This thread really makes me think that Air Control really ought to be highlighted more as a game feature, I remember when SC became my primary tournament game coming over from Tekken; Air Control was very pronounced and obvious. Perhaps then less people would feel some combos were "unfair" that aren't combos that they were hit with. Raph has one of these where he hits you in the air with 236A I think it is (or 66A) and then does 236B or something and it's very easily ACable but hardly anyone does even at mid-level play.
I remember in SC1, the general rule that applied was after a launcher, you couldn't AC until you got hit once, but you had a ton of control regardless after that 1 hit, making 2 hit juggles the norm. In SC2, that changed to each time you got hit in the air, your AC got stronger, so most combos consisted of launch into a slamdown move, which you couldn't tech into a free grounded hit instead. In SC3 AC was returned to somewhat SC1 levels and lost the scaling effect, but moves which gave a "ground slide" became the dominant form of post-launch combo filler, because even 2 hit moves intended for juggles (Like Cassandra 236B:B) could be AC'd out of. Finally in SC4, AC was just very weak period, and they added in moves which straight up nullified AC, and they had the ground slide. This is how you get things like Doom Combo... anyways pardon my rambling history lesson.
As you can see, AC has been getting weaker in each iteration, but SC's combo mechanics still seem very much focused on stun combos instead of juggles, so I guess it never really dawned on me that the presentation of it as a feature had been lacking.
tl;dr- I wish the designers would draw more attention to AC as a feature because many new players are ignorant it is there. Also, it's a great feature.
