To airstart or not to airstart?

Hello friends.
I come here today to talk about about air start, and how there is not much of a reason not to. It gives you map control for a good portion of time, letting you expand freely. Low weight units are the supposed counter, but as long as you build static defense and use your comm well, there is no way your opponent can mount a significant ground assault, because he has to invest so much metal into defending his base from mex snipes. Bombers don't even have to kill much, just a constructor or two, and the fear they generate (well founded), pays in terms of map control and mexes for you, rather than killing enemy metal. Ravens are low weight enough to be used viably vs raiders(with possibly exception of glaives - so make more defenders!).

The only reliable way to avoid this airstarting nonsense seems to be "play zion v2 and other small maps" where the distance is short enough that you can hit a timing where the bomber is still a significant part of your opponents metal, so he has not much in the way of ground defense.

Even if airstart is not "op", it is viable enough that it pushes out land factories. The air/land dynamic is not very fun(in my humble opinion) as it puts one player on a defensive that is very hard to break, while the air player is holding back from his temporary lack of ground. You have to get lucky and do something before the metal starts pouring in for the air player, and he can just out-metal you.

I present two replays as evidence:
B291037 2 on Red Comet
B286195 2 on Red Comet

The two games play out very similarly, even though me and lauri switch sides(air/land) and have stylistic differences. As the grounder, we both spam defenders and a few aa, try to raid but don't do well. Then the porc pushing comes, and eco wins the game. There was not much interaction, just the grounder defending, and the airer waiting to win.

It is important to note that I am not advocating for a raven nerf, just an early game usability nerf. I think bombers requiring a non-negligible amount of energy to re-arm would solve this problem. Early game energy is quite scarce, and the metal invested into extra energy structures would slow down the impending ground switch, giving the land player more time to establish air defence(and expansions with it) without having it being run over just as he is able to push out.

Thoughts? Rage posts? "l2p scrub" posts?

That is not my experience with airstart on this type of open map.

The energy drain for rearm is an interesting idea. The order of rearm and repair could also change. Currently a plane is repaired and reloaded at the same time and this lead to strange energy fluctuation if reloading cost energy. Alternately it could be a requirement that a plane is repaired before it can start being reloaded. Or the order could be reversed.

Either method would keep a plane on the pad longer. I prefer reload before repair because then the player can still choose to launch their plane before it is fully repaired. Also with repair before reload there is a bit of an issue with planes taking damage on the pad during reloading.

quote: Quit overestimating the playerbase when Zero-K has the much bigger problem of "needs more players!"

I don't see how tweaking the game for play at a high level is counterproductive in terms of attracting new players. At worst somebody is spending time on it which could have been spent on other things - but balancing the game is necessary to attract new players too. If a new player watches a 1v1 tournament and sees many ridiculous double-airstart games that may well be offputting.

With regard to the question at hand... I won't pretend to any great amount of knowledge about 1v1 in general or airstart in particular. I do suspect its viability on particular maps varies greatly based on how easy it is to defend your first few mex (are your first handful protectable by one set of defenders or not, for instance).

As I understand it airstart has not been in the high-level 1v1 meta in the recent past. It might take some time for the metagame to evolve and for the best tactics to counter it to be found.

For what it's worth, an example of a lower-level game:
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/291404

I did not use my ravens very well and got wrecked by a couple of fleas at the start, but I think he overbuilt AA which made him vulnerable to the ground switch. Neither of us played at all perfectly but it might be of interest.

It is worth noting that a single Razor doesn't kill a Raven unless you fly over it a lot, which is generally avoidable. Predicting where the mobile AA will be and avoiding it is considerably more difficult.

quote: everything is depends on terrain,map size,amount of mexes,and who is your opponent.

Of course - the point I was trying to make is that airstart is quite probably overpowered on at least a fraction of the map pool (for instance I think it's good on Quicksilver), and mostly unplayable on at least a fraction (Altair Crossing, for instance). It may not even be possible to balance airstart across all maps.

EDIT: A factory start or matchup not being balanced across all maps isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you play spiders on Comet Catcher, or tanks on Zion, you're going to have a bad time. That being said, air is significantly different to all other factories (including gunships) and I'm not sure I would want to see a game or map where air was the only (or even most) viable start. Your mileage may vary.

kaen is the problem then that the counters to plane start are unintuitive or require some extra skill? I do not think it takes much mechanical skill to counter a plane start. Perhaps countering it requires you to know which units to build and when to try to expand. If you get a bit behind vs a plane start your opponent can just spam Ravens and win.

Those issues are unlikely to be affected by reload timing changes or extra raider vulnerability.


Kyubey
What in particular does Shield do against Planes? Vandal is not particularly good and the constructors are snipable (if you dive properly). Is Dirtbag swarm really legit?

Not sure why Ships would be so bad vs planes. Presumably the plane player has to start on an island or just lose to Typhoons. Shredder is really really good AA so it should probably be made instead of Defender.

For Hovercraft vs Plane have you tried ignoring Dagger and using Halberd to raid? It takes forever for a Raven to kill a closed Halberd so with good timing you can snipe turrets and mex. Perhaps you can even snipe a comm.

I don't really that that is a good example. I was very flustered that game for some reason(tired I guess). I didn't use my bombers well, and even miss clicked making me miss killing drone's comm. The halberds didnt do any direct damage, just prevented my crane from expanding until they died.

The biggest mistake(among many) was going light vehicles - which just get stomped by hoovers(especially in small numbers). My hatred of mirror match ups got the best of me.

Repair before rearm is a very viable solution for fixing this, even if Air will need other buffs to keep it useful.

This would make damage a very real way to slow down Air DPS, even if it cannot kill. Right now you need to hit the thresholds of kill before strike or kill after strike to be useful.

It is worth also noting that Air Factory has the most economic power of any factory, which warps things a bit. Only Plane factory can repair units and build them at the same time. This is a very real advantage which disrupts the symmetry of starting factories.

quote: the cons are the easiest to bomb

How so? Raven bomb leaves Quill alive at less than 10 HP. That makes bombing them quite inefficient compared to bombing bot constructors which can be 1 bomb killed. Quill gives the second least metal value per Raven bomb of all cons.

quote: How so? Raven bomb leaves Quill alive at less than 10 HP. That makes bombing them quite inefficient compared to bombing bot constructors which can be 1 bomb killed. Quill gives the second least metal value per Raven bomb of all cons.

+1 avenger is all you need :P

quote: AND WHY IS IT EVERY TIME I CLICK ON SOMETHING ON THIS WEBSITE A SEPARATE TAB OPENS TRYING TO GET ME TO DOWNLOAD A "PC FIXER". This happened just now...

you has a virus, not site problem