Def Tower Poll

I REALLY want to push the idea of having laser defences cost energy to fire.

All defenses are going to be energy based in the future, according to what I've read. It's just not implemented yet.

Then don't that invalidate the poll?

No, because their physical power(how many shots it takes to kill something) is independent of whether or not they take power to fire in the first place.

Not really. It means that energy economy (and the harassment/attacking thereof) becomes a vector for defensive safety, and opens up a ton of new options.

Picture this: Your opponent has a number of defenses, but you haven't been able to break through. You've been building up Dox swarms for a good while, raiding his power plants/storage with air units. If your guess is right, and he's running a debt for some production project, you can swarm him until the lasers run out of juice. But what if you're wrong - does he have solar power, or a hidden battery base? Is he hiding enough of his own units to turn the tide, or has he been leaning on the lasers as a crutch?

Obviously, this is still a game where a heavy defense calls for escalation, leading from t1 swarms to t2 to nukes to orbital to unit cannons to ANNIHILATION. But making the defense a puzzle, rather than a blunt roadblock, would go a long way to making the game more interesting.

Also: Artillery/AA/torpedoes costing some amount of metal? It might balance the current masses of rapid-fire, all-purpose AA and (maybe) rapid-fire torpedoes, and wouldn't have very much effect on the slower-firing artillery unless you're really cornered.

Heavy defense doesn't call for escalation; although massively increased numbers can work, really you just need to bring the right type of weaponry. Generally, mobile artillery trumps all turrets. You don't "tech up" and use "stronger" units. You scout and analyze your enemy's defenses, and use the tools you have to do as much damage as possible. You air strike if they lack AA, you assault if they have a dense line of light defenses, etc.

Abandon the idea that you take a blob of units and you "just attack" and then before too long one side is completely destroyed. That's not going to be the norm. That is what they call a huge tactical blunder.

A well-defended base is going to take some time to destroy- you have to grind it down before making a decisive attack. And in that time your enemy might send reinforcements, or you might need to pull forces from elsewhere to assist. In order to take a well-defended base, you should expect to lay siege to it for a while using a variety of different units. Artillery, missiles, air strikes, skirmishers, assault units, and so on. And then because you're besieging a base for an extended period you need defenses, like anti-air and possibly anti-nuke.

Attempting an instant-action frontal assault directly into a lot of defenses will require overwhelming force. To the point that under most circumstances it is infeasible, and even where it is possible it would almost always be unwise because you will lose a lot more than you will destroy.

I mostly think defenses are acceptable. However there are quite a few roles missing, such as a lightweight defense-in-depth anti-air turret (missile turrets are much heavier than in TA), as well as long-range anti-air. As for ground, we need antiswarm turrets as well as artillery with splash, and multiple other roles are missing for defenses.

A defense line should not be a wall of a large number of a single type of turret, but a composite of multiple different kinds. A wall of light turrets will crumple against a focused attack by assault units. Heavy turrets can get swarmed, short range turrets can get blitzed, and so on. Generalist turrets are inefficient, and specialist turrets must be stacked together, making complete protection prohibitively expensive.

Placing a hard wall of every kind everywhere should be extremely cost-prohibitive. You're going to have weaknesses unless you are massively dominating economically, in which case you should just make troops and attack.

I'm 90% sure that this is confirmed.

Not only this, but all defensive structures will require energy to fire.

Man. When defensive towers sap energy, it'll be a good way to shut down your opponent. And Energy Storage will be a very very very important structure.

It will be. I kind of hope they add a larger version of it(And metal storage) to act as a 'buffer' during heavy firefights/production.

People are massively overestimating the tactical impact of global energy drain to fire weapons. It's a global economy- any power generation anywhere can be used to operate those weapons. So it's kind of silly to expect that denying energy will deny the enemy any kind of functionality.

If it were locally constrained, it would be a different matter entirely. You could destroy the fusion plant in one base and shut down its weapons. But if a completely separate energy complex, even on a different planet, can continue to power it, then there's nothing you can do short of completely eliminating the enemy's entire energy economy. Which, while effective, isn't really a tactical move so much as a game-ending amount of economic destruction.

Well consider it this way- Most of the economies(At least until lategame or when someone shunts off to a moon or another planet) operate in a perpetual state of "Holy crap need more stuff"

So if you invade and suddenly their defenses(Which were previously idle) start drawing from the power it's going to create a massive drain that wasn't there before.

Which, we all know how effective the economy is when it's in the red(hint, it isn't).

Some people don't operate with much positive energy. I always am sure to operate with a lot of positive energy, but not everyone does. And everyone has times where their economy isn't doing too well.

You could wait until someone's doing a big building project(if you scout a lot you'd know this), or you do a big raid that hits their energy generators and then move in at the front

You'll take losses but you'll also drain the hell out of their energy, stall their production, and do a ton of damage in the process.

If they do make defenses take energy then I wouldn't be surprised if a well timed raid or nuke and then a big push at the front door will be the end of a lot of matches.

Look, if you have completely destroyed someone's entire energy infrastructure, the game is immediately over. It isn't a question of "well timed attack" after that point. The game is completely over.

Waiting until they start a "big project" is silly because they can just pause construction and the energy drain from their "big project" can be redirected to their weapons. It just adds silly micromanagement.

The only way to make energy-consuming turrets and defenses meaningful is if it were possible for some to be online while others are not. Cutting a power line, or destroying a particular base's energy infrastructure, for example. Global energy cannot be meaningfully denied. If your entire energy economy is backing every turret, then either you're completely A-OK on every turret, or you're not, and it depends only on your own economic stewardship and not upon any kind of deliberate action by the enemy.

Even a limited localization like using pylons in Zero-K is a huge improvement over the TA system of having every energy user draw directly from your global energy grid. Destroying pylons allows you to power down big weapons like Annihilators and Doomsday Machines on the front lines which are using fusions from the rear. It's not a big deal in the big picture, but it is an aspect of gameplay created by using pylons that would be completely unavailable if those weapons drew energy from the global grid. Using a global system you cannot meaningfully shut down the enemy's energy infrastructure to prevent their weapons from firing- you are imposing an extra penalty on very poor players who stall, and adding no active strategic options.

You cannot deliberately impose a shortage on an enemy's global grid without completely wiping out their entire energy economy. And as soon as you do that, the game is immediately over.

Have you played much PA recently? Most economies are constantly on the edge of stalling or actually stalling. It isn't until later when you have a lot more of the map and more energy up that you're actually trying to find ways to spend the excess.

If you hit someone and take out just a few towers, that might be enough to make them draw energy away from fabricators or factories. Those fabricators or factories now have to wait(Or build more energy) in order to continue doing what they're doing.

It's like harrassing someone's workers in SC2. YOu don't have to kill -all- of them, but every worker you kill has an impact. That's like 160 minerals a minute they're not getting. For Terran that's like three marines per worker per minute that they don't have on the field.

When some battles come down to having 5-6 units left(Which is not that uncommon), you begin to realize just how much taking every small edge you can over your enemy is really worth.

It's exactly the same in PA. Unless you're in lategame where half the planet is covered in Energy/MEX, every building you kill has a meaningful impact. You don't have to kill all of their economy to stall or slow them.

Having defenses require energy will only exacerbate the problem, which I imagine is the intent of making them require energy in the first place.

Destroying their towers doesn't cost them energy. Those towers firing costs them energy. And putting bodies in front of their weapons just to drain the enemy's economy is stupid because you are losing units.

Your master plan of putting troops in front of enemy lasers so the enemy is "tricked" into spending a lot of energy killing them has quite a few holes.

You are extremely confused about the value of one worker in SC2. A worker gathers about 40 minerals per minute, not 160. The third worker per patch is about half as efficient, at an additional 20 minerals per minute.

Again, we are back to your master plan of tricking the enemy into spending energy to kill your units. It is a really, really stupid plan. Having the enemy shoot at you doesn't give you a "small edge." It is actually rather bad for you because you are losing assets, and they are only spending energy.

Destroying their energy infrastructure is a vastly more effective way to deny the enemy energy. Every power generator and mex you kill gives you a small edge. Every unit you lose at the cost of the enemy spending some easily replenished energy is bad for you.

Energy is cheap- much cheaper than metal. Metal is the heart of the resource game because you must control land for an extended length of time in order to acquire it. Energy is a rate limiter only; the function of relatively more expensive energy infrastructure is to limit the rate at which you can do things, even if you have the metal to do so.

Furthermore, the greater expense of energy infrastructure means you actually have valuable targets worth destroying, because while mexes are valuable they are easily replaced. Large energy sources are expensive and valuable, and are vulnerable and easily destroyed unless hidden and defended.

What this means is that an energy cost to perform any task only limits the amount and rate that that task can be performed until more metal is spent on greater energy production. It isn't actually a significant resource cost in and of itself because it can be constructed in unlimited quantity, anywhere.

The problem is that you can destroy turrets too easy. Go and build 5 t1 bots and 5 t2 bots you will crush a big defense line without a problem. There is no chance to repair turrets this fast. If you have a small amount of aa bots an la bots the most defence line are gone. This is too easy.

The turrets must be stronger and the damage increased. But in the end every battle is the same way. Try to nuke your enemy. The defence lines are to heavy and there are to many nukes. Against a good player you will never reach its base. Before your army is in position they are nuked.

The ammount of nukes should be limited

My thinking on this one is if the enemy has enough fixed defences for you to be worrying about trying to impair them by killing energy then the point where their energy production was vulnerable to hit has long since passed. surely you would just nuke a hole in the outer perimiter of the fixed defences by hitting outside the base with a nuke (as most people only cover the actual area of their base with nuke defense), and send your land spam right on through.

Telvi... are you sure we've been playing the same game? i dont think that so few units would "crush a defense line"

What on earth are you talking about? 5 dox and 5 slammers can't even take out 2 turrets. You could build 6 turrets for the cost of 5 dox and 5 slammers.

Regarding the power thing, if you're operating on a large power surplus then you aren't playing efficiently. If you get a strike on your power supply then your turrets aren't going to be able to fire as much as they would normally so it can be used to reduce the dps of defences you're assaulting.

Though surely if you were building fixed defences, and you knew that should they be required to fire that they would drain energy, then you would reset your baseline energy to a sufficient surplus to sustain firing a reasonable portion of said defenses continually, just in case? why on earth would you have your energy production at or about breakeven when you knew that should your base come under attack it would put you in deficit - thats far more inefficient than running a small energy surplus. a metal defecit makes sense, and energy break-even doesnt.

This entire discussion is ignoring the obvious issue of how ridiculous a global shortage is.

A robust economy will be able to operate a tremendous number of turrets simultaneously without much issue. And a robust economy can take quite a bit of energy loss and still have the economic power to build more energy to replace that which was lost. Whatever the cost to fire is, the player will simply build enough energy infrastructure that the cost to fire is not a substantial drain on their global grid.

An actual global shortage is never going to happen unless a player is so pitifully incompetent that they forget to build energy, or if every last energy producer has been systematically eliminated by the enemy. In which case, the game is over.

Energy costs to fire have no real effect unless it is possible for an energy shortage to make that weapon unable to fire. Weapons that draw from the global grid will never encounter this condition, unless their owner is incompetent, or their owner has already lost the game.

Unless the unit is connected to the energy source in some way, there is no way for the opponent to deny that weapon's operation. The fact that it costs energy to fire is not a factor in the opponent's decision making because there is no way to exploit it.

However, if you have to link the weapon to a specific power source, then the weapon can be disabled by destroying that power source, or by breaking the connection.