Catapults Need a Re-Work

Right now, I feel like the Catapult missile launcher is a little lacking in the attention department. Its high cost and short range make it feel like it needs some re-working. I haven't used them in a while, so I am unsure if many changes have been made since the last time I used them. I suggest that they should be worked into tier 1 or have their cost/range adjusted to make them more viable.

I was actually thinking the other day they might work better as a T1 defensive unit, as a sort of precursor to antinukes and nukes. They'd be good for vehicle swarms, but not a whole lot else without some love.

I think the catapult is better then the holkins, T2 in general isn't really viable in 1v1 usually.

I suppose that depends on the map, as always.

Although I can't imagine the horror of a 1v1 when players spawn on different planets.

Let 'em shoot orbital as well, and that honestly should be pretty good as it stands...

I agree the catapult should be changed in some way, for me its just a bit, boring like a pelter that locks but without the AoE. And they should work on making it do a slightly more unique job like the differance between a flak and a anti-air turret. But making it shoot orbital would make it a bit, weird ; I mean you don't get flak cannons shooting Tanks, do you? Defences should generally only cover one layer exceptions to this as the Anchor is Ground and orbital. But it would make little sense for it not to be able to hit ground units.

Have you looked at the guns on the anchor? It makes little sense that it IS able to hit ground units... I can easily see a tactical missile going into orbit, and I don't see what's wrong with having a defence able to shoot multiple different layers, as long as it's not as good as a different layer-specific defence. The only issue with it right now, is that orbital Is kind of bad, gameplay & combat-wise, so giving us more options against it, without improving it, will just encourage planetary turtling at the moment.

That's why I'd suggest uber do something like this:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-server-orbital-warfare-overhaul.62878/

Catapults having absolutely no aoe is what makes them so useless IMO. Precision strike weapons are good and all, but not for taking out hordes.

If you actually use them, tactical missiles are really good against vanguards, however, the current meta is pretty much 100% dox, so it's kind of pointless. Though with that argument, most units in the game are currently pointless.

the current meta for 1v1 maybe

I'll second this motion; Dox make it easy to ignore all defenses other than T2-T3 defense turrets. And maybe territory-control Holkins, if you feel totally nuts.

Catapults being able to fire their homing missiles at air units would be interesting indeed, as it'd make an especially fearsome counter to T2 bomber fly-bys.

I think the Catapult should be moved to tier one, as sort of a precursor to the nuke. It cannot fire at any planet, but it can fire anywhere on the planet it is placed. Missiles do have to be built, but the catapult can have four at any time. This would also introduce a T1 anti-missile weapon, which can shoot down Catapult missiles, but cannot harm nukes.

Or you know, we could not drastically change a unit and introduce counters to it for no reason whatsoever.

Unless it is something like the 8.8:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.8_cm_Flak_18/36/37/41
And didn't Missile turrets used to be able to shoot ground units too?

The primary purpose of Catapult seems to be short range high-precision fire. Basically a Arc firing sniper defense.
I think it can be very fearsome against Naval as it can one-shoot just about anything.

Pro's:
Artillery without power cost
High precision
High Damage (1 k damage per shoot)
5 times RoF of a holkins.
Low cost for T2 (1.8k metal)
Slightly faster RoF and range then Pelter.
Can one-shoot a stingray and Orca (1k HP) and 4 shoot a Leviathan (4k HP).

Con's:
High area demand (not many close to another)
Low hitpoints
much shorter range then holkins/range of only a pelter
T2
Countered by Sniper Bot's Anti Tactical missiles defens
No AoE.

That is the big question:
How much of thier weakness is the catapults fault?
And how much is based upon Dox being currently kings and dox being resistant to anything without aoe and/or high RoF?

Once Dox and Naval have been dealt with we can see where that leaves Catapult.
Maybe dropping it to T1 with lowered damage is not a bad idea. It already has metal cost and HP closer to T1 then T2.

What are peoples' thoughts on having the catapult be able to re-target if its current target dies? That is, two catapults launch a missile at the same bolo. The first missile hits, and kills the bolo. Instead of the second missile just crashing into the ground (as it currently works), it seeks out another target in range. This would go a long way towards making it a bit harder to overwhelm a group of catapults, since they wouldn't all be overkilling the same unit, one at a time.

The overkill targeting of many units needs a total rework. Its a complete waste of firepower and allows for larger groups of T1 units to overwhelm your T2.

Now that Sniper bots exist, I think we can afford to bring stingrays and catapults back to having the ranged they did in alpha/ early beta, they were pretty great back then, and main reason they were so annoying was that tac defence didn't exist as a counter to them yet.

The stingray getting its range back in particular would go a long way toward making naval a viable force again.

I agree, but nobody is hurt more than the low RoF + slow projectile + no AoE weapons.

I'd be all for this except that nobody acknowledges or uses this feature nearly enough... though it's a chicken-egg equation, as tactical missiles appear on so few units as to make it irrelevant.

I was never terribly fond of Catapults and Holkins being so similar in range in beta, but I had an experience with them that made me feel a little more comfortable about their current position;

In an FFA on a metal planet, I discovered a player south of me, across one of the metal canyon borders. Immediately panicking, I set up a wall and put three Pelters behind it. These did a fantastic job of holding the enemy's vehicles off until T2, during which point a well-timed air raid killed the Pelters. I replaced them with Catapults, and watched as they performed with similarly impressive results against T2 vehicle attackers.

In other words, the Catapult makes sense if you think of it as a T2 Pelter. It has similar range and rate of fire, fulfills the same role of killing off slow-moving units one by one, and has the upgraded feature of tracking missiles. By this same token, the Holkins is not the T2 Pelter; it's a distinct sustained bombardment weapon, too slow for defense but providing just enough pressure to goad your enemy into action. This is a distinction in roles that I can definitely live with.

So maybe the real problem is still the Dox meta; there's just not been enough time and breathing room to explore the tools we already have because we're rushing Dox nonstop.

hmmm, I still think that the playerbase is overblowing the dox problem quite a lot, I did my 5 ranked games and managed to get Uber with a build that only uses 1 bot factory. People I was versing attempted DOXDOXDOX but a few t1 turrets and my Bolos brushed off early rushes, when they started blobbing, having a few bombers on hand easily cleaned up their attempted attacks, and after using only a few small groups of my own dox to kill their expansions I was able to roll my tank column forward without much trouble. my build was basically 1 bot, 1 vehicle, 1 air, then vehicle spam, with maybe a few other air facs later.

Granted, the players I versed were not microing the dox like the top players do, but some of them did get nice raiding wins, the problem was the dox werent able to make much of a dent on my main base. maybe making dox slightly more expensive would help, but really I think they only need a little nerf.

In regards to sniper bots, i think they'd be used a lot more if tacs became a more common threat, it might take players a while to catch up on the meta, but it would be nice to see each of the T2 options have nice strengths, while leaving you open to some big weaknesses.

Back to the Catapults, I remember them being annoying in alpha and beta... until I tried the (old alpha version) Dox (scampers?) each individual bot absorbed so much overkill that rushing catapults was fairly combattable. Even if they mixed turrets in, you could use vehicles to hit those, while having a forward section of bots taking the tac fire.