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Requesting a basic guide to air play

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3 years ago
Hello,
I'm new to ZK and there seems to be a lot of things that is assumed common knowledge with no resources available.
One question in particular i struggle with is how to handle air play.
I understand that for some reason swifts are considered to better for air superiority than the air superiority fighter.
I don't understand why, it seems like a odd balance decision.
I've also heard people mention landing swifts but i'm not sure what they refer to.
Does anyone have a guide they could refer people to?
+7 / -0
googlefrog has told me he does not want all units to be strong.. he wants noob traps.. not a good thing to say .. well too late to take it back now.. i dont think this is even true anymore.. im not sure i realy believed it when i wrote it.. sometimes i just assume the worst and to be honest google is a very good dev =) he didnt even react badly when i said it he was just calm and showed his good intentions. i feel a bit of shame i have learnt to use the op units and neglect the crap ones.. some got fixed .. detri .. quake.. funnel.. some are still broken.. friggin reef already.. and some are harder to balance because they are ok sometimes like newton, air super disappointing fighter, blastwing, imp.. i have been playing tech annihilation and supcom faf.. they have some very unbalanced units.. but zero-k is still one of the best even in terms of balance.. its much more balanced then it used to be!
+0 / -0
quote:
googlefrog has told me he does not want all units to be strong.. he wants noob traps.

Uh... AUrankSmokeDragon I think there has been a big misunderstanding somewhere.

NLrankthoekman air is a pretty tricky support role so people will have varied opinions on how to play it. I can't write out a whole post at the moment, but this recent post contains a decent description of what air (planes) should contribute and how to do it: https://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/232850#232850
+2 / -0

3 years ago
quote:
googlefrog has told me he does not want all units to be strong.. he wants noob traps..


This one is pretty bad smoke.
+2 / -0

3 years ago
quote:
I understand that for some reason swifts are considered to better for air superiority than the air superiority fighter.


It depends on map and situation. Swift is very fast aircraft with homing missile and low hp. Swift main power comes in hit-run tactics. Also it can be used to deal with raiders because it have secondary pew pew gun. Swift cant take much damage. Swift is good intercepting fast bombers and killing them with their missiles and flying away. So on large maps swifts will be best. Its mobility why swifts is preferred over raptors, they have batter speed and speed boost.
Raptor is slow huge hp aircraft with laser attack so it can fight directly taking some damage. They tend better work vs slow moving enemy like krow. Raptor is wrongly called 'air superiority fighter' because they are niche unit.
quote:

I've also heard people mention landing swifts but i'm not sure what they refer to.


Landing swifts to attack from ground is troll move and in many cases fail. Its not to easy do that. So you don't even need it.
+2 / -0
"Uh... SmokeDragon I think there has been a big misunderstanding somewhere."

yeah .. what i said was a bit unfair.. i probably do fully misunderstand you. sorry
maybe this kind of spoken thing comes from within me or something i have crossed recently in life.. some kind of arrogant anger.. its not like i do anything to help. i just bitch.. =/

maybe i just wanted to know how googlefrog would react to that.. but he reacted in a very adult way.. impressive
he did not reflect my abrasive attack.. im not normally like this. googlefrog deserved more respect then that. i really am sorry.

"This one is pretty bad smoke. "

ye -.- good call
+1 / -0
IMO the easiest way to play air effectively is to make Likho,Raptor and Owl (also at the start/occasionally Swift scout)

Ofc there's alot of ways to use these units very effectively, but yes, its hard to do so...

For Likho, you can go ahead and pick off anything you see that isnt protected by (enough) AA. Ofc, its better to target stuff like shieldballs or emissaries, but one thing i learn is that if you ONLY target vauleable targets, you either idle your Likhos for a very long time, or you just suicides them into AA, or maybe even both.Its really easy to unintentionally do so.

For Raptors, you just fly them around your Likhos to protect from Swifts. (you can consider ignoring this if enemy doesnt have air)And, dont try to fight tridents, unless you have like double the number, because they'ill just die.

For Owls, you occasionally select and patrol them around the frontline, you could also select one and have it as guide dog of your Likhos.

For Swifts, make 2~3 at start, only make them when you or your team think you need deep scouting.(Most of the time for superweapon, bertha, ADV geo, singu)

Make one airpad if you have a second likho.
Make some cranes if you often see unreclaimed but safe to reclaim stuff.

here's some related(?) stuff that i use when doing this.

Build queue:3 Raptor>1 Owl>1 Likho. Repeat.
When you need Swifts for scouting, hold down shift and alt, click Swift twice.Makes ten Swifts.
If you find you have too many Raptors, for example, 10, but your oppentent arent spamming Swifts hard enough, you lower or deleted the Raptors.

Alt + 1 when selecting a raptor, auto groups all raptor to control group 1
Ctrl + 2 when selecting an owl, groups the selected units to control group 2
Alt + 3 when selecting a Likho, auto groups all Likho to control group 3


Click the shield icon, turn on everything in there, Might look abit messy at first but its really useful. If its too messy for you then i suggest to only turn on AA + Anti range.

also, watch out for these fukin artemis :)
+4 / -0
3 years ago
Most important thing is to set the default for the air factory to be hold position. Otherwise all your planes, especially swifts, will just suicide themselves into enemy AA.
+1 / -0
Seeing you play large time more often

Swift is better because of is speed aka afterburner, it can get to everywhere in the map asap thus able to catch enemy bombers. Also, due to its afterburner, it also able to scout the map by forcing its way through the AA. Again, due to its afterburner, it is also able to escape wrong place at the wrong time. It also able to force land by disabling the flying button, doing so will make the swift attack everything within its LOS and it only shoot when it has clear LOS, pretty much like a fencer.

Next is importance of radar plane. A lot of air players tend to refuse to build radar plane, it has been like that for ages. Radar plane is the most superior support air can ever provide for the frontline and most importantly to air itself. Radar plane aka owl provide great vison while extreme radar range and anti radar to any below it. This vision is beneficial to all artillery units because only with vision it can make accurate shot that deal huge damage. Next is this vision also given accurate intel to everybody on the team, otherwise you have to guess the dots (what kind of units), believe me most people can't guess dots and because they can't guess dots, they also don't know what to build to counter and when or how to push. I don't think I need to explain radar jamming, it simply make it hard for enemy to guess dots and their artillery to even shoot.

Now, what does all this mean to air? For air to fly in their swift in timely manner to catch their bombers/air, you need to know when and where their bombers/air are coming. You won't know if you don't have radar across the map and believe me. If you rely on the inaccurate frontline radar, you will be in for a trouble because ground radar has LOS and it is paper, easily destroyed so unlikely to be placed at super front position which means you will get even lesser intel (radar dots).

The problem is owl is really expensive and if you build owl at the start, it also means you will build a few swifts less which also means your number of swifts will be lesser than enemies'. Lesser swifts naturally means losing the air skirmishing. So you really need to consider when to build the radar plane but definitely not building it at the start.

Air rely hugely on their ground performance, their primary source of metal is not from reclaim afterall so whatever you could build depend largely on the eco. That itself can become another challenge if your team is bad because enemy would have more eco to build more while you struggling with your lesser eco.

When fighting against swift or raptor, you need to understand how their shots are fired. Raptor shoot what is infront of them so if you fly in from their back, you will be able to damage more before they fight back. Pretty much the same for swift. Also, when fighting swift, you could use afterburner to escape their missiles so you really to think when to use your afterburners. When you are fighting against another air who do everything to keep theirs's alive, that is when you know it is a tough fight. Of course that will also become measurement of eco difference but most people lack the capability to gauge that and understand the impact of eco difference.

A lot of people would expect the air to scout, regardless or not you are struggling to keep air superiority while struggling with eco. You can decide whether to scout or not, usually one will scout at 8-10min of the game for early nuke, as for other scout timing it all depend on the aggressiveness of the enemy. Remember though, scouting also mean losing some of your swifts which also mean potentially losing air superiority if your team doesn't give a single shit to build even a single aa unit. You can don't scout if you think your team doesn't deserve to win. Afterall, there are also a lot of times that even if you scouted nuke, your team doesn't care enough to build anti because they are too busy tunnel visioning.

Counterscout. When people scout, they send their lone swifts in several direction. So, all you really need to kill are the swifts in particular directions you don't want them to scout. Use afterburners to catch up and that's that. You killed some of their swifts, their air weakened, is time for you to scout with higher success rate.

Start game scouting. Basically you have one swift fly into enemy spawn and see. The main purpose is to scout for krow rush or simply com rush. Likewise, some players like to delay building their facts, waiting their team to build their's before deciding or simply hope the air will scout enemy's fact so he or she can build a counter fact. The early scout can also tell you if you should spam swift or you can build radar and bombers early.

Now when to build bomber or likho? Personally I tend to build likho more than bomber, mainly because I don't like losing units. Bombers are fragile and thus die easily to aa. As game progress, enemy surely will accumulate more aa and your bombers will then die. Likho on other hand will not die that easily as game progress so the reusability is much higher. Back to when to build bombers, that will depend on your how well you did your air superiority. If you have killed a lot of their airs with minimum loss, then that is also when you can build bombers since you already hold superiority. Or when your ally built some AA, that is also when you could build bombers because you could rely on the ground aa to regain superiority, by flying your aa in at the right time, mostly when they fly in to attempt to kill your bombers.

Of course, air doesn't only has bombers but also thunderbird! Thunderbird is a tricky unit to use, mainly because if you disable enemy, you also want your ground to attack the disabled enemy. However, to expect that level of play from your teammate is the difficult part. It require not just good timing but also a map aware teammate, these two conditions aren't simple to derive. Most of time, you likely to use thunderbird to disable shield ball for your likho to bomb and not to support teammate.

Lastly, set your factory to hold position, you don't want your radar plane and swift to fly anywhere they want and never forget to maintain air superiority by keeping a fleet of swifts on standby for any needs.
+4 / -0
I play air quite often in team games, although, I am far from great at it. I don't actually want to give away some of my tricks, but for the sake of the game I will.

I almost always start 4-5 swifts to scout. I put my factory on production priority for the first 2 and then turn it off and scout the enemy base with those 2 as soon as they are both up. I put them on retreat when (yellow) hp so they afterburner away when they get low. The first one will tank some damage and then afterburner back to base while the 2nd continues on scouting.

I queue a scouting route using the shift key so I do not have to micro them while they are scouting. If I see a rushed Likho, then I rush 10-15 swifts (factory priority back on) and send then in to kill it - again using the shift key to set a route that avoids scouted AAA. During the Likho attack, I turn off the retreat function on the swifts as I want the swifts to stay and ensure the Likho dies. Once it dies, I queue in an escape route for the remaining swifts to avoid AAA on the return trip. Remember a Likho costs 2800 metal so even if you lose 18 swifts (150 metal ea.) killing one, you have still more than made cost. Late game, it might not be worth trading the swifts because some players will just revive the downed Likho with Athenas from the strider factory.

I also build at least one airpad - even if I just build swifts - along with 2 caretakers far enough away from my factory that they focus on repairing landed aircraft instead of assisting the factory.

If the enemy is rushing swifts, then after my commander finishes all the nearby mexes, I put the air factory priority back on and spam swifts to ensure I can fight for air superiority. I group the swifts under a control group (ctrl + #) plus using ctrl-z & ctrl + # to add new swifts to the group. While fighting for superiority I keep my swifts on (yellow) retreat to keep swifts from getting too hammered. This takes some micro because when the swifts retreat, they leave the control group and want to return to where they were last damaged and I have to corral them, keep them from going in solo, and return them to the control group. I use swifts because they are so much faster than raptors. I rarely use raptors, except as defense for a particular building. Swifts using area attack also help against raiders. Late game doing an afterburner swift scouting raid every 10 minutes or so is critical.

[This entire paragraph is the most important] If the enemy has no airplane factory, then I make ravens. I can usually do a factory or commander snipe once I have 6-7 ravens. I again queue in their attack route + their attack + their retreat route using shift and force fire so THE ENTIRE ATTACK RUN + ATTACK + RETREAT IS AUTOMATED, although, I can re-route them if I see the need. This keeps the ravens from flying over spotted AAA both while on the attack run and the retreat. Because retreating straight over enemy lines is so costly, it is important to rarely switch targets as once the retreat route is deleted, the ravens want to return in a straight line to reload and it's micro intensive to corral them and re-route them away from AAA after they attack, especially if I sent too many and the target dies before they all attack. This also sometimes works on late game economy buildings. One other note on factory sniping; target the rear of the factory so the ravens hit the factory and not any unit in production - the unit will die with the factory. Most factories have 4k hp, but some have more so ensure you bring enough ravens (800 damage ea.) so that even if you lose 1-2 to AAA or enemy air, you still have enough to kill the factory. Also consider any nearby caretakers that will repair the factory during your attack run.

With the few swifts I have against no air factory I will sometimes snipe at light units being careful to retreat them before they cross into area without radar coverage. Sometimes you can land the swifts to do this. The green wing icon is for landing when idle.

Commander sniping is similar, but you have to account for the commander's HP. Also, the recon commander can jump and make ravens job much harder. I will often not even bother to try a to kill a recon commander because it is so hard for ravens to do.

Before AAA density becomes to great, ravens are wonderful. You can also use them against raiders, but some raiders can do significant damage to ravens and a unit with a slow is very painful for ravens. I use area attack with ravens against massed units with low AAA support. They can decimate many armies that advance beyond AAA cover.

Avoid:
1. Shieldbots: felons (1-shot ravens), racketeers (disarms ravens so they will circle without attacking)
2. Jumpbots: juggernauts (they will pull ravens), puppies (can 2-shot ravens), moderators (slow + high damage), black hole launchers can stun ravens too, but you can time it to kill them.
3. Cloakbots: phantom snipers (1 shot ravens), knights (stun ravens), scythes can hit ravens when they dive so massed scythes are dangerous in numbers,
4. Roverbots: dominatrixs (they will capture ravens), massed fencers will kill ravens,
5. Tankbots: orges (massive short-range AAA), grouped blitzes (stun ravens), cyclops - slows 1 raven ea. so kill it or you'll lose a raven or 2,
6. Ampbots: scallops have strong short range AAA so care attacking them, bolos slow 1 raven ea, but do lose to ravens
7. Hoverbots: lances are risky, but if you time it after they fire then you can destroy them without loss,
8. Spiderbots: grouped venom (stun ravens)
9. Any dedicated AAA units will cause pain, but particularly the hoverbot flail, ampbot angular, roverbot crasher, due to their range and damage. The crasher is fast so that can be a problem. The tankbot copperhead has big AOE so it's strong against massed ravens. The jumpbot archangel is a pain due to its high hp.

Likhos (a/k/a Wyvern) is great against massed units and 2 can usually snipe a commander or factory. Again you have to pay attention to the target's hp and nearby repair units & shields when using force fire. If your enemy rushes Likhos (and you fail to scout and kill it with swifts), you can rush an artemis AAA turret to shut them down - 1 costs less than 1 likho and will 2-shot a likho. Likhos work well against shield balls and strong units - even against underwater units using force fire.

Phoenixes are good against massed light units, but not against raiders in your base because phoenixes will damage your base also. I use them against flea or puppy spam. They also work well against a vulnerable wind farm.

Thunderbirds are niche and require careful timing combined with other units to be useful. You can gift them to teammates so the coordination isn't required.

Owls are great for radar + radar jamming + sonar coverage (less area than line-of-sight). Mid-game I start them. I do not use them to scout as some do because they are so slow. I try to cover the front-lines and any areas vulnerable to a flanking attack. I put them on instant retreat as soon as they take damage so I don't micro them. They will go repair and then return to the same spot. If I see they are too far forward I will move them.

Once AAA density becomes too great, I switch to economy, AAA support, anti-nukes, super weapons, and swift afterburner scouting.



+5 / -0
Air good against Battleship but it have to be fair game played some of player I don't disagreed also i need get long with other player from other clan as well have hard time today and why Treat some one that haven't meet in real life trying started problem not make Treads at all just saying

or maybe miss Understand any way Air unit are good there nothing wrong with it

also best of lucked for beginner
+0 / -0