So, here comes yet another boring troll poll. I started it because I feel its topic is important to an at least significant amount of players, according to results of this poll and frequency of Thermo games and other defense-oriented matches on FAF. As we know, there are many possible approaches to general planning in RTS, with most common being aggressive and defensive strategies. However, nowadays defensive strategies tend to be discouraged by many game developers, mostly by those following cybersport-oriented vision of the genre. Even SupCom, that was more of an exception, surrendered to that trend over time. Unfortunately, I'm still not entirely sure what position on strategy balance PA devs and community have taken. So I'd like to ask forum members about being positive to including defensive strategies as viable in PA. Also, it would be nice to get some kind of statement from devs to that question. I've seen a message in that thread, but it's still unclear if it was Neutrino's personal opinion or gameplay vision proposed by Uber Entertainment. Of course, with modding as core feature, it will be possible to implement defensive play even if it's not encouraged, but having it out of the box is still much better.
My question: if you are defending, how do you win? I've always thought that making at least one successful attack was the key to winning. If you make an attack, then it's not really a defensive strategy, is it?
I am just saying this: I plan on Uber being good enough to make this game work ANY way. Either out of the box or with patches until it is this way. Make every sort of strategy work if implemented right, and the best one being a mixture of strategies. Make defending work against harassment. Make nuking an option against defending. Make artillery and imperialization winnable against heavy offense players. Make heavy offense land capturing winnable against turtles. Make it all highly effective when done correctly, and it all coming down to who implemented against the enemy better. I never thought these games should be balanced AGAINST either side. They should have taken the time to make defending just as strong and attacking just as strong. That way, you have to think on the fly and be flexibly able to do a number of different strategies if you know it will be better against the enemy. Instead of the same build-a-combo implemented game-after-game. I dont want every game to be the same mass and flood of units, or the same build artillery and most-cannons-wins.
It depends how you defend and why. Usually a defensive stance is to protect ones base until you can field enough troops and advanced technology to commence a successful assault on enemy positions. There a 2 ways of achieving this, one of witch developers usually try to prevent: Mobile defensive army Static turrets While it is preferable to use both (And you probably should) using a mobile defensive army is the greater of the two due to its flexibility and its ability to later be employed as a offensive army. What develops don't want people doing is creating a little impenetrable box of turrets and artillery, your artillery can destroy the enemy while your turrets defend, but as the attacker you usually have a hard time of it by having to attempt to kill this box. Attacking soon is a solution, but in games with more then 2 sides this my not be an option, leaving 1 player to to forgo actually playing the game and instead start playing 'Sim Base', this is not fun and goes against what your supposed to be doing "Fighting army's of robots". At least this is my take on it.
Well , no. I think there is a diference between Strategy and Victory Conditions. but you are correct in that, in this game, you will have do some kind of offensive action to win since we don't have diplomatic or technological victories. I think there should be defensive strategies in this game though. In the amount that you should be able to claim and solidify your hold on a piece of land and then move from there. You should be able to create a good defensive base that is hard crack. What you should not be able to do is to create a base, make it so that is imposible to destroy and then win by throwing a nuke at the enemies commander. I mean you should be able to do that if the enemy is bad enough. But the game should work so that claiming territory equals more money(Sup Com, Warhammer, stuff like that). So in the end a offensive player can crack the defensive player by having more resources than him. That is for 1v1 though. I'm pretty sure FFA games will be so much better if players had the ability to stay in thier corners and defend while other kill themselves. Of course those players will have to pay by generally having a worst economy then other players that were more aggresive.
I'm guessing you're asking how viable turtling strategies would be in PA. While they were very viable in TA due to powerful economic structures like metal makers, FA gave the advantage to those who took control of metal. From what has been said by the devs, this will be the same case in PA, if not more so. Also, note that the initial release will not have any shields, and while TA didn't have any shields to support the turtle-game, it seems to be a good indication as to how the game will be played. Also consider the fact that this is a multi-planetary game (something people seem to be forgetting a lot these days.) Turtling up only invites disaster in the form of kinetic weapons. Add to that the fact that expanding to other planets increases resources by much greater quantities than a turtle could ever hope to achieve. In the end, turtling strategies would not be feasible, just due to the overall goals of PA. That said, I do think it's important that a player that doesn't expand as much is able to keep pace with the rapidly expanding player, at least long enough that they can push out themselves. Otherwise as soon as one player reaches the tipping point, the other player won't be able to beat them no matter how hard they try. (Although, since this is a multi-planetary game, it gives the behind player a better chance at staging a comeback, simply due to the huge amount of attack fronts they can choose from . . .)
Of course, at least one (more than one if it fails) massive attack / artillery bombardment / nuke volley is used to destroy opponents, since there are no economical, technological or diplomatic victory conditions in all-out robot war. The key point of defensive strategy is to attak less often, but with much more firepower. There's also one exception though, structure crawling: you pushing defense lines forward until it's near enemy base, but that one is highly map geometry dependent.
I think it's a matter of degree. Sure, extreme defensive strategies with the singular objective just to outlive your opponents should be avoided. (but at least that is taken care of by being able (at some point) to throw asteroids around) I can think at least of 2 general reasons for defensive strategies: 1) giving the player the choice to time his offensive based on own decisions (e.g. longer defensive phase for build-up of a specific force mix, or shorter when attacking as fast as possible, force distribution between different bases/planets,..) Not forcing the player to go offensive as early as possible, reducing his strategy options and variety in general. 2) strategic locations on the map (resources, terrain, ...) might be a reason for a local defensive strategy As long as the worst case (completely invulnerable base) is avoided (which is a given with one of the main features of the game) defensive strategies (at least locally) can have an useful role in the game. If you make them as good as useless you unnecessarily reduce the players options to choose his own strategy for the game.
Pretty strong poll description manipulation tactics there, OP. Make a super-broad poll topic which most people are bound to agree with and then write about something a lot more specific so you can claim most people are in support of your specific idea. You'll get loads of "yes" votes from people who, quite rightly, are in favour of there being a nonzero number of situations where it its optimal for a nonzero amount of time to successfully execute a defence, but your posts actually make it clear you're talking about exclusively defensive strategies with no effort made to engage the enemy until a game ender is constructed.
Actually supcom2 had a great take on defensive stratagies, if you dont believe me look at this: http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?act=ST&f=3497&t=744440&st=0#entry9269723
While I like the implication of using EW weapons to screw with the enemy in a multitude of ways, and would love to see that explored in PA (Possibly not as direct as a loyalty gun) Turtling in SC2 is really boring, cant say I have ever liked games where I just trade artillery with the enemy until someones shields brake.
This is a pretty broad topic, so I'll talk in broad generalities. In Zero-K there are essentially three strategies: offense, defense, and econ, representing the three broad areas in which you can spend your metal. "Econ" in ZK's case means spending metal on power plants, which feeds energy into the overdrive grid, which makes metal extractors produce more metal. Zero-K is balanced such that: Defense beats offense Econ beats defense Offense beats econ So at the (almost) highest level, you have a game of Rock Paper Scissors. But it's not blind RPS; you can see what your enemy is doing and react to it, so whoever has the best ability to collect intel and change plans accordingly will have the advantage. Which means that, for ZK, defensive strategies are as viable as any other. They'll work just fine if your opponent doesn't counter appropriately and will fail horribly if they do. Just like any other strategy. Nothing is useless and nothing is perfect. Note: The trump card in ZK is territory. The defense>offense>econ triangle only comes into play if the territory control is roughly even. Turtling when you have close to half the map is viable; turtling in your corner is a guaranteed loss.
This is the important part! If you own 50% of the map (or solar system), then nobody will think down of you. I certainly won't. I think those that who claim to be opposed to "defensive strategies" are actually just opposed to having scrub players sit in their little corner and play sim-base.
Actually, everyone promoting 'turtle' tactics ignores the fact that if it's good for the turtler, it's twice as good for the expansionist. So the entire 'waaah they're not promoting my gameplay style' is, I'm sorry, just a cry for validation of a crummy strategy. If you're playing 1v1 versus another player, don't be sad when your bad strategy makes you lose. If you're wanting to build an awesome base and smash lots of enemies which mindlessly throw themselves against your base, play Chicken on Zero-K. Hopefully PA will have something like that mode too - lots of people like it. Just don't try balance the game around it.
Agree. Against strong metal makers for this reason (territory should be primary determinant of income). Defense march should remain a valid strategy. In ZK the triangle crazyeddie detailed a few posts up is not strict, I think there are more ways for an offensive player to beat a defensive player than vice versa even given equal territories. Also most players will be using all 3 of those strategies at the same time. Generally, better players concentrate more on the attack and econ aspects, but econ and defense (with a concerted push) is cool too. One twist on this unique to ZK is that the biggest turrets (e.g. annihilator), while very powerful, need to be linked via a proximity mechanism to a substantial energy grid. A sneak attack to take out the links of such turrets to the grid is often a simple way to defeat hardcore defensive players.
A total annihilation like game could encourages defense more simply by making the wreckages more valuable, so I think maybe the game should have a wreckage metal multiplier to take care of everyone's tastes.
Not everything. For example, if game uses gradual base expansion, which allows to build new buildings only near existing ones, it's OK for turtler, but not anywhere near good for expansionist. Less prominent example is massfab grids (or other buildable resource production system) viability, which is crucial for turtling, but mostly irrevelant for map control play. I highly doubt that defending such a large territory is really possible in general case. It is extremely map geometry dependent and even when terrain allows it's possible only with no air restriction, which is actuclly cutting out 25% of the game, or some kind of extremely long range and powerful AA defence structure (i.e. ZK's Screamer). There is a little possibility to retain map control while turtling, if map is a flat square, and enemy tanks (and bombers) can come from any direction. So I suppose that viability of intensive in-place economics is crucial for defensive play.
I won a ZK game playing defensively with only about a third of the map one time (and the enemy had more eco than us too ; so I won with less eco AND less territory). Although my "defensive" play was really more like a mobile swarm of tanks constantly firefighting intrusions from all directions. That + careful use of walking bombs, mines and other ambush tactics. Was an incredible game, on edge and about to lose at every attack, but somehow I pulled through, ambushed their groups and won with 1 to 1.5 odds, reclaimed the wrecks, repeat repeat repeat. Eventually, my... um, less than ideal allies, finished their Sumo and Reaper and we pushed back to win. Was a total blast to play, even though the game was rather imbalanced (my elo was too high) http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/78581
