Artillery trajectory

Artillery is supposed to thin out unit blobs, I agree, and the reason it was OP was because it was both thinning out blobs and sniping individuals.

The artillery of that build, when encountering 50 Doxen, would only kill 15 before the remainder overran the artillery. That number seems about right really.

Currently I don't really see the point of it to be honest. I prefer to get Shellers, Catapults or Aircraft, as they are all much more reliable for the same basoc task.

And well.... we still have the basic problem that enough Static Defence (Pelters, MDT and Laser defence) is unassailable by T1

I miss something like the plasma battery from TA. I think TA in general had a fine balance in terms of defence options.
Obviously PA will get many more updates and new units, but right now I kind of miss some unit in between a laser turret and a pelter.

I don't think you know what artillery is supposed to be for , there are many kinds, not all artillery is indirect fire over long ranges. I know not everyone has played Total Annihilation, but the Punisher / Guardian filled the MRPC role (medium range plasma cannon) it used a lower trajectory and acted like a medium range unit killer. It had fairly small splash so it wasn't taking out huge chunks of massed units, but it did a good job of engaging units outside of the LLT / HLT's range (TA's laser towers)

Yes, I understand that, what I'm saying is it doesn't make sense, why in the world would you choose to use a high trajectory when a lower one gets your shot on target faster (75 vs 15 deg in your image). Sure if there was no direct line of sight, but we don't really have that yet.

We also don't need a fixed velocity shot, adjust the velocity to give the optimum trajectory based on the situation. If something is in front of you, fire a high velocity low trajectory shot, if something behind cover close up, use a lower velocity high trajectory.

Yep that's excatly why I made the comparision of the pelter to TA's Guardian / Punisher MRPCs. I'm not saying the pelter has to fill those roles, maybe a new unit could do it, but we need more direct fire artillery for engaging units outside the LT range that is effective at hitting mobile units. At the same time I'd like to see mobile artillery like this as well.

Sorry for the double post but my last one was apparently too long.

A blob of T1 units can over run unwalled pelters with ease as they approach faster than the pelters can kill them. Walls make a huge difference at T1 but if the Dox is changed to a grenadier type unit that can fire over walls, this might not be true.

Blobs of T2 Sniper bots can take out double their metal value of pelters and only suffer about 50% casualties, and you can't defend against T2 sniper blobs with laser towers due to the range difference. Walls help in this situation but not nearly as much as vs T1 because walls do not long survive sniper fire.

Shellers are insanely effective against pelters, they only need 1 hit to kill the pelter and can move before return fire lands. In theory you could take out unlimited pelters with a microed sheller. If the sheller is the mobile equivalent of a pelter, one would hope that the static pelter would have the edge due to it's disadvantage of being static.

I do agree that we don't want to be in a situation where T1 base defenses can completely halt unlimited T1 armies, but that can be solved with moble T1 arty units (possibly even the Dox as a grenadier, as walls will be less effective)

Completely agree.

What are pelters supposed to do at this point? Who in their right mind would build these glass cannons to harass an enemy base when it is much more cost effective to just go to T2 or harass them with dox?

When you hit T2, they become even more useless. Stationary artillery should not be this weak. Why have these defenses at all? Since we have more accurate, mobile pelters in the form of shellers.

Meh.

Meh indeed. They need fixed. The devs should fix them and i'm fine with what they come up with.

I wouldn't exactly call shellers accurate , but they certainly are better than pelters and also lack the disadvantage of being static.

Shellers have lower range than Pelters though. Actually can anyone tell me Shellers range because the value I get from the unit files isn't correct as it says that Shellers have the same range as Pelters but that obviously isn't true ingame.

How many units have variable projectile speed in PA? I noticed that Leviathan got variable projectile speed. Maybe Shellers and Pelters does as well.

Maybe it is bugged somewhere?

I think Shellers just don't use their maximum range.

I'm not sure how much lower it is, but even if it's a bit lower, the shellers can move away from incoming fire while the pelter just sits there.

I've also noticed that Pelters (and Holkins) seem to have trouble targeting something near the edge of their range ring, though I'm not sure if that just affects these units or all units.

The difference is so little it doesnt matter. I've seen shellers fire before pelters do in MANY cases, with both teams having radar.

Pretty awful.

Are you sure that the radars had energy?
I use Pelters to counter Shellers sometimes and they seem to outrange Shellers pretty reliably. The range of Shellers seems to be like 180 or something. Shellers really don't use their whole range that is indicated by their range circles.

Pelters also do not use their whole range, as indicated by the range circle.

Edit: This is going by what's in the files

Both have the same range, 260
Shellers do double the damage and splash damage (600 vs 300)
Shellers fire a bit faster (.25 vs .20)
Shellers have a bit more splash radius (15 vs 12)
Shellers have a lower initial_velocity (200 vs 275) and no max velocity (pelter = 200) (maybe this means they can fall faster, I don't know)