If this is done, will defenders be removed from the com's build menu?

I hadn't thought about it, but I'm leaning towards no. You think they should be?

Totally gimps bomber rush, so I guess it depends if you want t1 air to be viable 1v1.

If I say don't remove, I'm afraid you're going to increase their build cost (particularly e cost) to prevent coms from spamming / pushing too many of them during early game. Because if you think about it, these things could be a bitch to counter if someone just walked their com to the frontline and started spamming these.

But honestly, I want to see them kept, and rebalanced in a reasonable manner. This partly has to do with what happens to the kbots and the trucks as well.

Pintle, what exactly do you mean???

Nothing can possibly be gimped since the entire game is currently being reworked from the ground up. There's nothing even there to gimp right now.

I'm still working on backend stuff... unit abilities, code cleanup, bringing stuff up to date with the engine's advancements, etc. 3 years of missed development time.

In BA you see 1 radar blip that is air and you drop an mt. Hell, you can do it without even having a con out of the lab. The commander's ability to drop near-instant AA heavily gimps bomber rushing.

Bomber rushing is still viable in BA anyhow. You can kill the mts being built if you want too, com wont make 1 ready in a single bomber pass.

And when you say "if you want t1 air to be viable 1v1", you dont really think bomber rush is the only useful way to use air in 1v1?

I'm comparing "BA viable" air in a 1v1 to mods like CA, SA and XTA.

Not sure AA / BA's air was ever intended to be used in the same way as those other mods...

Unless you make nanotowers cheap and plentiful and useful, air will never be good as a starting-faction except as an all-or-nothing gamble. CA gets away with air starts because CA does not have a strong maker-oriented economy. In BA, you need to be able to spam econ. With air units, you're stuck with the weak nanolathes of the conplane, meaning a proper econ-spam is impossible... so even if you've a moderately successful initial rush, you'll still lose to geometric growth.

And I know how you hate nanotowers - that's why they chain.

You could ofc make t1 air cons worth building...

T1 air cons will most definitely be worth having. Also, it's interesting you mention spamming economy. I hate that, absolutely hate it. People memorizing build lists is so weird, IMO. If any part of a game can be played exactly the same every time with no chance of anything going badly, there's something wrong.

I strongly dislike what I see economy-wise when I've watched BA games. It seems to go like this:

Early game: Spam jeffies or weasels to hold off the opponent so you can...
Mid game: ...begin the nanotower whorefest. Soon flashes are dominating the battlefield, but they are soon followed by...
Late game: ...a swarm of L2 bombers. Whoever's L2 bombers manage to pop the most enemy fusions begins to dominate the land game. For most people the game ends at this stage, unless you're...
End game: ...a newbie, in which case the nuke/bertha/antinuke/shield rush begins. A complete stalemate ensues. At some point someone remembers that jeffies still exist despite T3 units being common, and attacks with a swarm of them that manages to sneak past your opponent's defenses (a single Punisher flanked by 2 LLTs), setting off a metal maker chain reaction because, holy crap, metal makers explode?! Maybe they shouldn't be built directly adjacent to each other after all.

Fortunately the game usually ends in the "late game" phase. I remember when I used to play AA, people seemed to try different combinations all the time. BA seems to have just gotten stale.

BA got a lot of game time without changing tons each version hence people managed to find some optimal build orders at certain situations after playing DSD for 1k times.
In every situation there will be an optimal thing to do...
The main thing is to make sure there are tons of different situations that allow players to use all of their arsenal and that every unit will be a part of that optimal route at a certain acceptable % of gametime.

BA does have some very overdue issues like t1 plasma towers cost nerf,stumpy needing a small speed decrease,jeffy needing a small speed decrease, t2 lab costs that need to be slightly lowered and some other issues related to balance that will allow some more units to be used at an acceptable % of the time and make BA feel "tighter".

Sure, there's going to be some things that people always do...

mex
mex
solar
mex
mex

etc, but I don't like the idea that someone be able to play the same way every time without consequences. I'm not really sure how to combat this, but I'll definitely try.

Theres still new tactics to be found in BA, even in 8v8 dsd. Problem is in the players for big part too, who simply like to sit back and tech even if its usually not a good move in itself. Fast tech is just a cheap strat, you dont need to actually react to the ongoing battle before rushing in with a huge force (unless you get your building t2 lab/fusion dgunned or bombed by bombers, in which case you can still ragequit), and get a sense of accomplishment even if its bad for the team overall. And when big teams dsd doesnt really have any competitive play but just people messing around, this is unlikely to change...

But the problem stays that many BA games are lame as hell. But try watching/playing smaller games too, with good players, youll never see t2 made most of the time...

Yeah that's why T2 sucks.
It was never allowed to be stress tested by the better players so it can be fine tuned.
Of course watching 8v8 dsd noob fests hardly tells you a lot about a mod's balance.

Caydr, as in the PM, I made two small flying-FARK like units for Arm and Core T1 air. If they're balanced properly, it could make air starts viable. The medium gunships help as well.

give both factions tier 1 gunships should help the problem and possibly a support unit.

Bladewings/Banshee

Rapier/Blastwing

works well in CA

I don't like AA missiles shooting at ground.

The art of carefully placing llts and hlts will die. Scattering defenders everywhere is a no brainer.

I also don't like how it gives you air defense as a biproduct. It's much better when you actually need to make a choice to defend against air.

IMO, this does nothing but make the gameplay less strategic, simplified and dumbed down.

That would be the case if I just removed "toairweapon", but I will be balancing the whole mod with this change in mind so there shouldn't be a problem. AA is going to be very different from other mods, in many ways, so automatic assumptions are unwarranted until at least the beta's out.