Artillery Defense

It was intended as a game-ending unit.

bad example then... but still, artil that accurate is hard to defend against. My point was that artil shouldn't be as accurate as it was in FA. If you got hit by artil and didn't already have sheilds, good chance you were dead.

would be nice to get some warning shots / near misses to give you enough time to react.

Well, artillery defense structures may not make it into the game, but would be a fun thing to mod in later if not.

If they made defensive structures that are expensive to put up to defend against artillery and only decreased the effect of artillery and not negate it altogether, they might be able to make it balanced enough to implement artillery. Especially if interplanetary artillery wasn't any more powerful than planetary artillery. If in earlier games artillery could reach almost across the entire map, I think there should be artillery in PA that can reach across most of the solar system. It would be EPIC!

Pro-tip on making it impossible for the Mavor to kill a Commander ever.

Have the Commander Walk in a Circle.

Mike

Nukes. Launch nukes into the sky, they are bound to take the artillery shells out.

That sounds easily defeated with a single "attack ground". Of course, the weapons were made to be ridiculously overpowered and indefensible. Asteroids will do a similar thing here.

How about have aircraft shoot them? That's what interceptors are for! All of a sudden, light aircraft gain a role that isn't simply a clone of "shoot other aircraft". Your ability to defend against long range weaponry becomes dependent on air control, giving a nice defensive support role for a theater that is normally known for its absurd attack power.

Here's another option for artillery defence.

What if stealth/jamming field generators prevented buildings from remaining visible in the fog of war, after they had left line of site?

This would mean that in order to be shelled, the artillery user would need to have a spotter in order to see them.

Artillery sort of works as a "first come first serve" defense line. Whoever sets up first gets the radius. Advancing the line of combat by leap frogging towards the enemy base with additional lines of artillery when the enemy is suppressed. Its working great for me..and against me. So far I have found it quite fair. The anti-artillery method is that of planning precision strikes against the guns themselves or the power sources that they require to operate.

If artillery don't have a ridiculous range, and is indeed a defensive structure instead of a cross map offensive structure.

Then defences won't be necessary.

For instance, if the artillery on the current alpha map could only shoot up to half way across the planet (Preferably much less) then artillery defence would not really be needed, as you could simply stay out of range or behind cover.

I would personally like for artillery to have the damage required to deal with units, but be lacking in damage to actually effectively deal with buildings, leaving that role to tactical missile launchers like the 'catapult'.

this is just obfuscating UI, structures can't move and players can just ground fire where the structures were.

I don't know has this been suggested earlier but how about this:

Shortly:
When you would fire with artillery then that artillery would become visible to players in range simulating it's powerful sound.

Same method is used in Company of heroes for example and it serves it's purpose really well and I think it could fit to Planetary annihilation too.

I really like this about StarCraft and Company of Heroes. I actually wrote a post about it here: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=46647

Feel free to bump

This is what I meant, although just for artillery but perhaps it works for other units too.

In company of heroes, if you are bombarded by an enemy artillery or mortar it becomes visible to you. Then you can destroy it by sneaking with soldiers or tank to his base, by bomber strike or by your own artillery for example.

This would suit Planetary annihilation very well, much better than anti-artillery building in my honest opinion.

Actually it potentially doesn't suit PA very well, think about SupCom, because projectiles are actually things you can see and even have Strategic Icons it was very easy to backtrack any long range weapon, sure you didn't know it's EXACT location, but given how easy scout was in SupCom, that was never a problem.

We'll have to see how PA matures before we can say if that 'star-craftian' workaround is needed.....

Mike

I don't want to get too off topic but unit ghosts have merit beyond artillery counterplay. Most notably unit ghosts can increase approachability by passively explaining why units are dying. Players not easily understanding why they're losing is among the most frustrating pratfalls of game design. Today unit ghosts are a standard in RTS, not reserved solely to StarCraft.

It is tangentially related that another pratfall is dividing player attention between banal or trivial tasks such as building adjacency and MEX upgrades. It's okay to divide player attention between many tasks but those tasks must be mostly engaging, otherwise gameplay feels tedious. StarCraft micromanagement while not for everyone is definitely engaging. SupCom on the other hand often divided your attention between some engaging tasks and some not so engaging tasks. I would like PA to keep what was engaging about TA/FA and trim what was trivial or banal. In a way, artillery counterplay is a good opportunity for player engagement.

Visible Actual projectiles/FX accomplishes the same thing thought, it might not be as approachable, but it's not really that different, if I don't know what a Hydralisk IS, seeing it doesn't tell me anything aside from what it looks like and that it's obviously ranged.

Also because ranges are(generally) longer than seen in Star-Craftian type RTS and the simulated projectiles you get some awkward questions that need answers that don't quite come up in the Star-Craftians, like do the ghost show up when shooting at anything? An Enemy Target? When an Enemy is Hit? You don't get those issues in the norm for RTS.

Mike

I agree, it's purely an approachability matter. To answer your question I will draw from the Company of Heroes example, in COH a particularly loud unit will briefly reveal itself to any nearby units (usually anything it's firing at). Assuming our robots are operating via ballistics it would follow any units that fired into LOS would reveal themselves. It's hard to convey the value of this mechanic without experiencing it in a few different games, I think.

At best I can try to convey what it's like to go from a game with unit ghosts (COH) to a game without (SC:FA); it's like going from a game with strategic zoom to a game without.

I agree with you.
Those "ghosts" wouldn't be so bad in Planetary annihilation imho. The game is supposed to be approachable, right? Does anyone really like it when your scout just suddenly dies and you have no idea why?

And when it comes to counter-artillery play it just makes it so much easier and quickier to find out where the enemy artillery is. Imo anti-artillery building could be doable but obiviously so that it just buys time, it should not be complete counter to artillery.

Mike, it kinda looks like to me that you're focusing too much on it being from Starcraft which clouds your judgement.

The advantage of this idea is that it removes some kind of micro. Looking where the projectile originated is some, in my opinion, unnecessary busywork. If you can do the same thing by looking at artillery tracers on radar and following to its point of origination, but instead having it instantly lit up just means a player doesn't have to spend a small amount of time for each to determine it.

Also, the boundary questions arem't as hard as you make them to look like. It would only be for long range Artillery of certain sizes (where it was possible in TA to look for the origination Of the shells on the minimapin TA).