Everybody knows air only armies are annoying (especially when wielded by a decimus) and I’m my opinion, wolverines and reavers are not nearly effective enough. I did some testing with a friend yesterday (unfortunately I didn’t record specific data) but it’s roughly 1 reaver for every 3 banshees. This means that for a 40 banshee Air Force, one must field 14 reavers (I rounded up) to effectively counter, this is 70 population, that’s more than HALF of your army dedicated to a unit that can only effectively attack a single unit type, and both of these cost power. So I have a few recommended changes to help reduce the needed reaver support to fight air spam, because in 2v2 or 3v3 having those 14 reavers, sets you up to get CRUSHED by a ground army.
BANSHEES AND HORNETS: banshees and hornets need to cost power, it doesn’t need to be much, I’d argue 45 as a good amount. But this slows the snowball effect down drastically, because now it’s not all supplies into banshees(hornets) and every drop of power into upgrades, it will heavily slow down how fast air armies will reach full strength. Banshees should perhaps move a bit shower as well, go make their map coverage and leader power fidgeting less effective.
BANSHEES: move the plasma torpedo function to a active ability (Y button ability) it as absolutely ABSURD that banshees can do as much as that do, they dunk on all ground vehicles save for reavers and wolverines, and in the infantry department there are like 6 infantry units in the whole game (not counting heros) that can actually HIT air (despite infantry being their supposed counter) and infantry gets faded out late game due to being ruined by leader powers, so there is no reason that banshees get guaranteed air superiority as well. It annihilates the nightingales and air support of balanced armies, deletes hornets, and makes vultures nigh obsolete since they can hardly get a Phoenix missile off before being erased. Moving plasma torpedo to an ability will still let banshees eradicate things, but not as many things.
Nightingales: slight movement speed reduction, of one has a complete Air Force as unsc they definitely have these bad bois, banshee builders just rebuild the casualties usually, but unsc likes to keep hales around (typically for the benefit of a few vultures as well) reducing nightingale speed will slow down complete air armies without hitting hornets (which I don’t think are as strong) as hard
infantry/ NON-AA vehicles: before we get into the last really important point I’d like to make Here’s some poppers changes to pretty much everything/ anything else to hinder air more.
UNSC INFANTRY: there is a single UNSC infantry unit that can hit air. Marines (I guess ODSTs too but they’re not that great at it either). Despite the fact that infantry is the Rock-Paper-Sissors counter to air. Marines either need their AA capabilities improved(like the return of the RPG ability) or the UNSC needs to get an additional infantry unit that can actually damage air effectively. There’s already anti infantry, building, and vehicle infantry, how much damage would AA infantry cause? Probably not much.
BANISHED INFANTRY: The banished have 5 infantry types that can hit air. Grunts,rangers,Heavy Grunts, Enforcers,brute Grenadiers (I may be missing one) so while I also propose an AA infantry unit, it could be a bit weaker than the UNSC one since banished infantry has a much better time actually hitting air.
UNSC VEHICLES: Scorpions, let them shoot their cannons at air, I know it doesn’t make that much sense, but you can do it in the actual halo games and it’s not too ludicrous a concept. It will improve the ability for a balanced army to actually compete with an air one. Warthogs, give them a rocket marine like flame hogs, it’ll let them do a bit more damage to air without really running any risk of making them too OP (again improving more balanced army strategies) Colossus: same change as scorpion,
The mantis is the most reliable unit for the unsc when it comes to fighting air (in my opinion) they do pretty well against air, and aren’t utterly crushed by a ground army other ground units being more reliable would really help hinder simple air spam. (No changes to mantis just praising them a bit)
grizzly: same change as scorpion
grizzly and scorpion: let Y abilities target air as well, just dawned upon my, but that’d also bolster ground a great deal.
BANISHED GROUND:
Wraith: same changes as scorpion/grizzly
Locust: increased resistance from air, locusts are notoriously fragile, and it hinders their ability to “work” when they can be targeted and killed nearly insanity, they have enough trouble with leader powers as is.
WOLVERINES: the big one, I’m just gonna say it outright,
wolves are trash, to fix that I propose a few changes
increased health and a shield of matching quality to that of a reaver
the return of the Volley ability, wolves are useless against ground, volley would let them do a bit of damage in a brief burst, then go back to uselessness but they’d be much more effective
decreased cost: self explanatory, to much power for such a bad unit.
increased AA damage, to perhaps bring them a bit more in line with reavers
REAVERS: the actually functional air unit, but still not perfect.
Increased fire rate, remove the wierd theming where missiles in air lose functionality when target dies, this will make them more consistent and maintain more constant damage,
increased health
im not fully aware how their Y ability works, but just add damage and give it a spartan slam level stun, if it has these then improve them.
The AA units need to be in huge quantity to stop a lot of air, hunters erase tanks, but AA takes FOREVER to kill something, this should fix that, and the increased bulk will stop that decimus player from just glassing all of your AA, the Y ability changes will allow AA to actually contribute to a ground battle.
TLDR: make banshees and hornets cost power, let tanks use their cannons against air, make reavers and wolves bulkier do more Damage and either improve or add y abilities, add an anti air infantry to every leader of both factions.
in closing. There is way too much in this game that cannot hit air for the anti air units to be as bad as they are, and air armies can snowball waaaay too hard sind ether units don’t need power despite their counter needing it. Thanks for reading friends, and should any DEVS be reading, please Bro, every game has a decimus I’m sick of the banshees