... now that there are air cruisers?
Considering the slower speed, much higher cost, and later development of the cruisers, I'd say the bombers still play a crucial role if you like playing air (like I do). It's always good to be able to destroy some power cores, animal shelters, and the like if you start rushing before T4.
Kryllith
Well I suppose.
But late in the game what will u do with all those spare bombers.
Killing them desn't seem right...
While your air cruisers take out the enemy's buildings or clustered army, your bombers can be busy picking off the anti-air units nearby.
A force of just one unit will not win wars against human opponents. Against the computer you can get away with building 5-10 air cruisers and destroying him. Against a human opponent, you must have air support to protect those expensive cruisers. Your bombers can be part of that air support by picking off ground anti-air much faster than fighters.
Actually, if you spend the same amount of nova/food on advanced shielded bombers that you do on a single AC, I think you'll find the resultant large bomber force will level buildings much faster than the cruiser with its fifteen-second reload time (or whatever... sorry, haven't tested, but I know it takes aaaaages), will take a lot longer to take down, and will be able to react to incoming threats much faster.
I would actually tend to suggest ACs for taking down large groups of ground units, as previously mentioned, or for cracking open tight clusters of AA turrets, which will eat bombers alive. For quickly levelling bases, though, the AC is much less economically viable than a bomber swarm IMO.
Of course, using a single Cruiser only ties up one pop. slot, as opposed to the twenty or so for a bomber squadron. Then again, if you get jumped by fighters, a good number of your bombers might even make it home again...
Basically both units still have their uses.
Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. I used a lot of bombers (still do) before CC simply because they were great at wiping out buildings. The cruisers work well on tightly packed buildings since you can (and in that case are better than bombers), but they're a bit wasteful if you just have shooting at a solitary building. Of course, the cruisers are far better for AA turrets and castles since they have play with the range, and they're good for taking out masses of ground forces (AA or otherwise). But if you're facing a bunch of spread out AA troops/artillery it's much better to have a wing of bombers.
Kryllith
It is worth realising that, with the possible exception of space island maps, you still will struggle to use a straight air force exclusively. The real point of the Air Cruisers, as far as I am aware, is to stop an opponent hiding behind a fortified position indefinitely - e.g. a wall of AA turrets at the edge of an asteroid is now easily reduced to rubble by a couple of ACs. Similarly, sitting behind static AA defences on a more open map won't work either, for the same reason.
However, an intelligent player who commits some resources to either large fighter squadrons or mobile anti-air is still going to be able to take down the ACs. If they have shielded fighters, and the resources are more or less equal, then they will eventually be able to overcome your big guns simply because they can afford swarms of fighters for each one of your cruisers. If they don't, then they have Anti-Air Retrofit instead, which does horrible things to anything flying, especially combined with Heavy Weapons Engineers or something like the Confed Geonosian Engineers tech. If they can spread out their AA mobiles or attack in two waves then your precious air cruisers will go down remarkably quickly. There is still no air unit that can take down a similar number of AA units cost-effectively; in fact, post-CC, the attack of flyers vs. AA has been reduced across the board.
Mix a couple of cruisers with the bomber squadrons, add fighters to taste, and don't forget the ground support, or you will be losing the resource war...
Nice, this is turning into a air tactics thread.:D
Carry on...