Catapults on Small Planets - and artillery in general

Well removing the commander is an option if you find that the catapult adds more to the game than the commander does.

For me I find that the commander is by far more important to a game so that says to me we need to think about the implementation of the catapult instead, looking at how it fits in within other units that have a similar role(turrets/artillery) and seeing if there is room for a different style of unit still that doesn't directly interfere with the commander.

Mike

Oh dear, has this discussion already gone full retard? We were warned against this!

It's a shame that the Commander doesn't have any ability to avoid detection, or maybe disintegrate any sort of powerful weapon that comes his way... it's like we've entered some sort of insane twilight zone where good solutions simply don't exist!

It just follows the pattern that the Commander is increasingly difficult to defend 'late' game (i.e. after 10 minutes).

Every unit will always interfere with the commander. If you remove the ability of the catapult to attack units, it becomes a shoddy implementation of the Holkins.

What about Levellers? The commander loses against 4, all other things being equal. Levellers are OP. They should have their ability to target the commander removed.

Id just prefer it if catapults were purely anti-building due to having no tracking.

Right now, artillery really has no other counter than nuke (which I argue is artillery) and air which is easy to defend against with anti air.

This problem could easily be removed by looking into how artillery actually functions in reality and mimic that behavior.

- Artillery shells move slow over vast distances and the guns are not 100% accurate so the guys firing with them have to lead the shots and hope the gun fires straight. If the target is moving fast and moves in an irrational pattern then hitting them is close to impossible. In game this would make artillery more of a tactical support structure/unit rather than a defense turret with superb range and low fire rate.

- Homing long range missiles are really expensive and before shot cost gets implemented, having them in PA just can't be balanced (Unless you want to go the long way and invent and reinvent a bunch of units to counter effects of a one poorly balanced structure). Usually real world armies only use them against high value targets.

- Long range fixed missiles are instead relatively much cheaper and they hit targets that stand still with pinpoint accuracy and devastating firepower. They are mostly useful against enemy defenses (like tanks in a bunker). Countering these missiles usually involves building and launching counter missiles. These are less expensive since they don't necessarily require as much range or payload as the missiles they are countering. In a game with lasers and what not I suppose that laser firing anti tactical missile structure wouldn't be a far fetched idea, although it should have a low firing speed so that it can be overwhelmed.

This^.

In reality, in the modern era

• we have precision artillery.
• electronic systems mean that artillery shells are still used as a back-up on naval ships. And they are able to hit moving targets on land and at sea. No cross fingers and hope.
• we have anti-tank and anti-ship guided missile systems with over the horizon targeting. These are cheap enough to be deployed as the main armament in modern navies and modern air forces around the globe.
• we have many electronic counters to artillery and related systems, such that there are electronic warfare squadrons where fighter jets aren't armed with much more than countermeasure systems.
• We have interception missiles.
• We have C-RAM. Which is a chaingun Counter for Rockets, Artillery and Mortars.

Why should we revert from WW2 era weaponry to WW1 era weaponry?

In the game, the counter is missing.

That last remark was funny, I didn't realize they had long range missiles in ww1

On topic though, the things you mentioned are very expensive. For instance the country I reside in has none of those, so I think my case still stands. Those high tech munitions are really really expensive compared to low tech and before the game takes ammunition cost into consideration we can't really talk about balance with these things.

Electronic leading on artillery won't actually help you hit your target if the target changes direction when the shell is in the air. If the shot has electronic guiding system then we are again talking about an expensive type of munitions.

On plane homing missiles are a lot cheaper than over the horizon ones. The only armies that I think (no I don't have actual data on the matter) deploy long range naval guided missiles are america, china and russia. Even then I'd wager that they are expensive enough that they will not be used against cheap to medium cost tanks.

This game currently has no electronic warfare systems in place although I would absolutely love to see those. Jammers, hijackers etc. Would generate interesting tactics.

Interception units and structures are something I would very much like to see, but I think they should only be absolutely necessary for defensive lines. I don't want to put supposedly expensive counter unit in every small skirmish group I send out. And if they are cheap, well then they just make artillery useless.

I suggest you get actual data on the matter. I can think of about two-dozen, without further research. They aren't as prohibitively expensive as you believe.

Out of interest, where are you from?

The V1 bomb was inaccurate. Mortars are more equivalent. And guided missiles against moving targets were developed over the second world war, so yes, unguided missiles are most definitely WW1

OK time to get some actual data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_(weapon)
"Rockets have been used as an artillery weapon for centuries, and continue to be used in the modern age after being extensively modernized in World War II."

Yeah, if you count any kind of rockets then the chinese developed them eons ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile

In the history section it says: "Germany first deployed cruise style missiles, during World War II. The V-1, often referred to as flying bomb, contained a gyroscopic guidance system and was propelled by a simple pulse-jet engine, the sound of which gave it the nickname of "buzz bomb". Accuracy was sufficient only for use against very large targets (the general area of a city), while the range of 250 km was significantly lower than that of a bomber carrying the same payload."

I think we should lay this history debate to rest.


And now let's get back to our topic.

Here's a quotation of the usage of cruise missiles from the cruise missile wiki page:
"The most common mission for cruise missiles is to attack relatively high-value targets such as ships, command bunkers, bridges and dams. Modern guidance systems permit precise attacks."

Here's a link for the wiki page of tomahawk missile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_missile

There you can read that an old 1990 version of the famous guided missile costs 569 000 USD. A more modern version (with better targeting systems) costs 1,45 million USD

Here's something to put the numbers in context

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_2
Leopard 2A6 5,6 million USD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-80
T-80U 2,2 million USD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MT-LB
MT-LB back when I was in the army they said it costs around 13 000 Euros for the main chassis without the machine gun. The chassis can also be fitted with anti tank weaponry and artillery.

Bear in mind that the enemy might have anti tactical missile defense systems, so launching a missile doesn't guarantee you a destroyed target.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1997/Shook.htm
From there you can read that an unguided M26 rocket costs around 10 000 USD. The same list also has other rockets that are cheaper.

I live in Finland.

I really don't care what it is, artillery needs some sort of counter/nerf because players who turtle online, while beatable almost every time, take FAR to long to win against especially if they have the foresight to build an anti-nuke ESPECIALLY since the new anti-nukes come preloaded. It's almost becoming an effective strategy to not actually play the game and just sit there waiting to either die or for your opponent to just leave out of the boring tedium of cracking the shell of pelters/holkins.

It is misleading to look at the precision of modern artillery and infer that the game's artillery should be super-accurate.

In real war, information is extremely scarce. Nobody really knows exactly where the enemy is. If you have confirmation on a target's exact position, it dies very quickly. Artillery is inaccurate not because the gun can't drop shells accurately, but because getting precise intelligence and targeting information is extremely difficult. In PA, information is much easier to acquire and much more accurate and reliable. So it makes sense to duplicate the inaccuracy of artillery by giving it a spread.

Not to mention that even the most precise guns actually do have significant deflection. This is typically why artillery is fired in barrages instead of one shot for one target like guided missiles. Saturating the entire area of the deflection guarantees damage will be done. And it also compensates for bad intelligence and inaccurate targeting by just covering the general area.

Artillery is fired at regions of space, not at individual enemies like a rifle or a missile. It can't really kill a specific enemy efficiently, but it has such tremendous range it is very useful despite its inaccuracy.

Because no one gives a **** about what the modern era has. This is a quality of gameplay issue.

Id love to be using jet bi-planes.

And watch their pretty little wings get ripped off as they break the sound barrier?! No thanks. Back to the future, please.

Back to the drawing board: what if artillery range depended on planet size? Probably not the first to get this idea. Generally, the smaller the planet, the smaller the range. It shouldn't be too incredibly drastic - the max change of artillery range should be something like, I don't know, 33%. I created a diagram, art.png, below this text.

I don't think it is a good idea to have range change arbitrarily. Different planets will behave differently because they have different sizes.

Ideally we will eventually get planets that are sufficiently large that the severe curvature of the planet isn't such a major factor with respect to unit vision and range.

Get a small enough planet, and suddenly pelters have the range of a laser tower - making them effectively useless.

Thats besides the fact that pelter shells routinely reach orbit on a size 300 planet.

Try it!

Consistency is sometimes a good thing. If the planet's curvature is causing problems with weapon range, you're probably using the wrong weapon type for the job. There's sort of a dead zone in the mid-range(strategic range) for direct fire weapons, because that's where planet curvature matters most. Missiles can work consistently in this domain, making missiles a good choice(a tac missile already exists, for better or worse).

For REALLY long range stuff, ballistic projectiles are back on the table. I'm talking interplanetary Berthas. You can resurrect the same feeling of a TA Bertha because the ranges are huge, inaccuracy can be so major as to miss the planet entirely, the planet shadow acts as natural terrain shielding(hope you like hiding on the dark side), and the minimum range is so huge that planet curvature just doesn't matter on the source planet. I even got a handy little diagram to show off, because no great idea is complete without one.

Interplanetary artillery would be awesome, in addition to the ability to bombard a planet using ships in orbit. Inaccuracy to the point that the size and distance to the target planet become significant factors, with the possibility that you could miss the planet entirely. Factor in rotation and you have a straightforward but potentially deep interaction for aiming from one planet at another planet.

Agreed on the first one, but not so much on the second one. If you're close enough to bombard a planet, you're close enough to invade. IMO it's better to get players invading straight away, and cut out any idea of wasting time on an orbital siege. Games already take long enough between worlds.

That was one of the points of a Krogoth-KEW. There's no space siege, no waiting, no wasted time pelting away. It's a straight assault drop, followed by an inevitable explosion, which gets followed up by more drops. The action never stops.

Granted, interplanetary artillery is itself a siege weapon. But if it behaves anything like the Bertha, it'll never deal enough damage to flat out end games. It only needs to be strong enough to punish any opponent that tries playing cute.