Catalysts should burn up after one use

Would a Unit Cannon really work well though? I mean, depending on cost, being able to drop units onto any point of a planet instantly is pretty broken as well, who needs lasers and halleys when you can shoot vanguards right into the middle of any base at will, or fire them to land right next to a com en masse.

You have a point there. Still, that might be because vanguards are still op- they we're just overshadowed a bit.

Swallow a spider to catch a fly, swallow a bird to catch a spider, swallow a cat to catch the bird... A fix for one thing often incurs problems of it's own.

Vanguards are totally fine in their current implementation, I would argue there's a lot of ways the current balance would be thrown into an absolute mess if you allow units to be delivered direct to a location from orbit, basically, the idea of a unit cannon might be 'cool' but implementing it doesn't solve all your problems, if anything, it creates more. (as you said)

Static defences lose a lot of relevance if they were able to be so effortlessly bypassed. Why ever build nukes? dropping unit blobs next to an enemy halleys or catalyst gets the job done cheaper, and can't be blocked by anti-nukes.

Basically, some people seem to have developed this idea that the Unit Cannon will be some sort of magical thing which will instantly fix everything and make the game play better in every way. I'm not so sure that's the case.

I'm happy with game-enders.

And Death Stars are awesome.

But remember when they wanted to blow up the Rebel base on that Asteroid, and couldn't because there was a planet in the way?
Remember how the Rebels sent a force to prevent them all getting blown up?

There should be a charge time and a recharge time on the Annihilaser, which demands large sums of Energy.

That way people have a chance to prevent or respond to the firing of the game-ender. Sending a moon at it, for example. Even if your asteroid was blown out of the sky, that would buy you some time as you prepared another moon, or started loading up an invasion force.

This would also mean somebody who was dominating the game and had a beastly economy could recharge the Annihilaser quicker. Therefore you tie the game ender to sustained economic supremacy, rather than a rush to build the win. A player would also be less likely to blow up a planet with their own Energy Plants on it.

All this would mean we could have our 40-man games with Metal Planets, and the end could be quick - provided somebody could keep outputting enough Energy to power a planet-sized Laser.

I still believe Vanguards are a bit too powerful compared to everything that's not a swarm of dox- But that's a different discussion for a different thread.

I still think we need the unit cannon in some implementation, if only because it sound awesome. Balancing that is a task for another day, again.


So, I guess, here's the question.
How do we balance the I win hard with a vengeance and you can't do **** about it button?

No, possible , but not needed at all! The player can rebuild them in no time and if he was smart he killed the most dangerous thread with the first hit, so there is no real threat any more.

Catalysts are not a "magic button" you can build as you like, you need to conquer and hold (!) a metal planet - so I think catalysts are ok. Someting *needs* to end a game at the magic 30-45 minutes mark, a cheesy ssx snipe or a vanguard drop/teleport is not fun for the killed guy either (as anything that throws you out of the game). At least catalysts are the most stylish "I win" button. In the end this is a kind of "economic victory". If you can build these your opponents have losts anyway. This is the truth.

You can maybe make it a bit more expensive, but in short, you don't. It's designed to end the game, it may as well be a wonder victory in AoE or a capture point victory from CoH or DoW, the whole point is that once someone has managed to fight off other players and gained enough dominance to control the laser, they win.

If they can get those catalysts up while sucessfully defending against teleporter invasions, nukes, halleys, and SXX, then they deserve to win, dragging the game out longer with a cooldown in the vast majority of cases doesn't give the loser a chance for a comeback, it just forces them to wallow in their lost cause for several minutes while the laser takes longer to do what it was designed to do... end the game.

"They lack strategic depth or variety" And SXX commander snipes are?

Sorry was not going to leave that hanging there.

I have to agree with @BradNicholson , the annihilasor serves as an endgame, if you don't like it, it's not necessary to have the planet as part if the game scenario. & if (we better actually) we get bannable game options (such as banning the use of nukes), then you could always just ban catalysts.

@brianpurkiss you don't have to like game enders, however, when you have two skilled players who manage to stalemate eachother, you need some method to break that stalemate. I've never liked matches that last for hours because two players are so evenly skilled that they are able to counter eachothers moves every time.

& it has happened.

Geers, I think we both know that Brian likes to nitpick way to much.

Actually, I find this idea to be very nice indeed, require power to power up the annihilasor, & if in a deficit, power up takes exponentially longer.


@BradNicholson can you complain with that? It's not a bad idea at all actually.

As i said in an other thread. Just need a cool down and a big amount of generators on the planet like the halley.
If you finished building the 5 parts you see how many of those special generators you have to build.

I'm going to have to disagree with specialized generators, I'm in the firm belief that there should ONLY be one unique structure to each potential game ender, for any game. While I said that I believe for it to fire at the current speed it does would require not having a deficit with your power, that did not mean require additional specialized buildings to act as the power source.

I really don't need a cluttered ui of useless buildings during a "no game ender match"

I'd assume a "no game ender" option would just remove those buildings from the UI.

I'm referring to the current method of "no game enders" as in a system without the required planets

Still need to avoid having too many unique structures for one thing though

Well, I won't be including metal planets in my systems then, ever. Until you guys implement a checkbox to disable the laser thing or a sensible cool-down..

Are these included in GW? If so, I may have to give that a rest for a while.

+1 vote for a reasonable cooldown.

Fixed that for you.

Soz. It wasn't round though, was it? Wasn't it like Mars' moons?