Walls and Anchors Need Nerfing.

T1 Walls need a 50-75% health decrease.

Currently they are extremely difficult to breach with anything apart from a row of Vanguards.
This is not good news for a T1 defensive structure.

Doing this would open up the possibility of a heavier, more expensive T2 siege wall.


Anchors also need some sort of nerf in their engagement with the ground, as their role as T1.5 Defensive Towers is currently impossible to counter without Umbrellas or Avengers.
This is because we either can't build Umbrellas close to an enemy's base, or lack the resources early-mid game to commit to a heavy Orbital assault, which may well prove fruitless anyway if the opponent has Umbrellas guarding their Anchors.

Reducing Anchors' projectile speed so that they miss more often (after all, they are firing at moving targets from Orbit), while also lowering their rate of fire and or damage would be good places to start for this in my opinion.


Combined, Walls and Anchors are a bad news for T1 combat.

Defences are currently near impossible to breach till the end game, when we can charge in with mass T2 Vanguards and Avengers.

Which, of course, is less cost-effective and more time consuming than massing 50+ T1 Bombers and sniping an enemy Commander in an overlapped bombing run. Which is what people are doing when they cannot breach defences.

All of which encourages turtling, to the detriment of what is proving to be increasingly engaging Ground Combat.

I agree.

We need a ground to orbital unit to help counter Anchors. RCBM did this by simply making the Stingray's Missiles and Bluehawk's Missiles shoot at orbital. Great additions.

Speeding up Avengers like in Mered's mod is also a way to nerf Anchors, and make orbital a lot more fun. (seriously, try the mod. Avengers are a lot of fun)

Also, area attack commands need to completely ignore walls. It's a huge bummer when an army with an area attack is completely destroyed because they're shooting at walls rather than moving forward to destroy the laser defense towers.

I remember that t1 bombers used to have a tactical missile that would target one enemy. I think it might be a good idea to have umbrellas have a longer range missile that targets ONLY anchors, because currently the range of umbrellas is too small to hit them before they get destroyed.

I'm agreeing on Anchor range in relation to Umbrella. Range superiority only encourages Anchor creep even further, even though it is not even required. Thanks to healballs, you don't even need that bonus range to build anchors in covered terrain, all it costs you is a bit more metal and energy to compensate for the damage dealt by the Umbrella while under construction.

Possibly on wall HP, even though I would then like to see rectangular build instead of just line build to compensate.

I do NOT agree on projectile speed for Anchors. You are literally asking for players to manually dodge, and claiming it was their own fault if they don't pamper their units all the time. Clear no to changes which promote manual dodging.

Neither do I agree on countering Anchors with Avengers. Stationary defenses always need range superiority, or otherwise they become entirely inferior and will fall like flies.

What I'm missing though on Anchors, is a seperation of anti-ground and anti-orbital weapons. Current DPS are IMHO fine against anti orbital, as it ensures that no Avenger, Astreus or SXX can sneak through (ok, except for the instant snipe exploit with the latter one). Against ground based targets, reduced range would be adequate though, possibly also a different fire pattern which deploys more overkill, thereby maintaining efficiency against T2, but explicitly crippling performance against T1.

Definitely. I remember in SupCom walls didn't "count". They were just sorta there. I don't remember if units went after walls (I don''t think they did) but I know that in an Annihilation match walls didn't count as a unit, so if all your enemy had left was walls, they'd still lose.

There's also the issue of Pelters shooting at walls instead of defensive structures. Or Pelters shooting at walls after the defensive structures are destroyed, doing nothing but consuming energy.

Walls were done pretty well in TA, I think. As soon as it was finished, it ceased being a structure and became a "wreckage", being worth very little metal, but good for guarding against anything early game that used a horizontal fire.

If PA used something like that, anything with an arc would be key to hitting beyond walls, and your units wouldn't automatically attack the walls, but the structures behind them.. in doing so, walls act like the walls they really are.

Why it's not like this, I don't have a clue. Someone knowing more can fill me in?

The grenade bot is designed to do this specifically, use them with infernos to take out enemy towers, infernos to tanks and eat walls, grenadiers to kill the towers by focus fire.

When a unit checks if it can hit a target, it doesn't take wrecks into account.

This is already the case (kinda). Units prioritise every possible target before shooting walls.

The real issue with them in vanilla is that they just have too much health and too few units can shoot over.

Exactly. This is what I'm looking for. Walls shouldn't naturally be something units attack if you can use them to your own advantage.

I'd rather them not really shoot at walls at all, but then again, walls in this game are much harder to deal with than the ones in TA. I like the idea of going into a walled area in TA and capturing it myself, using the walls for my own gains (since they're neutral) instead of spending hours slowly rolling them over just to build my own..

That shouldn't be changed, without bubble shields building a wall is all we can do to counter artillery trolls. (Because for one reason or another attacking the artillery isn't possible.)

What is an Artillery Troll?

I'd rather we have a way of attacking the Artillery than have walls block something dropping out of the sky.

Exactly what it sounds like. And there are times you can't attack an artillery piece due to an army being in the way, too much anti air, etc etc. So being able to force your opponent to micro his artillery shots can give you a little time to prep your counter attack.

WHAT?!

Hell. No.

What needs to happen is that Avengers need a buff or mechanics change. Something like the Awesome Avengers mod I put out a few days ago. That change literally made anchors nigh on defenseless against anything more than 4 avengers, and thus the creep could be countered.

Walls are easy enough to break through with mass T1 units, especially infernos or lots of dox. In addition, they have some sort of bug where almost every unit shoots over them instead of into them - making them even less viable.

Walls already got nerfed once, and I like the balance of it. Walls aren't OP: You aren't building enough units to break it if you think so. Also, you could just go around. It is a round planet after all.

EDIT: Regarding artillery and walls:
Artillery shouldn't prioritize walls, sure. That's a change I think we all can agree with. But come on. Artillery isn't meant to punch through defensive lines by itself - you need more artillery or an army to help.

I agree that walls aren't OP, but some mechanics concerning walls need to be tweaked. Walls shouldn't be automatically targeted. They make area attack commands counterproductive.

I edited it in a ninja

Walls are perfectly done, they are serving their duty! And the same is for anchors. What isn´t allright is that there is NO Anti-Orbital Ground, Naval or Air Unit and the game is generally lacking a varity of orbital combat units!
There is a fighter (Avenger) and....
...this it was!
We need more!

This is the only thing that should be changed. Don´t nerf Anchors or Walls!

The main issue isn't artillery, although it is an issue. The main issue is area attack commands targeting walls.

Same deal. Different units. Fix the prioritization: Don't nerf things. Awesome.