I think we dont need brawler at all, there's already enough gunships to choose from.

Put shields on the brawlers. Because shields on brawlers.

edit: ignore everything I say about gunships, because I am utterly incapable of doing anything useful with that lab. Seriously, how do you use gnats? I can't figure out where to bring them out without them all exploding the moment they smell a firefight. The darned things are made of paper.

HOW2 GNAT

1) send in expensive gunships
2) wait ~2 seconds
3) send in gnats

this way, all AA on the scene has locked onto the high cost gunships and will now ignore the gnats until all the other gunships are dead or the player manually targets the gnats

its that easy!

Gunshit lab wins SO many games, but few players use them right.

how I like to play gunshits

1) make 3-4 brawler/blackdawn, dont make your presence much felt until you have the group
2) fly along the very edge of the map with all 4 to the enemy base on the flank
3) blow up all assisting nanotowers & cons at lab, and any fusion
4) move along all their bases doing the same until gunships are lost
5) make 2 more gunship, and let it be visibly seen you still have some
6) meanwhile, reclaim gunships and make heavy vehicle lab. start golly
7) other team desperately spams AA around their eco centers. roll golly into weakest front and explode through for massive damage and heroism

well thats how youd normaly go for a gunship start.

its actualy good your playng it that way, it means that start works as intended.

But note, youd be scouted for that rush, very very early harass kinda beats that start imo.

Don't forget to rapidly expand with constructors at the start as well.

Aircons are kinda expensive and die really fast to fighters. Its usually better to let your allies take the mexes unless they are spread out alot in my opinion.

My gunship approach is quite the opposite for the early game. I usually churn out as many banshees as fast as I can and spread them out to scout the enemy and kill lone units and force them to make AA. That really helps my allies raid better especially if we go in with land and air at the same time. Then I try to not lose any banshees as they hardly make cost in the first run without being repaired. I try to avoid all damage as the less damage I take the longer I can use my banshees without the need for repairs. Usually the units killed + the AA the enemy has to make to scare away my banshees is more than I spend for banshees.

Then you can use the banshees against enemy raiders and helping your allies push at certain points of the battlefield.

If the enemy also has gunships, gnats and banshees are the best counter unless the enemy has a superior rapier force.
If the enemy makes fighters, you can consider making rapiers.

If the enemy made lots of AA then I switch to land while keeping my few banshees alive for killing raiders and attacking undefended units.

Blackdawns and Brawlers can usually be used without losses even if the enemy got moderate AA aswell.

autoland behavior is unfortunately retarded or that would be even easier (at 50% HP? time to fly in a straight line back to the air repair pad, ignoring all orders to stop. Oh, I'm deep behind enemy lines? Guess I'll be flying over that flak belt, CYA)

Autoland is enabled by default?

No, but as an elite pro I am always taking it to the next level and pressing the little buttons on the GUI

When you use autoretreat(the little chicken) and repair zones(retreat zones), you can place the zone wherever you want. They listen to orders when they retreat but their new command gets overriden by another retreat command given at the nearest repair zone after a second or so. So if you spam commands you can interrupt their retreat. Which is good if you are stressed but bad if you have control group that you keep microing and want damaged ones to be repaired without deselecting them.
You can also turn the autoretreat off or remove all repair zone to gain full control of the gunships again.

Notice that spamming commands won't work well if the latency to the host is low or if you play singleplayer.

Use Gnats against thugs, rogues, ravagers, cudgels, recluses, etc. They are especially good against most assaults, as assaults tend to have enough HP to shrug off gunship fire and surge through anyway, but Gnats will stop that happening. These units will -never- hit gnats. Tanking the shots with other gunships first is great, but if you really want to exploit the hardcounter relationships, use them against units that cannot hit them at all.

Godde: Air cons are IMO great, because of their speed. On huge or really hilly maps, their expansion cant be matched: the 1v1 metagame for google and I on huge maps quickly degraded into air start vs air start because of this. But you're right, in large team games if you're going gunship it often isn't worth it since your allies will expand for you and there is a high chance of fighters.

rapier + brawler guts unmicored fighters imo

fighters autotarget super-durable brawler, rapiers rapidly bring down fighters.

Rapiers get more HP for cost though. Brawlers can take more damage before dying but they don't fire back at the fighters.

brawlers are compulsory if the group is to have any real DPS vs land though.