Catapults on Small Planets - and artillery in general

Correct.

So remove the ability of the catapult to hit units.

Now the Holkins is clearly superior. It has better range and it does splash damage to multiple structures and units in the vicinity. It also does more damage per impact. Its relatively slow tracking speed means it is better suited to attacking stationary units and structures as is anyway. And the fact that it does damage to multiple units at once more or less balances its lower fire rate. This doesn't fix the proposed overlap of the catapult and Holkins. If anything, it makes it worse.

Who is Holkins?

Great research.

The V1 flying bomb was not a smart weapon. That is my point. Smart ordinance did not exist until the end of the second world war. The V1 flying bomb is not a tactical missile. It isn't accurate enough to be used against a specific target.

The current catapult has a lot in common with weapons introduced towards the end of the war.

After removing the ability of the catapult to track, it becomes a dumbfire weapon. It bears more resemblance to the dumbfire mortars of the first world war, and less to the buzz bomb. The buzz bomb cannot be used to tactically attack a specific target of interest, only launched towards a city. In no shape or form does the buzz bomb resemble a tactical weapon.

Mortars have less range than an artillery piece.

An artillery piece has less range than a cruise missile.

Which most resembles PA?

Did you notice that the Finnish armed forces have anti-ship guided missiles with a range of over 200km? The tactical ballistic missile is more economical than other types of military hardware.

My point was that long range guided missiles cost a whole lot more than unguided rockets. Most tanks are too cheap that you would actually want to use cruise missiles against them.

I know what hardware Finnish army has and the anti-ship guided missiles you mentioned are just that, anti-ship. Ships are very expensive. Sure it's an economical choice against ships.

EDIT: Fixed the quotes

Well what more would you expect when you only change one half of the cause of the problem? What changes would you suggest to the Holkins to help differentiate them?

Mike

Make the Holkins, as well as other types of shell-based artillery, highly inaccurate. Long guns can be relatively cheap, but also not terribly damaging to a large army. Sure, a direct hit will instantly kill a couple units, and a near hit will do some splash damage. But on the whole the real damage of artillery should be low. Artillery should be meant for sustained bombardment of a general target area, not for picking off specific enemy units. You shell a base, or an army's approximate location, not a specific unit.

Rocket artillery is similar to shell-based artillery, except it fires a massive salvo of rockets all at once, carpeting a large area in a short period of time. Just like with shells, a rocket barrage isn't aimed at a particular unit, but statistically it should deal quite a bit of damage, depending on how densely the enemy is packed into the large deflection area.

The Catapult should be extremely different from artillery because it fires guided missiles. Guided cruise missiles (accurate, unlike rockets) should be much more expensive. Units that fire such long-range guided missiles should probably have to construct their missiles, consuming metal and energy to do so. But missiles can kill a particular enemy structure or unit from long distance, unlike artillery. However, missiles can be intercepted by missile defense. And when they are intercepted, the resources used to construct the missiles are completely wasted. If Catapult missiles could be countered using highly efficient missile defense (could double as anti-air) it would make sense to make its missiles more valuable, fewer in number, and more individually damaging to a single target.

EDIT: It seems I failed at quoting and now you quoted me saying something stormingkiwi said earlier. Sorry about that.

I would argue that the Holkins is already highly inaccurate purely because of its long refire rate. - you can do an excellent job microing units away from fire.

And if it engages an individual target, it is firing ineffectively.

Sorry, my bad. The forum ate my quote that you quoted, because I had an extra end-quote in the post where I quoted Quitch. WadaNiddyYiteyeYam.


Further to my post, are you aware of the proposed increase in the ground support role of the Finnish airforce, and the recent (as in this month) purchase of guided anti-tank missiles?

I apologise. We understand different things by guided missile. You think ballistic missile (i.e. missile entering into low orbit). I think missile that guides itself towards target. Such missiles can have a relatively small range. Others can have sufficient range to engage a target over the horizon, without having the long range of a ballistic missile.

@KNight

My belief is that both the Holkins and catapult are fine.

The reason for that is simple.

Build a pelter behind a cliff in a desert biome.

Result?

Pelter can shoot out. Enemy pelters can't shoot in. Neither can the Holkins. The enemy can therefore only rush with units, bomb it into oblivion, or build a catapult.

The catapult's ability to fire in situations where the pelter/holkins are ineffective is important, and, in my honest (albeit possibly stupid) opinion, I think that different delivery methods are more important for gameplay than "make only water able to beat fire, make only ground able to beat rock"

I did not know since I don't follow the news on our army too frequently. I know that anti tank missiles are guided, however I have never heard of them being used as long range missiles. Sure they are used by planes, choppers, infantry and vehicles but their effective range is usually around a few kilometres.

Precision missiles with a longer range are usually used against high value targets such as command vehicles/bunkers, bridges, etc. They are not used against regular tanks due to cost issues, unlike how the catapult is used in PA now.

If one catapult missile costs let's say equivalent to 10 ants then overwhelming it would be easy and you would have to pick your targets more carefully. This would also force the player to scout for high value targets before firing.

If you want to fix artillery, you have to kill base vs. base warfare. ENTIRELY. If tanks can reasonably reach another base, the battle should be fought with the tanks.

Put the catapult on wheels, boost the pelter's range 100x (cost 5-10x, min range 500-1K, similar damage), and don't make another single base defense with continental range. That's how you got into this mess in the first place.

Tow missle, less then 50k each and can fire around a 60 degree corner. I'd say it's guided.
Guilded artilery, put that shell thru a flying bomber at 5miles away.

C-WIS, 500 rounds in the air@ a target that is 1 mile away before the first round hits. so accurate it will detect and destroy a 2" metal wire dragged behind an airplane 1 mile away.

RAM - missle that can take a 180 degree turn mid flight to destroy a moving target from 5 miles away.

Mark 25, 2omm shell can target a running targets head thru a building and hit it from 1 mile away.

Should I mention the drone hellfire missle? It's so cheap that if the USgov determines that the mission may risk more then 5 US lives it will just send a drone instead of troops.

If there's robots running around in a game I think it's way past World War II.

Can I also mention that our destroyers "practice" targeting by putting a 5" round thru a 6 foot inner tube from 3 miles away... Dumb rounds don't act like dumb rounds when fired by intelligent systems.

Were also attaching the C-wis to humvees now so that they can shoot an incoming mortar out of the sky while going 60 miles an hour over rough terrain.

Only in real life is war not fair, in PA anything your opponent does, you have the capability to do as well, don't like the catapult in his base, shoot his GPS Out of orbit or bomb his radar.

I thought we solved this problem with slightly inaccurate artillery fire????

seriously that's all what we need lol

I like this. Catapults should have a slower rate of fire, and target exclusively high value units and building. Perhaps only the Commander, Stationary Adavanced radar (not the basic one, or scouts, AWACS, etc), Naval forces, Nukes and Anti-Nukes, T2 Factories, T2 PowerPlants and T2 Metal Extractors, and so on.

Catapults shouldn't target small mobile units like tanks and bots. Also, IMHO Catapults should consume Metal in order to operate. Perhaps Energy as well, since they need intelligence and guidance.

What about being able to set a wider formation for assaulting forces? Right now units mass and overlap each other. That's not ideal when they have to deal with splash damage. Instead, if we could set them more apart, they could survive longer.

The series of Total War does that with a mouse-dragging system. But perhaps units should never mass up like they do now.

The Catapult doesn't have splash damage to my knowledge. One of the oddities of the Catapult is that it has "perfect" overkill control because the missiles will reacquire a new target if it's original one gets destroyed.

Mike

I think cross planet spawns could fix this problem or at least make situation better. Arty is very strong indeed but if both players spawned long way from each other then it would make turret pushing harded because of the distance and then vulnerability of their own base. So risk/reward balance would be better for the player who decides to make units. When you spawn near each other then it's obvious people would make mass turrets and commander pushes no matter what. If you make players cross spawn then its very important to have map control to secure area and you can harrass other areas and the game should be interesting, because if he uses commander to try to secure attack area you can make defensive turrets on your own while harrassing him.