Make gunships fly higher

quote: To make gunship start more viable (hopefully without other detriment side effects) in 1v1

This blind RPS is desirable because...?

To make my point more explicit, this will arbitrarily cause problems for factories with expensive or high-burst AA (e.g. Tank, Jump, Amph) in the games where one's opponent happens to plop gunships, without meaningfully affecting the factories with cheap and reasonably buildable AA (e.g. shield, cloaky, veh).

Locusts not being immune to raiders is core to their balance. Being able to path over cliffs and water effortlessly, and being more than 50% faster than Glaives, allows you to "choose the fight you want to fight" already.

Im a very frequent gunship-starter, I usually opt for them as long as the map isnt completely flat or too small. Alot of the value is intangibles like your opponent having less experience dealing with a gunship start than a rover start, or triggering an overreaction of AA.

Alot of the options have razor-thin timeframes of utility. A single harpy + radar can do all your anti-raider till about the 4 minute mark when mobile AA shows up. Blastwings get one free shot before picket+radar, best used after your opponent has done their initial econ.

Now at about the 5-6 minute mark you better have a land factory, if you spent metal on anything else you're probably dead by now. If you can pull off the transition then you're in a good spot, very early game and you have the options of a air+land fac already.


The big downsides are their vulnerability and speed.

- Constructor costs 300, but gains little advantage by being a flyer as fleas can still target it.
- Once they start taking damage, gunships often arent fast enough to disengage before dying
- Bad value. If you wanna go out destroying some mexes and llts you might be looking at around 1000 metal for 5 locusts or 760 for a nimbus.
- Lack sticking power. Glaives and ronins can dance around and tie enemy units up at the point of engagement, preventing them from going somewhere else, gunships dont really have this so your opponent can go where they please.


In conclusion, I think the dirtbag should be added to the gunship tree.

quote: Locusts not being immune to raiders is core to their balance. Being able to path over cliffs and water effortlessly, and being more than 50% faster than Glaives, allows you to "choose the fight you want to fight" already.

I merely want them to take less damage when not fighting. Also I should emphasize that I want constructors to get that buff the most. Also them flying higher won't make them any less vulnerable to AA.

because plains don´t get countered by 220 metal.

Gunships are also so appalling at doing damage that a mex is like a 10 second time investment for alot of its units.

http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/633964

I made a gunship factory in this game and found myself not wanting to make the mainline gunships. I played fairly poorly though.

I think this comes back to the old problem that AA is balanced to kill planes, which only need to be in an area for like 2 seconds. while GS need to stay for a while to do the same damage.

Rather than make Locust conditionally invulnerable to retaliation except by AA, i'd suggest making it more different to the Harpy by making it even faster and maybe just a bit more damaging..

quote: flex AA less punishing for gunships

No. Using flex AA is fun. It makes for more tactical choices. If your gunships are dying to raiders, seriously reconsider your tactical choices.
The problem is gunship vulnerablity to normal AA.
Normal AA is really, really boring.
Its also ridiculously overpowered if you compare it to normal units - nobody sane would tolerate units with ridiculous range, super-fast speed, homing or instahit projectiles and infinite damage stackability all at the same time. Of coursem this is to counter planes, which have many similar features.

All the AA right now is really samey. There could be powerful EMP cannons temporarily stunning and downing flyers, forcing ground units to respond and clean up. There could be weak AA missiles with really really high AoE, giving players a counter to stacked up planes and gunships. But no. We have what we have.

Gunships can't choose the fight they want to fight. Because Swift exists. All gunships that are not Nimbus+Trident or Krow will become useless when Swift appears. I wish this was changed, but lets be real, that'll never happen.

I would like some general gunship buffs, though. Wasp and Crane could be buffed too, I have rarely seen them used.

Okay I will limit it to: make constructors fly higher when not constructing so a plane doesn't get killed by a frikkin' flea. It can get killed when constructing.