I like the Anchor. Its a fun unit that helps defend your precious orbital satellites. But in their current state they are just being used as orbital tanks instead of a turret. Here are my suggestions to balance out the anchor. Make it a stationary turret. No movement allowed, especially between planets. This is being abused like crazy right now. Leave the attacking to the orbital fighters. That's it really. What do you guys think?
I think the problem with the anchor is much bigger than that. How are you supposed to kill it? It's designed as an avenger-killer so those won't work... Using an umbrella requires controlling the surface, which defeats the purpose of killing the anchor (its protecting the surface from orbital weapons). Using another anchor is slow (and the only counter to a unit being itself is stupid). AFAIK nukes can't hit it and using a KEW is impractical/overkill. Orbital combat is still very broken IMO. It barely interacts with the other layers leading to "this is the only unit that will work" scenarios. There should be many more anti-orbital units (ground/air/ship) and a few more orbital combat units that can return fire from orbit (AA satellite, bombardment/artillery satellite). Also, you could let the orbital laser (SXX?), that currently can only fire at ground, turn its weapon sideways and snipe other satellites from long-range. Then you'd at least have a rock/paper/scissors triangle. Avenger>SXX>Anchor>Avenger.
I tend to agree that orbital combat as a whole is broken, I usually call it a stalemate when there's a hour of orbital defense cracking ahead of me. I think the anchor would balance itself out if we had another means of invading a planet. A big transporter that could ship some levelers to a planet would go a long way to making invasions simpler. However astereus do fill this gap somewhat, its just a pain to micro things one it. One of the things I do and have happen to me is build a bunch of anchors and fly them over their orbital launcher. Stuff can't be built and it forces people to build umbrellas. Since the anchors have so many hitpoints, it takes a ton of umbrellas to take down the fleet of anchors. I read another thread that said anchors are supposed to be used to punch a hole for lasers and orbital fabricators. This is kind of silly since most good players will just micro their umbrellas to shoot down the lasers then the fabricators. Its all just silly in my opinion and really drags a game down with multiple planets.
Anchors must move between planets because I believe that's the whole point: someone has a grip on a planet, you want a chance to get in there and get a foothold so you send in the anchors. They can clear an orbital space and at least distract the Umbrellas. They do a pretty good job of that. I think the problem is they're just too fast. There's no reason they should need to move around as quickly as they do. Leave that job to orbital fighters. As it is, I just don't build fighters. It's very rare I have a use for them (mainly the use is to run around enemy anchors that are loosely but poorly protecting an asset, like an orbital laser).
The anchors need to be stationary, that I agree, also there HP needs to be lowered significantly (like by half). A single Anchor can take down a fleet of 50 orbital fighters without even thinking and taking hardly any damage. Orbital fighters need to be the main Anti mobile orbital killer, that is there job. Currently the Anchor IS the new fighter, and that needs to change. The name itself, Anchor, should be UNMOVING lol.
This is exactly what I'm trying to communicate here. The Anchor are just replacing the fighters instead of defending against them. It like strapping legs on a land based laser turret. If that was an option would anyone build levelers anymore?
Orbital needs and overhaul and more ways to interact with other layers of the game, which is hopefully what's going to happen here shortly. Right now its a stop gap, and I think its obvious that the Avenger/anchor relationship makes orbital superiority come down to who has the most Anchors. Originally they couldn't move, which make them more like a space turret which worked out better. But Avengers in general are horrible at targeting things and actually hitting stuff.
Changes needed for anchors to make them balanced with fighters and to keep fighters relevant throughout the orbital game: Make each of the four guns independently targeting Increase damage so it one shots an orbital fighter increase RoF to 1 shot every second or two. This makes them more like frigates than anything else, and forces you to have fighters to defend them. It also keeps their role as a fortress breaching unit, which this game desperately needs to keep to break stalemates.
I like the ancor, but I still don't like/see the point of having a orbital fighter. Id much rather give T2 fighters (Or T1) the ability to lob up rockets at orbital units, and have anchors fire at planes (While having their bullets die before they can even reach ground targets). As for mobile anti-orbital, Id like a 1960's solution, like a death ray, or a alternative anchor.
Orbital is a bit of a mess atm. Some thoughts that might help... Fighters (check) Basically prefect as they are right now. Cruisers ( nothing yet) I would love to see a large vessel about the size of the leviathan for use in helping make a beachhead on a new planet. The Cruiser would be slow moving and would have minimal close range anti-orbital capacity, but would have 1 long range Rail Gun for helping to deal with Anchors. This gun would require the cruiser to point at it's target (Fixed forward gun) With the Cruisers slow speed it would mean this gun would be pretty useless vs Fighters moving around but great for shooting slow moving/still targets. The Cruiser should also have a decent amount of hps. It would carry a few missile launchers that are anti- Air to help control the air zone below it. Anchor (check but needs adjusting) Anchor should be SUPER slow. I don't think making not move is a good idea as first in space that doesn't make sense at all and second you need them for making a holding point on another planet. But currently their speed makes them more useful then fighters. Large Transports ( nothing yet) We have single transports but we need an assault transport. I personally like the idea of a Drop pod. You build these drop pods and then can move them around like normal orbital. When you want to use their drop function you click on them and toggle the landing icon and click on the ground. The Drop pods would then drop down and deploy on the ground 5-10 units (what ever number) of troops. I think these pods should have 2 types, Heavy Weapons and Shock troops. The Shock troops would be your basic troopers (bots or whatever) Each pod would spawn say 9 ground troops and 1 AA troop. The Heavy Weapons would spawn half as many as the Shock troop pod but these troops would ave 4 Artillery types and 1 AA type per pod. This would allow us to assault another planet without having to use Gates. Anti-Nuke Satellites Currently a huge issue with assaulting a planet is being nuked as soon as you try to make landfall. With this we need something we can bring with us to give us a zone that we can make a beachhead on. Anti-Nuke Satellites would have 1 missile, and would take awhile to reload. Makes for a nice Trinity effect for units. Anchors counter fighter Fighters counter Cruisers Cruisers counter Anchors The Anchors are for defending your base from orbital and defending your cluster while assaulting a planet. Fighters are for both and are quick and Mobil. Cruisers for dealing with Anchors and securing an Air space for making a landing on another planet. Our Space cannons for clearing the ground. Drop pods for making the ground landing for assault or securing an area for a Gate. With the anti-Nuke satellite giving us some protection from nukes. Keep in mind to assault a planet would still be a massive undertaking even with these new tools but at least it would be possible were as currently assaulting a well fortified planet is just about impossible.
