Catapults on Small Planets - and artillery in general

The accuracy of artillery is the biggie right now. You attack with artillery and the defence for artillery is the artillery itself. That's not right.

Adjusting turn speed would also help as it makes artillery less effective as units close in and less able to handle attacks from multiple directions.

Err sorry yeah.

Pelters, and to a lesser extent stompers and shellers, work quite a lot like catapults (4 wheels, chucks a stone)

Not like an archer unit, which would cause tanks to "tank damage" to get close enough to hurt them.

I find damage unavoidable when assaulting a base, and so I opt for speed over tanking ability to minimise the time that they can shoot at me without being able to also shoot back.

All of the mobile artillery units arc their projectiles at all ranges. Pelters and holkens should behave the same way. If their projectiles arced always they would inherently behave more like artillery at close range, and they would become more vulnerable at short range as well.

That's just the thing. Stationary arty has to deal significant damage on an enemy approach to justify its cost and use as a defensive weapon. The trouble is that, similar to shields, it increases the base entry fee for battle. Fight with anything less than critical mass, and the attack fails without doing any damage. That's always a bad thing as it discourages battle in a serious way.

The same standard doesn't apply to mobile arty. As an offensive weapon, all it needs to do is pelt away and trigger an enemy response. He can't take the hits forever, and if you don't like the risk just pull the units out.

You are assuming that artillery is a defensive weapon. That is my entire point- it is a completely different role from a turret you use to defend your base because it doesn't behave in the same way. Artillery should be fire support for long-range fire missions, not base defense.

Or at least fire support for the traditional base defences?

Exactly, that's my take on it. It should reduce the size of a blob. Not eliminate single targets.

Ledarsi - Artillery is defensive. It stops you from being sieged, giving you some counterbattery fire.

Artillery is no more defensive than anything that lets you reach out and blow someone up. Using it defensively just means you're using it against someone who is in the process of moving towards you.

Artillery is fire support, and is more similar to an air strike than almost any other type of asset. Air support can also be used defensively. It just means you're bombing an enemy that is moving towards you. That doesn't mean air strikes are defensive.

By the same token, artillery isn't inherently defensive in nature. If anything, you have to use other assets to defend the artillery. Not have the artillery defend everything else.

In fact, it certainly seems to me that artillery is much better suited for long-range offensive fire than it is for targeting an enemy on the move to attack you. Air support is much better defensively than artillery, since an attacking force usually has left the safety of an established air defense network to move into your territory.

Correct. Artillery isn't inherently defensive or offensive.

Can it be used to soften up an overwhelming enemy blob before they get in range of your turrets?

Yes.

If you personally prefer to use it offensively, that's fine. But it can quite effectively be used as both.

Don't delude yourself. Calling stationary arty a defensive weapon isn't a particularly big leap of faith.

- The structure is stationary, and it creates a base boundary where the enemy can no longer build stuff. Defensive.

- It attacks enemy forces and diminishes them before they hit your main defense line. Defensive.

- A huge enough number of them can ruin any hope of attacking. That's pretty damn defensive.

- Players can build them in turret lines that creep towards enemy bases and swallow them up. This only qualifies as offense if you think a 2 hour turret creep is aggressive engaging gameplay for some reason. But for everyone with some kind of life it is the ultimate turtle endgame, which is to create the most passive aggressive defense possible.

Which is exactly why I am tired of people who build these literally impenetrable defensive lines, then nuking everyone in the system. Its really annoying.

The current problem with artillery is accuracy. Shelling artillery shouldn't be pinpoint accurate at any range and Rockets shouldn't track their targets.

I like the idea of giving the shots a high cost so you would instead use your artillery to perform fire missions instead of shooting rambo style at anything that moves (or doesn't).

this, allow me to accentuate that catapults should definitely not be homing, they're the commander bane right now.

I think that problem would be solved with an anti-missile unit.

Technically speaking that's not really solving the problem as much as dealing with the effects of a problem instead. We should try to fix the Catapult first before we resort to what is essentially a "workaround" to me.

Mike

The catapult isn't broken. It is too strong against the commander, because if you lose the commander you lose the game.
If you took the commander away, the problem goes away.


The catapult missiles should track their target, otherwise they'd be useless. They can only kill one target at a time as it is.

The only reason they are broken is because, like anti-aircraft missiles, they reacquire lock once their intended target is destroyed, and destroy another target.

Yun-Huh ! that's what we're getting at

...you can't "take the commander away", if one is built with your com mid-way in it's radius, it's GG, whether you run towards it or away from it.

Correct.

SO REMOVE the commander from the game. Completely. New game type is destroy all factories, destroy all fabbers.

Solved. Catapult isn't OP anymore.

It's only OP because you can't intercept missiles. If you remove its ability to track targets it's a very poor substitute for the Holkins.