Tall walls and pointdefense?

a bit of a short thread this time on eventualy providing players with a bit more defensive options ..
that surely may have been talked somewhere but i still like to bring it up again as it is quite a while since we talked about that stuff last time ...

so we all know shields are quite the cool thing to have ... but when they are available there would be almost no reason to NOT build them taking the examples from SupCom FA and 2 ... as they blocked simply EVERYTHING damagewise and still allowed you to move arround freely with your units and made the game turn into a big siegewar needing superexpensive ramms in the form of experimentals ...

so here is a bit of a suggestion on how to allow a bit more siegepossibilities because actualy that´s cool imo
but to not make it (hopefully) too powerfull ...
as we see regular walls help impeding (even if slightly) enemy movement torwards your base but they don´t stop too many shots going over them as shoots with a small arc do ...
tall walls would help forcing your enemy to use either siege weapons bombers or orbital but at the same time
would stop you from using low or no arc weapons and limit you in movement ...

point defense mobile or static:
helps you to reduce incomeing weaponfire of missiles and artilleryshells thus making your enemy forcing to use either bombers or direct weapon fire, but ultimatley wont help you dealing with the root of the problem to which you still need your own weapons ...

using both of those defense options would limit the effectiveness of many of your enemies units but still not entirely stop them ... so you either need more defensive beam or artilery turrets or have to use units and deal with limited movement within your base ... but it would help you fortifying territory you can´t under any circumstances lose ...



so what you guys think? would that be a worthwhile addition with the spherical nature of PA maps?

"short thread" he says

may give you an idea what i consider a "long" thread ...

I rather like longer ops. when I have an idea but don't have the energy to write the wall of text that goes with I'm ashamed.

Actually, the Gil-E shoots down tactical missiles already.

would be cool if it does the same with shells .. does it?
and then we would need a stationary tower as well

No, like in SupCom it only stops tactical missiles(Catapults, Bluehawks, Stingrays and Hornets).

Normal arty are used way less in most games.

Also, mobile is more important than stationary. It also keeps people from being able to completely turtle.

if you turtle too much you will lose anyway due to being outproduced and ultimatly overrun .. it would be just a matter of time ... that to me is no reason to refuse players these options ... again we are not speaking about versatile shields but defensiveoptions with clear drawbacks ... the player should be aware that he may built his own prison at worst and a impeding barrier to enemy movement at best ...

I would be totally down for point defence towers, maybe allowing flak towers to act as such, but tall walls... meh.

what speaks against tall walls ... and please don´t say would encourage turling .. as i mentioned the drawbacks already ...

Nothing speaks against it, I just don't really see the point... You've already got point def. towers, and it would look really awkward to have tall walls blocking standard artillery that just arcs really high up...

it would block low arcing weapons such as levelers and grenadiers as those do shot over regular walls iirc not shellers or tacmissileunits

My only thought here is that once T2 units roll out, it is very easy to chew through buildings. Once an army shows up at your doorstep you are likely going to lose a lot either way.

I would like to instead see a surface-to-orbit defensive vehicle. Maybe some sort of enhanced missile launcher. The reason I would like to see this is because I would also like to see the addition of heavy interplanetary transports capable of ferrying dozens of units as well as the addition of some sort of orbital cruiser capable of orbit-to-surface fire. Mobile anti-orbital surfaced based weapons could possibly help balance against this.

I could possibly get behind the idea of T2 vehicles having some sort of enhanced survivability- either units with shields or units with point defense systems (like on the larger naval units) and aircraft with flares or something. No shield projectors or base shields or anything like that though.

I like having point defence on units, as an addition to their function, but not by it's self.

Allright, but that's still pretty much only 1 unit, who was meant to be able to shoot over walls, so It'd kind of defeat the purpose of grenadiers. Idk, just my opinion.

I choose option #5, I would like more defensive options but not what was posted in the OP

Not sure how I feel on the subject of walls that counter the things that are supposed to counter walls. But I do think that all forms of strategy should be viable.

Don't really understand the hate on shields, they were able to be balanced in FA and I don't see a reason why they couldn't be balanced in PA.

shields are too effective and to difficult to ballance ... they are basicly a areal armor and AoE HP buff ..
and they were not ballanced in FA they totaly lead to siege wars making any low tier unit oblsolete even worse being stackable made it neccesary to punch through with high numbers of bombers, and shields with aa and artillery were grind to crack what almost forces you to go tier 3 and experimental ... it is the same situaton with PA players having entrenched themselves on a planet ... unless you manage a snipe or finish your enemy of early there was no way around superweapons and that leads to repetitiv gameplay ... and players actualy don´t want that

walls are not like that .. a wall consists of many many pieces each piece of wall only covers a small area from 2 sides not however from above .. so while they do protect they are still vulnerable to breaches as a wall with holes would be inefficient and they don´t allow your ownunits to pass unless shielldgates are a thing ... and going aircraft, orbital or sheller/bluewhawk still would be viable against tall walls as the backside of the tall wall can still be attacked by those ... however tall walls combined with turrets and regular walls on front and artillery on the back could stop other groundunits from advancing or at worst impeding them ... but as you see it would be quite time and resourceconsuming ... so there is a fair ammount of risk to it ... let infernos get to a unprotected wall it will chew to it no t2 needed have a turret behind te wall the turret will destroy it but be protected by the wall against other units like tanks and bots with directfire...

a shield once consumed enough damage and going down merely needs a recharge to be online again ... and energymaintanence is absolutly not a problem in supcom unless you go realy hard on unitproduction .. also shields aside from power need only one structure.. so realy aside from energymaintanence ... there is no real disadvantage to it and enemy units being able to go through the shield is a very minor disadvantage
shields are too powerfull ...

that´s what option 3 is for ...

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...lanetary-annihilation-general-gameplay.63990/

Ah, sorry I misread option 3 then. I reserve my judgement on taller walls.

On shields: I see where you are coming from, I disagree. I think that shields can be balanced.
In the case of supcom shields started at teir 2 so it only made sense, in a game with many tiers of units that, they beat out the first tier. In general what a firebase in FA bought you wasn't the win, just time.
That doesn't mean you couldn't make it work for PA. Since if you are building shields, you aren't building tanks(at least as many as a player who isn't building shields) and you are committed to a small area, rather than expanding.

Its similar to point defence... do you walk straight into point defence, sure if you absolutely have to... but many times theres the option to completely ignore it and walk around.

that would be the same case with making firebases behind walls imo ... the difference however would be that some units still would work against those as they could ignore the wall ... shields cant be ignored you either punch through them or get into them but cant get around or behind them like walls ... the fact that they CAN stop anything damagewise is what makes them so powerfull
of course firebases and shields give you time ... but shields are to good at that as explained above ... and they are easily replaceable ... what tier they are doesn´t matter and i don´t see why you shouldn´t bring them in when your enemy is still tier1 as you would make it harder for him to get through your army and base as such force him to go tier 2 or higher ...


i suppose we agree to disagree ...

I'm not arguing about what tier they are, simply stating that in supcom they were teir 2, so they beat teir 1, because thats how SupCom was balanced. and you can almost always avoid a firebase.
And I think that you could adapt them to work in the PA setting.
Walls are supposed to be cheap defence, which the current ones excel at, I don't think having a separate wall that would completely block all ground forces would be easier to balance than a simple bubble shield that could block a bit of everything.