Ground Warfare - Snipers, Mobile Artillery, Towers and Walls.

At the moment Ground Warfare seems to be somewhat dominated by T2 Snipers and Mobile Artillery.

This is because these units can, quite rightly, kill things at greater range.
This could possibly be balanced in the following ways:

Snipers:

1. Not shooting whilst moving.
2. Deploying; an stabilising arm would pop down to balance that long barrel's recoil. This would delay them engaging, making sniper-micro harder.
   
3. Slower shooting.
4. Having a shorter range than Towers. That's the point of putting your gun on a tower - greater range. Snipers out-ranging Towers is leading to Sniper micro of opponents' defences. That's a role (tonnes) of Mobile Artillery and Armies should be filling.

This would allow groups of Snipers to be chased off or out-gunned by large groups of Doxen and Pelters.

Mobile-Artillery:

1. Possibly deploying as in SupCom. Not endorsing this as that's not really the function of Mobile-Artillery.
2. Slower Shooting.
3. Lower Damage, wide AOE.

Units keeping in wide formations (perhaps with options on how wide they spread) would make this easier to balance. If my army is blobbed up then Artillery AOE will be far more devastating.
Another issue is that when sending an army to attack, everything moves at the rate of the slowest unit. This should be an optional feature, as if my Doxen are running as slow as my Vanguard then they're going to be easy pickings for Snipers and Artillery.

• T1 Walls also have a lot of HP. Too much for T1 units to punch through whilst being shot at by towers.
• Towers also shoot very fast, with great damage. A nerf is needed here in my opinion.
  
• I think most ground units could use a HP buff so that combat between each other and defences lasts longer. Losing 20 Doxen to one T1.5 Tower makes me cry.
  
• Getting across the map is also quite slow - This might be an opportunity to differentiate the roles of Bots and Tanks (further) by increasing the former's speed some more.
  • As well having them move at different speeds across different terrains...

What do you guys think about Ground Combat at the moment?

I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Shellers are fine, the only thing they need is a lower rate of fire, otherwise they are pretty balanced, least that's how I see it.

Nope.

Shellers are currently better than pelters in every way. More damage, more AoE, more accuracy, mobile, same range, a 3rd of teh price, etc...

Didn't really mention Pelters in my OP. They're not particularly dominant in ground warfare any more - I think they're much more balanced. Shellers are basically mobile Pelters with a buff though, so I see no sense in them being cheaper.

Edit: I see you misread my OP. I changed 'Artillery' to 'Mobile Artillery'.

Shellers cost their cost, plus the cost of a factory, EACH.

That post was directed at Tehtrekd. I read the OP fine.

@StormingKiwi lolnope. The cost of a factory is meaningless when it will be payed off by T2 eco within a couple of minutes. And it being a factory for EACH one? You don't appear to be thinking straight to me. Give it some rest. The only way that owuld be true is if each factory only made one sheller and that would be it.

My apologies.

You don't appear to be thinking straight to me.

How can you build your Sheller, when you don't have a T2 factory? Start with two t1 fabbers.

Cost of first Pelter - 1500.
Cost of first Sheller, 5500 metal, plus 575.

Every subsequent sheller is dependent on the 5500 metal already being spent. It's not like research, where the metal you invested in the research is protected. If you lose that 5500 metal investment, you have to build it again to build Shellers. You can't build Shellers without making that investment.

I think that before anything be done to the Gil-E's weapon, we should maybe look at it's other aspects, for example, it has the exact same movement characteristics as the Slammer which to me is just really weird. Sure, in regards to HP per metal the difference is pretty big(Gil-E: .4 HPpM Slammer: 1.1HPpM) but that difference doesn't really matter as much when Gil-Es are just as maneuverable IMO.

Mike

Your wording was implying that every sheller cost 575 metal plus a factory, when in fact that is only for the first one (and the price of the factory is in itself irrelevant due to T2 eco).

Correct, and that's exactly what I mean.

I would agree with you if the first Sheller did in fact cost 6075 metal, and was built in a basic factory, and every subsequent Sheller cost 575 metal.

You require an investment of a 5500 factory to build the sheller. So in terms of game pacing, you should expect to have 4 pelters instead of 1 sheller.

Of course then the shellers quickly catch up so it is ~4 Shellers to ~5 pelters, then ~7 to 6, which I believe was your original point. So yeah, sorry for making an argument out of nothing

On the other hand, once your opponent has gone shellers, you should be going holkins/catapults.

Honestly in the current build, I don't really see the value in building pelters.

True. I think that speed and weapon ranges are an issue.

Relative to weapon ranges, the movement speeds are so low that a 10% difference really wouldn't make a substantial change.

I think there is a scale problem. In the current balanec, you could make Gil-Es travel at 10.. but that isn't really significant. You could make them travel at 9, but now they are beginning to become a vehicle.

for me: land units are bad agains turrets becouse they are f**** slow. Usualy in games I love playing with tanks, but in PA.... before my units will get to enemy base my ally build nuke and kill him :| Same thing with cannons. Its ok that cannons shoot fast and have big dmg but units are so slow, that they will die before they will get it to their fire range. You can lose to 1 cannon with your 100 "t1" tanks.

Why people likes t1 asault bots? Becouse right now they are the fastest land units, with ok dmg. You have much better mobility than player that is building cannons. What about tanks? Even when Im watching streams I see that people give to their tanks move order few times. Becouse they don't feel they are moving.

Snipers not shooting whilst moving? This sounds good, Im OK with that.

Mobile artylery... For me there is something missing on T1 that can help with killing cannons. This was well done in SupCom, where you have Tank and Artylery on T1. Cannon kills tanks, artylery kills cannons, tanks kills artylery. Its clear.
What is your response for cannons in PA? "Wait here, give my a min, i just need to build adv fab" or "He have cannons? I will build more cannons!".

Well to me that speaks to a deeper problem, I personally don't mind the idea of a Bot that's slower than a aVehicle, so long as there isn't a comparable Vehicle that's faster, when comparing the Gil-E to something like a Vehicle I don't think it should be boiled down to the idea that because a stat or 2 being similar is cause for concern.

The Gil-E can be slower so long as the isn't a Sniper Tank, of course, assuming that the Gil-E is slowed we can also assume that a Sniper Tank would also be slower than regular tanks.

We shouldn't think of it's speed as being a Primary Factor, rather it's just one of many Factors that all contribute to the grand scheme of things, like yeah it might be slow but that's done as an offset to it's range or damage, it gives a new facet to bot tactics because you can't just treat them as "Sniper Slammers".

Mike

That's partly to do with latency or pathfinding or just redundant micro.

Think about MOBAs (LOL/DOTA). Why do you think APM is so high? I've watched my friends play, they play at a fairly high level, and there are so many redundant clicks. (reason I was given was latency issues. Last thing you want is for the server to not register your click)

I disagree here.

The differentiating factor between bots and tanks, seems to be mobility vs staying power.

Think of Uber's tutorial video - they emphasise that tanks are used to steamroll defences, whereas bots are used to bypass defences.

So I think there is a deeper problem - Uber aren't keeping that model in mind (why are Doxen Grenadiers now set up to steamroll defences, and not bypass defences to attack units?)

I think if you're going to build all bots, relative to all vehicles, they should be more mobile. It's army composition - you're moving your sniper together with your assault bots. And the sniper has decreased the speed of the whole swarm.

No, no, im talking about sittuation when you give order to units, return to them after 15-40s and give them same order, becouse you are not sure if they are doing what you wanted even when they are doing this. This happends for me sometimes, and I see it many times on PA streams. I think this is becouse slow move of land and naval units.

Isn't that because of the pathfinding of units? I often find that some units have got stuck somewhere. Which is why I come back to them to fix their orders.

See I think that's just being overly simplistic. No way that all units of a chassis type will be good at a certain role, not if you want actual variety at least.

I do agree with the idea that Tanks might have more/"better" options in that regard but I don't like the idea that ONLY Tanks should have that option.

Mike

I need more steel and less toilet paper.

Agreed with:

snipers not shooting while moving
mobile artillery not shooting while moving
healthbuff to basic units
damage nerf to double-barrel turrets
slower fire rate for mobile artillery

Disagree:
Snipers less range than turrets - they're snipers. Turrets aren't. Turrets have more range than normal, but not sniping range. Maybe snipers should do much less damage to buildings.

Walls. I really don't know anymore what to say to walls. Sometimes I like them, sometimes I hate them. Maybe a slight increase in cost. If you want to destroy walls with basic tech, go inferno.


My general thought about ground combat:

Ground combat happens too fast. Units die so quick, they really need more health. Maybe units should have 2-3 times health and +50% the metal cost. (Since I also think units build a little too quick)

No sniper turrets?

And I think that approach is needlessly simplistic.

Why not just have one land factory then, if vehicle and infantry armies are otherwise indistinguishable?


Remember PA is a game where you build more and more and more factories all the time