Late game and Turtling

The last few games with multiple teams of people have all been the same. Anyone who isn't turtling (building defenses, attacking very little if at all) dies in mid-game. In the end all that is left are 2-3 bases with loads of defenses building nukes and the occasional commander snipe attempt.

If you send an army the other person/team will first of all know right away because of the adv. orbital radar and will then either nuke it or bomb it with adv. bombers or Holkins cannons. If it's an air/orbital assault there are always LOADS of AA/anti-orbital turrets and fighters.
Advancing with artillery is also not an option. All of the land outside your base is usually covered by enemy artillery.
In that situation all you can do is build enough nukes to get through your opponent's anti-nukes.

Many things need to be done to stop this or at least make it harder to get to.
- nuke rework, there's a lot about this on the forums, but it needs to be made much less effective against armies.
- Catapult rework, again, a lot about this on the forums
- Holkins is way too good against large armies-1 shot can destroy 10 or more units. It needs to be made more of an area weapon like in Sup Com.
- bomber counter (bomb bouncer?)
(- bigger, more powerful units, capable of getting through)??

Any other suggestions?

If you turtle then you cede map control, have less metal and will be out produced by a superior eco.

If they have advancd radar then you should be building fighters and destroying it.

T2 bombers are exceptional at sniping commanders and antinukes. This paves the way for nukes to get through.

What's wrong with catapults? They do their job just fine.

Holkins fire every 10 seconds, that's really slow. Also 9000 metal is not a small investment.

I should have been more clear. I meant they expand first and then fortify their position. Their base spans a good portion of the planet, and a lot more is covered by artillery.
In smaller games (like 1v1 or 2v2) this can't happen because the teams are always attacking each other. In bigger games they can either attack the turtler or they can attack their immediate threat, the guy who's building the massive army. Usually they choose the latter.

For example. Me and a friend were in a 2v2v2v2 match. We first expanded, building turrets along the way. Whenever someone attacked us they didn't get far because of our defenses. We kept doing this until we had about 1/7 of the planet. Then we fortified it even more. Whenever someone attacked us the damage was minimal partly because a large portion of the attacking force was destroyed by holkins cannons.
If we only had that 1/7 of the planet, they would have better eco and we would have lost in the end, but our Holkins cannons covered so much area that the 2 teams that survived to the end simply didn't have the eco to do anything.

If just 2 Holkins cannons are shooting at an army and each shot destroys 10 units that's 2 units per second. As an anti-ground defense weapon they're well worth the 9k metal. It makes large armies useless.

Umbrellas one-hit everything. You'd need a lot of orbital fighters, which would cost way more than the radar satelite.

T2 bombers are good at destroying anti-nukes, but when you have hundreds of fighters (which cost WAY less than the bombers) patroling it's not a good solution.

Catapults fire automatically, always hit, go over walls, one-shot just about everything, track targets, ... That's a bit too much. They do their job fine, too fine, and are good at other jobs too.

Well thats why you never run units into holkins? Destroy it first with t2 bombers. If they weren't any good then you would never build them.

Umbrellas may one hit stuff, but they only attack fighters if manually microed. So you need deepspace radar + power + 2 umbrellas + micro to protect against a cost-effective orbital fighter raid.

Yes you can build quite a few fighters per t2 bomber, but patrolling them spreads them out and makes it hard to take down t2 bombers quickly enough. 18 bombers can take down an antinuke cost-effectively, stopping 18 bombers is no joke and relies on noticing early enough and intercepting in time. There is also nothing wrong with sending in a whole swathe of your own fighters to clear the way. If you're going for air snipes it makes sense to get air dominance anyway. It doesn't make sense to throw t2 bombers into fighters hoping most get needlessly slaughtered and a couple get through.

Yes you make catapults sound good but what roles are they actually good for? Good at keeping commanders, naval units and small amounts of troops away. Ok for sniping pelters too. They're 6750 metal and do their job for a reasonably expensive cost and are useful in pretty specific circumstances. They are however terrible against large numbers of units, require power to fire and for radar coverage, and are outranged by holkins. Why do you think they're so good? What is it they are so good at?

If you have 4 Catapults, you are guaranteed 4 kills on everything entering the radius. As soon as those targets are destroyed, you are guaranteed another 4 kills.

Unlike the Holkins, which can miss, and is pretty hopeless if it has to start tracking something.

You can see bomber raids with radar. In late game all sides usually have the adv. radar satelite, which makes it even easier to intercept them.

Ok, umbrellas aren't THAT good, but the attacking force takes a lot of damage before doing anything. Even if the radar gets destroyed you can have a new one up very quickly. There are a lot of fabbers around, usually building nukes.

Catapults are good for
- defense against units, they 1-shot everything
- defense against artillery being set up nearby, but the Holkins is better because of the range
- bombarding the enemy base, if you set up 1 of these and a few laser turrets near someone they're gonna have a lot of problems
It's role should be more like a long range cruise missile for destroying that annoying turret, kinda like SC.

Late game -> huge armies - Holkins can't miss

Well I would imagine a well defended base could increase your chances of winning. I see nothing wrong with 'turtling'.

That's the point of the adv orbital radar. There's nothing wrong with the radar. The best way to deal with it is to find a better way to attack him that yields success despite the radar, or shoot down the radar itself. Maybe the devs will create a radar jamming unit.

No. Let's leave the nukes alone.. PLEASE! I think the only real thing I would improve upon the nuke is the aesthetics. It's seems like it's more smoke than explosion.

I personally feel the range could be toned down a bit with more collateral damage, but all in all the catapult is perfectly fine. Different tank/unit formations could be used to mitigate additional damage to other units by the catapult missile.

I'm open to the idea of making it slightly less accurate, but keep the same amount of damage.

Easy. Fighters.

I think at least a part of the problem here is the way the tech tree is currently set up. Currently, you have t1 and t2 so it takes very little effort and zero opportunity cost to unlock the full tech tree that is presently available in the game. Which is compounded with the fact that things which should be t3/end game such as the holkins, nuke silos, or haily are readily available early in the game. On top of that many things lack an equivalent counter tech level wise. T2 bombers are an excellent example and have received much attention on this forum. All of this in my opinion leads to imbalanced play styles and strategies. The tech tree needs to be shifted around and more units added to the mix. I don't think this this game should be TA4, but it is clearly a spiritual successor to the franchise. There is a reason why the tech trees/unit combos worked and didn't work in the proceeding games and some of those things should be brought back. I think there is also probably a universal truth to why virtually all RTSs that I have played have a T1, T2, and T3. Because they mirror the dynamic of an RTS match i.e. early, mid, and late game. It is my opinion that part of the imbalance that is being experienced in this game right now is due to the architecture of the tech tree itself. The rest of the imbalance can be explained by the game being in beta.

I would like to add that one thing that I have noticed is in certain star systems if players end up exclusively controlling planets and I mean planets, not moons, then the game can become almost unwinnable. The important caveat onto this, is this scenario is encountered if the system has no moons that can be smashed. These games are nearly unplayable in my opinion due to long travel times for fighters and lazers. Players end up sitting and waiting for extended periods of time with nothing to do while they wait for their units to travel. This makes for a boring game, and boring games don't get played. Additionally, I have noticed that if there is a large number of units traveling between planets/moons the game seems to lag out really bad.

Don't....

There is a difference in turtle -ing and Fortifying

what he's trying to say is defences are too powerful

@timevans999 yes, that's the simple way to put it.

@siefer101 yes, there is a difference. Fortifying is a huge part of turtling. Neither of which are bad if balanced.

@kemm0 100% right and welcome to the forums!

@r0ck1t
There's nothing wrong with turtling if it's balanced, the problem is that it's THE way larger games are won.

The radar is expensive, but seeing EVERYTHING is a bit too much. (energy consumption dependant on the number of enemy units/buildings?). Sure, you can take it out and have a small window to get stuff done, but still.
The radar isn't the main point tho. It's the fact that you can easily take out a huge army before it even reaches your base.

Give the Catapult less range and add area damage? Isn't that Pelter and Holkins territory?

The bomber counter wasn't meant for your base. It was meant for the advancing army.(enemy AA, very little time to deal damage....)

One of the main reason why nukes are so effective is because of army clumping. In Warcraft 3 you could choose to either have your units clump or have them get into a formation when they arrived at their destination.

I think something like this needs to be implemented.

I haven't seen holkins miss ...... leads targets pretty sniper accurate. The only way it misses is if target units are properly microed into a dance

Just want to point out that the late game is meant to be played out across multiple planets.

Building a single planet system for anything except a 1v1 is probably unrealistic as to how the game is actually going to turn out.

Thus, you can get to a point in a single planet game where everyone has EVERYTHING....wait. That never happens.

Look, everyone has the same unit roster - but I've never come across a true stalemate in PA. There are just so many ways to break a turtle right now that they cannot possibly defend against all of them before you break through.

As for multiple planet games, Eco gets poured into the massive drain of nukes and halleys and maybe some Astraeus landers - thus leveling the playing field for everyone with a sizable slab of Eco.

Just another facet of the basic problem that right now land armies are too expensive, too slow to build, to slow to move and they suck.

I mean I don't consider myself a "turtler". I just don't build a land army anymore. I rush for T2 bombers and use those to pretty well wipe everyone off the map with perhaps a bit of help from nukes. T2 bombers murder land armies. They murder nukes. They murder commanders. The only thing that stops them are fighter hordes so I just try and have a bigger fighter horde than anyone else.

You still have to be aggressive though. Wipe people off of metal patches and claim them. Keep a sharp eye out for any of their bombers and their fighter hordes and keep your commander safe, etc.

But yeah. The problem is not that turtling is powerful. True turtling is very weak. The only thing weaker than turtling are land armies. If you want to win under the current build, I suggest hordes of fighters, as many T2 bombers as you can make and a smattering of nukes. And perhaps an anti-nuke or two just as backup in case a nuke launcher escapes your sight.

It doesn't miss much admittedly.

But it misses if it has to track a target sideways. And it misses if the units change velocity significantly. Sometimes they get caught up on terrain.

I don't rely on them. Great if you can attack a base or attack a staging post. Terrible if units actually start moving towards them. It's not hard to queue up move commands so that your attacking army is never hit.

I play mostly 1v1 matches, but I was recently in a 3v3v3 where occurred the situation that is the subject of this thread. All metal were split between the teams, most had T2 extractors, and all points were reasonably fortified. However, I found it to be quite an enjoyable end game. I think that it basically comes down to 3 things: 1) an econ race, 2) finding wholes in your opponent's defenses, and 3) reacting to your opponent's attempts to exploit holes in your defense.

Keep in mind the following unit costs in metal: avenger; 2950, Adv. radar sat.; 39500, nuke;34200, anti-nuke; 17280, umbrella;21000, holkins;9000, catapult;6750.

A single avenger is relatively cheap, cannot usually be hit by an umbrella, will often go unnoticed, and can destroy an advanced radar satellite or idle astreus. A small number of avengers on patrol might be able to camp your opponent's orbital and are still reasonably cheap. An advanced radar kill sets your opponent back by about 1 nuke or 2 anti nukes and also denies map vision for a period of time. In order to replace the radar, they will first have to invest in multiple avengers or risk losing it again. Once you have orbital dominance, the threat of laser platforms is present, and your opponent will be pressured to mass avengers or build umbrellas, which are both expensive and further divert resources from nuke/anti-nuke production. If your opponent does not invest sufficiently in orbital defense, then a laser platform attack can be devastating if directed against anti-nukes. If your opponent builds umbrellas only, the laser can still do good work against outlying holkins and catapults.

Nukes directed at outlying clumps of T2 metal can sometimes be worthwhile (assuming nothing better is vulnerable), even if it seems like your not killing much. As mentioned, T2 bombers can be effective without air superiority (though it requires a bit of finesse in the micro-department) and are very effective with it. If you see your opponent going T2 bombers, then spam fighters and be proactive in killing his bombers before they are sent anywhere--doing so should provide an econ advantage since fighters are cheaper than fighters + T2 bombers + advanced air factories. Often times your opponent's Holkins coverage will not be perfect and you can cause them problems by exploiting any holes. Slammers are fast and strong, and, if micro'd properly, might be able to overtake some defended positions.

Since you're in an econ race, precise econ management is key. Make sure all metal is T2 and make sure you have enough energy. Know where and how much build power you should be allocating, and be quick and decisive in adjusting that allocation as the match unfolds. Never waster metal. Never unintentionally leave nuke launchers idle.

In exploiting holes, adaptiveness, speed, and awareness are key. If you move to exploit an opening, a good opponent will see this and react. It is up to you to judge whether your strategy will succeed despite that. In economics, a sunk cost is a sunk cost; just because you already spent some metal on T2 air factories and T2 bombers, doesn't mean you should continue spending there after seeing that your opponent's counter will likely be effective. Instead, shift to a different tactic and hope that your opponent will overspend on defenses and be caught off guard by your next gambit. Meanwhile, your T2 bombers (if they didn't get killed) may become useful much later, when your opponent is not thinking about them. Because your opponent will react to anything you do, speed of execution is key, as it minimizes the reaction time that your opponent has. Speed of execution comes down to both econ management and micro. Finally, you must be aware of everything. Know how your opponent's economy compares to your own. Know everything that they have, and spot everything the moment they do it. Have camera anchors over all key locations on the planet to help you keep an eye out (this is very hard to truly master).

Hotkey your nukes and know the second they complete, launching them instantly at a pre-planned target (unless you are saving them for something like a multiple strike at a commander or anti-nuke). Consider going off planet--I generally consider this a newb move, but in some cases it might be worthwhile. If nothing else it can be used to remove the threat of a com snipe.

Perfecting all of the above is extremely difficult and complex. I find it enjoyable and don't mind that it de-emphasizes tank pushes and bot raids.

I agree with your point, in the current state of the game bot and vehicle units are essentially useless if the defender knows what they're doing (missile defence tower line + holkins). It just becomes much more cost effective to spam nukes or T2 bombers for suicide runs.

Hopefully when we get some balance patches this will be rectified.

@greysuit That's all well and good, but I agree with @damnhippie . Nuke spam and suicide missions dominate the late game.

What about orbital play? Also, saying its JUST nuke spam and bomber missions downplays all the complexity that surrounds that. For example, base spreading and rebuilding is important in a nuke war.