Balancing Shields

In my opinion it should be so that if you are being bombarded by artillery, only things you could do is building artillery of your own or attack.

Remember that some shield-lover will propably make a mod which adds shields to the game.

It is the essence of a good strategy game that any challenge has multiple valid solutions to it. Removing shields has removed a defensive solution to the problem of being bombarded by artillery. However, it has also removed an extremely powerful one, which can potentially emerge as an optimal solution, thus collapsing other options as meaningless. With that in mind, there should still be a number of solutions, such as:

Running your commander away, and building a base elsewhere.
Sniping the artillery with a bomber strike.
Raiding the enemy energy production so as to hamper his shots.
Building your on artillery for counter-battery fire.
Building stealth/jamming field generators, so that you cannot be targeted unless actively being spotted.
Expanding your base over a wide area, so that damage from artillery is minimised.

Both offensive and defensive counters should be available. As long as there are a wide variety of counter options, then shields are not necessary.

I feel the first one depends on the range of the gun firing at 45 degrees, and the gravity of the planet pulling the shell back down.

So effectively the range, and ability to avoid hitting mountains, while hitting the otherside of a planet should be possible, is that what we want?

And the second uses the planets gravity to help the shell move from moon to planet, but I do feel like accuracy would be a problem for such a gun.

I still find that to be a bad mechanic to include, TA had a T1.5 and T2 artillery, and even then the T2 artillery's range was betrayed by it's inaccuracy and low angle of fire.

A 40X40 map in supcom is a bad example, because unless your artillery is on the side of the map, you can hit practically anywhere. On a 81K map, the range for artillery is far batter to what I am referring to, as you need to secure some serious ground before you can use T3 artillery to bombard each others main base.

Id rather have a game where that wasn't a choice that an enemy could force upon me by sitting in there own base. So really I don't want offensive static artillery in the SupCom sense.

But that promotes a sense of bad gameplay from the player, turtling is fine, but doing to then again just sit back and do nothing while their artillery beats the enemy down? I don't agree.

Well why not just let nukes be your base-to-base weapon? why have artillery replace them?

Yep I agree 100%.

Indeed, but why have Bertha's that can fire across the entire planets surface?

Wouldn't it be more fun if their range was more in line with everything else? Requiring players to build additional bases to use them offensively?

Shields are fine. We just need an emp artillery or similar to counter them.

Then.....what would be the point?

Adding solutions to the top wont undo the underlying cause.

That would be great. It's always fun to build forward bases with arty and what not, you feel as if you territory has expanded, more resources, and have a tactical advantage over your opponent in economy and military. If your arty can range from that base, even better.

The problem with fighting on a small planet is that if we do have any kind of powerful cannon/launcher it's projectile can enter low orbit. If the orbit decays the projectile could land anywhere. We're going to have a problem with artillery in this game. unless it's really weak, breaks the laws of physics or is just really really expensive, artillery will have a very large range.

As for the the second counter argument, what if the moon is in geostationary orbit? then all the artillery would need to do is 'drop' the shell. I agree that in many cases the artillery would be much more inaccurate though.

I've never played TA (regrettably) so I'm really not qualified to respond to that .

I have attached an image with the range of T3 artillery on a 40 x 40 map (gentleman's reef) The T3 artillery only has the range to attack the two nearest islands. that leaves 4 that are out of your range. you will only be able to attack them one at a time, and you can't build artillery anywhere else or it will be too lightly defended. In such a case, a turtle will be forced to expand and must start using an army. After you've secured 'some serious ground' you can start building T3 artillery again. (in all fairness, I like playing 20 x 20 games as far away from the enemy as possible, meaning that any T3 artillery that is built is generally built in a corner. So it rarely reaches the enemy's base. I accept that this is not the most common of situations though.)

May I have your definition of a turtle, please?

They shouldn't be doing nothing. they should be either building more artillery or building an army to attack. It's not like it's overpowered. If they make it to the point of having a completely impenetrable base you weren't attacking them enough. I'm not saying you deserve to lose, but how could you let it get to this point. It's much more difficult to destroy them later.

A turtle for me, is a player who uses a defensive stance to build up more technology, nukes or an army rather then by going out into the map and attempting to capture more unsecured deposits.

Leading to a steam rolling kind of strategy by late game.

And I still feel like the argument that 'you could destroy them sooner' is kinda silly when turtling by nature is designed to stop rushing.

But your points are fair, I just don't feel like artillery should have the same kind of power as nukes in regards to range and damage.

Oi, cheeky.

Best post in this topic so far!

Do you really recomand someone, whose opponent has 30 or more artillery units, that he should start building his own artillery after he is 30+ atillery units behind.

Those kind of things end always bad except your enemy plays way wores , than you are.

Its basic rts knowlage that you never try to counter unit x with the same unit when your enemy has build an enourmus amount of them and you have built zero of them till this moment!

Yes expanding your base over a wider area would be a solution. And therefore would fit underground or underwatergameplay perfect because you could build tunnles rigth under the artillery. But i know most of you dont like the concept of playing underground i get that.

No, it can't. You can't launch anything in orbit, unless it propels itself. And cannon projectiles are not rockets.

Also, you seem to misunderstand core gun mechanics. While projectile is, indeed, simulated according to physics, cannon aiming and range are simple gameplay desisions. If game design requires cannon to have range of X, it will not be able to aim at anything further than that. It doesn't matter, how powerful the shot is from physical standpoint.

It's really simple

When there's no shields, then you can't make artillery good enough in comparison

This is a fact

TA and Supcom really stood out for me for having artillery that can shoot farther than 5 feet, among other things

How exactly do you make artilllery not overpowered, as in: being able to decimate unprotected units at extreme range, while they only provide a supporting role against a prepared location. That's right, good old bubble dome shields

If there's no shields, you have to drastically reduce the effectiveness of artillery ( like in most other RTS's ) effectively rendering them completely pointless

There is a VERY good reason, why every single halfway decent TA mod, including the ones that run on the open source engine "Spring", has a bubble shield of some sort
EVERY
SINGLE
ONE

My personal favorite is the one that doesn't magically stop shells midair, but deflect their flightpath into a different direction, effectively causing a hell of a shrapnell rain going everywhere. One shield is also able to ward of multiple berthas, it creates a really awesome experience when two fortified locations within range duke it out for minutes, with artillery shells going everywhere, units dying in the field in between and everyone looks for an opening.
A VERY noteworthy thing about these is though that they ONLY deflect plasma shells ( be it bertha, tank or whatever rounds ). Missiles and lasers go right through them, which is exactly how the balance works there ( already mentioned one shield can tank multiple berthas if you have the energy )

Just my two cents, shields are more important than you think

It's hilarious how terrible shield and artillery threads end up. I guess the target audience has something to do with it. Such weapons have nothing to do with strategy or winning, so much as they are about playing a sim city tower defense.

No, RTS is not a tower defense genre. You can not sit back, avoid map control, and hope to win.

No, RTS is not a sim city genre. Base development is a means to an end, not a primary focus.

No, shields do not add strategic options. They're a defensive tool that TAKES away attack options, often in ways well beyond their original intent. Attacks can always be met with more attacks. Defense leads to stalemates.

No, you're not going to win with artillery unless the enemy LETS you win. Shields will not change that in any meaningful way.

While a small amount of thrust is required to fix the path, a big enough cannon can absolutely launch anything into orbit.

You keep artillery powerful, while having no shields (They essentially just add extra HP to an area that regenerates) by making the theatre of war larger, like PA has done.

So areas that can be hit by artillery don't make up a sizeable area of the battlefield, you survive artillery by not being in range, being behind mountains, or by using stealth.

Then shields don't matter unless your bases are under siege by enemy fire bases (Take time to build) or by battleships (Generally weak air defence).

Shields are designed to protect against artillery, but they usually work against everything as a bubble (Unless they have a oddly specific list about what they stop and don't stop) and so end up being more of a pain in the *** then a anti-artillery defence.

We don't need shields if artillery aren't designed to win games as 'game enders'.

Sadly you can't be anymore wrong. Shields to a lot more than that. They are a way of fortifying a location ( takes time ), protect fragile structures or units which would otherwise be impossible to do so, enable you to make fire bases that aren't completely worthless

Case in point: The TA artillery never had that much of an impressive range, it was more akin to a t2.5 artillery from supcom. One of the problems that Supcom had was making t2 artillery too weak, and t3 artillery too strong against structures, while simultaneously making them effectively useless against anything in the field that can walk faster than a snail because of the ridiculous flight time. On the contrary: TA artillery was more of an oversized cannon, the flight time was excellent and the accuracy was good.

The good thing is that PA is returning to the TA orgins with artillery philosophy by making them shoot flat over ground and not arc for 60+ seconds. They get buffed against units which is VERY important.

On the other hand, PA currently falls into the fatal mistake of just assuming that you can make artillery work without any sort of direct countermeasure.
In real life artillery is severely limited by intel, unknown enemy locations, concealment and the likes. None of this plays any role in PA ( or any RTS for that matter ) because you can always scout your opponent and know exactly, down to the millimeter, where everything is. This is made worse by the fact that PA ( like ta and supcom ) has beyond the fog of war radar signatures. Plus all the intel is concentrated in a single person who can coordinate units like no real life equivalent could hope to do.

The naive approach to "just build things further apart" falls flat on its face because that's not how people use artillery. They were never used to raze a base in high level play in supcom, not in TA either. That's because artillery isn't good at this. They were used to take out key structures like anti nukes, fabrication facilities, generator farms, etc. Building more apart does exactly nothing to prevent this. All you do is make it harder to fuel your economy by having unnecessary travel times between key locations for you.

Mountains don't work for the same reason aswell, especially on maps with no map borders like in PA

And since your base can't walk away, stealth does nothign in the long run too. You might be able to build a firebase with the help of anti radar units, but as soon as you're detected, it becomes completely ineffective. And since you're in range of a much larger, better equipped base, you will lose

We don't know jet how strong the units and turrets will be. Its early alpha.
Based on the strength of the turrets from supreme commander, I would say that artillery could be a bit of a problem. But in this sentence are too many would and could for my taste.

If anti-air turrets are too strong then artillery is a kind of a problem , because one player could lay back and build a enormous amount of aa turrets and artillery and then just sit back in his base and start to attack the other player, and that's lame because there is very less tactic and skill involved in this kind of play.

But on the other side could the other player propably then build many thanky ground units which are good in absorbing damage , and just a-moving into the turteling player , who knows.If the turteling player also is building many walls and the base is around some tide entrance....mhh

And a anti-artillery satellite could surely prevent this kind of situation if there are no anti "anti-artillery satellites"-turrets which shoot done the satellite from inside of the enemy base.

But we all don't know this jet.Because there is no complete unitlist.

So I will from now on lay back and annoy you with my advertising for underground-underwaterplay.Because it would be fun for everyone and if implemented with the right kind of counter units it would not be abuseable for heavy turteling like shieldplay is.

By adding extra HP to a area.

You cannot deny that's what they do, they add HP to a area.

Yeah, but that's saying "Tanks add damage to enemy units"
Or a land factory "adds units to an area"

TA / Supcom and this game isn't starcraft. Turtling was always viable ( and by turtling I don't mean stay in one base the whole match and rush the game ender structures ) and always should be, it's part of what makes this game so sought after. No shields interfer with this process, ontop of reducing engagement complexity and making some cheap tactics possible

I will campaign for having shields until the game is released, and if they're not in by then, I'll just make them myself ( they said the game is modabble ). Shields are an inseperatable strategic element for this type of RTS

I am inclined to agree with that, but I'll just have to wait and see I suppose.

I don't believe so, so please do mod your shields and prove me wrong if you can.

Otherwise I will continue to campaign that shields aren't necessary if artillery isn't designed to replace nukes.