current meta = banshees until screamer

google 4eva

the problem with banshits is that even when you KNOW the opponent is going to do, it is very hard to counter in this kind of game.

by this kind , I mean 10v10 where there are 2-3 competent players a side and the rest are chaff. by counter, I mean prevent their competent players massacring your noobs and/or yourself when you overextend trying to protect them. mobile and fixed land AA is no counter, so you are more or less forced to do the same

new meta brah

I think 500m or so in static AA from everyone would help a lot against Banshees. You'd probably still need one air player and it's not like every front would be completely safe. I don't think Banshees should be completely destroyed for little investment on each front, they would be nonviable. So against a Banshee strategy your fronts should take damage but not so much that you lose.

quote: AA targeting banshees is ok as long as -fighters- still target Vamps, because right now banshees taking fighter fire is why vamp + banshee always beats vamp on it's own.

Well the current priorities are set up such that fighters are always targeted last. I couldn't really decide whether fighters should target other fighters by default but in the end it would be more effort to write a config which treats different units differently.

There are situations in which you'd want to shoot the fighters and others in which you want to shoot the Banshees. The Banshee situation seems more common and is a good default. People are expected to use attack or fight commands with fighters but not for ground AA. Some people in zkdev suggested that AA have a state toggle for this kind of thing which sounds ok but I doubt people would use it and it would just clutter the UI. But a state toggle would be really easy to implement.

+1 state toggle, which defaults to target bomber/gunshit for land AA and default to target other fighters for flying AA

No google, if fighters default to shooting Banshees over other Fighters, you will never get air superiority. Every battle you whittle down a few banshees, he loses none of his AA DPS, he wipes your fighters and still has them all alive coming out of it. The next battle, there are slightly fewer Banshees but so many Vamps now that you cannot even engage them. It's frankly already like this, because Banshees can hit vamps and lend enough distraction/DPS to tip the sclae.

Banshee has 3.9 HP/metal, Vamp only 3.6. Banshees tanking for Vamps is very bad.

I've been saying the Banshee is OP for like a year or more. Nobody ever believes me. The real problem is all that speed. It can just hit where AA isn't, which is why Fighters are the only counter (only thing faster), which is why fighter + Banshee is the new meta.

for speed, there are planes. for HP, there are gunshits. banshits are in between, which I consider bad. others may think different. gunshits are too fast.

ofc this questions the unit diversity and roles in gunshit factory in general.

allied AA is generally sparse and easily overwhelmed by banshee ball in the early game where this is an issue - the reliance is usually on allied air players to counter those of opponents.

Thus, if you dont intervene with fighters, your allies get eaten alive by banshee ball and/or overproduce AA.

If you only use fighters for defense over allied land AA, then you will lose a lot of comms or factories early on. Players cannot possibly make enough AA coverage early on without crippling their land power. Every player needs to build AA too, because the Banshees can hit anywhere. If you're lucky you'll have an rkiss or a couple of jethros when the Banshee's first hit, which will go down very fast to them and still be able to win vs any vamps you send.

It makes your land push incredibly slow and if you over-invest in AA, sfireman will switch to ground, which is the whole strength of this strategy.

unfortunately this strategy is mostly applied in large clusterfuck games full of disorganised, easily panicked nabs. I might make cost against a banshee attack 100% of the time, but that is no compensation when
a) nab allies get butchered and collapse
b) killing me or any high elo player early, even if it isn't cost effective for the attacker, is still a good deal most of the time