Catapults and the dire need for Tactical Defence

Balance before form.

Which is literally countered by any kind of anti air.

But that would just give us a bigger pelter witn no aoe. Also if we wanted estetics and functionality to have nothing to do with projectiles we might as well give exploding rocks to everything.

The functional distinction between TML and arty has always been blurry, just get rid of it then.

How? You have jumped to that conclusion, as even you said that we could use a supcom like tactical missile, so why would that in PA suddenly just be a bigger pelter.

And frankly yes, ascetics are nice, but should never be what determines how the game plays.

No it hasn't, ones for buildings one's for units, but both can do either.

So just like every other counter in the game then?

Thing is a well defended missile launcher/arty has no counter because it is surrounded by counters to everything. In supcom shields and TMD provided the counters for these things.

A unit which only counter is itself is not balanced.

Kill the radar, rush it with dox, snipe it with gillies, bomb it, nuke it, use a lobber, walk your commander over with 20 fabbers, build your own when they are fighting other things. But yeah other than that there is not much you can do. Nerf plz.

if you let the enemy create a line of catapults right outside your base, you really have no right to complain when it starts hammering you left right and centre.

Maybe you should have established your own batteries and radar first, or better yet, pushed out with units and kept up the pressure so it wasn't possible for him to establish a fire base on the outskirts to hammer you from.

Setting up artillery fire bases to hammer an enemy, whilst creeping them forward, should remain a viable tactic.

In OTA, it was a very common strategy. It was called the 'Octopus', and meant focusing on many small outposts spread out to minimise damage to oneself whilst putting as many batteries up to keep the enemy hemmed in, gain map control, and establish many different spread out factory complexes to spam units from to keep him on the backfoot.

You aren't always in perfect control of everything that happens. What if they do manage to get such a fire base up? Alright I get it I made a mistake, now how do I deal with it? What's that? I can't?

That's OP.

No, it is you being outmaneuvered and in a losing position, one that you will pay dearly for because you have allow the enemy to direct you into a situation that is difficult to get out of. By that point, you have several options to deal with it.

As said before, catapults are more expensive that T2 bombers, so bombers can be used to shift them. Failing that, a large land assault of doxes can either overrun the position and drive them off, or draw enough fire that you can set up your own counter batteries. Failing that, you can nuke the area, as it would take time for them to set up an antinuke.

If you have one of those offensive satellites, they can also be used to put fire on the position (although in my experience, they are buggy). At worst, you can stall him whilst you fall back and build a secondary base (or fall back to an existing one).
There are plenty of ways to go about it.

However, if its a very built up and well defended position, the enemy should be able to shell you with near impunity. That is the advantage he gets from putting all his effort into setting it up, with adequate defenses and you letting him get away with it.

It such a case you are simply outplayed.

That's not a defense. There needs to be some preventive action you can take against it.

Yes, it's called setting up your artillery in your base first, and being proactive preventing enemy batteries from being set up.

There should be no static defense from artillery, apart from your own artillery. All else should be a mobile defense of various units to stop them from being set up in the first place.

In this way turtling is discouraged, and artillery can be brought it to blast apart exceptionally heavy defence perimeters.

Pelters and holkings are aoe non-homing artillery. TML is non-aoe, homing artillery. Take away the homing ability and what are you left with?

Also by taking away the homing ability you are left with no artilery capable of effectively taking out units . Pelters and holkings can be dodged and it was said that their main focus is taking down structures.

Also I didn't say we could use a sup com type tactical missile. I said that I agree they should be countered by tactical missile defense like in sup com.

Well a pinpoint slow moving missile, and a fast moving aoe shell.

Pelters and holkins are inaccurate but their weapons move fast enough that it doesn't matter.

If anything the TML was anti-structure in supcom. Especially because of its larger range. Could oneshot most structures at a pretty big range.

yea in sup om it was anti strusture as IIRC it also required that you manually fire them. but here fire is automatic. This makes a big difference.

actually their weapons move quite slow + they fire in really high arcs. sure they cna be used to thin out lines, but that just becusea large blob of units behaves like a slow moving base. It can't get out of the way.

That's the thing I really like about them, good against blobs, weak against squads and smaller.


I like the gameplay of actually getting troops through, but having artillery thin them out before they get to your turrets or other defenders.