Air vs. Ground Balance. You can't make it fair by making nobody happy.

[Rothnang]

Originally Posted by Mietz

The other side of the coin is that if you make Air the only counter to Air it all ends always in an air-zerg which nothing can stop ever.

I don't want air to be the only counter to air, quite on the contrary. I want the fight between air and ground to be less of an absolute.

Since beta there has been bad blood in the community over air vs. ground, and I've been in both camps more or less. I started out really hating air because I was a tank player, aircraft kept killing me, and it annoyed me to no end that when I pulled a counter I couldn't stop an aircraft by myself. I eventually learned how to fly, as well as how to organize an AA squad and saw things from another perspective. In an aircraft I could kill a lot of people without them having any real chance to fight back, but any organized resistance would not simply force me to fly more carefully, but pretty much keep me out of the area completely.

Both experiences are frustrating, and there is very little in between where air vs. ground fights are concerned. This isn't a problem you have with ground vs. ground fights. A single infantryman can take down a tank if he does it right, but a single tank can also survive against a large enemy force if he plays it smart.

I want air vs. ground gameplay to be as deep as ground vs. ground fights are, and not lead to one side or the other getting shut down hard. That kind of system may be OK for an RTS, but in this game every single unit that gets destroyed or denied any action is a player, and to most people it simply isn't fun to get steamrolled to satisfy some high minded ideal of what should counter what to an insane degree.

There needs to be a meaningful fight between all units. You should never have a situation where you simply don't have enough people to do anything about getting bombed, and there should never be a situation where you're completely locked out of a fight because you can't get close enough to even shoot without getting shot to ribbons.