Idea: Anti missile guns/emplacements

But how do my enemy know which radar dot is the catapult under construction when I have 20-100 units in the area?

Orbitals, air scouts, land scouts, luck.

All of those can be countered except luck. Well once radar jammers are in the game even luck can't get the catapult under construction.

In my recent games I had a really hard time to bring any unit close to the turle. Assume that there is only one planet in game. I had a lot of tech one stuff around two or threehundered tanks fivehundred bots more than twohundered tech two bombers and twohundered mobile artillery. Everything moving on land got vaporised by around thirty of the catapults. Planes came just in range of the flak and diapeared. Finally I got owned by nukespam (15 nukes simlply outnumbering 9 Antinukes). I do absolutly what to do agianst these. ( littler cost than the holkins (ex Lobber) littler range but way more accurate(the catapults missles) I would appriciate I defence and attac with turrets would be harder and units gets more important for attacing and defending.

At least these are my preceptions.

Yes you can, build it first, then he has problem not you. Your thinking is turtle style, go out of your shells turtles! In this game you can counter such stuff on so many ways. I start to love this game because thinking pays much more than micro or turtling. And there are no corners on maps!

"Build it first" is not a valid solution to a situation where the enemy has already built it first.

There's always the trump card, go round to the person's house and hit them on the head, then on their keyboard, select the commander and press delete twice. Then go home and wallow in Victory.

That's probably not a valid strategy for most people.

And anti missile guns just help turtles to turtle better. But while your opponent turtles, you get rest of planet and hide commander somewhere so he cannot nuke him, spread economy build few antinukes and don't let him scout.
Then finish him or lag to boredoom with 2000 units army.

Why did you let the enemy build it there in the first place? Don't you have an army to stop that from happening?

If the enemy is really creeping towards you with Catapults you can surely make some Catapults of your own before he reaches your base.

problem with the current build is that, its more efficient to build towers and artliery than to build land units. The very buildings nad units that would be used to siege a turtle are being used to Turtle themselves.

Think about what people suggest, build your catapult before the other catapult, problem is armies are not working against turtles.

U can build a tower for 300 metal. Two alleged tanks cost around 300 metal. The double laser tower will kill 15 to 25 alleged tanks. That's not bad going for 300 metal, when tanks themselves cost 150 each.

This is the issue and people who are pointing out towers are simply too efficient at what they do at Tier 1 units. Tier 2 units are incredibly powerful and can walk over defences with ease.

Put in fact that u can put walls in front of towers and again u get same problem. Person said build a pelter, thing is while you built your army, that is probally takes longers to build and is more expensive, they build a row pelters behind there towers, so u can't build your pelter.

This is the problem, when your enemy can do everything u can do, but its cheaper for them to turtle then for u to build an army, then there is only a small window of oppunity before they close up there base. Resources needed to take out a turtle are far far more than someone needs too turtle. Why most people just forget about attacking with a land army and use nukes.

More easier put, the balance is kinda out of whack right now.

I disagree with that assessment, as not every thing can be put down to a simple cost analysis.

Mobile units, if less efficient then towers (And considering they can't move, this is a good thing) are still superior in their ability to be concentrated for both attack and defence operations.

Defensive artillery is one thing, but players have many tools for dealing with T1 defences while also at T1.

Including the commanders ubercannon.

armour was added to reduce the effectiveness of the uber cannon against other commanders and buildings. My point is the enemy has the exact same stuff which can be used defensively against any attackers. At the same time, most stuff is better at defence than offense.

Its true units are mobile and can launch a concentrated attack against a wall of towers. take this example.

Guy builds 40 towers, uses 10 for each wall. lets say each tower cost 300 metal using the double laser ones.
He spent 12000 metal for his defense.

Realistically lets say he can only defend from one side at a time, cos his towers can't move. At most 10 towers are defending.

The tanks cost about 150, infernos cost about 180. for maths reasons lets use the tanks.
12000 metal, assuming they equal in resources. he gets 80 tanks.

Most games I know 10 towers will beat 80 alleged tanks. You could spend less metal and have les towers, put walls up, probalyl be even more efficient against tanks.

My point is that the game is out of balance. Its lopsided in favour of the person turtling in Tier 1. Then it becomes lopsided in favour of the aggressor in Tier 2. hence the large, tier 1 turtle to tier 2 unit mass build strategies.

You saying you can't balance based on cost, seems wrong, since a war of attrition is based exactly on cost. Most wars were ended due to a lack of resources rather than a defining battle, or strategy. One who was most efficienct in battle often won, even if they lost repeatedly, as long as they were most efficient they could eventually turn the tide in their favour.

Granted someone who sends a bunch of tanks against a heavily armoured fort, should probalyl lose those tanks. But it should not be so easy to build that fort, at a drop of a hat before the enemy arrives.

There's something wrong with the pacing of the game and how units costs are measured against their effectiveness in battle.

Think about this, if u ignore cost, what about time? If we did not have the 5 second delay animation of units rolling of the factory floor, can you imagine how many tanks I would be able to build, without having to invest in more and more factories. The hidden cost of unit production is the cost of the factory. A tower comes built as is, requires no factory, no power needed to support it, once done its done. Factories need support structure in place to build. Take up more room.

Time is a different cost, but in practice, players never calculate the effective cost for an engagement.

For what is the cost of winning the game?

Players might not explicitly calculate it but as you get experienced at the game you will do such estimations intuitively.
There is also a large degree of trial and error where the players tries different builds and strategies where they chose to focus on expansion, defense, tech or eco.
Some builds are good, some builds are bad and some builds might be good but have specific counter builds or counter strategies.

I pretty much agree with moonsilvers analysis. You can pretty much rush straight to t2 and rely on static defense while you build up t2 eco in the current balance. Map control doesn't really become important until you have saturated your starting metal spots with advanced mexes.
Is that bad?
Mm... not sure but I think that it is bad that t1 doesn't have much to offer as t2 units are pretty much simply better for cost without any real trade-offs.

Godde and Moonsilver wrote exactly what i was thinking and backed it by numbers.
And turtle wing is asking for more turtling options. Turtling is slow suicide, do not complain that player that you willingly gave rest of planet has more options and strategies available.

While you turtle you limit yourself to 10-15 mexes, some powerplants and solar panels, all that means you have some maximum economy level you can create. All your enemy needs to do is keep some pressure on you, so you do not get out of turtle mindset. While expanding his economy. The moment his economy can build more units than your eco can handle you lose. Nukes are easiest to do it, but its possible with mix of normal units.

I feel the need to post this since people have taken the idea the wrong way. This idea is not meant to provide the player with a perfect turtle defense that can never fall, it is merely to be used as a temporary (as in early game stages) alternative to doing exactly what has been recommended here.

The whole point of this device is not to replace armies when you would rather not build them, but because you cannot build them. That being said the fact that you cannot build an army at that moment to deal with this issue does not mean the player has lost. They could have an army helping an ally, their economy could be wrecked, or any other number of things because as we all know **** happens. As another balancing option if it bothers turtle haters it could be given a miss chance stat.

Catapults for example become a very large issue on small planets where a one can target 1/2 to the whole planet which in most cases leads to someone who is not turtling being able to turtle build them inside their own bases and still inflict damage without any chance of it being killed in time.

To summarize this all, it is meant to be used as a temporary "bandage" to a problem until (assuming done quickly) the proper solution can be put together.

But people should still be going for a permanent solution.

The permanent solution would be to beef up T1, or stealth against radar with a jamming device. I do think having an anti weapon gun is good idea.

My reason for this, is that take the anti nuke, it only offers defence against nukes. It can't wipe out armies, it can't defend your base against air. It also can not attack anything. In many ways its effectiveness is like a wall.

Suggestion is only an anti missile weapon, not an anti artillery, the pelter and holkins would still work. But holkins on small planets has trouble firing on targets due to the nature of the planet, so in many ways by buggy nature of terrain, it balanced itself, so it can't shoot everything on the planet.

The other option is instead of having an anti missile type weapon, we ask that the catapult be removed for a single patch and see how the gameplay changes. Kinda like an experiment.

Perhaps that would be a better option and accomplish the same thing? If u guys agree with that, I can set up a Poll in the forums and see what everyone else thinks.

Radar rapsbery jammer is best for this, much better than anti missile gun. Even more i think commander should start with small jammer like this.

But why? The best solution is to deal with the problem directly, not to have a way of ignoring it.

And even then, that's not to say that units that use multiple weapons cannot be equiped with extra anti-missile defences, as to make them selves more protected against such devices.

But a standalone single anti-missile defence?

It's a stupid idea, you should be shooting back.

A wall, has many uses, and all of those uses are shared by tanks.

Anti-nukes are a very bad mechanic of gambling against a stupid non-scouting, unconscious enemy.

So you always loose, unless your enemy is brain dead.

Making it even more ultra specialised does nothing to cover the problem, that you should be killing the enemy shooter anyway.

It's only even a problem on the super small planets anyway, and such planets put you easily in rushing range anyway.

If you are being shot at, shoot back.

What the forum thinks, of the people who even bother to vote, and if your vote in unbiased.