Interplanetary artillary and radar

You assume incorrectly.

Map crossing artillery practically promotes player laziness compared to the monumental effort to destroy the guns at such range.

Gameending unlimited range artillery isn't 'variety', it's one strategy to rule them all.

Not to mention there isn't any strategy to use them. Suicide a satellite in the worst case and watch worlds burn.

You're correct in another point, fast movers can do precise strikes and take them out. You know who has the best defense against fast movers? Turtling players.

Because missiles need a downside

Also nit necessarily, dumbfire artillery can work well if you calculate all the variables, similar to how you have to calculate the variables of dumbfire artillery on planet, wind conditions, gravity, and such.

Missiles already have a downside: no AOE.

There's too many variables, some of which cannot be calculated. Things like wind wouldn't be and other environmental effects. You simply cannot have pinpoint accuracy, nor can you hit anywhere you want at any time.

But they can track? That means it has a plus side, as well as doing pinpoint high damage.

Also, missiles has thrusters, so they should be able to go further, as well as dealing lower damage than a dumb-fire artillery shell.

Yes, they can track. So?

It still doesn't make sense that a missile has less range than an artillery shell.

High damage can always be tweaked.

High damage tracking missiles work well against high health targets, lower damage aoe artillery are most optimal against large groups of low health units.

Every unit/building needs positives and negatives

I never really understood why rockets don't do aoe in PA. Aren't ballistic projectiles rather relying on kinetic energy than rockets, who are almost purely explosive?

There are actually 'guided' projectiles for cannons, which use control surface's to correct their flight path. And when you managed to shoot up into the lower atmosphere, range becomes much less limited. Realistic near future railguns are projected to have a range of 320km or so.

Never said otherwise.

Yeah. I've seen those. And those are no longer "dumb" projectiles. They can be fired a mile off course and can then move to hit the target. Really cool (and expensive) stuff. But what we have in PA are dumb projectiles since they do not track the target.

Well, in the end intelligent ammunition might be cool, but there is a certain beauty in shooting a stupid rock 3 times the weight in the general direction of the target.

Balance > Realism.

Of course rockets are just as explosive as artillery and artillery can be almost as accurate as rockets. But why have two identical units.

Never said identical units.

I'm saying artillery should be short range with splash, and missiles should be long range precision.

Short range arty, that's a tank...

Nukes should be able to travel interplanetary, just not as quickly as they do, its way too fast. I would be happy to see an interplanetary artillery a bit like a Holkins however more like a MAC from Halo (magnetic accelerator cannon) which uses metal debris and fires it, would be pretty cool.

EDIT: There would obviously be a counter to this

Short range for unguided arty COMPARED to guided arty.

Actually, short range artillery is a howitzer. The sheller's design fits quite well into that category.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerhaubitze_2000

I can't really see it begin used that much. Very few systems get close enough for that to be possible. And I don't think it would really even be that useful. It would be nice just to have but not needed.

I wonder how many howitzers exist in the TA/PA universe... take scale into consideration.

Artillery is long range, regardless of your personal opinion on how long/short guided/unguided the projectiles should be.

This thread is about interplanetary artillery, pretty sure "short range" units don't apply.