ADV Laser Defence Turret

Guys, I have a problem that you are seriously forced into doing this and not be able to overrun the towers with your basic ground forces.
Thats my whole point....

Why would you overrun them? It's not going to be cost effective. You use the mobility of your forces against the static defences. If you can simply zerg them then what purpose do static defences serve?

Because there will be situations when the need for this is required. Of course it will not be cost effective, but if it is the only thing stopping a nuked from getting launched in an emergency situation it should at least be possible to some extend.

If there's a nuke then they have tier 2, so why are tier 2 responses from you off the table?

Because you cannot always assume the optimal situation.

If they're nuking you and you're not tier 2 then the problem is not why your T1 force cannot beat their hardpoint, it's why you fell so far behind in the first place.

Still beating the same drum I see. Can't understand why this isn't sinking in.... do you send a janitor to an important boardroom meeting to seal a big deal for your company....probably not; likewise direct assault by tanks/bots against laser towers isn't wise either. Common sense. IF you have overwhelming numbers it might work, but its doubtful when walls go up and repair-bots come out and if the wosrse case scenario you mention is there - its sort of a GG moment aye? Surrender and and save yourself some dignity.'

Don't mean to sound so hostile but there is now 2 pages of back and forth, but this, but that with scenarios that simply should not have occurred and counter arguments that are weak, ie why would they let you build pelters? they won't but they actually have to come out and face you to stop you, and if you have that many tanks (you know to attempt a bulldoze) you'll win and get your pelter up easy as that; AND you have forgotten inferno's the T1 bullet sponge that can make bulldoze maneuvers actually work, the ai does it so it doesn't just work on paper.

This is rock-paper scissors; a direct hard-counter and the opposite of what this genre is meant to be about. It also requires T2 units, effectively making T1 land combat irrelevant.

How is it rock paper sissors? its an insistence on combined arms, inferno's help tanks take on turrets its not a hard counter in the least, artillery could take them out outright, or they could soften up for tanks... these are real world strats (although they failed hard in WW1 but there are no trenches in PA so...) Or are we really in fovour of the mighty death-blob? Really? I thought we wanted to go away from that direction. This why several games are technically broken including both SupCom's (gunships for the win).

Rock paper scissors (RPS) means unit A beats unit B beats unit C beats unit A, with little to no chance of success with any other match-up.
A = artillery
B = static defences
C = tanks

The problem is especially bad since A is a tech 2 unit. Not have RPS doesn't automatically mean death blobs - tanks can still be made inefficient against static defenses, but defense shouldn't be (effectively) immune to tanks.
Both TA and Sup Com did not have RPS. Gunships were a broken unit in Sup Com, yes, but that's not due to the lack of RPS, and it can be fixed in several ways.

The situation here is not like that, static defenses are exorbitantly difficult to take out with tanks its possible but doesn't make sense when there are tools available to or alternate ways/directions to break through. For one, Pelters are not T2 and are just one of a number of solutions offered to solve the many scenarios on this thread about adv turrets which has effectively been derailed by the ineffectiveness of tanks to destroy something intended to stop them and infernos are far from a hard counter to anything either (though don't try killing them with bots, tried it, epic fail). There is nothing wrong at all with having different tools to do a job, there is something wrong with insisting that you should be able to fix a tv with a wrench and its the manufacturers fault you can't.

I think the issue here is that DalekDan is asking for a specific role to be filled- specifically, an assault unit which is actually designed to be effective against defenses. DalekDan, you should not be arguing that every ground unit should be better against defenses.

The solution is to have different units that are designed to perform different jobs. Combined arms is a mixture of different roles which give you different capabilities. If those capabilities are simply "I want to kill X" then you are just doing RPS, which is bad. Assaulting a fortified position is a specific type of job, not acting as an RPS counter to "static defenses" in general. The key difference is that different roles are of varying effectiveness based on how an opponent uses their units, not just what units they actually have. Defensive turrets spread out over a large area, for example, would not be most efficient to eliminate with assault-ish units, but if those units are focused in a smaller space, the assault units become very effective.

A T1/T2 solution is an especially bad version of an RPS solution which stratifies a player's options into basic and advanced units. Saying "you should get T2 units in order to counter X" is bad. This is especially bad if T2 is generally a counter to T1- that would be disastrous.

I think that having access to advanced units should be a strategic advantage, not a strength or other direct advantage or upgrade. What this means is that you get options, not flat improvements. Those options might be good, they might be bad, it really depends on how your opponent uses their units, and how you use yours. Cost is only one possible balancing factor, and simply increasing the cost is the most boring tradeoff a unit's design can make. Ideally a more specialized unit loses something else in return for specific, powerful functionality which makes it an interesting choice. Simply making it bigger, stronger, and more expensive is not as interesting as giving it huge features and correspondingly huge weaknesses.

For an advanced defensive turret, there are a lot of possible designs that are more interesting than simply making a bigger, better turret that costs more resources. Perhaps a turret with a lot of firepower, but the same amount of HP as a basic turret for a higher cost. Or a turret with more front-loaded damage, but lower damage. Or a turret with long range, but also a long minimum range. Designs that give a unit strengths and weaknesses are more diverse and open up more opportunities to exploit their strengths (or weaknesses) than designs that are merely "stronger in all ways, and more expensive."

Maybe you're name dropping the wrong person.... i never called for anything, I'm merely stating the roles as they exist in the game, and the thread has really gone off the rails from the original post. To be clear I don't advocate a unit that is designed to be effective against defences, one currently exists that when combined helps other units orverrun defences (inferno's/vangaards) and artillery and pelters are useful to take out those defenses, this in reply to posts bemonaing the fact that swarms of tanks are ineffective on their own against turrets and why they shouldn't be. Otherwise i agree with most everything you said and I really don't know how some people got the impression you got but oh well..

If I have misunderstood your position DalekDan, my apologies, but there are others in this thread that seem to think that all ground units should be better against static defenses. My point was there are two errors in that line of reasoning. First, not all ground units need to do that job when an assault unit intended to attack fortified positions should excel at that role. And secondly, the concept of having units be designed with the purpose of "countering" specific other units leads to RPS and deathballs and space bears, oh my.

I think you are absolutely correct that the Inferno/Vanguard are currently intended to serve as assault units, but we will have to see how future units fit into the system as well.

They're not piratically immune to tanks, send enough tanks continuously enough and eventually those defenses will fall, but like i've been saying all along they will fall a hell of a lot more quickly and cheaply if different units such as vangards, infernos, artillery, pelters, bombers and gunships are thrown in as well either in support or as the primary attack. Anything less than what they are now and turrets will be kind of pointless with the sort of numbers units can be spat out in the time it takes to even build a turret.

Totally agree, the Doomsday Machine, with it's ability to engage multiple targets simultaneously was the coolest base defense in TA.

The model is fine for me. But the range-radius is a bit small in my opinion.

I have discovered the problem. T1 fabricators have the ability to build T2 towers. THis means we have t2 towers destroying t1 units. I believe Ants do not have such a big problem against the single laser defense tower. It is the next one up that is the problem.

single tower is 300 metal, ermm not sure how much an ant costs in metal, don't think its much. I've seen army of tanks and infernos other t1 units able to defeat single laser towers. The unfairness we may be seeing is T2 tower versus t1 units.

The question should be, is what should the T1 tower be and what should the T2 tower be? Because I also know form experience, that a double laser tower stands no chance against T2 units.

By looking at how the developers made these units it looks like this. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Single laser tower is meant to defend against bots, double laser tower against vehicles, triple laser tower against any T2 units that come attacking. May have been there original thought.

Also possible that the effectiveness of towers was made to be so high to make people not build walls of towers, but to only build one or two to guard an area. This may have been a gameplay decision, that has had a setback since its not properly balanced yet.

I still would like different types of towers though. Make things more interesting. BTW tanks were originally invented to overcome trench warfare and fortifications. In world war 1 they failed a lot, because they were terrible. Originaly name was Land ships, tank is the secret codename, but I guess it stuck. GO LANDSHIP.

The issue is not just the strength of the turret, it's when you put it behind a wall that the turrets become impressive.

A simple double or triple turret can kill several ants, but it's hardly unassailable. However, if you put it behind a wall it becomes a very hard counter to ground units that requires artillery or air support to attack.

The wall complicates the balance further because building thicker walls will allow them to sponge even more damage.



A possible solution would be that walls block only movement, but that towers get their health raised enough that they don't need walls to be effective. This would allow a more direct balancing of tower vs tank to get the sweet spot where it's still worth building but not OPed.

The solution is not to hit it straight on with tanks because that's stupid. Tanks move, turrets don't.