Close Air Support; The Cavalry's here
Feel free to add to this guide.
When a team gets to a certain size, or a map of a certain size is played, inevitably a team is going to need to control the skies. This can be done at great cost by building static AA and AA units, but this requires a lot of effort from the people holding the front lines, which they could be using to hold off the other guys' units, and gain some ground.
Therefore, teams often elect to have someone be dedicated air support.
As an air support, your main tasks, in order of importance, are these:
1. Gain air superiority, at least in the skies over your friendly lines.
2. Provide intel about enemy plans and movements.
3. Support friendly assaults and hinder enemy assaults by bombing tactical targets with bombers (see bombers section for further info.)
[4. Gambit play: Strategically bomb something vulnerable, important, and preferably explosive in the enemy base.]
These tasks will switch importance depending on gamestate, but generally this is what you should concern yourself with.
TL;DR:
- First, spam out some Swifts
- If there is no enemy air, build low amounts of swifts in case they decide to go air and to raid, but start focusing on bombers.
- If there is enemy air, build more Swifts.
- If you won air, start building bombers and swifts, with about 1:1 Swifts:Bombers cost. Depending on how well you did, play around with your ratio of fighters:bombers.
- If the map is small, you may want some Hawks. If the enemy keeps sending planes over the same area, you may want some Hawks. If the enemy is gunships, you may wants some Hawks.
- Don't go over enemy AA unless you have to.
- Try to fight enemy fighters in friendly AA range as much as possible.
- Bombing enemy attackers is often a good idea. If they are inside your friendly AA range the enemy might even send his fighters to die.
- Only build Cranes if there is no chance of enemy fighters making it to where they are going to be building. You could build a spider lab for the cost of 2 cranes and save yourself a lot of headache by building some weavers to do the ecoing if you absolutely must.
- Whine for your team to get the best radar cover possible. You can't stop bombers that you can't see coming, and choosing when to engage their fighters is a lot easier with radar spotting them.
- Don't keep bombing the same location for too long. If you get predictable, the enemy is going to take you by surprise and kill all your bombers. Switching who your bombing target is will keep everyone on their toes and expecting to be bombed. This will cause them to build AA and spend less time thinking about the guy on your team who is working on taking them down on the ground.
List of Fixed Wing Aircraft:
Crane:
Construction "plane", very low HP, but has good mobility to reach mountains, and can't build itself into a corner. Unarmed.
Swift (Old name:"Avenger"): Multirole Fighter
Bread and butter fighter plane, very fast with special booster ability to go even faster. With booster, can outrun most AA missiles. Has a laser cannon that can engage all targets, as well as dedicated Air-to-Air missiles. The missiles have some splash damage, making them effective at engaging blobbed up targets.
Against ground targets, the Swift is basically a raider. Against air targets it is a burst-damage skirmisher/raider. Due to its speed, this is the air superiority fighter of choice for very large maps.
Hawk: Heavy fighter.
Slower, but packs more of a punch than Swifts, will win in 1-on-1 and small-scale combat with Swifts, but be careful of blobbing too many of them in the same space and getting shot down by the Swifts' missiles.
Hawks are relatively slow, a bit slower even than the bombers. This makes it hard to intercept bombers from halfway across the map, but if the enemy team keeps bombing the same spot over and over, they are a good choice for defending that particular location. Due to their low speed, they will keep on the tail of bombers for a long time if they chase them down, dealing quite a lot of damage with their rapid-fire AA lasers. They have 3x the Hp/cost of Swifts, so if you have to take out enemy aircraft while flying over light enemy AA, this unit might be a good fit for you.
Raven: Precision Bomber (Assault)
The Raven is a versatile bomber, capable of bombing both mobile units and static emplacements. It is quite slow and vulnerable to enemy AA fire. On the defensive, when enemy AA can't reach it easily, they are very powerful deterrents.
By default, when the Raven bombs a mobile unit or shield, it will dive. This slows the Raven down considerably, making it vulnerable not only to AA fire, but regular weapons as well. Be careful when diving down on enemy units. There is a button on the raven to change this behaviour. You can tell the Ravens to dive always, dive never, dive on mobile things only, or the default behaviour.
With experience, you will find out how many bombs it takes to kill something, and you will be able to split your Ravens efficiently between targets.
Phoenix: Napalm Bomber (Riot)
The Phoenix bomber is a bit faster than the Raven, with less HP, but its most important difference is that instead of dropping a single large bomb, it drops a cluster of napalm bomblets. This bomber is very effective against light units, and can even take out missile turrets (though this will usually mean the bomber dies as well) but is basically useless against heavier units.
The Bomber may turn as it drops its bomblets. This behaviour may be altered by adding a move order to the attack order. Adding a move order behind the bomb target will cause the phoenix to drop its bombs in a line.
Thunderbird: Support bomber
The Thunderbird is a cluster-disarm bomber, which uses lightning to disarm targets below it. As with the Phoenix, issueing move orders after its attack influences the path the attack takes. The thunderbird attacks for a longer time, however, so aiming it to cover the most amount of enemy units is generally worth it. With luck, it can disarm even heavy units in its flightpath. The Thunderbird relies on allied units to do damage, however, so if your team is not ready to sweep in and take advantage of the opportunity you have created, it will go to waste. The thunderbird is also a very powerful defensive tool, delaying the enemy from firing for the duration of the disarm.
Wyvern: Singularity Bomber (Riot/Assault)
The Wyvern is a very powerful bomber, and the most expensive plane. If used with care, it can be absolutely devastating to enemy formations. The singularity bomb pulls in nearby units, so attacking the same unit twice in a row with two different Wyverns yields improved results from attacking two different units.
While not being a lot faster than the other bombers, the wyvern drops its payload relatively quick, and has enough HP to dart in and out of light AA. Be careful of burst AA like Hacksaws, or massed AA. Be careful in general, you do not want to lose this unit.
Vulture: Radar + Sonar Plane
The Vulture is a dedicated intelligence plane, which is unarmed but relatively speedy, almost matching the Swift in cruising speed. It has a large sight, radar, and sonar range, revealing enemy positions to your team. If the enemy has focused on building low-range AA, you can circle a vulture above friendly lines and reveal a lot of the enemy lines, which can help your team's fight tremendously.
On sea maps, the vulture is indispensible as a mobile sonar platform, which can reveal submarines and amphibious units to your team.
1. Early game and Air Superiority
Gaining air superiority will begin at the start of the game, and you will have to keep putting in some effort as the game goes on. The first things you want out are some fighters, I recommend Swifts, they are cheap and fast. Do not build a con in the first few minutes unless there is no enemy air or you reliably trounced the enemy air player and you are certain they won't be able to get past the front lines any more. Air cons die very easily to Swifts, the most ubiquitous fighter, and at the start is when the enemy swifts will be in your base, scouting it and easily picking off your flying cons.
Once you have 1/2 Swifts out, send them to scout the enemy base. They are the fastest scouts in the game, and getting your team the information they need to anticipate what the enemy is going to do is vital in team games, as well as figuring out early on what labs the enemy team has, and if they're doing something silly like rushing a heavy unit out early.
When you scout with your Swifts, you may run into some light AA cover, if you do, press the D button to activate emergency boosters and get them out of there safely. You will gain the most distance if you turn your Swifts first, then activate the booster.
Continue making fighters so long as your enemy also has air units. Most games, this means you will be making fighters all game. Using the repeat button on your factory to keep making a certain mix of fighters and other units saves you a lot of queueing.
If the map is small, or fights keep happening in the same places, it might be worth building Hawks. Against gunships as well, hawks are quite effective.
Keep trading favorably, so long as a confrontation costs you 3 Swifts and the enemy 6 Swifts, you are doing well. To prevent yourself from losing too many Swifts, try not to loiter over enemy AA range. Learn the sounds AA units make, and when you hear them, check where your fighters are and pull them back if appropriate.
When the enemy bombs your allies, ideally there is some radar to see them coming. If there is, get your fighters into position outside of enemy AA range, ready to intercept the bombers. You might even persuade them to not bomb at all, which means your friends will probably live for another 30 seconds at least. If there is no radar, try to react as best you can to enemy bomb raids, and persuade your team in the most diplomatic terms to please build a radar near the front lines.
When you bomb, you may want to send your fighters along to keep your own bombers safe, or perhaps even eat some of the AA fire if you are outnumbering the enemy fighters considerably. If you do choose to use them as a screen against AA fire, keep in mind that the bombing target should be important enough to warrant throwing those fighters away, and probably the bombers too, if there's that much AA.
2. Providing Intel
Zero-K is a game where people make decisions; Where should I attack? What should I build next? Do I have enough units to push through the enemy lines?
To make the right decisions, your team needs to know what the enemy is doing. Fortunately, the Air Factory is quite good at finding that out. Your main intel will be from two units:
Swifts.
Vultures.
Both have their pro's and cons.
Swift:
Pro:
You are already building them, should have a nice army of them flying around already, they are fast, and they can penetrate deep through enemy AA with their booster ability.
Con:
You need to keep hold of them to kill the enemy, so sacrificing them all to scout is a bad idea, they have low HP, and their sight range isn't optimal, which means you have to send a line of them over the enemy to get a clear picture.
Vulture:
Pro:
Long range of LOS, radar, and sonar. 3x the HP of a swift for only 2x the cost.
Con:
Can't boost, so high quality AA will block it very effectively, you have to build them seperately and they have no other use except to scout.
For me, these properties boil down to these choices:
- If the enemy has little AA, or holes in the AA cover that you can slip through (check the static defence circles on the ground, you can slip through pretty tiny cracks if you spend some attention on it), build a vulture or two. Even if they get shot down, you got radar info about the enemy base, so you can recognize certain patterns. (A large field of evenly-spaced dots is a windgen farm, a dot creating new dots is a factory, a cluster of dots next to that is probably a bunch of nanoturrets.) When they do get into a base, a single vulture can reveal a lot of territory very fast.
- If there is a lot of AA, or a thick fighter screen, send in a couple of your Swifts. Make a line with them, turn them into the enemy line, and fire the booster when they start coming under AA fire. This will reveal a line into the enemy base for each Swift, and has a better chance of getting detailed intel on well-defended enemy positions. This is particularly relevant when the enemy has made a huge fortress and you need to find out where the anti-nuke is, or the Big Bertha.
3. Tactical Bombing
Basically, this boils down thusly:
- Ravens take out assault units pretty well, so if the enemy is assaulting your team and they have left their friendly AA cover behind, bomb them to shit.
- Phoenix are good at killing the light stuff. If a horde of glaives is coming for your teammates, phoenix will be able to help. Be careful of friendly fire, though, and again be careful of enemy AA range.
- Thunderbird can stop an assault dead in its tracks, as the assaulting player doesn't wish to send in units that can't fire at anything. 9/10 times the enemy will turn back if disabled. Particularly effective on shieldballs, though you may have to send in several thunderbirds to offset sniping by felons.
- When your allies want to assault something, you can try to bomb out the heaviest defensive structure, or the one they were having the most trouble with. Stardusts raised onto spikes of earth are a pain for ground players to deal with, so might be worth special attention.
- Commanders are great targets if they dare go on the frontline, or even better, if they are completely unsupported. Some players may resign if they have spent a lot of metal improving their commander, and it is lost to bombers. Others may try to secure the corpse and resurrect it even though the act of doing so is disproportionately costly.
4. Strategic bombing
Sometimes, when the opportunity presents itself, you will be able to bomb with impunity. Perhaps you killed off all the enemy fighters, and their team did not build any AA, or left obvious holes. Now is your time to shine as an air player, or your time to throw away the advantage you won.
Should you have the opportunity to bomb freely, look for these targets:
- Singularity Reactors: These cause a massive explosion, wiping out everything around them, which is hopefully a large part of the enemy base, or even another singularity reactor, causing a chain reaction. This is very satisfying to watch, and often ends games right then and there.
- Moho Geothermal: Also cause a massive explosion. Tend to be in vulnerable locations, but a little bit further away from the enemy base. Most people will cover them with terraformed earth, but this is often no issue for Ravens.
- Fusion reactors: Little brother of the singularity reactor, their explosions aren't as big, but this also means people are more likely to put them in the middle of other structures.
- Geothermal reactor: Little brother of the Moho Geothermal. Explodes roughly the same as a fusion reactor, but also tends to be further from a base.
For these 4 above, you will cripple the enemy economy by bombing them, further securing your lead. Or perhaps creating one, if you go for a hail-mary play of sending all your bombers into enemy lines. This often ends badly, though, so plan well!
- Nanoturret fields: Nanoturrets explode on death. If they are built in a 2xN field or more densely, they will cause a chain reaction taking out the entire field. This is funny, and disrupts enemy production. Causing the enemy team as a whole to excess metal is basically taking income from their hands. It's better to bomb the eco directly, but if you can't find that, bombing these is decent enough.
- Windgen farms: A few phoenixes set loose in a windgen farm make quick work of it. Don't waste ravens on these, though.
- Mexes: Any vulnerable mexes can be killed in one shot by a raven, or burnt down by a phoenix. Kill the eco, secure the lead.
Superweapons:
If the enemy is building a superweapon, or has completed a superweapon, see if it has enough anti-air cover. If it doesn't, bomb it.
