Hello all! I'm playing PA since few days, so I'm technically still a noob. Nonetheless the other day watching a game I've noticed something I would like to share with you (I searched quickly - found anything on topic). A bomber made a couple of rides on an enemy base, hit something that looked random, and got stripped down by the AA. Now, Planetary Annihilation encourages players in acquiring intelligence. And that's great. It makes intelligence an essential aspect in knowing what to expect from your opponents and where to strike. So, at least for bombers (or perhaps Artillery, too?) wouldn't be interesting to be able to set a priority list of items to strike, if encountered? Like AA, or Intelligence (radar), or Nuke pods? Since everything goes that fast in PA, perhaps it would add to the fun being able to setup some pre-conditions to (some of) our troops. That way players could tune their strategy, also opening few more variations in the way each one on us approach the battle. Perhaps that could be bond to some condition, like acquiring a specific Intelligence tech tree, or it may be limited to bombers T1, or enabled only in portions of the map where the player has radar coverage, otherwise the bomber will go for the default attacking priority routine. What do you think? Before to say anything more, I'm looking forward to hearing from you. If I'm missing some point in the gameplay, please enlighten me
For instance, it seems to me that nukes are a bit to easy to achieve. Being able to direct your bombers against nuke launching sites if encountered would make more difficult to achieve the *end of the world* weapon, that often closes the game. Or, specially during the middle part of a game, players have usually just one Advanced Radar Tower. Taking that down would pretty much affect your opponents ability to moves troops timely on you, and granting you some time, or advantage on the field.
First, select your bombers. Now, click the attack order in the order bar. Finally, click on the target, be it a nuke, anti-nuke, orbital launcher, advanced radar, etc. The bomber will attack that unit/structure until it dies. However, it seems to me that you're talking about sending your bombers in the general area of your opponents base, and getting them to focus down an important target on their own, so i'll respond to that as well. If you were to simply send your bombers to the opponent's base they would attack whatever was top priority, no matter what is actually a bigger threat to you. Your opponent might have one nuke launcher slowly building a single nuke, while spamming out so many tanks that your defenses wouldn't stand a chance anyway, but your bombers would attack the nuke launcher. Also, this could get exploited as the bombers could discover something your scouts didn't see, and just start attacking that instead, without you needing to do anything. The big issue, as I see it, is that it lets you just sit back and "make good tactical decisions" without you actually thinking about it, which isn't good.
Making a tactical decision about what you want to attack in an enemy base isn't difficult; implementing those decisions through the UI *is*. Surely the bombers could be intelligent enough not to bomb walls. Or you could have attack order modifiers for your bombers to concentrate on economic or military structures. And your bombers should be smart enough to spread targeting. All of the above strike me as useful automation that in no way takes choice away from the player.
In case of a commander rush, it's often best to first take out the fabbers that are assisting the enemy commander. A command for that would be handy. I think currently units shoot the commander first - or is it the closest target first?
They already don't attack walls first if you tell them not to. All you need is a right-click, that does the job.
No. No it doesn't. This whole topic is about Area Attacks. As far as I can tell you don't think Area Attack should even be in the game because micro = skill. Plz advise if wrong.
Well then, you didn't mention area attacks until this post. You should have clarified, as I just thought you meant the move command, while having the "attack everything you encounter" option set for your bombers. Also, if you are doing an area attack, you don't usually care about what they kill. If you want it to target specific structures, right click will do that job admirably.
This would be a pretty nifty addition to area commands. "Bombers, go kill all the AA in this area. Then target the fabrication units. Then kill the metal extractors and energy plants."
That sounds good, but only if you could set it yourself. Sorry if that's what was said earlier, if so, didn't see it. I don't think that a premade target priority list would be a good thing though.
Premade, not really. But if there was an area command where... I click on an AA tower and then drag an area circle, then shift click drag on all metal extractors so my bombers/gunsihps/bots/tanks/laser satellite/whatever attacks all the AA towers in that drug circle and then attacks all the metal extractors in the area, that would be absolutely awesome. It'd be a fantastic addition.
I would agree with that. I just don't want to see bombers go after, say nukes, before anything else, just because it's higher on the bomber's "target priority" list.
Thanks for answering. I stress that I'm new to the series of Total Annihilation, and now Planetary Annihilation. However, I played quite enough of other strategic games, even if it's only with PA that I'm getting more passionate about RTS. When I order an area attack to bombers, I have no idea what they will actually do. Sometimes they do a stupid thing. Since the game goes so fast, every fair bit of capability to control your troops may make the difference, and perhaps add to the gameplay. So I thought, assuming that some specific conditions are satisfied like for instance having radar coverage on the area (which means that the bomber "knows" in advance that the structure is there) I imagine that it could be nice to specify one own priority check list for area attack. Perhaps before the game starts. I just noticed that bombers aren't that smart and I would like to have more control in the way some units behave on the battlefield. But maybe there is already a way. Click a specific target, and then queueing an area attack. Gotta try.
There's no need for a list. You should be able to make it up it on the fly by clicking on the buildings in the order you want them to attack.
