Bubble shields in PA:T?

I was a big fan of shields in SC because they looked cool and did provide a nice safety feeling. Also, SC had really long range artillery and fast bombers, so shields were really needed.
However, PA do not have much artillery (T2 arti and Holkins have a pretty short range compared to SC T4/T3 arti) and bomber swarms can easily be destroyed with flak. Moreover, PA is already barely readable sometimes so shields are not gonna improve that ...

But Helios drops inside a base are a pain and i think they could apply the same solution as they did for unit canon : umbrellas should prevent any unit teleporting from a helios from landing in their range. They should'nt add a new building just for this purpose.

Orbital problems should be solved by altering the orbital units themselves, rather then adding on a band aid solution to them.

A T2 umbrella, or buffed anchor anti-orbital would be nice.

I really want the T2 umbrella with area of effect to counter the obrital spam.

But about the Helios drops, I think we should keep it as now.
Otherwise the Helios will be come completely useless, since they are not designed to be an attack unit.

Shouldn't the counter to orbital spam be orbital spam? I thought Umbrellas were to deter early-game Commander sniping, not create an impenetrable hole in the sky above them. Otherwise what are anchors for?

The problem is the Helios has enough health to withstand a combination of anchors + umbrellas + fighters et al and still unload a lot of stuff into your base.

I was attacked with *just 1 helios* against a large orbital force, and couldn't fend it off quickly enough (it died, but only *after* flooding the centre of my baser with t2 which promptly killed my com).

I mean I think for that to work my opponent should have had to kill my orbital stuff first instead of just sending a single loan unit. I guess next ffa game I play I need to build way more orbital.

This is the most important point you´ll have to remember when talking about Shields: LowTierShields change everything, HighTierShields adds a little bit of variety. So "Yes" or "No" are clearly not enough options, therefor I voted no course it´s less horrifying to do not have high tier shields then having low tier shields in PA!

There is nothing that speaks against a "ShieldGeneratorTitan"---a thing with ultra high costs, probably even stationary and an energy drain that is higher than the amount of Energy you could produce if you place EneryPlants everywhere beneath the Shield. As others said, I´d even think that such thing could help fortifying the already established balance and fixes some of the remaining issues!

But cheap shields---they´d change how we protect mexes, they´d change how we establish fortifications, they´d render entire groups of units either useless or make them ten times more powerful. On top of that, they add much micro and each millimeter (don´t take this to serious...) in placement will start to count. Suddenly PA would start being ways less turtle-focused---I think you get it. A clear NO! from my side to LowTierShields, a CouldBeAwesome! to HighTierShields!

but turtling is awesome :<

what might be interesting then could maybe be the option to research shields. i don't know if the game supports research technology but having to invest time and resources to give every unit and building a small shield (50% of the standard hp?) could help too against small attacks etc since the defenses can destroy attackers while maybe only taking shield dmg that "repairs" automatically afterwards.

a huge shield bubble as defense against artillery/orbital fire would be better though. imo. always loved turtling in supcom, building the turrets inside the shield bubbles, teching and then attack with the strongest units ^^

Perhaps make a Shield Titan unit. Make the size of the unit large like the other Titans, and only block stuff coming in from the vertical, not ground units from the horizontal. Only allow one per team.. make it a power eating monster.. in fact make it so you have to charge it.. and "fire" it.. when fired it deploys the shield for 15 seconds.. then you have to recharge it.

Quick question: Does the Helios have a time-out like the SXX or is it active immediately on arrival? The time-out thing seemed to work pretty well against SXX snipes.

It doesn't appear to have a cool down after transit currently... I think even if it's main weapons work on arival, the gate should take a while to charge up or something...

Yes I second that, seriously, Helios is BRILLIANT for bringing PA closer to the "intense battles over multiple planets instead of everyone camping the hell out of their impenetrable planet and spamming nukes and anti nukes" idea, but as it stands it's too easy to cheese with it.

I don't mind either way. I only remember them being useful since my buddy always build waaaaaaay to much artillery; so I usually build way to much shields to counter it

Ehh. No bubbles. Orbital defense is an issue, but shields are a poor way to fix it.

I always thought there should be a way for nukes to be used to take out orbital units. Having a costly orbital nuke that has the anti nuke range could be a good idea to stopping larger orbital assaults directly on a base (Think of a jig explosion in PA). The only issue is when it would it be set off. The last thing we would want is a nuke going off every time a satellite showed up. If it would be a direct counter to the Helios, that could work.

Another weird Idea would be an expensive scrambler to counter the Helios. A structure that would essentially scatter the teleported units across the planet. Damage would still be done, just not on top of your base.

On a side note, I miss the astraeus drops.... This never seems to be a problem when it actually should. The day we see an astraeus drop nerf thread will be one of celebration for Titans.

how did you not want to put this in the original edition of "a tank is a tank" ???

Seriously WHY as your editor do you never contact me before making these decisions ?

this one's gonna get sales like hot cakes!

we're going with this for the new ad campaign ok? :

To be quite honest with you, I have no argument against shields in and of themselves.

What I do find is a problem though, and maybe shields could exacerbate the problem or could even counter intuitively lessen it, is excessive turtling.

I find that this happens QUITE OFTEN on multi planet system, which is why I NEVER play them.

Basically, the person winning doesn't want to risk anything, and so turtles the hell out of their base and spends 20-30 minutes working on their game ending move. This 20-30 minutes is A COMPLETE BORE. You don't have the resources to attack, if you tried it would be repelled, and so you simply have to wait to be annihilated.

Case and point. At the weekend I was teaching my hosuemate how to play to try and get him involved in the game again. I recommended a single planet system but he wanted to see what multi planet was all about... so here we were, in a multi planet FFA.

As he sucked, he wasn't attached by the winning players... no bother. He was no threat

But then when it was down to 1v1, each player on their own planet, this complete douche spent 20-30 minutes building up 50 nukes and firing them all at once.

So there I was, trying to teach my friend how to play, and all I felt like saying was 'just kill yourself and start the next game, this is not going to be anything but boring now'. But I couldn't, I didn't want him to feel like the whole thing was pointless. He had to sit there for the best part of an hour doing ABSOLUTELY **** ALL because he was not attacked for the whole game aside from 90 minutes in with 50 nukes.

Players need to get back on their game and realise that a quick kill is better than an impressively looking one after half an hour of playing Sim City in your own base.

But players won't realise this by themselves, because for some of them they clearly have nothing else going on in their lives to make time a factor.

Shields could make this worse, they could have spent an extra 10 minutes building shields just to 'make sure'. They could make it better because once their commander is shielded, they don't have to spend 10 minutes building other defences. I just don't know.. but please... please... PLEASE can we do something with the game mechanics to speed up play in the latter half of any multi-planet game? I will be recommending single planet systems more strongly from here on in to assure that this situation is avoided in the future.

I have no particular love of shields, but PA defenses seriously need to be buffed. I can't remember the last time I built an anti-land defensive structure. The only one that was useful in standard was the Hopkins for fighting leviathans from the land or sniping a commander. Now the area has taken that role. Defenses, other then gatalas and Torps are useless. Torps aren't even nearly as useful as they one were because hover can now wreck them with no resistance. Shields are one good way that I see to bring defenses a little was back into PA. People always say that shields will encourage turtling. I cannot understand this complaint. No matter the strength of defenses you need to attack to win the economy war. You can't build defenses over all of your metal. It takes to many fabber seconds. A better economy is gotten by raiding raiding is attack. A better economy wins the game u less your opponent attacks. Ergo turtling in PA will never be a problem.

not officially, but I wouldn't mind a bubble shield mod

I forget what the T2 TML is called, but it targets the orbital layer and brings down a Helios very rapidly.

Leave. I personally stay around to watch they have in mind (lasers, planet smashing, or an Independence Day style invasion) for me and if I don't feel like it I just delete my commander.

Just because winning players can drag it out doesn't mean we should make/keep ourselves from making any gameplay adjustments. Turtling as it stands is horribly inefficient in a game where you haven't already won so I don't see the problem.

You're thinking of Bluehawks or Stingrays, the former is a bot and the latter is a ship.

Bluehawks got buffed to costing a mere 800 metal; a reduction from 1200, so I'm eager to see them in orbital defense.

no, no - the catapult, a handful of them can bring down a helios very rapidly, and they double as anti-land defense