Interaction between Screamer vs shields and com-drones.

You can discharge a screamer for free - you only have to let your com make com drones.

Massive shield spam - about 15 Aegis per screamer can drain about 30 or more shots out of a Screamer.

If used well, you can retreat your Krow with mobile shields and make cost against Screamer missles - Without any chance to loose a Unit.

My suggestion.
* let screamer penetrate shields.
* let drones, some or all gunships and maybe aircraft flying at a higher altitude, because the AOE kills ground stuff under Low-altitude air targets - especially com and carrier drones.

This is actually a problem, and has been for a while, Carrier drones do the same thing. The fact blasts and gnats also do this so easily is a problem too.

You really need to just holdfire screamers, this is the way we've been doing it basically for as long as screamers have been stockpile. But it is really hard to set your screamer to fire at will in time to stop a bomber attack.

I believe there is already a fix that makes AA do its full (air) damage to shields instead of its reduced ground damage? If not that's a problem. To me though, 15 aegis per screamer sounds like you're really not making cost- did you actually test this or did you just make that number up? I know it can be strategically worth it with a krow though.

A better solution would be just to put gnats, blasts and drones into their own category which screamers don't fire at. The question is whether its worthwhile to drain screamers with fighters or banshees as well? Probably not.

That comm drones do this is annoying.

I once build screamer specially against krow, well I didint know that it need 10 to kill krow so krow drained missiles and went back for repair. Maybe missiles should be free? Its expensive turret and actually it is even more expensive.

By the way 10 missiles to stockpile thats huge ammount of time isint it?

I agree that Screamer isn't efficient at all at the moment. Only its range is a good thing. But damage and stockpiling time sucks. It can't even kill a krow properly. I had a screamer in FFA with about 20 missiles stockpiled and set on hold fire. NeonStorm sent krow, I set screamer to attack it, Krow went down to 20% and retreated. He repaired it and did the same thing again, and could do it faster than I could queue new missiles.
It seems that mass chainsaws and flakkers are a much better option at the moment, deal more damage per cost, and cant by killed or disabled so easily.

The Screamer just feels like a heavy chainsaw to me. To be honest I don't feel like it's a part of the "Every Unit is unique" of Zero-K. It's just a more expensive heavier chainsaw. Maybe it should be completely replaced by something else?

It's the only real AoE AA you have, it can rip through packs of rapiers or, if an enemy leaves their bombers/fighters too close together.

To explain googles cryptic 'if used correctly', you should not hit it the moment it enters the range, since you'll be holdifiring anyway. You should wait until it is deep enough within your territory that you can kill it before it retreats (To do this sucessfully, you should be using other AA, like Razors, to get its HP down).

IMO it is not a power issue so much as the cost and the drone countering.

Making chainsaws is more cost effective than screamers. 4 chainsaws means that area is pretty much completely air free and you dont pay for the missiles unlike the screamer. Thats why you never see them ingame. Why would you pay for a expensive unit that only counters heavy units or bunch of units and costs resources to fire if you can make something that does that all for free?

4 chainsaws makes 1000 dps
1 Screamer makes 1750 dps

dps is the only reason.

If you have more damage per shot it will make too much overkill against bomb drones.
Because It is not every time possible to avoid the waste with chainsaws in front of your screamer - so far at the front, that they have more "range" than the screamer while a single missle has to be more expensive, because they kill brawler/blackdawn with 1 shot instead of 2.

It would take less time too, so that another player could notice his 3 or more brawlers to be shot down and lose 2 or 3 instead of 1 if he retreat.
If we double the dps, we need to make a missle cost 2*125 metal instead of 1*90 - also because it would make 3500 damage and only 100 damage less than the max. capacity of Aegis. That would let them penetrate shields.

Screamer needs to be one of:
* AA-arty : kills cheap stuff all over the map ( 200 to 400 dps, no AOE, 10 metal/shot, 25% more range )
* Long-range Anty-Heavy : ( 1 shot each 2 seonds, 4 times dps, 400 metal for the missle, fire only at >300 metal targets.
* * make it possible for chainsaws to fire first at some small targets - reduce the range, or only attack if enemies come closer than 1/2 range and keep fire until no enemy is anywhere in it's range - manual fire at one unit don't lead to auto-cleaning area.
* Riot-AA : really huge AOE, only fires if there are more than X targets where X is toogleable between 5, 7, 9
* * let the missle explode AOE-radius*0.75 above the top of the target to NOT damage ground units, or add an example to the no special damage rule.

4 chainsaws kill a krow in like 18 seconds. Thats will really scare him off. Also everything can hit a krow so having 1k extra dps in a area vs krow will make it a non krow zone.

On top of that they also stop all other air. Screamer takes a long time to kill a krow since it has to stockpile its missiles. Because of that screamers wont make cost. They most likely be killed or wont have enough missiles stockpiled by the time krow comes. I believe 10 missiles takes over 10 mins to build. Thats like 1/3 of most games?!?!?