i think defending against raids with bladewings is too easy since there is no usable T1 counter to them. aa kbots or vecs cannot keep up with aks or flashes. even stumpies are way too fast for samsons.
having the tactical option of breaking through somewhere, sacrificing fast, cheap troops to deal damage to eco would be a good thing imo.
it just cannot made to happen against a competent core player.

mount a sucessfull assault, break through their porc, pour your army into enemy territory to rape their mexes - no. you get paralyzed and lose all your troops.
(this is different in very small games where the cost of an airfield is actually inhibitive.)

opinions?

lol u really did it. now wait for core players to come and say 'BAWWWW DONT NERF BLADEWINGS CORE IS USELESS BAWWWWW'. there was so many discussion about drones...

side note, 2 levelers rape tons of flashes (especially in gaps), ddm is best turret ingame, armed mex makes early raids pointless.
@ topic

2 cents:

bladewings: they need a cooldown period, so they can't permastun anymore, e.g. like this: a bladewing gets 30 shots. after they are all used up, it takes 60 seconds to fully reload. the 60 second timer starts running after every shot, so the bladewing is always fully loaded after not being used for a while. this could also be an option for certain other op units

levelers are fine. slow, low hp, cant shoot over obstacles. good for defending against light close combat units, raider still a better choice as all purpose, assault or late game unit.

ddm: nice unit, but needs a cost increase.

Bladewings are a good unit but then again they're one of very few air units that have cool interesting interactions with other units, not just "click enemy base and hope for the best". So I see it only as a good thing that they get much use. Yes and if you nerf them core becomes alot worse than arm on some bigger maps.

And you can use fighters vs them.

As if your enemy is gonna have drones while youre scout and flash raiding..

3 mex, 2 solars, airlab, solar, drones ?

In DSD 8v8? I'm disappointed how few teams *do* field a Bladewing player.

*annoying CA-player comment* - in CA/ZK, the AA kbots can keep up with raiders.

increasing crasher/jethro speed would be an option. increasing samson/slasher speed? haha...
make samson/slasher vs ground only and introduce a dedicated aa vec? just a thought...

or maybe decrease bladewing rof and increase their hp instead. the idea would be to decrease their effectiveness vs defenseless units, while keeping their overall effectiveness intact.

Simply put, in any game situation, if 1 player starts air and rushes enough drones to cover the team (lets say 2 per front player), the team is gonna lose anyway because, though theyre safer from scouts, they've lost a back player. Some examples:

8v8BADSD you only have 1 (or MAYBE 2) techers, no player supplying transports for team, no player comdropping hill, and a player unsure what to do 7 mins into the game with an airlab, no resources and 8 drones.

3v3 on any map, we see on team safe from early rushes, but after this initial boost, the game ends almost instantly as its a 2v3.

If youre going to claim drones are OP, make a better case than "they stop scouting and raiding too easily"

How viable is reclaiming air lab and going veh/kbot after you make ~8 bw or so?

Depends whether the other team are combombing themselves or not

often enough teams have a non-teching air player who doesnt even build bladewings

So do you think bw are underpowered? Or is air just not supposed to be a viable start?

I see a lot of players who spam out a few transports to help and then focus on teching full-time to get bombers. If that guy built a half-dozen bladewings he could be tremendously helpful to his team during raids.

aaaaalso... lets not forget that dsd isnt all of ba. dsd allows for hardly any raiding at all.

there are other, more open maps though where raiding does play a role... unless somebody is clever enough to spend some hundred m on bladewings

Yes, but larger, more raid-friendly maps don't usually see 8v8 games where you have a spare player to start air.

true. the only raid-friendly map that actually sees a little play is comet catcher, and that is usually 2v2 or 3v3

guess i gotta try getting some bladewings on that map =)

Unless they've changed radically in the years since BA came about, I highly doubt they're OP.

They changed quite a bit when the way paralysis works was changed. They are worse now of course.