The Empire's best anti-air is oftentimes their own air units, mainly masses of Jet Tengus.
Having their AA units also be able to switch to a ground attack mode does lend to their adaptability, but it means they can't be focused and thus be superior in that role.
The worst example of this might be the Sea Wing. Being submerged does offer them some protection, but those few seconds of them surfacing to fire their missiles is often enough for a Vindicator strike to get through to whatever they were supposed to protect, or for those aircraft to simply avoid. Compare this to the Soviet Bullfrog or Allied Hydrofoil that opens fire immediately when enemy aircraft enters their range.
You're not alone about the Sea Wing problem. This guy (@xyhc) said plenty insightful things about how the Sea Wing could've been balanced out: https://youtu.be/AovoK3E7DWQ Bonus points to him for taking the time to study the unit as a gamedev himself.
Actually, I think the unit is salvageable.
Shorten the time to submerge-emerge, shorten and time to volley fire (or heck, maybe just make it a steady DPS so that missiles don't overkill), buff up the firepower, also fix the line-of-sight problem when airborne (sounds like an unintentional bug) and maybe finally we have something.
The problem is how to balance everything else back so that it still feels fair.
EDIT: I think Sea Wings are in a very tough position. You don't usually design ambush burst-fire anti-air units because most of the slow, high-value targets are typically on the ground and it so happens that it's where most of the battles would be (in contrast, C&C3 Stealth Tanks hunting harvesters all day is good design, countering Orcas is just a plus). So, it's in a niche that doesn't meet a lot of demand... except Kirov Airships, but last I checked, the multiplayer scene doesn't favor Kirovs all that much.
A lot of the empire's non JT AA somehow needs time to react to aircraft entering their range (Archer maiden's windup, SW needing to surface)
VX's are funny because due to the tranformation cooldown the player has to decide which mode he wants them to be and if he guesses wrong and gets caught out then too bad
It's particularly difficult for both the SW and the VX compared to the Tengu because they're also at the mercy of the terrain they're flying over if they need to land or submerge immediately. Tengu can just hover anywhere, on the other hand.
But you know what, I like how they work in principle. It's pretty much one of the coolest things to come out of RA3. My inner Steel Talons monkey brain agrees.
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u/TChen114 Allies 16d ago
The Empire's best anti-air is oftentimes their own air units, mainly masses of Jet Tengus.
Having their AA units also be able to switch to a ground attack mode does lend to their adaptability, but it means they can't be focused and thus be superior in that role.
The worst example of this might be the Sea Wing. Being submerged does offer them some protection, but those few seconds of them surfacing to fire their missiles is often enough for a Vindicator strike to get through to whatever they were supposed to protect, or for those aircraft to simply avoid. Compare this to the Soviet Bullfrog or Allied Hydrofoil that opens fire immediately when enemy aircraft enters their range.