Artillery Defense

This is what I was referring to. We don't want a unit draining power as that will be way more complicated to manage and they are trying to make the economy newb friendly. Also, units are not expected to have the same longevity as structures so having units drain power would cause ridiculously complicated fluctuations in the power grid as they die and are produced.

Units that use power are not a new thing...though I know there won't be shields in PA, mobile shield generators from FA are an obvious example. Mobile radar, radar jammers, etc.

And as I said just a couple of posts ago the Commander's D-Gun in TA used your energy.

It's not a hard thing to take into account really, hardly an advanced player feature, with a streaming economy it's just another negative. A player would treat it the same as any building really that doesn't drain consistently, Nuke and Anti-Nuke silos for example, while they take a constant amount of energy that amount spikes (along with metal) when constructing their payloads. Infact its the same with any factory when you come down to it. Everyone gets used to that easily enough and in SupCom they get used to the power drain of shield generators (static or mobile).

Providing there was a way to turn it off then I doubt it would be an issue if it did appear as a mobile unit rather than a stationary structure.

I haven't really played FA. You are saying that all of those unit types represented an energy drain while they were alive?

In FA, yes, there were units, like mobile shield generators and units that could cloak/stealth, that drained energy while active. You could turn the ability on or off.

Haven't played TA in a few years, but I know the D-Gun on the commander at least used energy. Pretty sure the mobile jammer/radar units did as well. Not sure if units like The Can used energy when they fired their lasers.

all heavy green lasers in TA cost power to fire.

They did and so did the blue lasers fired by the Krogoth and other units. The sniper bots as well drained power for their cloak and their weapon.

Tbh I have already kind of taken all that for granted. Fixed defensive lasers are going to use power to fire, and in an energy stall, be unable to fire at max rate (or at all). I was pretty certain I've already heard Mavor say something to this effect.

So why not just give them the ability to defend against projectiles at well? They burn energy to fire. It would essentially be the same functionality as shielding, however with much more depth.

Instead of one structure giving you a bubble of immunity to all attack types, you have a variation of structures with different damage values, attack speeds, energy usage, and range.

You can still use 'artillery only' to saturate the defenses and get shells through, or you can two or three prong attack with carpet bombers to waste PD shots on low damage bombs while your battery of t2 artillery slips past and knocks out a few advanced pgens. With them in energy free-fall its all over but the crying.

I can see energy complexity arising when you have loads of units using energy. Somehow I pictures a mobile artillery defense to be a top-line unit though; a really big and obvious target. Not something you build 50 of and include in every patrol. Maybe that's just me.

I agree that there needs to be some form of artillery counter-measure, other than simply panicking and bum-rushing the enemy position. If it came down to that you would not have the time you need to prepare a measured response while your econ and Industry is being gutted. Obviously people could easily bait hasty responses into well-prepared traps if the only option was "find and kill ASAP".

Perhaps point defense should exist, but only defend against heavier munitions which attack at longer ranges(thinking bertha grade stuff), but do so with a considerable margin of failure, so the person being bombarded would still be under pressure to solve the problem, but not quite "kill it in the next 3 minutes or my base is dead".

Obviously I expect Radar Jammers to play a role, but once your opponent has physically scouted a base, they can simply bombard your the position anyway rendering those useless.

I would prefer to see artillery exchange its higher damage for more of an area of effect, or even special abilitys.

That way we could reinforce the use of shells vs missiles where shells are the choice for anti-army weapons and missiles are for taking down structures, with missiles front loading their damage and shells spreading it out to deal with masses formations.

Have the artillery prioritise mobile units over buildings, that way artillery will actually be for it's designed purpose of softening up enemy troops as they try to advance rather then for shelling bases down.

Make shell based artillery terrible at killing buildings while enhancing their anti-army role, that way shelling bases won't be a problem as it would take a long time for shells to take out your structures.

I kinda like the idea of a stationary unit (aka building) that can shoot down arty shells. It would cost power to run though, and cost quite a lot to build (not as much as for arty itself). I guess 1 anti-arty unit can counter like 0.8 (or perhaps even less) arty units so you would have to build multiple and set them up in your base properly in order to be effective. Mobile units would still be vulnerable to arty fire. So it's just base defense, no unit defense.

If you build artillery then your foe should use land or air units go destroy it. Artillery by nature is suppose to destroy things and hard to defend against with out getting out of your comfort bubble.

Again though, this gives the attacker a massive advantage. What if I surround my Artillery with a massive swathe of AA or Air-to-ground gunships? Since the defender has no time to properly scout and plan his response (or else his base is gutted by the time he does), now he has lost his entire air/land force in addition to his base.

It forces the defender to attack blindly on the attackers terms. I don't like it.

You require a mobile force, static forces are to support a defensive posture, not to replace the mobile force altogether.

So, you not only let your enemy build up a massive artillery position near your base, he also could leasurly build up other defensive structures all the while he was in range of your own artillery?

1. You failed to scout
2. You failed to intercept it while he was building it up
3. You failed to scout again and lost your mobile forces

And now you want to be able to have a defensive building that turns around your certain defeat because of your indefensible tactical failures? I don't think so.


I mean, you let somebody build up an entire firebase in your own range without doing anything against it. Your enemy deserves that win. (Also, building artillery buildings usually is a slow and expensive process, giving ample time to act before it even starts shooting.)

That's all assuming that it is a fairly standard unit composition.

We don't know what manner of transports can be used or what manner of Arty or mobile arty there will actually be. Furthermore assuming radar-jammers exist moving a large group of units over a planets surface undetected may actually be pretty easy in a game where you are managing multiple planets.

Though you are right to condemn anyone who let an actual static fire-base complete under their noses.

We don't know enough at the moment but if it's possible to build powerful enough artillery to shoot anywhere on the planet I still feel there should be a semi-effective countermeasure to it(as in, it might intercept roughly half of shots fired on a 1:1 basis).

There is a chance a player using radar jamming and simply taking their time could build a small secret base near you in just a normal game. Now add multiple planets and multiple fronts?

I think it could be possible for someone to 'sneak' a base, or at least an artillery installation up on you. Especially if they've managed to sneak onto a planet you think you've locked down.

Scout all you want if you think you are on a hostile planet but, as I said earlier, if you are on a planet you think you're in control of?

In the end though this all comes down alot to what sort of masking technology will be in the game. Going back to artillery defence, I agree with what was said about a defence structure to counter artillery being fragile, I think that would help keep it balanced. Which in the end would be a major factor into any form of defence against artillery, artillery in most cases is expensive and can take a while to build and if there is a defence against it it shouldn't be able to stop 100% of incoming shells (Unless the defender builds loads of them) and a fragility to it would give attackers a strategy to get around it, or at least a target to go for to try and break through.

But why? If artillery is designed to fire at troops and not buildings why would an artillery defence be required?

Traditionally it has been anti-everything on the ground (and sea), that's just the assumption most of us are operating under (have the devs stated otherwise?). It's easier to use against stationary targets anyway.