Compare Tarantula with Angler and think again about your "reasons" to nerf Tarantula

I guess this applies mostly to lobpot and perhaps to some degree to FFA.

How many cloaked tarantulas do you need to shut down enemy bombing raids?
How does that compare to building chainsaws and/or artemis?


What if bombers dropped their load on death (regardless of whatever order they might have)?
This would (I think) let air trade a bit better with AA units..

quote: It would be nice to make air a bit more micro skill based and less on who has the most cloaked aa units.

Isn't the current situation require a lot of micro? Scenario: you want to licho something but you don't know if there is cloacked aa. You send 1 or 2 swifts around that area to make aa fire -> if it fires you don't do bomb run, if it does not fire -> you do bomber run. Same micro overhead for aa player: they should put on hold fire if there are swifts but attack licho ... (can you make aa automatically target only licho?... don't know.

Of all things

quote: Angler can't walk over hills, you can bait it's missile volley easily. Normally its used in sea and take so long to float it doesn't do much.

Just make 1-2 lobster and both problems are solved, the only disadvantage I know of is that anglers must reload.

Tarantula's relatively low burst damage is its greatest weakness as AA I think, and it is a pretty bad weakness for missile AA to have. One needs quite a lot of (expensive) Tarantulas to shoot down a Thunderbird before it fires, or a Licho before it is well on its way home.

Tarantulas are also expensive enough to be a pretty juicy target for Lichos, which can be a big problem if you don't have quite enough Tarantulas.

Tarantula received some buffs (mostly to the speed and agility of its projectile) in 2019 and 2020 and has perhaps never escaped the reputation it earned for unreliability before those changes. Looking at its stats now it is a stronger unit than I would have guessed. Still, I'm inclined to agree with the opinion above that among the ground mobile missile AA units, Angler is top tier. I'd probably also prefer to have Crasher over Tarantula unless terrain is a big issue.

(Flail is much weaker since its AoE nerf. Vandal in theory has good stats for cost, but the sheer number of them you need to pose a threat to bombers makes them cumbersome and relatively easy to avoid.)

I think Tarantula is around the middle of AA power. The slow missile and awkward lack of burst is a problem for it.

Slow missile? What does that have to do with anything.

If the missile has enough burn time it doesn't matter how slow it is, it will still hit the target no matter what you do to dodge it.

HP, burst, dps stats are more relevant if divided by cost

you also left out the tank and jumpy mobile AA which have more dps than tarantula