Artillery Defense

this is what i think a lot of people seem to miss when they are complaining about turtling

for example, in TA & SupCom I would turtle against my brother because i know he can out expand me, so instead i'd expand & defend with a combination of units & structures while my goal was to either accumulate enough a force to overwhelm him or have enough nukes to get past his missile defences & act as crippling blow that would then be followed by whatever army i have on hand. though this isn't a traditional turtle i adapted it from that concept to defeat my opponent.

I have to agree with this, having options is key.

On Topic:
In TA long range artillery was balanced with excessive energy use to fire them coupled with a high level of inaccuracy. In SupCom they reduced both disadvantages so as a counter they introduced shields or vice versa.
Having a laser that defends against artillery requires a lot of balance fine tuning. you have to have the artillery effective enough to do some damage when it gets through but you also have to have the defence laser effective enough at stopping shells that it's worth while building it.

it certainly adds more choice so i would like to see it.

Having any weapon be "unblockable" seems like a good way to have a completely OP weapon.

In reading this thread last night I was absolutely stunned at how many people completely don't understand a playstyle they don't use, but are willing to lobby their hardest to eliminate it as a playchoice.

Turtling (for me, anyway) is never about not interacting with the opponent. It's about being able to dictate when and how that interaction takes place. Giving me this option lets me bide my time until I have what I feel is a force advantage, at which point there is a gigantic flurry of war happening.

If I can engage you at my discretion and on my terms, you will lose an overwhelming amount of the time. This is not turtling-specific: this is how strategy works.

If I can force you to change your current ambitions, forcing you to attack me when you weren't prepared to do so, I have successfully ambushed you before you've ever given the order for units to move/attack. That's more checkers than chess, and while a valid strategy, a very shallow one.

If you have the ability to counter without putting your unprepared forces into a sub-optimal position and minimizing your losses, I've still cost you resources and a building or 5; this still tilts the table in my direction, but doesn't guarantee me a win. This is more chess than checkers, and can lead to a lot more fun, emergent gameplay. Which is what we all want, right?

you're looking at this from only your perspective. if you can effectively turtle then the optimal strategy of your opponent becomes not engaging you at all. this is what players mean by not interacting with your opponent.

nobody is arguing against defensive tactics or turtling tactics, they have their place. it's just silly if you can sit in your base and lob nukes/artillery shells/experimentals all game without recourse. nuke turtling was so bad in vanilla supcom that GPG had to completely change how MEX, MFab, power adjacency and building nukes work.

But turtling is completely the wrong way to do this. If you are turtling you are allowing the enemy to surround you, out-expand you and giving them the economic advantage. You are giving away the initiative to the enemy.

That's crux. What exactly is forcing the enemy to attack you instead of just teching and ecoing?

Agreed on the impervious base setups in SupCom (fixed in FA), but since this game already has that covered with KEW... anybody who sets up a serious turtle-base is going to get screwed by the expanding player who lobs asteroids at them with impunity.

One of the very few things I liked in SupCom2 was the anti-shield weapon. Dealing with a recalcitrant turtle? Build a Bubbledow! They also had a good grasp on counter-play... Enemy arty got your number? Quantum Distortion Artillery is here to help disable buildings. Someone walking a dozen experimentals into your base? Convert your mid-range arty into close-range super-defense for a short time to help. Playing an opponent who wants to lob nukes all day? Build a nuke redirector and watch him reduce his own base into ashes. So on and so forth.

An artillery weapon that can only be countered by a direct offensive on the base housing it.

Sounds pretty fun actually. One player is porcing making long range artillery. While the other player is going beyond the skies raining down asteroids.

When a weapon is unblockable, the strongest response is to counter attack. It doesn't necessarily mean something is OP. It means that the strategy forced a response. Of course, forcing a response from something as simple as an arty piece could end up feeling very powerful.

Asteroids already provide all the high end game enders the game needs. Cheaper solutions could push the game to end more quickly, but it isn't strictly necessary.

The ability to dictate when and where an interaction occurs is usually associated with the offensive player. Determine WHEN and WHERE? While turtling you can only determine ONE place, where your built your base. And you can only determine WHEN the encounter happens when you get enough resources to build heavy artillery.

And you can only hope the attacking player doesn't kill you before it's done, or simply moves outside of its range. You can't even decide the when, because the simple act of shelling a single base with a single cannon won't force much, unless that weapon is ridiculously overpowered. Which would point to a problem with the weapon.

turtles decide the where i.e. where your artillery was built. they don't decide when or how.

You only barely control the where; you're assuming the other playing would strike down your base. He might not even care and just let you shoot your artillery while he builds up so many nukes your base vanishes in an instant.

(I don't consider picking where you die to be picking the "where" of the engagement, as there is no actual engagement, just someone being mopped up.)

Considering the size of the map, you'd need to be turtling an insanely large area to be able to keep up with others.

All I'm saying is that I hope the balance is good on the artillery, and that there are a lot of ways that could be accomplished. Long build time, limited range, high power requirements per shot, etc. One other way you could balance it (that I was throwing out there as an idea) would be to have an artillery defense structure that could shoot down incoming artillery within a certain range, with a certain probability of success, and with an energy requirement of its own. Just another option for balancing artillery that I thought would be interesting.

*Usually* associated with the offensive player. Not always

And not true on the one place for a turtle. A smart turtle will create a second base for something like long-range artillery because it's going to bring down the thunder on its head. As far as the when, you obviously build up defensive structures/units around the artillery so when the enemy comes in a rush to take it down, you turn the base into a meatgrinder and whittle their forces down, costing them as much resource damage as possible, while getting a hefty bonus to your own resources by reclaiming the wreckage, allowing you to build a second artillery, and so on and so forth.

There is a ton of thinking to do when you do things like the above. Any unexpected reaction from your opponent can throw a huge chunk of your strategy in the toilet and you have to be able to see that and correct it quickly. In war, it's never the stuff that is going right that should have your attention: it's the small pieces that seem off or wrong that will kill you outright. In that sense, it truly is the little things that kill

I think some sort of anti-ballistic defense structure should be able to reduce the damage, not mitigate it outright. Maybe it reduces enough that what would be a major problem becomes a minor annoyance. Blocking it entirely doesn't seem like the right answer. If someone fires a shell, some portion of that shell should always touch down. If your defense structure shaves bits and pieces off the shell, bits and pieces of damage should fall off with them.

You cannot reasonably expect to be able to do this against someone who knows what they're doing. Anything that leaves your base is killed instantly by a competent player.

Then it has been a loooong while since I've seen a competent player in Zero-K or SupCom:FA.

Going out and doing things?

Claiming ground, and denying map control (even if it's still a minority)?

Sounds less like a turtle.

This happens regardless of the defense's power, because it
A) can be killed to make a base vulnerable.
B) can not protect everywhere at once.

And even if it doesn't stop every incoming shell, then it is still only mitigating damage, not blocking all damage outright. Not saying there wouldn't be issues that need balancing for the idea...