Walls. Walls and more WALLLS!

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by gamerx112, August 23, 2013.

?

Nerf walls?

  1. Yes.

    33.3%
  2. NUUUU

    66.7%
  1. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

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    If nukes didn't work, how is that anything to do with walls?
  2. impend1ngdoom

    impend1ngdoom Member

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    This is like the current FPS sniper rifle issue. Do you have A: sniper rifles that are decent and actually kill people who then get mad about it because they think theyre 1337 skills should make it impossible to kill them from far away because they didnt have a fair chance OR B: nerf the living hell out of sniper rifles and make it a one gun game. Neither is a good option but the "sniper rifles" (In this scenario they represent the wall turtlers) are much less of an issue than the 1337 skills guy (which is the unit spammer in this scenario).

    TDLR wall spam is far rarer than unit spam and is currently aside from unit spam itself is the only counter for unit spam. I say leave all as it is or risk having a "one gun game".
  3. dallonf

    dallonf Active Member

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    In my opinion - and given that I'm a beta player, it's an uninformed opinion - base defenses (turrets, walls, etc) should be very powerful, because you're going to have a ton of different bases on different planets and can't possibly keep an eye on all of them. They need to be able to defend themselves against all but the most dedicated attacker so that you can focus your attention on building new bases instead of babysitting old ones.
    lokiCML likes this.
  4. mushroomars

    mushroomars Well-Known Member

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    Base defenses are already capable of shrugging off raiding attacks. A single base turret can easily take down 10 tanks, with minimal damage. It will take no damage at all if hidden behind metal extractors or a ring of walls.

    Mind you, a base turret costs just over 600 metal while 10 tanks cost 2250, not including the factory and energy plants needed to run the factories. I'd say Base Turrets are just as powerful as they need to be right now.
  5. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    I was going to make a really informative post on walls and defensive barricades in general, but this time I'll wait for someone else to get there first.

    ...It might be a while.
  6. gamerx112

    gamerx112 Member

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    Turrets are enough without walls. I can understand being there to defend turrets and Very important structures. but with their cost, ya can just spam it on your base.
    I would say either reduce the HP of the wall or make its price higher.
    after all something with all that hp SHOULD take awhile to build.
  7. zGeneral

    zGeneral Member

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    May I suggest this then:
    remove auto-targeting
    make them work as obstacles only - shots pass over them
    these are low walls.

    for high walls.
    shots can not go through them, for both parties, so towers can not hide and shoot!
    Last edited: August 24, 2013
  8. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

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    What would be the point in them being towers then? Why not bunkers that are more secure.

    While I agree they should not be auto targeted, walls stopping moment is not enough to get people to use them as walls but more as an offensive wall to screw with enemy movement commands.
  9. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Walls are not balanced. Everyone knows it – Uber knows it.

    We don't know what Uber's plans are to make walls balanced – but they are working on it. They've done an amazing job so far with everything, so I trust them to balance them to fit with their end all goal for the game.

    The point of Planetary Annihilation is to fight people. Building defensive structures to win is not what the game was intended to be.

    It's not a matter of "couldn't win with tank swarms" that makes walls OP. What makes walls OP is the fact that you can build more walls faster than the attacker can build anything else (tanks, pelters, lobbers, catapults, nukes), and since they have more health, it is impossible to counter pure dedicated wall building. That is OP.

    If someone has a team of fabricators building nothing but walls, nothing can beat that – not nukes, not units, not catapults. That is OP - plain and simple.

    Not only is it OP, but it isn't fun. What's fun is watching units and towers and everything under the sun shooting at each other blowing up in glorious fireballs. Shooting at walls is not fun.

    I'm guessing walls will end up having less health and/or longer build time and/or greater build costs and units will be able to more intelligently shoot out a single wall and then shoot what's behind it.

    If units were smart enough to shoot out a single wall, obliterate the structures behind it, shoot one more wall, obliterate, repeat, then walls would be much less OP.

    Either way. Uber has plans and ideas they aren't sharing. I'm sure whatever balance they come up with will result in pure epicness. Keep up the great work Uber!
    LordQ likes this.
  10. gamerx112

    gamerx112 Member

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    AAAAND I came.
  11. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    Things that counter walls:
    - piercing projectiles
    - Any form of jumping/transported/orbital drop unit
    - Anything that can reclaim
    - Any form of high arc projecile
    - Any form of air unit
    - Any form of friendly fire
    - The simple fact that walls do not shoot, and are thus only as powerful as the ranged weapons behind them.

    Walls definitely have some ridiculous synergy when they're mixed with the current long range defense towers. But complaining about them is fruitless when half of the solutions to walls don't even exist.
  12. flnordin

    flnordin New Member

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    i have faith in Uber also we are still in Alpha
    complain when walls are still like this in Beta
  13. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    I would like to see ants have a slightly higher trajectory attack, so when they are fairly close (less than their maximum range), they can shoot over walls

    I'd also like to see mobile units' HP buffed and their damage (and that of defences) dropped. Everything is paper/glass at the moment. It's a separate issue, but it obviously impacts the effectiveness of walls.
  14. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    The most basic and generic of tanks, unaffected by walls? Oh boy. This really IS going to take a long time.

    Suffice to say, when you have ANY type of unit attribute differing by whole orders of magnitude, bad things are going to happen. Walls have both an HP:Cost and HP:footprint far and beyond anything anything else in the game. It's an absurdly heavy handed solution, causing walls to hard counter anything that can't avoid them entirely.
  15. smallcpu

    smallcpu Active Member

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    Nah, ants are fine, they don't need a buff. I rather have another basic tank type with a bit of a higher high arc of fire at t1. Something like the Stumpy in TA, high health and an arcing plasma cannon.

    Or a rocket tank with medium range unguided rockets that are fired in mass. Think Katyusha from WW2.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    As for unit health, yeah, they're kinda out of whack. Especially with wrecks. The wrecks we have atm could as well not be here as they don't serve as obstacles at all. Often units don't even leave wrecks behind as the overkill from the hp/dps ratio is so extreme.
  16. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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    Not unaffected, but needing to be a much closer than usual, and that trajectory would limit what could actually be targeted beyond the wall.


    The stumpy was exactly what I had in my head :)
  17. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    Even so, that's not going to change how walls are working. They are not being utilized as some kind of physical barrier to unit movement and shadow your base from weapons. They are being used as gigantic bullet soak towers, taunting enemy fire away from ranged weapons so they can fire with impunity. PA is not some kind of holy trinity RPG. These kinds of RPG mechanics do not belong, and they clearly cause major problems in how battles play out.

    Getting rid of damage types does not mean reimplementing them by adding extra zeroes to unit health. It means finding better ways for units to interact and trump each other on a field bound by physical rules.
    Raevn likes this.

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