thank you for your feedback. since you proceeded to clutter up the thread, i edited your post into your first one and then edited this one to better address your concerns, although you mention points that all have already been mentioned and explained here, so im not sure whats up with that.
the purpose for this change is to enable a player in a disadvantageous position some counter play in order to reduce their disadvantage a little
for example, if you lost air, your opponent can snipe your transports, gunships, bombers with asf and theres not much to do about it, other than hope to shoot them down beforehand. if you get sufficient AA then this isnt a huge issue, but in many cases thats not what happens. Air players often simply lock a couple of asf to enemy units like a drop in transit and theres not much to do about it. Because air gameplay is quite similar in its lopsided outcomes for both inties and asf, this applies to both of them. The only time this isnt really relevant is the extremely early game where you cannot afford to get an extra bomber for hunting landed air units, which is also presumably before one side has an air advantage over another.
In what is probably the complete opposite to "just dumbing down the game" the change opens up more choices for everyone involved:
This feature allows you to:
-Hold-fire your inties/asf and when an enemy flies over with his larger swarm you do not lose all of them for virtually nothing
-land your strats/gunships in friendly/neutral territory in order to save them from enemy inties/asf, provided they arent killed by enemy ground forces
-land your transports in transit to prevent their cargo from being destroyed
the person with the advantage then gets the following choices:
-stay with air units above the are to "lock" the landed units in place, but risking his air forces in the case of AA
-retreat, saving his air forces but not capitalizing on an advantage
-retreat but keep an air unit or two behind in the case of neutral territory, and "lock" both his enemy and some of his own air
-bring some air to ground forces while the enemy is unable to move safely, risking your own forces for some time but ultimately still gaining an advantage
this is where the unkillable scout thing was addressed - its killable with air to ground units that are mobile and readily available for a player who already has and air advantage. if a scout flies away, it means you chose to not leave any aa unit "guarding" it so thats choice 2 there, not 1 or 4 which would be applicable
next we should consider that situations like this happen in official balance too, when a scout is simply hidden away and just sits there for the whole map, being lucky enough that no one flew over it. suggesting that its not a game breaking problem, and that perhaps the location of that scout was not valuable since it was safe from both air and land forces.
furthermore, its debatable whether this buff to scouts is a problem, because it only is if we assume that the current situation is perfectly balanced, and that buffing scouts would ruin everything. as discussed with a bunch of people, good intel is not bad for the game, even if its free.
for example take the transports radar signatures - we can easily tell what they are, just by the pattern they make when carrying units. removing that would certainly be an interesting change, but it might also be very annoying not knowing if its a t1 scout or a percy drop coming, especially since shooting them down isnt always convenient, and depends on reactions, making the outcome feel like "luck"
as you can see, the intent is to give a bit more choice other than "aa or get rekt, and in some cases get rekt anyway" for both players. admittedly, its an unusual change and can catch you off guard but we think in the long run it will foster improved gameplay where you cant simply shut down the enemy air game for a good proportion of the match.
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actually i have come up with what is imo a nice parallel to explain the situation:
vividly imagine that you built a bomber early on in the game. you worked hard to get that bomber, as well as the inties required to keep it safe, you have an advantage over your enemy, and now its time to punish them! so you see a juicy engy, drop the bomb and...... it doged! your advantage has been negated by nothing but a single skillful bit of micro! and then your bomber gets shot down and you have lost your advantage. all because the bomb missed.
this mechanic is essential to supcom micro, its the very core of the land game and its what sets supcom micro apart from other games, where projectiles are on rails. the point is, that land units can dodge projectiles. when said projectiles are infrequent that advantage is substantial, and does not require any resources to get, except apm and some game knowledge.
This also applies to doging strats, tmls, pd shots, and many other things. consider for a moment how much better aeon strats would be if they never missed dancing acus and the like. intense dancing for 5 minutes can lead to a complete waste of multiple strats, which is 10k mass or more. or if tml always hit that walking acu.
now, air units cant do this. the only micro they can get is very strange indeed, they instead prevent the enemy from shooting, and not once, but as long as they stay behind they can maintain that state of not getting anything for it for enough time to destroy the enemy. this is one of the things that leads to lopsided outcomes from asf fights.
to put this in terms of the land units, imagine if you were unable to dodge things, at all. if the opponent paid for something they can use it on you. if they bought 10tml and you didnt build enough tmd (AA in our comparison) then you lose. possibly your acu.
so, where this change comes in, is letting the landed air units "dodge" their airborne counterparts. you avoid the damage. but at a cost of not being able to move or shoot either, at least until they leave. by the same principle - investing some apm and micro, you can negate the enemy players advantage, at least for a bit, and even then you still have a disadvantage of being pinned down, which if the situation allows it would lead to your loss anyway.
admittedly its not the same as land unit micro but it does bring about similar effects, and creates decisions for both players to respond to a situation with micro if they should so choose. in other threads people were complaining of lowering the skill ceiling. this is raising it.
lastly, given that we already had a little discussion on this topic with you, its sad to say that this appears to be a provocative post. if you would care to explain why its specifically "terrible" that would be nice. please make any further discussion in PM to avoid cluttering up this thread.
it should also be mentioned that nothing is set in stone, and this change may well make its way out of equilibrium in due course. however, that won't happen quite yet since so far the evidence provided appears to be rather based on feelings, and the situations given as examples were already addressed at least partially in this post.