Balancing Shields

An alpha isn't there for you to complain, you are beyond ridiculous in your reasoning for that.

And if you think TA artillery is easy to spam, then you never played against a real opponent, like a human.

Okay pony person, judging from your comment, you ARE a bad player, because artillery was used frequently and in large numbers on anything other than table sized 1v1 maps. They were very important because the constant barrage of units would otherwise invariably damage and grind even the toughest defense to dust. I played more TA than I can count, I played TA when you were still running around the christmas tree, mashing your tin drum. Don't come into a thread for serious discussion and just flat out lie through your teeth to fuel your nonargument.

Btw, an alpha is a feature incomplete version of the game. It's EXACTLY the right moment to complain about missing or faulty executed features. If ( for some reason, just an example ), you'd be campaigning against multiple planets, now would be the time to speak up.

In the beta, no feature changes are done usually, a beta is a feature complete version, with bugs and balance issues. That's what people fix in the beta, bugs, imbalance, performance issues, in short: tweaking the game.

No, it was on the fly, because it was a very specific situation, which TA has too many of to include everything into some sort of reproducable strategy guide that people can memorize.

Fine, say it was on the fly, say it was you, and you know best. In every game after that you just repeat what you did and tweak it. No intellect, no intuition, it's already known, it became a part of the metagame for people to adapt to.

In the same way, I discovered in a Seton's game that it is a good idea to send a T1 transport with 6 engies to a post naval battle location and send them on an attack mover orders to reclaim. I saw that this was good and do it when possible from now on. If it causes me to win, it's not because I came up with that solution on the fly.

Are you suggesting that we mod the game so much as so often that a solid meta game never settles?

Your funny but you have the heart on the right spot.

I 100% disagree on this. Theres absolutely no way you had the economy to pump +6 LRPC to stop an incoming force, while more than likely building an entire army, unless VERY late in the game or you were floating like a newb. I bet you spammed +atm like a madman and had like 30 cons.

If you scouted your enemy and he or she didnt scout you, then you can stop reading here.

TA "on the fly" strategies were very dangerous and often resulted in very bad execution cause you were ill prepared and it was usually too damn late. On the fly, panic like situations require bottomless pockets and "manpower", I call your bluff.

I obviously had them beforehand as part of the base defense, I didn't decide to build them on a whim obviously. I just happened to utilize what I had correctly and not whine about nonexisting hard counters like other guys in this thread

Isn't it clear that shields as a feature is something that not everyone likes. In fact it divides people to half basically, other part do like the idea, other doesn't. Why should that kind of feature be part of the vanilla game?

Because it's necessary for the competive play? No it's not.

This was a pretty good assessment of why artillery countermeasures are necessary. Luckily I think Uber recognizes that and we'll be seeing something, maybe not shields. High walls for example could be a countermeasure.

They are often unoptimized, having idle engineers and factories at times. By design, they have to lose to a prepared build, because a prepared build is going to roll out sooner and knock on your door harder and earlier.

And firebases don't matter in real competitive play, be it 1v1 or team play. Like I said before, visual scouting is king. It sounds like cephel is arguing for units that only work properly in entry level play. I'm not going into why this is a bad idea.

If it divides people in half, then all the more reason to have them

If we have shields, they can be tweaked so that most people like them
If there's no shields, no amount of tweaking will make those happy that wanted them

Pretty easy math here

If its a 50/50 split, then it is always going to be a 50/50 split.

So your math is just bias.

I don't think that shields can be tweaked so that most people like them, as this thread shows actually. And if you miss shields, remember that you can always download a mod which adds them.

Can you back that up with some sort of evidence or reasoning?

I wonder if by making shields only 50% efficient (half fire goes through) it would balance better. It would turn off after some pounding but then you did take some damage.

Other "solution" would be energy walls, they can provide cover for arty fire but not entirely. If the base is too widespread then some fire will hit something.

Either way, more energy should be drawn as these barriers get hit, shutting down from overload rather than HP, making them expensive to maintain and limit the coverage to strategic areas... :| maybe

Shields counter everything, and artillery is designed with shields in mind.

With no shields, we need to redesign artillery to not require a counter....like practically every other unit in the game.

Id much rather have tactical missiles and nukes be a problem then shell based artillery, as that is really what is a greater weapon in the real world.

Sure. As many contra-shield people in this thread already said, they'd prefer some sort of dedicated artillery counter, rather than a shield.
The irony of this is, that this would EXACTLY work like a shield, but without the visuals.

I can deduce from this that some combination of "shields don't work on everything" (like in BA) and "shields have some creative spin beyond bubble dome force field" (anti shell weapon, etc.) would make most people happy and still allow for powerful artillery.

I really hate reposting but here is my personal favorite taken straight from BA: Shields are now called plasma deflectors and do just that, they deflect plasma shells. They don't catch lasers, they dont' catch missiles, they do absolutely nothing aginst them. All they do is deflect the flight path of plasma shells such as from heavy tanks, artillery tanks, and the static artillery. It should be noted that "deflect" does not mean "absorb", the shell still goes somewhere, sometimes even goes through the shield by chance. It's not a foolproof system and it introduces strategic disadvantages for both sides. The attacker gets hit back by his own shells sporadically, usually resulting in friendly fire on units in between artillery and shield ( or enemy when the enemy is there ), the defending side spreads the shells over a much larger area than the incoming fire is coming from and has no control over where they land. They might hit the edge of the shield by being deflected straight downwards, they might hit stuff BEHIND the shield, or stuff that is otherwise not in direct line of sight of the enemy artillery by shots being deflected at a 90° angle and hitting stuff behind mountains or something.

I think this is a much better approach than "shield that eats all damage" and "anti artillery defense that works 100% with no chance to fail ever" ála anti nukes. And while we're at it, I'm no big fan of 100% working anti nukes aswell because I'm no fan of hard counters.

I agree about the anti-nuke being 100% (Id like it to at-least only be 100% effective if given time or resources.)

But how about the camp where people don't want an anti-artillery device, period?

Why not just have artillery that doesn't require a defence like that? Why not make artillery's effectiveness based on something like range, or make them purely defensive in nature, exchange damage or AOE, or make their firing arc matter more in the placement of artillery?

Anything over then a device that stops artillery, no matter the effectiveness.

Shields were an "everything" countermeasure and that's what most have a problem with. It's a lot harder to argue against having countermeasures or counterplay for artillery though.

I should clarify though, I don't think we need Artillery-defense structures. In fact Anti-Nukes are pretty unimagined themselves, X-Defense is boring. I'd much prefer something organic like LOIC satellites that shoot down ICBMs but can also be used offensively.

Uhhhhh....... nooooo. Maybe the medium range cannon was used a bit, but LRPC were extremely rare and only used to end games on bad maps (like over crude water).

There is a word for players who used tons of long range artillery regardless of game: bad. There are almost always better, cheaper, and faster ways to win. A game neglecting those options ends up more simcity than game.

I don't like that. Planet killing asteroids are our game enders, not girly artillery weapons. I'd rather see easier access to asteroids raining from the sky, than leagues of turtles farming LRPCs. It's more climatic and more offense oriented.

However, I'm of the camp that anything less than artillery bombing should have one (or likely more) defense. After all, problems using conventional weapons would justify why the war uses asteroids in the first place!

Well the idea is that artillery wouldn't be made into game ending weapons, like standard defences they would have their uses, but not game ending.