Swift op?

From #zktop20 earlier today:

quote: [14:58] [ISP]Lauri maybe swifts are OP [14:59] GoogleFrog how? [14:59] [ISP]Lauri they beat both hawks and tridents for cost, have godly mobility and can shoot at ground [14:59] [ISP]Lauri just really safe to spam [14:59] [ISP]Lauri it's a bit of a shame since it makes things like banshee switches really weak [15:00] [ISP]Lauri due to people often having swifts anyway * 8.10.2014 15:00:26 [15:01] [ISP]Lauri hawks are not even nearly as dangerous to banshees as swifts due to their tiny speed advantage over banshees [15:01] [ISP]Lauri a while ago I tried how swifts and hawks performed against various gunships and planes [15:02] [ISP]Lauri swifts just generally outperformed or matched hawks in straight up combat [15:02] [ISP]Lauri rapiers were an uncommon exception [15:02] [ISP]Lauri they have a convenient amount of damage to be effective vs swifts, but not so vs hawks [15:06] Anarchid swifts also have uber alpha and Displace ability [15:06] Anarchid and know how to use Displace to retreat

Discuss.

I don't have any evidence to confirm these claims, but I have been surprised several times when my hawk cloud dies to an enemy swift cloud. I might have a shitty brain, but my intuition was that hawks were like AA riots and swifts were essentially raiders/scouts. Also, the manual says of swifts:

quote: ... but enemy AA and air superiority fighters will kill it quickly.

If swifts beat hawks for cost, that's an explicit contradiction to the unit guide.

Yeah so in fact swifts are the riots. ;)

My humble not-top-20 opinion is that I've built Swifts far more often than I have built Hawks. Quite besides their air-to-air (and combat in general) capability they are much better as scouts.

Swifts also have the ability to retreat easily from a losing fight whereas Hawks are exceptionally vulnerable while retreating.

Then again, I build Glaives far more often than I build Warriors. They have different use cases, and that doesn't necessarily mean that Glaive is OP or Warrior needs a buff. I don't have sufficient experience with air to comment on whether a similar relationship applies in general to swift vs. hawk but it is a possibility to keep in mind.

I suppose the other question is "Independent of their relationship to hawks are swifts overpowered?" which I'm definitely not qualified to answer. What does "overpowered" mean for a unit that has no competitors in a similar role? (I think Hawks do, or should, fill a quite different role to Swifts in an air force)

If you remove AA missile from swift it will be useless

I think swifts are the more interesting units with their boost, it makes them capable of retreating, of cool micro and tricks, and basically of interacting where generally fighter vs fighter is a single fight order. Not to mention they can harass and interact with ground in an interesting way.

If Swifts are the dominant fighter, this is good for the game IMO.

The trick is to make Vamp more interesting, not simply better.

quote: If Swifts are the dominant fighter, this is good for the game IMO.

It's not only about fighters, they also counter the bulk of Gunshipfac. Besides, a more interesting Hawk would not be used if it still lost to Swifts.

I think Vamp/Hawk needs some niche but currently it doesn't really have one.
Best fighter vs planes is Swift because of its high alpha, best speed, and ability to quickly react thanks to speedboost.
Best fighter to use near enemy AA/porc is still Swift because it deals big damage quickly, can't be easily hit by non-AA porc, and it can just escape at any moment. This is where Vamps were supposed to have a niche, but Vamp takes ages to kill anything and is such a slow and huge target that its HP doesn't help it much during that time.
The best fighter against gunships is not Swift, and not Vamp either, but actually... Raven.
I think only against Rapiers Vamp is the better choice.

quote: If Swifts are the dominant fighter, this is good for the game IMO.

Not necessarily for every aspect of the game. Banshees for example suffer quite heavily in my opinion from the dominant Swift. Slower gunships are often escorted by Tridents or Rapiers for AA support, but the whole point of Banshees is to be fast and raidery. You either don't make them at all or you use them on their own without dragging slow AA gunships with them. Currently Banshees are a very risky investment because players will often have some Swifts anyway (there's very little reason to not have a few Swifts) potentially blindcountering those Banshees. Hawks on the other hand are much more softcountery due to their inability to near instantly catch the Banshees anywhere on the map.

The way I see it, there are a large number of situations in which the Swift is much better than the Hawk and a very small number of situations in which the Hawk is slightly preferrable. I think this imbalance has a bad effect on gunship (and fighter) unit variety (specifically the Banshee) and it seems like it would be a good idea to either nerf the Swift or in some way improve the Hawk.

Any comments on the "remove the AA-only missile" idea? It seems that all of the problems mentioned here involve other flying units and that its ground interaction is fine.