Noob questions - fighters

[erik8752]

Why do advanced players build so many fighters?

[Forboding Angel]

Wrong forum. What game? BA?

Probably because BA experiences an extreme form of snowball effect where armies never have an upper limit. As a result eventually the snowball rolls over you. The fighter screens are there to protect from bomber facerolls (it helps that they attack ground units as well).

[raaar]

Assuming it's about BA, which I only rarely play.

Try to play without fighter screen cover against core players who complement their army with those annoying little flying thingies which cost like 60 metal each and deal 666 dps of paralyze damage, shoot every 1.2s and paralyze for up to 7s. I wonder how long until BA peoples realize how broken they are.

[Silentwings]

If you're asking about BA, probably the best thing to do is join a host, spectate a game, and ask the people themselves.

(You might also notice that the best players often choose to blend ground anti-air with fighters, and also take strategic decisions as to if/when its worth having a small/large fleet of air.)

[MasterBel2]

Answer for BA
Quite honestly, people buid fighter screens because they're far too lazy to build antiair on the front line. Because the role of defending against air strikes usually comes down to the player who isn't producing much land units (aka the techer, someone not on front line), or because people don't like building mobile constructors, energy and metal is thrown into fighters which, quite honestly, are nowheres near as effective as flak as an air defence. Plus, fighters die defending against air attacks whereas flak turrets do not.

I'm sure Ares will come back at me explaining why I'm wrong and why fighters are useful, but I don't care.

[Forboding Angel]

You used to be able to use mass numbers of fighters for comm snipes if you didn't mind losing a goodly number of them.

[MasterBel2]

Ugh yes. Used to be the trademark way to finish off the last commander in an ffa. So much lag…

[brainfart]

Airwing isn't really my thing but I remember some bits. Traditionally the main benefit of the fighter screen was the ease at which it defends the whole front and you don't have to think about it too much. Throw in a spy plane and couple of gunships as well to help plug holes against light units or sneak attacks. Space is also limited and you can get a good density of AA. With less contention for space. It is a naturally regenerative defence. Against buildings it tends to be the case that they can lose to attrition as it tends to be the case you can always flood and overwhelm the nearest ground based AA to bomb it. At tier2 the intercepters are pretty powerful AA by any standards. I think as AA goes they inflict quit a good deal of damage yet are much cheaper than ground based doing similar damage. In an emergency you can pull some fighters to assist units on the front caught by an air attack without cover such as by emp, krows, gunships, etc. Screamers can perform a similar role usually covering ground units where it's not safe to put fighter screen. In a real pinch you can pull some for emergency scouting as well.

The fighters will also later usually be used in attacking if you get to that point. It is ideal if when building up units to have them on the defence before attacking unless you don't want the enemy to see what you have. They will have some ground attack and can take out some of the enemy air screen. The real use there though might be cannon fodder for your bombers to get through. They will soak up a lot of damage and disrupted the entire enemy airscreen. It is 50/50 as to whether to also try to use the intercepters to take out a choice target or two. They tend not to last long but their speed and numbers can sometimes beat bombers for getting through to a target. I don't do it often but I am pretty sure you want to attack at end and not the middle of a fighter screen as you'll then only have one stream flying into yours and overall the planes in the stream will be furthest from yours. If it is the edge of the map you only get AA from one side as well on the ground.

Against a significant air attack fighter screen alone is often insufficient. Later in game you'll want some more ground based AA to back it up. Some structures are good but not necessarily extreme. Usually some rows of popup t1 at front because it is cheap to spam and flak in some key areas or one or two dotted around. After that T2 AA vehicles tend to work better although I find the flak vehicles better at taking out spam. A key problem will be that your patrol line will be wide but thin and your enemy will stab through a single point of it. It takes a bit for all of your fighters to rotate around and come into play. The distance is very short and it is a matter of a few seconds for the engagement to go down. Flak is likely effective due to the AOE against a concentrated fight spear.

When your enemy has a fighter screen it is good if you can surreptitiously erode it. A screamer is one expensive way to do it. Although I tend to find sneaking an AA ground unit in range can be enough. You can support it with radar jammer plus radar vehicle or radar jammer and spybot. I am not sure how well the spyplane picks those up though.

It is common for an enemy to be to dependent on the air screen. If you launch some attacks that deplete it by sending a dummy ground attack backed by anti-air vehicles then attack with air before it regenerates it can be enough for you to get through or to delay a mass air attack by the enemy. It is not infrequent that there will be not be enough enemy ground based AA to compensate for a significant loss in air screen as long as you have the bombers.

Before an air screen is up the common strategy is to send across peepers the whole front first to see where there are gaps in the AA.