Are Rocket Angels Underpowered? Thread - Red Alert 3 Paradox mod for C&C: Red Alert 3

The Rocket Angel is a unit that sees rather limited use in my experience in serious RA3 games: and I'm wondering what your thoughts on the unit are.

Is the unit underpowered? Overpowered? Fine? Lacking a real niche?

Rocket Angels seem to be mostly used as either raiders or well-rounded supports to a Rising Sun army.

I personally think they are a bit underpowered, mostly from not quite filling a unique niche.

So, in the spirit of tossing out ideas, these are some tweaks that individually might help balance them:

1. Allow the Paralysis Whip to shut down base defenses, helping to support the fast-paced Rising Sun army from losing all momentum against base defenses.

2. Shift the Rockets to only target air, but lower the cost of the Rocket Angel to make them more cost-effective as anti-ground stunners or anti-air support.

3. Allow the Paralysis Whip to slow down enemy aircraft, keeping them from using hit-and-run tactics against the Rocket Angels.

(This is a list of rough ideas: not polished suggestions.)

Underpowerd!! HA! never herd that one before.

Rocket angel spam is almost unbeatable from the ground or sea, and even then air forces have dificualty (Esspeically with the whole spinning thing).

Then again the empire has the ace in T3 combat.

Mainly the angel is a AA/AG combat unit on a fine edge. Easy to kill but swarms well, witch is why FLAK comes reccomended.

I truly have not witnessed what you describe in serious matches.

The Angels fall like flies to AA, and if they really get to be a problem anti-air infantry provide a hard counter.

In Paradox, air forces might have trouble because dogfighting is worthless until they fix the system.

yer, bleedin planes!

although mabey i just suck eh? i never play online, only against the AI.

Who. Spams. Everything! lol.

Now adding all those would make them just redundant since they can't retaliate against ground AA which makes them even worse, just give them the ability to stun defences and I'm happy

Edited by: IFork

I'm not saying add all of them- they are three independent ideas that I do not intend to all be together.

I think either a cost or tech reduction would work, that way you could use them as harassement unit, with their stun whip and anti-ground capabilities, this would come with a health nerf, they would also be an excellent support unit.

I also think your third option would work

Edited by: g.a

They already drop like flies when shot at. A single Hydrofoil killed 3 Angels who were idling around in less than 6 seconds when I played, then again I too only play campaign and seldomly skirmish. Normally for defenses you should have Wave-Force Artilleries, but when your enemy packs out artillery emplacements, a defense-deactivating Angel might come in handy - with a time delay of at least a second, not instantly. This would in turn be countered with a slight prize increase. The Angel is good at recognaisance and works well together with Burst Drones to get rid of annoying anti-ground planes. Since missile pods will be a permanent power increase in Paradox, they also would have more of a punch than in vRA3.

A time delay for a RA is kinda useless considering it's fragility, btw if you use RAs for recon you're doing it wrong :/ they're too slow to do that.

Also in vanilla RA3 an Apollo can take out several rocket angels before it gets destroyed due to it's slow projectile speed.

maby im doing it wroung.

i still think their fit for purpose being infantry in all, not to mention Empire infantry.

Is the stun whip a targeted secondary, or a mode?

Rocket Angels are too fragile to have a delay on anything, and I think it would a little overpowered against faction like the chinese if it could shut down buildings immediately.

I feel like they are well equipped with weapons useful for harassement, but they are too slow, expensive, and tech reliant to be so.

Edited by: g.a

Though Rocket Angels may pale in comparison to other things in paradox, my general experience has been that a large group will become an anti-everything attack force with enough stopping power that low-armor doesn't become a problem. I have send whole squads of Apollo Fighters to be lost to some 8 angels or so. Rocket Angels for a relatively low cost of $900 will soft-counter all targets, so a large force becomes almost unstoppable. The paralysis whip has ruined many of my offensive strategies, and pulls high-priority units out of combat even more effectively than the hydrofoil. I don't think they are underpowered currently.
@g.a the paralysis whip is a toggle mode

I never used a rocket angel in skrimish. Only tanks.

In my experience, Rocket Angels are rarely cost-effective, and when they win it is due to a heavy economy advantage.

They are also less mobile then the VX/ Tengu combo.

they are also at least in vanilla one of the few units able to hit both air and land in the same form. Plus the paralyze wip. Plus you have to realise that Paradox is currently revamping the whole damage system.