Ineter-Planetary Artillery

@wpmarshall no, you would just need target leading.

I dunno how feasible that would be I imagine that the greater the distance and path the more inaccurate the artilery would be. we could imagine that as soon as the target planet is beyond a certain distance the IPA becomes absolutely worthless. or just a random shot, and I guess that's still worth taking.

I personally think this makes sense. The 'Big Bertha' / 'Intimidator' in TA had map wide coverage and there were no shields. Yet it wasn't the total game breaker everyone thinks. It was terribly inaccurate, very slow firing and took allot of energy to load.

Add in the fact that you can only hit the part of the planet facing you I personally think a planet to planet BB style gun would be good. In TA you rarely won the game with Bertha's- they were mainly for physiological warfare and to goad your opponent into doing something. I think they do have a place besides nukes as well- as a cannon like this only requires energy to fire, rather than both energy and metal for nukes. It would lend itself to a strategy around invasion as your bombard the planet from range to soften it up- move in with orbital to set up a teleporter, then pour t2 units through the gate (that you built with the metal you would have spent on nukes).

I don't expect Uber to implement this in the main game, however I could see these working nicely in a mod, and I think it's at least something that should be explored.

Target leading is tricky when you're on a rotating orbiting object targeting another rotating orbiting object. It's probably outright nuts if you're trying to hit a precise spot on that second object. (Which could explain why orbital units teleport to the designated move order rather than transitioning there naturally -- It makes the calculations simpler.) Luckily, it's only rocket science!

reading this thread makes me wonder how they are going to implement armed metal planets
one thing though ipa doest have to be like holkins it could be aswell a rapidffireversion of the catapult
or some sort of longrangetorpedolauncher
the problem aside from balance would be to animate the flightpath and bombardmentprocess in a authentic way same with nukes .. longrangewarfare does't have to limited to nukes only ...
as for mapspawning artillery in supcom those were simply basebreakers or gameenders ... nothing i couldnt see implemented in pa in some way

My reasons for not wanting map crossing.....inter-planetary artillery, and why I'm not much of a fan of interplanetary nukes without a reason.

• Give the player tools to win the game from inside their own base, without the game mode specifically being the construction or use of such a game ending device.
• Encourages the use of turtling past the early game, where turtling is most effective.
• Makes the use of a single unit type the games overall priority.
• Does not take account of any kind of range (Such as planets being close, naturally) and lessens the purpose of having ground forces on other planets.
• Allows players with orbital surveillance to simply mass their artillery as a solution to every problem.
• Is a tactic that requires no skill to use, but massive amounts of skill and time to counter over the systems distance.
• The counter play to map crossing artillery is boring and unfun, as it simply revolves around winning the game before their opponent even begins their strategy.
• Makes people dislike defensive strategys, making them endlessly wine on the forums, resulting in nerfed and useless base defences that are not worth building.
• Makes people want bubble shields and defensive lasers to stop enemy shells and missiles, when this does nothing to resolve their issue of being attacked by these weapons unlike other counters, turing the gameplay into a boring contest of building the artillery and the ultra specialised counter that has no other purpose.

so much speculation and implification ...

The idea is fascinating, but Brian might be right. We have already Nukes, which aren't that expensive to build. Plus, if we could have the Unit Cannon, it would invalidate much of an Interplanetary Artillery, which ultimately could end up being expensive and not that effective.

Otherwise, I like the suggestion.

On the other side, couldn't an Orbital Bomber be more useful and easy to balance?

We need a mechanism in place that fights turtling.. making it so only destroying the physical cannon or vision sou
rce will stop bombardment... this should force the turtler to assault that attacking orbital body or c.. with troops, nukes or other yet to be seen mechanisms.

Brian has tried making the point around the lines of, this gives turtle-ers another weapon in their arsenal... Nukes can be hard countered by Anti-nukes which a turtle-er will have no doubt built.. artillery needs to be countered with an army not a structure. this KILLS turtle-ing because it we will not have shields... The only defensive measure is an offensive measure....attacking the artillery installation or the radar. this is the current scenario with artillery currently implemented in the game and it forces the baser's hand and makes them respond with an attack, more artillery, catapults or nukes.