Heavy AA Discussion - And theory Options

[Darky]

Heavy AA is here to stay obviously, but what I would like to talk about it is how they changed the game.

In vZH and Shockwave, fixed-wing air units have one purpose: Take out important targets by immediately responding where it is needed.

For example: When you destroy the 4 Battlemasters in a battlegroup made of 4 Battlemasters, 2 Troop Crawlers and 2 Gatling Tanks, the group gets much more managable.

Or when you destroy a War Factory, your advancing forces won't have to deal with reinforcements. Or later on, you destroy artillery so that your tank blob doesn't get killed by AoE.

Stuff like that, basically, if you need something on the map done right away, you used fixed wing aircraft.

And this is where the dilemma begins.

See, air units take out priority targets, but what happens when we add heavy AA to the equation? When in sufficient numbers, heavy AA units, invalidate fixed wing aircraft completely, meaning they need to be taken out first so that you can use your aircraft to take out priority targets. Well how will you achieve that? For that you need tanks, the very same units whose effectiveness was supposed to be achieved via air support. You need ground units to destroy heavy AA but you need air support to effectively destroy artillery without suffering more losses than you otherwise would have. Of course, this cycle is not absolute, and formations can be successful without air support, but then where does that place air support?

Something that used to be a good force multiplier (and still is early in the game) without being mandatory is hardly viable when heavy AA is there to ground them until ground forces destroy them. Once you do, it is very likely that the enemy still has some left in their base guarding it, and if not, chances are the game is already over at that point anyway. Of course, this doesn't make Raptors and others useless, far from it, but it does limit their usage considerably, when they were balanced in the vanilla game. And since aircraft didn't really get a power upgrade compared to vanilla (except perhaps the Frogfoot, which is now removed), it would appear that fixed-wing aircraft are indirectly nerfed in the redesigned RotR.

But this doesn't mean that heavy AA is overpowered. Why not? Well it brings us to the second half of the problem. Rotor-wing aircraft, henceforth called helicopters, can be amassed and they provide great fire support, better than fixed-wing aircraft even if their response time isn't as much. Since they are well equipped and capable of neutralizing AA quickly when used in numbers, helicopters in vanilla Zero Hour are close to being overpowered, as they marry the mobility of an aircraft with the endurance (not as in damage endurance but as in how they don't have to return to base for anything for repairs) of a vehicle packed with heavy weapons with no counter-spam AA unit available. Simply put, there is no counterpart to artillery when it comes to anti air, which enables spam tactics in vanilla and forces players to spam their own anti-air unit, which aren't effective against what are also often used later on in games: tanks.

And the helicopters in RotR are upgraded compared to their vanilla counterparts. They are also more numerous and arguably more effective in general. The Comanche was buffed considerably, the Russian helicopters are already good and the revealed abilities are nothing short of amazing (Thermobaric Rockets and Active Protection System) which give further utility to helicopters.

This means that helicopters, which were already good if not a bit too good were balanced adequately with the introduction of heavy AA but even more supportive tools for them to help them be used as force multipliers. They are in a fine place in RotR, as once the AA is down, they improve your ground forces' efficiency drastically even when not spammed. Which is how helicopters are meant to be, at least in my opinion. However, the fixed-wing aircraft , which were all balanced except perhaps for the disputed Aurora, are indirectly nerfed by something seemingly intended to balance helicopters, limiting their effectiveness considerably and making them not cost effective once multiple heavy AA units are out on the field. As a player, I don't see any reason to use Raptors once Grumbles are up as that money is better spent on Comanches which are even more powerful or other ground units to get rid of the heavy AA. The fast response ability is göne later in the game.

Now this is my theory pertaining to heavy AA and how they affect the gameplay and it could be right or wrong if there is something I missed. Since it assumes that heavy AA is being amassed, it is obviously concering early game, where fixed wing aircraft are still very much viable. This is also about 1.802 and what has been revealed about 1.85, so it may be invalid for 2.0. Share your opinion below.