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Air is too strong or too weak - dependend on the map size.

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13 years ago
A precision bomber:
450 metal
1200 dmg
1250 HP
600 range

Licho:
2000 metal
2500 dmg + AOE
2600 HP
500 range

Precision bombers do more damage per cost, have more HP/cost, and are more scalable.
Licho is mostly redundant.

2 Precisions kill 1 AA Tower.
300 metal against 450 metal - BUT you can never have as much Anti-Bomber towers at one spot as you can have bombers attacking one spot.

On small maps a single chainsaw in the center avoids mostly all air.
On big maps with many metal, it's nearly impossible to defend against bombers.

Ships have a huge disadvantage to precision bomber spam - especially guarded with vamps.
The Ship AA is specialised to kill gunships, but not air.

The only effective defense are fighters, but they are often scared away by Chainsaws, or even a Screamer.
If the bombers are follow some vamps, they usually never get killed till they drop their bombs.

Because of Air is mostly who has the most vamps, and who is attacking where is currently no patrol, the attacker can't get engaged.

Unless you play against noobs, the only factor that rules about who dominate the air is, which team have more eco.

I know that it is an design goal to make fighters be the best AA, but I can't figure out the weakness at a bit larger maps.


Maybe I'm wrong and some ppls can help me here, but than the manual should also be extended to guid newbes on the way to the over-average-playstyle.
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13 years ago
Air is quite balanced at the moment.

All i'd say is that heavy fighters probably need to have more HP and probably more DPS.

Licho is not superior to precision bombers.
1) It has an area bomb, so, unlike precisions, its very very universal. This bomb also sometimes throws units around, dealing bonus damage.

2) Having lots of HP in one unit as opposed many units with low HP means you dont lose anything unless all HP is lost. This is especially important for air, as the units repair after every bomb run. Ability do a strike with zero losses is very important. Where you would lose 1-2 precisions (and thats 900m + reclaim for the enemy), you can use Licho, which will survive with 1-20% HP. For you, it will only cost a little E and buildpower to repair a licho.

Now, considering maps:
This is the same as with raiders. Mobile units are stronger on larger maps, and fixed wing air has the most mobile units in the entire game.

Ships arent weak to bombers. You just need to micro them. I know it sucks, but thats how it is. All ships have such a shape that if you maneuver them properly, precision bombers will miss alot. And area bombers arent usually an issue because ships have generally high HP and dont tend to cluster too much.

So, i dont really know what are you really trying to say in your post. AA isnt underpowered, a hacksaw is insanely cheap, killing just 1 precision bomber makes it more than return its cost. Flaks, while short-ranged, totally obliterate everytihng, except maybe for licho. Chainsaws are an insane pain which almost guarantees that a bombing run will have losses.

Bombers are extremely reliant on an idea that you should have minimal or zero losses during a bomber run. Once the defender becomes able to pick off at least some of the attacking bombers, using them becomes less and less worth the expense.
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13 years ago
On ships and prec bomber - I think Prec shot should home enough to hit everything except aircraft and fast raiders (or jumpy comm). Then prec can be balanced with this in mind so "micro your stuff" is no longer a required against prec bombers.

I think some people have the design goal of "fighters = best AA" in mind but I don't. Fighters should not do good damage for cost compared to other AA, their advantage should be extreme manoeuvrability and response time.
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13 years ago
Whether it is too strong or too weak depends on whether there is significant AA. Many times I've been criticized as an "AA Spammer", but in fact I generally only built 2 AA turrets: A Cobra and a Chainsaw. I just usually build them fairly early. If I don't see a lot of air, those will be the only two I build, and the fact is they're usually enough to make anyone on the other side who is going air avoid me. In fact, having their Black Dawn rush slam into a Cobra/Chainsaw combo is often enough to make that player drop air completely, reclaim the factory and put up something else.

Most people build no air at all, or only incidentally (dual-role stuff like the Defender). But if I do see a big enemy air force, and really "spam" AA, it's wasted investment on their part. I've seen a 300+ force of combined bombers, fighters, and gunships hit 6 Cobras and 6 Chainsaws, and just melt so fast less than half the bombers even got a shot off, and none of them made it back to reload. But I was the only one who built any non-naval AA, even though it was obvious the enemy was amassing a huge air force.

AA is extremely powerful against air units (with kill ratios of 10 to 1 metal or more), unless none are built, in which case any resources spent on AA were wasted. Since most ZK battles are too crowded and metal-poor for big air forces, most people don't build AA until late in the game, and usually just to counter Krows. In a 1v1 on a medium to large map, air would probably be badly underpowered (because whatever one side spent on air, the other side could neutralize with less than 1/5 the metal into AA). But that's not the way ZK is usually played.

--Dave
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13 years ago
Pushing out two of the most powerful AA defenses without even seeing enemy air is pretty severe and I think it's fair to call that AA-spam. A Kiss and a Hacksaw would be more reasonable for "just in case". I mean, late in a large teamgame you're going to have to worry about somebody secretly going all-in with a swarm, but treating a Cobra and a Chainsaw as minimum strikes me as wasteful. That's 1400 metal - nothing to sneeze at.
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13 years ago
hacksaws are too easily baited by sending in some avengers (which they overkill). You can kill a hacksaw with air and lose only 150 metal by sending in 1 avenger and then 2 prec bombers.

Abusemagnet you spend 1400 metal to counter a black dawn that cost 900 metal. That means you completely ignore ground....
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13 years ago
Yeah, now that I look at the numbers, it's a bit overboard for prophylactic defense.

But the overall point is: If fixed AA isn't drastically stronger than an equal weight of actual air, then it's going to be a bad deal (because air can, by definition, strike anywhere, and static AA can't). Some of the particular mobile AA options aren't particularly worthwhile, but that's a different matter.

--Dave
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13 years ago
PORC can't defend your forwarded base - not even Chainsaws.

And Stardust is generally more effective against gunships -except BD and Brawler-.
I think a 6x2 field of spaced Stardusts can kill a Krow better than Razors / Flaks if supported by some Chainsaws.

If Vamps get homing missles like avenger, I don't know a problem.
Especially Vamps have to fly through a really large area to kill only a few units - and likely fly right into the enemy AA,
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