Shield generators

Because rebuilding takes
1: time
2: resources
3: engineers not blown up by the blasts

From a theoretical point of view; if you get the right angle and (more importantly) the right velocity, you can hit every point on a sphere.

But that's on a chalkboard where you have no air resistance, and a perfect sphere, with uniform gravity... and the things that don't exist in real life.

That makes it an engineering problem; overcoming the non-ideal aspects of reality that make anything fun very complicated.

Engineering problems are usually things that can be beaten with a great deal of coffee, money, and failed prototypes.

In a videogame, we can assume that's already happened. So artillery that can touch the far side of the planet are perfectly acceptable to have if it's good for gameplay.

And what about accurately hitting a different sphere than the one you're currently on while in orbit around it accounting for unknown (or at least not perfectly accurate) rotation, gravity and potentially air resistance for BOTH spheres?

Is that something Robots would even bother to spend time deducing the "perfect" solution to with ballistic munitions, considering they have the technology to pluck an asteroid from the belt and huck it at a planet?

Why would Robots waste time with such an inefficient bombardment method as conventional long-range artillery, when they can either land Robotic troops directly surrounding the target or throw a meteor at it and call it a day?

Inter-Orbital artillery sounds like a middleman, a sloppy and inaccurate waste of time...
Either get troops on the enemies ground to capture it... or "remove" the ground altogether.

Than balance orbital artillery in such a way that it can't just obliterate everything. Ie. make it weak enough that its damage can be rebuilt, repaired and recovered from.

It will still bind enemy ressources so its still worth as a strategic bombarding tool.


Also, stop arguing about what hypothetical robots would do. If interplanetary artillery proves to be fun gameplay, it will be in the game, convoluted arguments existing for it or not.

We can always find a lore reason why its the way it is. It doesn't help with deciding wether its good gameplay though.

So robots would rather waste tons of ressources in form of units to destroy the enemy instead of using cost effective ultra-range bombardements? I'm not sure you even believe your own argument here to be honest. :mrgreen:

'The Mavor' was never really Fun. It was a tool to break stalemates. Asteroids and Death Stars serve this purpose now... and look a hell of alot more fun to use than the Mavor.

smallcpu, So why did we launch operation D-Day again without bombing and shelling half of europe to glass first? remind me... was it because land troops can actually capture ground... while artillery just makes a mess leaving the ground useless?

I'm not arguing in favor of the Mavor. Imo it was a pretty badly balanced unit and not really fun too. Totally agree with you here.

I'm talking about rather low damage, very high range artillery that can be used as a strategic tool against enemy bases. Either to soften them up before a ground attack or to force the enemy to constantly invest heavy resources to keep that position from slowly being wittled down.

Is there any reason that should be allowed from orbit?

Isn't establishing a beachhead more fun to play than just setting a trio of cannons to fire at will?

The point I'm getting at here is that, Conventional "Extreme-Range" Artillery is really sodding dull.

Indeed, if longer-range artillery MUST exist it should only be usable in very specific cases, like an entirely secured planet.

Say whaaaat?

Conventional artillery is freaking cool! :evil:

Artillery barrages off all sizes!

I played countless TA games where I just creeped closer and closer to my friends base while building one Punisher after the other. (We were both pretty bad at it. :mrgreen: )


Also, bombardement from orbit is by definition cooler then ground artillery, since its from the orbit!


(Speaking about DDay, you're the one usually arguing with robots who don't mind glassing entire planets. So you can't use that suddenly to say that stuff that only destroys doesn't work. )

Also, speaking of DDay, they had extensive aerial and ship bombardement of the landing areas before sending in the ground troops. Orbital or otherplanetary artillery would fulfill the same thing when you're invading an enemy planet. Yes, artillery at a beachhead is nice, but you've to make one first where you can land your arty. And for that you use orbital artillery.

That's what I thought a high-speed, high-density asteroid would be for;

"You've taken this planet and secured all latitudes and longitudes against any beachhead I could possibly create?
Then you leave me no choice... Turn on the engines."

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Sorry smallcpu, I don't share your enthusiasm for extreme-range artillery. The Bertha was nice to listen to... but that's about it...

It's more of a "lay back in my armchair and listen to the rumble" than "edge of my seat excitement."

We can do that now. How do you think Opportunity got to Mars, or Voyager 2 was set up to pass close enough to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune on one flight path? Voyager 2 does not carry enough reaction mass for major delta-v changes, we had to calculate the trajectory that would slingshot Voyager 2 from planet to planet ourselves, with the main energy input being right at launch.

The PA engine already will be calculating complex trajectories for projectiles. It will likely simplify quite a lot where appropriate, however current computing is perfectly powerful enough to be able to simulate planet to planet trajectories, and even calculate the most efficient option out of the possibilities, where multiple possible trajectories exist (e.g. the one that required the least reaction mass to get Opportunity down safely onto Martian soil).

Killer space robots probably won't even break a sweat :mrgreen:

Depends on the efficiency. If it is cheaper and easier to build a (set of) huge gun(s) to shoot at planets, I suspect they might consider that option alongside capturing and redirecting an asteroid. I suspect the choice would actually hinge on the end requirements (slagged planet vs precision strikes) coupled with the different windows of opportunity.

Whether extremely long range artillery even gets implemented is up for grabs; Uber may or may not have plans in that direction, however the engine should be able to cope if someone wanted to make one. I suspect the utility of ground based interplanetary artillery will be borderline though (limited to windows of opportunity), and rather suspect the only way to make it useful would be as an orbiting unit, rather than static :|

Should shield generators be ingame?

In my opinion: Maybe, but not like they where in supcom.

I like the umbrella sheilds idea or something similar to help you against air and artillery (maybe trying to balance them somehow so that they dont get so ridicules when stacked), these umbrella sheilds wouldent stop land units and low flying projectiles at all.

I'm comfortable with Uber's original decision not to make shields. I love shields, I use them all the time in SupCom, but I've played enough TA (some really recently :mrgreen: ) to know that not having shields can also work, and be balanced. It just requires some modifying of your basic playstyle to accomodate the differences.

I'm also utterly convinced that people will mod shields in anyway, so there will definitely be the option of playing PA with shields if you want to. This discussion is big enough to show that some people are willing to go to a lot of effort to get shields, so I will confidently bet that it is going to happen

Not shooting her out of a gun, that's for damn sure

Rockets like the kind that launched Opportunity and Curiosity are a controlled burn that takes place over several hours... not a one-time explosion to force a munition out of a barrel. :lol:

Minimal corrections or not, a Rocket is not 'Artillery'.

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I have no problem with "Tactical Missile"-like weapons being able to fire between planets, since you have to order each one to fire individually and it takes a long time to build each rocket...

But an Inter-Orbital or, Science forbid, an Inter-Planetary munition-based cannon is the definition of "snooze-control" to me. No thought... just set it to fire-at-will and you can effectively forget about it.

Due to the slightly more delicate nature of the payload, yes it needed a slower burn. But once the Voyager unit disconnected, it had a set trajectory; this would be mathematically equivalent to a single impetus from launch that leads to the same set trajectory (and somehow doesn't crush the payload into so much scrap metal). The Voyagers are technically a guided munition (they have attitude thrusters and reaction mass) but even an unguided munition would follow the same trajectory, it just wouldn't get to correct it's course.

I think we both agree that interplanetary artillery will be of dubious utility, where we're disagreeing is on how difficult (or not) it is to write the targeting suite for one. It's technically the same targeting suite you'd need for the asteroid anyway.

Very well, I'll compromise on that point.

I'm still of the opinion that Extreme-Range artillery in any RTS is duller than dishwater when it comes to gameplay.

Visually and audibly impressive no doubt... but lazy and forgettable gameplay created for the attacker... and outright un-fun implications for the defender.

Incidentally, tacmissiles are basically the best thing ever and more games need pay-per-shot 'artillery' that doesn't turn entire bases into smoking craters (and don't have the annoying micro that seems to inevitably accompany suicide units).

Would be cool to have more of them I agree.

Personally more varied anti-nukes and nukes are a must for me, like anti-nuke tanks that die from attempting to shoot down a missile, but can be brought along, and be built in larger numbers, but have a higher chance to not be effective, or to possibly not quite finish the job and require another to finish them off.

Nuclear submarines and possibly missile ships have the ability to construct small anti-missile missiles for this purpose, but again with limited effectiveness for a mobile unit.

And possibly even a anti-missile plane/gunship that takes a lot of time to do the job, possibly even following the missile to do it.


Just more anti-missile options, so we can have more missiles and more common missiles.



As for artillery, TA's artillery had double the metal cost of a nuke silo, but with the same power cost, but half the build time.

Making TA strategic artillery much more expensive per second to build then a nuke silo, and in it's case actually much better then a nuke silo.

That would be a better instance of artillery to me, less common then nuke silos, a heavy economy sync, vulnerable to cliffs blocking their shots, and a huge power cost to charge up a shot.

You only end up with 1 or 2 per base, because anymore and your economy would lose you the main battle very quickly.

Orbital artilery? And how do they handle recoil? They need thrusters then. Not recoiling arty in the air will break immersion imo.

If you're going with an absolute minimalist approach: After firing one shot they turn around and fire another shot in the opposite direction. Or the really minimalist approach: They don't. Since a gun is deorbiting projectiles, it actually increases its orbital energy with every shot (and ideally wants to be very heavy compared to its projectiles, and so built on a convenient rock), so the problem is not the gun deorbiting itself after firing too many times but accidentally launching itself into deep space after firing too many times, which is harder to do over the course of a few hours when you're starting in low orbit. Although most satellites need thrusters anyway so they can manoeuvre to avoid debris, maintain orbit in the face of air resistance, and dock with other vessels.

EDIT:

Sounds like what you really want is a generic system of missile launch platforms and missiles, which is probably more like mod material than something that should be in the main game.