Friday Afternoon Playtest

Exactly. This change requires more micro which should be reducing not increasing. I am 110% against this. In fact I think land anti air tanks should be able to attack other land units and land bots should be able to attack air units. A GI can shoot down a helicopter yes? Maybe muzzle velocity should dictate this?

I feel like the main problem with the missile turrets is the ability to be force multiplied by walls

http://www.nanodesu.info/pastats/chart?gameId=26764

Did a little test game by using missile towers behind walls as my main defence, and they proved to be exceedingly effective.

Also quick question, how many people have found their Holkins artillery bugging out and not firing? Because half my line were not firing, and the other half not firing to the range their range circle indicated, and that was a little jarring, had to resort to mass catapults in my expansion forts.

BTW haven't turtled properly in a while.....love it too, the new walls are awesome, but would have loved some more artillery use out of the enemy. They still got one major attack off before my artillery become overwhelming, but were bogged down by a canyon.

Managed to finish the game with the use of roving sniper death squads, caught the commander and blew him away while his army and base was being bombarded by catapults, Holkins and air scouts.

The cake is a lie!
IE: play-tests do not = patch.

However, it does mean that certain things are closer to being released to us than others.

I know, I know!

This is just the experience from what I have plaid of this patch.

I've stated this before in other threads, but I am also very much against the strict AA only shoots air track. I see a lot of games moving this way, and its definitely one thing I don't like. In TA everything could shoot at anything in range. Tanks shooting at aircraft...didn't really have much of an effect. But at least they could shoot down air fabbers. Fighters could shoot at tanks, but not to too much of a good effect.

Maybe it's easier to balance missile turrets being able to shoot air, but I much preferred the play style of TA for this. Missile turrets worked great against aircraft and would still shoot at ground units, but it took 3-4 or so shots to take out bots and more to take out tanks.

I think this is a combination of a few things:

• Wall balance
• Combat Fabbers (I see you built a lot, and these + walls/defences are godly: Youtube)
• Missile towers not being balanced correctly for AA and AG.

That last point is important; I don't wish to be confused as saying they are balanced for the role as they are now, I'm only saying what I believe they should be able to do (and then balanced towards that goal).

To be fair, don't we already have a dedicated anti air in the form of flak cannons? I am also of the opinion that it is okay to have a "jack of all trades" turret, as long as it is weaker and less efficient than any dedicated air, naval or ground defense.

Yeah the combat fabbers were great at monitoring my base!

Personally Id like the missile towers in the AG role not be able to shoot over walls (Possibly making walls taller) so that players using them as a kind of anti-raiding defence must use them out in the open as a picket line where their frailty cannot be compensated for with walls.

In the video a single combat fabber repairing a wall prevented 100 adv. tanks from destroying it (around 5:36)

Yeah I don't like the current repairing system, as I feel it should be more like normal construction (With construction like costs) but possibly a little slower.

And also the current leveller has very bad burst fire, although them having lesser weapons then Ants but better HP is a duo that is growing on me.

I never had an issue with missile turrets being able to target ground units, I do however, dislike the fact that flak can hit ground targets, that just doesn't seem right. Also, flak is a little cheap in my opinion, for something so effective against air. I hope it's price goes up a bit...

I personally would have preferred a sam site to a flak cannon, give it a long range but low firing rate.

And none of the sup com stuff with the rapid fire missile, I mean LARGE single missiles.

We needed AOE damage to fight off thick blobs of bombers.

A long range anti air tower has been suggested in another thread and I really like the idea of that addition. A really slow firing homing missiles – but the missiles have a very wide turn radius.

These can be used to help enforce no fly zones and intercept scouts – but not really effective at fighting off large blobs of incoming bombers due to their low rate of fire.

True enough.

Personally Id like to see advanced bombers have the same HP as the T1 bombers, as the numbers you can mass makes using T1 fighters against them very hard if they are going straight to a target.

Hell in the current patch T2 fighters have come back swinging, and I am almost tempted to say that T2 is a must if your enemy is using it, as fighting against the easily obtained T2 swarms is very difficult.

That sounds exactly like the Catapult.

AA turrets being incompatible with walls as a tradeoff for anti ground sounds lovely to me.

I like the increased health of Advanced Bombers so it gives increased validity and importance to Adv Fighters.

True enough.

I just hope stacking aircraft into a single spot is going.

That would be a nice change, that's for sure.

Indeed. But there is a big difference between a guided missile and laser bolt. We could also assume that the two have two different targeting system. But for now I would just focus on the weapons itself.

In fact, both may be able to shot down land and air units alike. The difference, in this case, should be in the outcome due to what effect the two weapons have on fast- and slow-moving targets. And here I can imagine two opposite results.

1. Missiles may miss fast moving targets and always hit very slow one. In case of an air unit one hit one kill. Armored vehicles would be able to stand several hits. On the other hand, laser bolts always hit, but deal much less damage for hit, therefore fast moving targets may survive.

2. The other way around is that Missiles cannot reach very fast moving targets, while laser bolts are instantaneous, and extremely charged, therefore killing air units at sight. Armored land units will will be able to stand several bolts. But they would be destroyed by a single missile.

So, you see, both turrets can now hit everything it's moving or not. But using two different mechanics the outcome is very different.

And don't let me start with shells and projectiles

That may be the result of % repairing instead of a fixed amount of HP, per time, per contructor/fabber. And in this case it is plain wrong. Repairing a % of the original HP, an unit with a large pool of HP would regenerate HP way faster than an unit with low HP, even with less fabbers as support.

That's basically how Commanders' Rushes are made possible.

Example. Let's take two hypotetical units, one with 1.000 HP and an other one with 100 HP. And let's have both under attack by 5 enemy units, each able to deal 10 points of damage per second. Also, let's have both supported by 3 fabbers, each able to regenerate 5% HP per seconds.

The second units goes down very quickly, 'cos it takes 50 points of damage, and regenerates 15 HP per seconds (3*5% HP per second).

The first never goes down, 'cos even if it takes 50 points of damage per second as well, it also regenerates 150 HP per seconds (3*5% HP per second).

And that's very wrong in my personal opinion.