Mobile Artillery useless?

Ive been trying out mobile artillery recently. So far it seams relay lack luster. It even seams to share the same range as a levier.(for the bot one) In fact it seams a weaker version of the leveler not there turtle cracker I expected. Does any one know how to use mobile artillery successfully?

Wait until it's been balanced in all honesty.

Mike

Ill have to agree with KNight here. It really does suck if not properly microed - and even then, its slow going, as only your front line units can actually hit the enemy.

In smaller battles (i.e. raiding) artillery bots are an excellent, though expensive, unit to use.

Just replace them with the Swedish made Archer with the appropriate range, that would make them less mobile as they have to auto deploy to fire but also get much longer range

A group of them on attack move behind a cushion of normal combat units can absolutely destroy a base.

And they are a decent counter to turrets hiding behind walls. They do need some balance work to make them better, but they definitely have a place in the game.

Yep.

Personally Id like the tank artillery to be able to fire while moving, if slowly, as I feel like the bot artillery is much more nimble and a little pain in the ***.

Well it has been balanced several times so he has a point.

Well we can say the same bout how inversely the leveller became the number one unit.

T1 in front artillery in back sandwich t2 assault in between for a truly unstoppable force...

Well this isn't want I'm talking about, edited my first post to clarify.
To add to that post, I remember a post from one of the devs early beta saying that now is the time to talk balance.

That is the one thing I am worried about in this game. If they are having trouble balancing the units they have now how will it be when more units will be introduced.

I won't mention the latest air nerd as this is due to the carpet bombing feature but the rest should be balanced a lot better by now.

The game hasn't been fully balanced yet.

Right now Shellers aren't the most valid units out there. They're pretty powerful if you micro them, but that takes up too much of your time.

Yes I realize that, that's I was said what I did.

Mike

And yet again I feel like we are utterly unable to actually discuss the balance of the current units because of units that haven't been potentially added yet!

I know. I was quoting you to back up and agree with what you said.

I know! It's frustrating having to wait for more units.

I disagree with this. Neutrino mentioned they wont be just throwing us all the units in one build. Wouldnt it be much easier to balance the units we have now and tweak it as units are added later? Also judging by most RTS games today, the game will never be fully balanced.

Too much micro - when they add the ability to set formations between different units, this should make them far more applicable and usable, balancing aside.

At this point we should have a pretty good idea of what they're going to be.

Instead of having a balance discussion about mobile artillery being weak or being strong, I think the discussion of artillery at this point should really be a design discussion.

Currently artillery behaves more or less like a combat unit, but one with superior range to other basic combat units. I think artillery should have far greater range, and function more in a fire support role. Other roles, such as skirmishers, some kinds of riot units, and units meant to defend a location effectively, are better suited to having the kind of range that mobile artillery currently has.

Artillery should be well behind the lines, a distance that actually is a significant amount of time spent moving. And artillery should be inaccurate such that it doesn't kill a single target in a certain timeframe the way direct fire weapons do. Instead, artillery is used to attack a rather large area, preferably one where it is likely to hit something rather than aiming at a specific enemy unit. You should keep your artillery a safe distance away, and conceal its location to protect it from air strikes and counter-battery fire. Screening it to prevent scouts from discovering its location is also a good idea, since artillery is very valuable when kept in play for sustained fire for a long period of time.

Increasing its range significantly and making it far less accurate would be very good fundamental design changes to artillery, well before we get into any discussion about whether a certain unit is too weak. Heavy artillery also needs a significant amount of splash damage in addition to its range and inaccuracy; again, with considerable inaccuracy so you can't really kill a specific enemy unit, but if there is a large group then you will probably hit something.

Then we can add units with longer-range weapons that have the kind of range advantage that artillery currently enjoys, but which still shoot at a single enemy unit to try and destroy it. These units aren't really "artillery" because they still engage and fight specific enemies instead of acting purely as fire support for other units.

Artillery is meant to crack base defenses. That's why it has a longer range, it's the anti-tower unit.