I recently got back into FA after years away. I remember the days of v3599 when Restorer spam ruined every game for an idea of how long ago!
Because the balance was less refined in those days there were certain things that you just never did but that I see people do often now. I want to understand if those things have all been fixed or if I'm just watching noobs make mistakes. I'm not great at understanding how stat tweaks affect the viability of units so I'm hoping the forum can give me an overview please.
Some specific questions I've got:
Fixed T1 and T2 AA was never used because it was much less value for money than mobile. I see people using static AA quite a lot now, is it viable? Can anyone help me to understand any tradeoffs?
Similar with PD. I see quite a lot of T1 PD in 1v1s. Is this because I'm still relatively low level (I'm ranked about #2000) or have they become more affordable? I feel like I find them harder to overcome than I used to but I can't tell if that's just that my skill is much lower now than it used to be.
T2 static arty: this was hardly ever worth building, but I see them quite regularly now. Have they been made more viable?
Rhino vs Wagner: it used to be that the Rhino was a waste of time and you'd pretty much always use Wagners. I see that the Wagner has been nerfed but I don't fully understand this in context.
Engineering stations: it used to be common to see fields of UEF and Cybran engineering stations. Did the engie mod/HQ patch make this unviable? Is it now player's choice what they use to boost a factory's production (instead of just using T1 engy spam or engineering stations)?
And in general, does every unit now do what you'd expect it to do for a sensible cost? Have the 'noob traps' all been removed? Are there any particular peculiarities in unit behaviour/cost or meta that I should be aware of?