AA vs bombers

Situation: your ally has lose the air, the enemy air players is starting to comsnipe with a stack of shadows.

What AA do you build?

Hacksaw has been owled and costs more than a single bomber
razkiss often cannot kill a single bomber (unless they are bombing right on top of it)
other fixed AA is incredibly expensive and vunerable, not affordable early game

Mobile AA is very inefficent vs bombers, and very vunerable to ground attack. You need about 4-500m in mobile AA to stop a single bomber - stopping the doomstack is impossible.

the result
= whomever wins the fighter wars probably goes on to slay half the other teams commanders
= if the enemy dosn't have an air player, you can spam shadows and kill commanders with almost certain inpunity, knowing there is nothing they can make that will deflect 3+ shadows early

Stack zenith nanoframes around myself to render me immune to shadows and rush chainsaw
(I joke)


normally I spam moar vamp, in the rare occasion I'm not air I'll place razkiss in staggers with mobile AA to boot although the effect that has is laughable, when it feels chancy that I might be targeted next/at certain "checkpoints" in pushing I'll make a couple of Faradays cause if you run back to them when shadows dive the faradays fix them in place pretty damn effectively


the best choice remains cooperating with nearby players if they're amenable to it and rushing a chainsaw

agree re: chainsaw, but thats still 900m. Razkiss is largely ineffective and the emp turret is short range/situational

I think it might be a good idea to take a look at AA relationships to planes. specifically:

1) bring the hacksaw back in as affordable bomber deterent.
2) increase the alpha (not DPS) of the lighter existing mobile 'missile' AA, specifically crasher & vandal.

I think the Jethro, Cobra, archangel & flail are already pretty valid responses to planes. Jethro less so, buts its other strengths prophibit further buff.

For the design stuff, I think after Googles air rework Shadow is perhaps a bit strong. Hacksaw was owled on purpose, because it would create assured attrition vs bombers. IMO that's a good thing. You should be able to create areas where the enemy knows the gambit of bombing into it is taking assured attrition. This already locks commanders down into tight areas and stops their advance. This is actually currently the case at the moment too, only it's usually a wall of defenders, a faraday/newton and/or dedicated AA.

Though to be fair, boosted fighters spoof hacksaw even more easily than before, so...

So what you should do right now? TL;DR: Make more AA (And flex-AA), which both protects from bombers and frees up your own air player to make bombers instead of fighters. Air players win the air war from having land AA, not from smashing fighters into each other.

Faraday is very good vs diving bombers, often enough to disrupt the bombing run entirely, with AoE, while Defender can add valuable DPS. The way you counter air in 1v1 is to make 4 defenders in your base. It takes 11 Defender shots to take out a shadow, 4 Defenders shoot 12. This doesn't leave much of a margin but enough defenders will help your static or mobile AA out a lot.

The enemy spamming bombers means he's not making fighters, it's your air players chance. By the time your ally has lost air control, if he's not awful, you should have time to get the lines to meet and get up a good defense wall, AA, Defenders, etc, at least enough to punish someone with bombers. This should be enough to cost the enemy air player every time he tries to commsnipe and wrest back fighter control.

Having a good air player is important, but it's often the ground players making AA that wins the air war. This frees up an air player from making fighters, and makes it impossible for the enemy to engage in air wars over your territory without taking loses to AA. That's when you can start spamming bombers, when your fighters are no longer necessary and no longer that useful either. It's not winning the air war so much as having enough AA from allies that you don't need to spam fighters just to be safe.

Well you can easly surround ur commander with 10 hacksaws and (if u have lvl 1 support com (2k Hp)) it will die to only 4 shadows (or 3 shadows + 1 av) anyway. Why?
All u need to do is D-boost avenger over them... Every hacksaw will just try to kill avenger, and waste shot. Even if ure not so smart, u can send 4 shadows.. and every hacksaw will fire at 1st shadow coming at once. So 20 rockets to kill single shadowm, while 3 stay alive. I dont find this kind of ''defence'' usefull.
Can we get redesigned HS which aims at bombers (and/or GS) only?

PROTIP:
the hold fire button is here

<-set this

<-to this

sometimes i wonder if ANYONE reads the manual

actualy the main problem with a hacksaw is that im can miss shadows like 20% of the time

If i remember correctly a defender faced with 3 fleas will kill all 3, what about giving the hacksaw 6 faster, but weaker projectiles with similar overkill avoiding logic? Or making it fire something like the sniper shot (with adjusted damage ofc)?

Quite a lot of points have been raised.

First and foremost, it is important to realize that the air war is won by friendly air supported by ground AA. Players who insist that 'Air player must keep us safe' have obviously never played air themselves. Even a little ground AA creates 'no-fly' zones that force the enemy air back, increasing their reaction times and reducing yours. Dedicated AA is best, of course, but defenders, newtons and faradays are all dual-purpose towers. This dual role makes the defender the best choice in most situations, even though lotus is stronger in a direct fight.

To address my clanmates' points: In the current air environment, Vamps are not anti-bomber fighters; they are anti-gunship fighters. Trying to respond to a bomber raid (Licho or not) with vamps tends to be too slow. You don't just have to match the speed of the bombers, you also have to take your own reaction time into account. Well managed avengers can usually outperform vamps in the anti-air role. But the vamp excells at bringing down packs of brawlers, black dawns or a krow, at task which avengers find difficult.
And of course, you can duke it out with big balls of vamps. But maintaining a large fighter force is NOT what air should strive to do. Every vamp you build is one less shadow.

Finally, the hacksaw is clearly underpowered. The defender has almost the same range and a group of 4 can do the same as a hacksaw: shoot down one shadow. Only it does it better (multi-target capability, no lost shots, engages ground and air). It also does it cheaper.
I would like to see the hacksaw buffed, but by decreasing its price instead of increasing it's capabilities. Players need to be able to respond to a sudden air threat by having access to a cheap AA defence. The fact that the hacksaw has very low range (for AA) prevents it from really interfering with the freedom of movement of the enemy air like the chainsaw and screamer do. But a cheaper hacksaw might allow people to quickly create safe spots that are uneconomical to bomb.

Moffmaster

The hacksaw used to be cheaper. The problem was that, combined with tanky shadows, it made the game feel a bit like antinuke gameplay - either the bombers have relative impunity, or you have a Hacksaw up and you're safe. That said, the rest of the bomber game has shifted drastically.