How does one "rush" 4 bomber squads without you figuring out what they're doing? If you see their score is much higher than yours but they're not expanding as fast as you are: build anti-air. Build a repair bay next to your base if you have to. I dunno, I'm only #24 or so atm but have still played 120+ games and have literally never seen this strat happen. Single bomber rush yes, but 4 bombers or destructors sniping your base while caught with your pants down? I feel like there's ways to prevent this. You don't even need to scout it - score alone will tell you if they rush bombers.

I was wondering when this topic was going to flare up.  I've known about the Dominator Punisher rush since just after release.  Its the reason I don't play much ranked.  I don't want to win like that and I don't want to lose that way either.  Took quite a few wins against the painful AI that way in skirmish though.  But I didn't know about the Destructors however.  I'll have to play test that.

Yup that is pretty much it.  If the opponent is the PHC you can ignore a single AA (Not sure about two AA or more.  But how realistic is that by this time of the game anyway?).  BTW if the opponent is the Substrate then you might need to take out the blossum launcher as your first target but then just bomb the Nexus. 

Now the Dominators Punisher can be nerfed or the AA can be buffed or the Nexus can be buffed etc.  However then it seems to be that every time an OP strat is discovered something gets dumbed down or a strat is just made impossible.  What I believe is needed for this game is a more intelligently reactive fighter protection possibility.  If one could have the option of fighters that aggressively patrol ones area (w/o wandering off) coupled with more intelligent radar (can distinguish b/w air and ground) then a balance can be achieved w/o just nerfing things.

Thanks I've made the edits.

1 blossom does not kill 9 punishers in time to save your capital

This was exactly the problem. I watched the game and I'm still not sure this is a problem with bombers. Was this bombers being OP or was this just you out-ecoing him and his lack of preparedness? You were always 2 eco sectors/nodes ahead of him. You had 2 captured rad sectors to his 1 (he got the 2nd near the very end of the game) for most of the game, which allowed you to get 3 bomber squadrons and left him with less rads to counter. If he had scouted and seen nothing but a couple T1 units idling and a single factory there, it would be easy to figure out bombers were coming. We also couldn't see from his point of view how efficiently he was building and using resources. He just finished a single AA turret near his nexus when your bombers rolled in. What I'd like to see is if he had the same rad income as you and suspected bombers, how countering it would go. If he had 3 fighter squads ready to take on your bombers, what would the outcome be? On paper he should be able to counter with fighters and still have resources left over to field a larger land army. Upping the damage with quanta is interesting and makes the strat harder to counter (less time to kill bombers before nexus dies); I think it is riskier on larger maps where you have to actually build more units to expand. I do wish the Nexus had its own upgrades - health and weapon upgrades - as well. It's worth playing some customs to see how well an equally paced eco build up can counter with fighters.

well this one of the maps it is less likely to succeed then others to be honest.  Positions here are really close so you can get punished by hive rush although they will never kill your base before you kill theirs.

other maps are larger distance which makes it even better with punishers since they fly fast

PHC Flak armor was doubled from 8 to 16 in this week's small update. I don't think it was enough of a change though. A single Punisher squad will still defeat it. I think its damage output needs looking at to put it on par with Substrate's.

Yeah. Flak damage is really low.

And those armor is not necessary to change.

Flak supposed to be cheap and low health with mediocre damage so they can defend quick air rush.

The video isn't working. I would say the Avenger is a bit underpriced at 212/39 and the Nemesis a bit overpriced at 500/50. Most of the others are fairly in line with each other except the Substrate's cost slightly less metal and sightly more radioactives. Apollo is quite cheap at 220/17. There's tons of other variables to be considered though - build times, health, damage output, etc. - that complicate this.

It's a good video and I followed his points up to the Armory and Flak AA timing for PHC (around 13:30). Why not build flak first and then Armory? He did the opposite and was concerned his worker would get sniped by the first plane while still building flak. The Armory (and expansion) will be slightly delayed this way but Substrate investing in early planes is already slowing their own expansion and will be left with T1s for longer than PHC player will be.

Edit: I see he touches on this topic later in the video. I'm skeptical that he would lose 1 engineer and radioactive extractor to a dominator while it's under fire from flak but buffing PHC flak damage was already brought up in this thread. I disagree that Apollo is expensive but yes, it is slow and can't be everywhere on the map. I think it makes more sense to build flak initially as you expand. Anyway, it's worth watching for the devs I think - maybe some build time adjustments should be made as well - longer for dominator, shorter for flak for example. I actually prefer back when engineers/constructors had more health + armor/shields. They die a little too fast right now, which makes this dominator rush more problematic. 

They are asymmetrical factions so comparing identical build orders is a little misleading. We know the difference in buildings. PHC can still get their T2 units out quicker. They do not need to build a quantum relay to do so.  The point is, can PHC defend against early air without being set back too much? 

Not totaly true. The units getting out of the PHC factory at the very begining of the game are stronger than the sub's. On a small map the PHC T1 rush supported by apollo is very strong if not slowed down or even stop by the dominator rush.