New Build Walls Discussion – Good? Bad? Indifferent?

What's everyone's thoughts on the changes to Walls?

Their cost was decreased greatly from 200 metal to 25 metal, and the hp was increased from 3,000 to 6,000.

This means with very very little metal investment, there's now a barrier with a TON of health which greatly increases the effectiveness of walls.

What are your thoughts?

I think walls have too much health. But I like the idea of walls being useful. Someone else mentioned something about in a different RTS walls weren't really for absorbing shots but rather directing movement. So most units could shoot over walls with relative ease, but they couldn't drive over them. That made walls very useful for forcing enemy units into choke points, rather than being massive damage sinks that can be layered and spammed out. I'd be fine if they kept their health where its at, provided that they are more for redirecting units and forcing choke points rather than absorbing damage. Players building layers of walls is simply too powerful.

I love having walls to build around my various bases and defences, allowing me to solidify a position relatively quickly and make it hard to assault, however there are improvements I think that can be made that can keep the walls stronk but without them being necessarily such a pain in the arse.

Step 1: No more repairing walls, but make wall segments easy to build over destroyed ones.

Step 2: No more clipping bullets through walls, if you can't shoot over, then move around silly missile turrets.

Step 3: Units no longer, ever automatically target a wall for shooting, and no more trying to shoot through them either.

Step 4: Area reclaims and reclaim moves automatically reclaim enemy walls.

Better healthier walls for all.

They need to limit the effectiveness of turrets somehow. Walls are just... too powerful when you have walls in front. Particularly if you have triple layers of walls.

@evan6565

IIRC walls in TA became part of the landscape and couldn't be destroyed by direct fire. They could be reclaimed though.

Wall do work both ways, they stop the enemy getting to your base but also hinder you from expanding unless your willing to either reclaim them as you go or spend alot of metal building more.

I think using combat fabbers is a great way to deal with high health walls and gives the unit another role to play on the front line.

Im almost tempted to say that engineers and combat engineers should auto-reclaim enemy walls on a attack move, or possibly even just by default during a run by with combat engineers.

If walls are meant to create choke points and funnel armies into kill zones, they shouldn't also be so good at blocking shots. A simple fix is to just make them shorter. Units still have to walk around them but shooting over walls gets easier.

People say this, but a good coke point is one that that does restrict you from shooting at the ambushers, so that you have limited time in the killing zones.

Auto reclaim enemy walls would be awesome for combat fabbers. Make them even more useful on the front lines.

I really like that.

That would be awesome.

I think they could go even further with walls, Battle for Middle Earth 2 style:



(about 1:40 in, he starts doing walls)

I'm not much of a turtler but I've never seen much problem with the concept of walls, even big ones that block both movement and fire.

I like them as they are. You can actually build walls with them now and there are still units that tear through them.

I don't really see them as OP, but I think it would be cool if the Inferno could just slice through the walls with its blowtorch. That would make the inferno a really useful heavy seige tank, kinda like a battering ram at the enemy's door or something...

Giving the Inferno a boost to damaging walls would be pretty awesome.

It wouldn't need much of a boost either, since it already has a massive DPS.

These all sound good, truth be told, but 3 is the big one for me. It feels silly.

I really like walls as they are; it encourages more flanking (which is to say, using the roundness of the planet) and makes turtling - a considerable investment - a little more feasible.

Wall wreckage is the big issue I see, however, as the wreckage has about as much HP as the walls themselves while still blocking shots.

Incorporating this into wall wreckage would be a great compromise. Blasting through them lets you get to the juicy stuff underneath, but you need fabbers or a lot of bullets to clear the path for movement.

Yeah. Wreckage is all around an issue.

It makes attacks half as effective because the vehicles can't drive forward since they have to weave in and out of the wrecks. And the outgoing shots get blocked by the wrecks.

All around wrecks need work. I'm pretty sure Uber is aware of that one.

You pretty much nailed it. However I dont understand what you mean with the step 2

Why not make walls neutral wreckage like in TA? That way they won't get auto targetted anymore which will already help alot.

I like the walls a lot. They force you to plan your invasion and make excellent forward base fortifications. But they are not too hard to take down - if you know they are there a targeted raid can punch a whole for your blobs to go through.

The only way I will ever see these walls as balanced is if they use the same set of rules for both sides.

Either have them so that they only block pathing and both sides can shoot over, or make it so that neither side can shoot over apart from special exceptions like Pelters.

The current implementation just counts as cheap a HP boost to the side with the walls. Uber seems to want them to be used to funnel units. I don't think they can fill both of these roles.