Suggestion: deflection gravity "shields"

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by missstabby, November 1, 2012.

  1. missstabby

    missstabby New Member

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    I was wondering, since planetary bombardments are a main feature of PA i was thinking of ways to defend against this.

    In the trailer i have seen the "nuke it to bits" solution, though it only succeeded in fragmenting the asteroid. Turning a canonball into a giant flakshot.

    Therefore i thought of a building that is capable of creating a gravity field that can "bend" the trajectories of such projectiles. Small ones have enough power to act as a shrapnel umbrella for a base, though bigger ones should be capable of misdirecting an entire asteroid that is on collision course, however this building can only work when it has line of sight.
    so if a commander only builds one on the north face of a planet and a asteroid were to approach the planet from the south, it would still destroy the planet.

    This field only influences the paths of "ballistic" objects like asteroids, orbital dropped units or giant bombshells dropped from orbit or different planetary bodies. Things like ships or guided missiles would be able to correct for this change in gravity.
    At groundlevel during a ground/naval/air battle the construction is useless and vulnerable.
  2. ajoxer

    ajoxer Member

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    Just for reference, the idea of a shield that only works on artillery-type weapons sounds pretty interesting to me, perhaps as a precursor or cheaper alternative to full shields, or as a way to provide a counter to heavy artillery while still leaving the base vulnerable to other attacks.

    Full asteroid deflection, I'm going to disagree with on both a 'realism' and a 'fun' argument- On realism, assuming an equal and opposite reaction, creating a gravity field powerful enough to deflect a planet-killer sized asteroid would probably do horrifying things to the planet. On a fun argument, I think the best way to destroy an asteroid is either with a full nuclear barrage, or a small strike-force landing on the asteroid to sabotage the engines, and sending it spiralling into the sun. Gravity shields make it less of an impressive set-piece, for me, to make it such an 'automatic' defense.
  3. penguintd

    penguintd New Member

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    From strategic point of view, if the asteroid is on the final approaching phase, then it's done. Reason being that for the scale of almost moon like size asteroid as shown in the pitch video, there is no way a "gravity" field could be generated strong enough to deflect.

    I don't want to be a "reality" nazi or something like that, but as a ultimate and planned attack, I don't want my "nuke" to just disappeared without smart counter strategy. The asteroid attack should be easy to stop in early building phase or during the initial launch. But it should be really hard to stop mid flight and impossible during final approach.

    So that means you need to scout and respond other than just plant 4 buildings on a planet and then avoid the destruction. Hope you understand what I mean.
  4. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    If the planet has big enough engines, it could just DODGE out of the way.
  5. garatgh

    garatgh Active Member

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    If those 4 buildings are as expensive as the astroid engines i fail to see why not. It would mean that you have to prepear a astroid strike (Teleport in a strike team to take out the gravity feild generator perhaps?). The fact that you need to scather them around the world for a 100% defense supports the strike team tactic too. Atroids shouldent be a "i win" button just becuse you happen not to scout one out of god know how many astroids in a system (The concept video hade ALOOOOOT of them).
  6. ajoxer

    ajoxer Member

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    The problem is that this makes it more of a double-defensive position for the person on the defense- They first need to prepare for the asteroid with gravity generators, then prepare for the assault teams on their generators.

    I propose the alternate 'strike team to blow up the asteroid's engines' idea because it means that both players are simultaneously playing defense and offense, on different scales- As one is being offensive strategically, they must be defensive tactically, and vice versa.
  7. garatgh

    garatgh Active Member

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    That said, if a system contains anywhere near the amount of astroids shown in the video its gonna be hard to keep tabs on them (Well, it depends on how the radar and intel gathering will work in PA i guess).
  8. thorneel

    thorneel Member

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    Based on the vague memories of a post from Neutrino, I'd say that it wouldn't work. How many engines you can put on a planet depends on its surface. Its mass depends on its volume. Volume grows faster than surface. Thus, planets can't be as agile as asteroids even with proportionally as many engines.
  9. penguintd

    penguintd New Member

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    The reason being if you let the thing go out of hand that easy, you deserved to be smashed by asteroids. That attack for sure would take sort of mid-to-late game tech to build, and divert of resource and maybe expand into multiple planet in order for enough resource to get on to multiple of them. And if I can sit in one location without worrying about resource problem(Like for StarCraft, Terran in Big Game Hunters, you can pretty much defend until you have late game fleet of battlecruiser), then I don't want to have that in a macro game like PA.

    It should always be something like if enemy put more resource into getting asteroid attack, we will either have 1. already expand into more location if they rush for it, 2. can have more attack units to hijack or prevent it from happening, or 3. they will have weaker defense on their other bases that we can take the trade off from losing one of our base.
  10. Consili

    Consili Member

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    I would agree with this. The depiction in the trailer did show a large asteroid field but I am not sure whether they will be that common when it comes to the completed game. They are effectively the last say in the escalation of a conflict (so far as we know) and should be treated as such. I think they should be:

    A: Comparatively rare
    B: VERY expensive
    C: Have a long build time
    D: Have a moderate to long travel time

    The result being that there is a massive investment in player time and resources to field such a weapon, the pros being the massive destructive capacity and the difficulty in countering it once on approach.

    To add to this such endeavours would be likely to be aimed at planets where a foothold cant be gained because the enemy is too entrenched. Certainly I wouldnt waste one on a planet which I can take more cheaply and quickly through other means. There is a general feeling that the asteroid strike would damage the planet and prevent or severely limit any occupation/resource gathering on the affected planet, which adds another cost to throwing the asteroid. Not being able to get the resources you have denied your enemy.

    With all this in mind the onus should be on the defender to effectively scout, and actively attack an asteroid, rather than have a passive defence system.
  11. Alcheon

    Alcheon Member

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    game balance issues aside, would a large 100+ asteroid field be any more difficult to simulate then 100 units? if thats true theres nothing stopping anyone, devs, modders, map designers from creating massive dense fields of asteroids

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