Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggestion)

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Yeah I meant as protecting only from above

They could in SupCom1 or SCFA, but AA that close was quite powerful for you not to bring enough gunships to kill the shield anyway.

I can't find the link, but I believe one of the dev's said that all the physics was being built with the idea of 3D planets in mind, so in that case shields would also be curved (even more) to keep the shape over a large area.

Well artillery in TA might be a better example of what I mean, high energy cost, medium range and ling building time.

With bases being positioned far enough away from each other, artillery bombardment of another base would include the attacker building a forward position, and with the tide of war constantly shifting, it would be very difficult to actually bombard an opponents base unless you already have the army advantage.

The terrain in TA also prevented out right bombardment of enemy locations due to the physics preventing the shells from getting to the location unless the gun is close enough to arc the shell over at a great height.

If you catch my drift.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

What makes you think there will be no map crossing artillery in PA?

Its not hard to make the shots hit the other side of a sphere without it going into actual sustained orbit.

There will also most likely be artillery that can fire from a nearby planetary body (moon/astroid/other planet perhaps) at your planet.

Unless they confirm that long range artillery wont be ingame i sincerely doubt that they wouldent include it.

(*Do note that i consider each planet to be a separate map, so while i belive there will be map crossing artillery i doubt there will be artillery that can hit anywhere in a system.)

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=34022
{O} Artillery warfare: #1

{R} Shields: #1#2 #3

From this is where I am basing my point of discussion, but if I have misinterpreted then I apologize.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

It seems like you have misinterpreted it. Im assuming its this part?

It dosent say that long range artillery wont be ingame, just that the game wont be as focused on super units as for example supcom.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Then I am mistaken on this point, thank you for correcting me good sir.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Well we havent hade any confirmation that the game will have long range artillery either, so you might be right.

Im just saying that we dont realy know yet unless a dev wanna drop by and give us a confirmation *holds breath in anticipation*.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

You do however see my point from the perspective of TA's artillery?

Comparable to T2 artillery from SupCom, the inability to turtle to mass artillery in a persons base and shoot the others base means that a persons mobile forces are much more important for 'weeding' the map of enemy parasites.

A comparison could be made to urban warfare, where a tank would decimate gorilla forces, if you could find them, and get a direct shot without having to level a city block, requiring the use of infantry to go in and engage them.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

^^ Yes if what you say is correct and they do the artillery in TA style (I didnt play that much TA so i cant realy judge your info, or argue against it).

Then there may be no need at all for sheilds.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Out of the entire list of confirmed features and suggestions, the ommission of shields is what made me glad to read about the most. It would've been so easy for the developers to make it a habit to 'add more' while disregarding the effect on the flow of the game.

Shields were one of the worst implementions of Supreme Commander. It was too easy to respond to the 'threat' of artillery by just plonking down some shields in your base, turning artillery into expensive junk. They were also the catalyst for ridiculous turtlefesting that could only be broken by masses of bombers and other expensive units.

In fact they did more than make artillery useless; they enabled a mentality seen on message boards of "Oh no! We can't POSSIBLY have a game with map spanning artillery without shields! That would make it too powerful!", usually from people who don't want to take an active stance against their opponent. Artillery fire has a devastating moral impact of the player it's used against and adds a sense of urgency to the game; which is probably why you see so many forum dwellers clamouring for shields, and 'counters' to all high-end strategies in general for that matter. You know- if you so deperately want a cheap, easy way to complete nullify the affect of artillery, why not just remove it from the game?

I consider shields to be a non-critical unit. Taking the suggestions for balancing in this thread into account, they would just amount to additional hitpoints to an area. Might as well increase the health of all units and buildings if you want that level of protection. I wouldn't mind if Uber decided against implementing shields altogether.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Hmm... I never played TA, I only played SupCom. Believe me I like how artillery works in all forms, short (artillery units), mid (fortified artillery) and long-range artillery emplacements. But I also like how shields can guard against that kind of heavy bombardment. Yes, I'm a turtle player by default and I don't see anything wrong with being a turtle player. It has it's ups and downs. On the upside you're hard to kill. On the downside you're not quick to expand. You can easily be overwhelmed by a rusher.

The shields in SupCom had the problem of overlapping, yes. Aware of that. However the Cybran faction's artillery shells could easily break through because of their emp-like impacts draining shields fast. The Illuminati had the emp experimental artillery cannon that oneshots ALL shields within the blast radius (the same AoE radius as a nuke). Basically, there were ways to counter shields, it wasn't a supreme defense. But I digress. That's SupCom. It has it's own style. PA will have it's own style again.

Here's to hoping Mavor sees my suggestion And at least explains why not, if not. ^_^

Also:

Uhm... I consider artillery to be a non-critical unit? Artillery is an offensive structure. A building! It's not even a defensive structure, it's a piece of immovable metal that attacks. You'd get a better effect from moving in with troops.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Your last point is exactly mine- building long range artillery already disadvantaged you because you weren't using those resources to build an aggressive mobile army to crush your opponent's position.

So why do we need shields in this equation?

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I'm not saying shields should be cheap ablative armor structures. I'm saying they too should be a heavy investment. Something that you only use at sites you want well defended against attacks so someone cant just sneak up behind you and wreck all your resources with a single artillery strike, effectively putting you out of business. The biggest flaw shields in SupCom had, besides being overlapping monstrosities, was that they were cheap and easy to build compared to the big hunks of metal-spitting cannon. If they're in a similar price-range and tech-level, effectively countering each other blow for blow...

I'm just saying it could be quite interesting.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I don't recall long range artillery shells in either their Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander renditions being powerful enough to down a fusion in one hit.

But anyway- if shields were an obscenely expensive project, that might actually make them tolerable.

I still think it would slow the game down though.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Actually we do have official word on this subject, it was discussed in some of the early interviews (I think the PCGamer one covers it). For a hint, in supcom the UEF experimental artillery was called the Mavor. Guess who it was named after?

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Shields should be an investment, not a Guard-All. ^_^ Are you worried about the game being slowed down? In a game that can be played with over 40 players in a galaxy filled with planets up for destruction? I think it would speed the game up, to be fair. If you have these artillery-defending umbrella shields guarding key locations (be they resources, important tech structures or otherwise important buildings) you don't need to check in on them constantly when artillery is being used all over the galaxy, giving you more time to focus on the battles you wage.

Constantly having to check whether you have key structures in place -will- slow down the speed of the game. And if you end up forgetting you own those tech structures or resources or key buildings because of their relative safety, the enemy might end up with a surprise assault that leaves you techless. In that way, this kind of shield can be a problem rather then helpful if you think you're immune to damage with it. ^_^

But I can see your point too in that shields are a cowards tactic. SupCom shields were annoyingly easy to defend yourself with, and extremely cheap compared to artillery. I don't want that. Especially not in a game of this size. You simply just don't NEED shields that work in that way when you play a game of this scale. But no game should have a single "game-ender" unit. There should always be a fair counter-tech. That's my take on it, and I remember those nasty artillery units in SupCom. They were horrible to guard against even with shields. No amount of shields can block out 15 Mavors bombing you. And those cybran experimental movable artillery units... Oh gods... The nightmares :< So yeah, fair counter-tech. Glad to know there wont be many experimentals in-game. Units like the Soul Ripper and Fatboy just took out all the fun of the game for me.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I continue to say that tessellated shields would be the solution. As individual segments would be weak, they would near-instantly fall against high-RoF direct-fire weapons, but protect quite a bit against slow-firing, imprecise artilleries.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I'd be perfectly happy with the OPs idead of shields, I normally hate them but since land units have no problem going through it, it's just aerial and orbitals this could actually be quite entertaining.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

If your opponents can dish out constant pain to cripple you, so can you against them. If you can build shields to withstand their attacks to 'focus on the next battle', so can they, which means your 'next attack' takes even longer to accumulate to a point where it can punch through his exponentially powerful defences, which cancels out your desired effect of speeding up the game.

"giving you more time to focus on the battles you wage." Why isn't artillery just as much part of the battle? Long range engagement is just a different kind of engagement. I swear, people think a battle isn't a battle unless the units are pelting at each others' armour from a few metres distance.

Long range artillery in their Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander renditions were expensive, fragile and had crap DPS per buck. You were much better served building a mobile force if your goal was to completely wipe out your opponent.

I'm sorry, but if your opponent had time to build 15 Mavors, the single most expensive unit in the game, then just what were you doing in that time? It sounds to me like you were asking to get pasted.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

What sort of purpose would a shield provide? Nifty as shields are, there's no real reason to add them for the sake of adding them.

If it's base maintenance, that can be done with easy access to repairs. If it's artillery survival, anti-artillery weapons can target those, along with repairs and rebuilding. Bombers? AA, more repairs, more rebuilding, oh and don't clump so much next time. Virtually everything that might be shielded is an expendable resource, which is easily rebuilt from the materials already on site.

The only real reason to have an uber base covering shield is to protect against weapons that are plainly out of reach. This would likely be off world artillery or satellite weapons. Local defense with a shield isn't needed, as nanomachines and local robots take care of all the small-mid scale needs. Even then, plenty of other countermeasures and alternatives are available.

The only target that absolutely can't take damage or be replaced is the Commander. So why not design shields with this in mind? That places shields as being fairly small, very expensive, and very durable. They'd be priced around protecting key targets like anti-nukes, arty, or comms. Complete base coverage would be a complete waste, both being stupidly expensive and leaving a huge drain on energy that's easy to exploit. Shields might be incredibly "noisy", making them easy targets for detection and impossible to stealth. Mobile variants may be incredibly restricted, such as being mere personal shields for high tech units, or having a Comm bubble only.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Thats aloot of faulty logic, its like saying "Why would we need AA structures? Interceptors can handle air".

And why would we want anti-artillery weapons? They havent been in either TA or Supcom. A sheild seems nicer.

And saying "which is easily rebuilt" is faulty logic too. If thats the case we wouldent need any anti air becuse we could just "easily rebuild" the stuff thats destroyed.