Often I've asked myself is air offense worth it? To make a stab at a good player you'll have to make at least six helicopters or planes. Thats money that could of been going to other things, such as more tanks. And besides, air vehicles get destroyed by anti-aircraft units and structures so it may not be worth it.

There are a few reasons for focusing on air attack. One, that you have so much ore that its falling out of your silos. Another, that the enemy has lots of good targets and has not defended them hardly (or at all). The last reason would be that you HAVE to. What I mean is that you have to use air offense to counter your enemies' moves, such as a dozen unescorted cruisers are on their way to you.

Base Attacking- Let's say that the enemy's base is undefended for air attacks and you have plenty of air vehicles for the job, now what do you destroy? If you have enough forces, then I would say go for the Construction Yard. If you do not have enough planes or helicopters for the job, and you know it, then don't attack. Why provoke the player into setting up air defenses and having his attention to your air attacks? It'll make the job harder for you in the meantime. What you could do is do a land/air attack. This involves taking a group of tanks and have them attack the enemy's construction yard. Yes, I know the enemy has a dozen tesla coils and fifty tanks in his base, but don't worry about that. Make your tanks go directly to his construction yard. Yes, a few tanks will die, maybe most of them. What is important is damaging his constuction yard enough with your tanks so that when you air attack it the building will be destroyed. Now that's worth a few tanks, right?

The order of best to worst targets of air attacking:

1.) Tech Centers make the best targets. They are weak, and sometimes the enemy focuses on protecting his construction yard and not that crucial tech center. Upon blowing up a tech center, devastation will happen to the allies. If they had a satellite building, its gone now, all that time down the tubes. If they already have a satellite up, then they will lose contact with it. This means their screen will turn dark, even the places they've been before! Ha ha! Allies players HATE losing their tech centers. DO NOT destroy the Soviet's Tech Center at all! If you do, the Soviet can still create the new options that the tech center gave him. If you allow the tech center to remain then it will continue to drain needless power. Try to destroy the Allies' tech center. If you do the Allies are not physically hurt, but they now see NOTHING but around themselves! And that's so funny to watch them get fuming mad!

2.) Construction Yard (Already mentioned above)

3.) Powerplants are a nice target due to their weakness, but focusing on powerplants will not accomplish much unless the enemy has few powerplants. Then you can be quick in destroying your oppenent's powerplants, putting the enemy practically out of the game! But the enemy can easily build a new powerplant and it may take a while to destroy all of them, so go after the more crucial structures.

4.) Tesla Coils and Gun Turrets are good targets, as are flame thrower machines and pillboxes, simply because they can't fire back at your planes. And by destroying these objects, your soon tank attack will be easier.

5.) Iron Curtains and cronolabs make great targets. Blow these up and piss of the player! Also, missle silos are excellent targets, for they are weak, and when they blow up the player gets really angry. And he just got a nuke ready! :)

6.) Radar Domes are good targets, for they are weak and once you blow them up, the enemy player gets disorrientated.

7.) Ore refineries are pretty good targets for air attacks. Make sure you have plenty of planes/helicopters before you start so you can destroy the ore refinery all at once. Once nice things about blowing up ore refineries is that as the game progresses and ore becomes more precious, people will start making their ore refineries as close to the ore as possible and usually away from their base, and their base defenses. Blowing up ore refieneries screw up the player's economy, and having a good economy is always the key to winning.

8.) A war factory is not a good target to destroy. Chances are is that if you have enough helicopters and planes to destroy a war factory, you could blow up a constuction yard. So don't waste time on the war factory while there is still a construction yard around. Once the constuction yard is destroyed, immediatly get rid of the war factory(s). Most smart players have at least three war factories, some have up to nine! Blowing up a war factory won't hurt the player overall.

9.) Naval yards are not good targets. What will you accomplish by blowing one up? Not that much, for creating a new one is cheap and quick.

10.) A barracks is a bad target for your air attacks. If that is the only building you can blow up without getting hurt, then do it. But barracks are so cheap, and they usually have those pesky rocket laucher guys near it that all we air offense guys hate. So use your planes/helicopters' ammo for better targets.

Useless Targets

1.) Service Depot- As to my knowledge, not many people repair their units on service depots. Sometimes its better to make a new unit altogether instead of using money and time to repair a damaged one. Destroying these won't hurt your opponent at all. They can still make MCVs and mine layers without it.

2.)Soviet Tech Centers- Under no circumstances, never blow this up. In fact, blowing it up will help the player. Why? The Soviet Tech Center is built only to get new construction options such as the tanya and the Mammoth Tank. If you destroy the Soviet Tech Center (and the allied tech center) your opponent will still be able to build these units. Soviet Tech Centers draw unneccesary powerplant power. If you blow it up you'll be freeing up more power to the enemy.

3.)Walls- If a RA player is making walls (for some strange reason) don't air attack them. The reason is pretty obvious.

One target I didn't mention were AA guns and SAMS. It takes six helicopters to destroy one SAM without any of them being destroyed. If you are planning to air attack a base, it'd be wise to start with these pesky air defenses. Destroy them either by lots of planes, helicopters or ground attack or you'll be having to create new planes if you ignore them.

What!? The enemy has defended his base so well that you know you cannot destroy any buildings? Here's some great unit targets. If you happen to see an enemy tanya, do an air attack on her. The player can't get her out of the way and so she's gone! Also, she costs over a thousand bucks so do not think you are not hurting the other player. Engineers are good to get rid off, especially if you plan on doing some building attacks. The player may forget that he lost an engineer and when his buildings start to get damaged, he can only repair them with money. Destroy those awful annoying cruisers and especially their friend: the destroyers. Destroyers will shoot at you, and they'll do a good job at it. Use subs and boats if you have them to get rid or to divert the destroyers so your planes can do all the work against the cruisers. Destroy theives and spies using air attacks, for its pretty silly to send your army after a silly spy. The best unit to destroy, of course, are the ore trucks. They will be away from the base occasionally and you can get rid of them by air if you have enough air vehicles. Make sure you have enough air units to do this. You don't want the enemy to start placing rocket launchers around. If they do this, try using ground units or yaks to get rid of

Armies- Many times the enemy stockpiles units somewhere on the map. This vast army is just sitting there, waiting for the player to say 'go' to attack you. Its fun to destroy his army asthey are just sitting there, approaching you, or running away. Migs do a nice job of destroying tanks. Beware if the enemy slyly placed rocket launchers around the army. They'll give your air units a beating.

Earlier in the game when the opponent is sending rifle infantry on their suicide quest to explore the map, if you have a plane destroy that rifle infantry before it gets to you, blow the riflle dude off the map. You don't want the enemy know where you are. Attacking with ground units will only justify that you're around that spot, but the enemy will keep on speculating about an air attack. Most of us don't use air attacks early in the game much anyway, so your plane has nothing better to do.

Chinook- This is a nifty helicopter that transports infantry over the air. You can make lots of slick attacks with the chinook helicopter. The most widely use of them is to just transport tanyas. But if you need air defenses quick, five rocket launchers sardined inside won't do to bad to wherever you are taking them. Try taking engineers inside so you can capture that allied construction yard so you can build new units. One of my favorite strategies that involves the chinook can be found here.

Paratroopers- These are fun units to play with, too bad you have to wait for them. These will send five riflemen anywhere on the map. They can be used to scout the map, or to annoy the enemy. This is their main purpose: harassing the other player. However, if you send them in an undefended spot in the enemy base, they can do plenty of damage. If you have them destroy a powerplant and the enemy's power drops to low to support his buildings, that's and invitation to pull in with your tanks. I would generally avoid having the paratroopers attack buildings such as the construction yard, since it will take them forever to destroy it. Now if you get the paratroopers to attack the tech center, heh heh, and you manage to blow it up, then those paratroopers were well spent. Powerplants, tech centers, helicopters, planes, engineers, and tanyas make the best targest for paratroopers. Don't worry about the Tanya. She'll only shoot at you if the player tells her so, and by then it may be too late for her.

Spy Plane- This is a heavily armored plane that takes a 'camera shot' of the area of the map you tell it to go. This is the main reconnasaince of the Soviets. Its useful to find the enemy until the allies put up their dreaded gap generator. Then you can only take one quick peak benath their shroud, and quickly lay in paratroopers, air attacks, and nukes.

Why is this listed in the 'air offense' section? It can aid in your attacks. Most ally players realize that when they see the spy plane flying over them, they know they are about to be attacked. You can use the spy plane to trick them, also to make their air defense weapons going off which calls the player to view his base to see what's going on (which would divert the player as you move your tank army).

Parabombs- If you happen to pick a crate that had a present of parabombs in it, don't start cheering. Parabombs suck. You can't really control them much to be effective. They are handy at killing a crowd of infantry, or bombing the water for subs.

Yaks- Yaks suck, don't buy them. I thought they might be good at killing those annoying rocketmen but no, the rocketmen just lay flat. This has made the yaks WORTHLESS!

Mig Control- As the enemy keeps on getting air attacked by you, he will place AAguns, SAMS, and rocketmen out. Most likely he'll place them in the direction where your base is, and rightly so since that seems to be the direction where all your planes are coming from. You can control Migs using something similiar like a waypoint to attack in a different direction. Group your planes under a number. Force attack (ctrl fire) the place where you want your migs to fly. Your migs will fly over to that spot but right before they reach their destination, tell them to attack whatever target you want them too. If done properly, your migs will avoid the aircraft defense structures and units. Just be sure you tell them to change their target BEFORE they fire at the 'waypoint'.

Tank Offense	Nontank Vehicles Offense	Water Offense	Air Defense	Other Ways to Kill the Enemy