Cyborg16 wrote:Plasma_Wolf wrote:Strategic bombers are more expensive than cruisers. 2100 mass vs 2000 mass. They also cost way more energy so you need time and resources to build T3 Pgens. You also need to upgrade your air factory to T3, while cruisers are available at T2.
Did you see the second set of numbers I posted (top of this page)? Aeon cruisers are the only ones to nearly/actually destroy strats 1v1, and seraphim cruisers barely scratch strats. If well timed coordinated, presumably most cruisers would only aim at the first strat.
Seraphim cruisers have flak, not SAM, so obviously they're not as good against strat bombers as the other cruisers. If using Air to kill navy is what you have to do, you get T3 gunships against all navies apart from the seraphim and you use Strat bombers against the Seraphim.
This is for when there's a lot of T3 navy present (gunships do better damage than torpedo bombers in large numbers because they don't have to do passes). In case you're Aeon, you use T3 torpedo bombers of course. They're more efficient.
So, strat bombers against Seraphim navy and gunships against other navy. This is simply because of how the cruisers work.
As for "they're doing badly", cruisers are designed to kill air and strat bombers are designed to kill something in a very specific place. So they're good at killing each other. There's nothing wrong with that. Cruisers should die against something that's being used to kill them, but is also more expensive than the cruiser. And since you're so fond of doing numbers, please calculate how much cruisers you can build for upgrading an air factory to T3, building a T3 Pgen and building a strat bomber. This is how many cruisers you have against you when you get the first strat bomber out.
Also test using 10 strat bombers against 10 cruisers and see how many there are left then. Actually, test 20 strat bombers against 21 cruisers, which is the actual mass equivalent cost.
As FtxCommando said, something is wrong if your opponent is using cruisers to effectively kill off all dedicated AA in your naval group.
Stop thinking in linear one-unit-vs-one-unit terms. Use combinations. If your opponent is building strat bombers you will soon have enough ASF to deny air all over the map. Your opponent has to build his own ASF. If ASF are matching, he may decide to use the strat bombers somewhere. Two choices, use them against your navy or your army at the front. Then your ASF have to be at the front as well to prevent that. Whatever your opponent put in Strat bombers, you have extra in ASFs so you're good to win the air fight. Any attack is a waste on his side because you've got the control over there. Reclaim will be yours.
The same happens if it happens over navy. If your opponent uses strat bombers to kill your cruisers in your navy and then have the surviving strat bombers kill the rest of your navy, then your ASF will easily kill the strat bombers if they go alone, and all of your navy survives. If he accompanies his Strat bombers with the ASF, then he's going to lose all air in exchange for (maybe, just very much maybe) your navy. If you don't have enough ASF to kill his air (ASF + strats) and he can kill your navy, then he's seriously outperforming you.
Suppose he's got all air (strat bombers and ASF) against your cruisers and ASF. Do you think that it's a bad thing if strat bombers are not all targeted right away? ASFs being targeted by cruisers are going to die quickly and en masse. Even if all cruisers are gone in one Strat bomber pass. Then your ASFs outnumber his. In the end you have ASFs left and he's got nothing. Granted, you lost cruisers but he's got nothing at all.
