Gameplay, Units & Balance

I thought the catapult answer was make it so missiles don't re acquire targets after their initial target was destroyed???? Taking away auto fire??? Might as well remove it all together..... force firing each shot ?? Ain't nobody got time for that!!!!

True enough. But compared to someone getting a t2 vehicle factory....

Adv. Air is possible to, I just played a 5v5 where the enemy did it. It was a 5v5, the eco was a little more feasible to do it, and they would have won if air was the silver bullet everyone says it is, but we scouted one by themselves early and I had a radar erected right, and I mean right, outside their visual range, followed by a laser tower and 2 pelters, followed by awkwardly angled pelter creep. That enemy commander didn't make it easy, but we took him kicking and screaming among the next 10 minutes, and they had t2 bombers up by then, but if we didn't raid like we did the t2 bombers would have done it.

It nearly killed our commander(s) even with the few they had got up that early. Literally had to build t1 AA bots assisting on the commanders while they entered the enemy base early game, to stay barely alive, and they were barely able to get the bombers off before they dropped the last of the bombs killing our commander(s).

Bottom line, people will complain about air, but we beat that, and people will then complain about artillery like catapult and pelter creep, and when you do those you get intercepted on building artillery by t1 army blobs and complain about those, and those army blobs get nuked and you complain about those, and your nuke gets bombed by bombers and you complain about those... Generally the game is fun, is all the complaining proves.

i know it was a 2v1 against the ai, but I got 15 or so t2 bombers by 10:30. Would work perfectly fine in a bigger map.

My original question was about medic bot comm rush..... not about what beats what or what is best for what. Also you prove my point you go t2 air immediately you die. So about the comm rush??? Guess if this medic bot is t2 its a non issue.....

Oooo wow against the ai bet that was hard.....j/s 1v1 and try it. I see lots of ladder players use comm rush currently......

so they had bombers at 20 minutes then??

We used a variant of com-rush, but it would have failed/they died if it wasn't softened by very early pelter creep. Though I focused on what I did, even if commanders died or I had done something else, I think we would have won with 1 commander or if I had focused elsewhere on raiding. I just think that early stomp-out was fairly effective.

And they had bombers up by 4 according to scouting which is when I moved to perimeter them with pelters, and when the commanders went in around 10 they had very few numbers of t2 bombers. Apparently, they read on the forums t2 bombers are OP so they put the whole enchilada into getting those, only not to have enough by time we were fully invading on their commander.

By end of the game, they had an 8-row of air factoriy along with 3 advanced air factories in full production and if I am not mistaken 1 assisting each basic and 4 assisting the advanced. Thank god one of us focused early on huge blobs of t1 fighters, it wasn't instant but over time we reduced their air numbers to 0.

I'm not against imprecision. I"m against the mechanic of deflection based on the random number god.

There is no "always on the move exploit". You make artillery attack ground location, without target leading. If the unit is "always on the move but really stationary", artillery doesn't lead it at all, so it hits its current location. If the unit is "really stationary", artillery doesn't lead it at all, so it hits its current location. And if the unit is actually on the move, artillery doesn't lead it, so it can't snipe it, and instead hits part of the blob.

You're forgetting that the Pelter IS a structure, and does not outrange itself.

"Not every shot has to connect for artillery bombardment to have predictable results" is a complete fallacy in regards to a pelter vs pelter dual. That should be a perfect draw.

What are you talking about? The position of the shell and the position of the explosion IS randomly decided by some arbitrary dice roll. That's what random deflection means. It means that a pelter vs pelter battle is decided by whoever sacrificed more to the random number god. There's only 3 shots in that dual. First person to get 3 splash shots on target, or 1 splash shot and a direct hit, wins. And that is decided solely by the random number god.

Further, when splash damage is fixed so it is splash damage (and not area of effect damage), the pelter's splash will presumably do 150 damage at the point of impact, and less damage according to distance from that explosion. Which causes the "more accurate" pelter to win the dual by a much greater margin. The pelter whose shots were more on target on average wins.

Perfect draws do not happen. And Pelter vs Pelter duels is a weirdness from PA's relatively immature state that should go away. You shouldn't be constructing static artillery within range of enemy static artillery. You should be bringing mobile artillery to attack an enemy base, especially if it is defended with static artillery you want to destroy from range.

Just because a single shell has a random inaccuracy doesn't mean the behavior of the artillery is governed by random chance. You should shell areas which contain as many enemy units and buildings as possible because it means your artillery does more damage. Firing at a single enemy target in an open field and going "wow. such fire. much miss. so random." is completely missing the point. You have to use your artillery taking its inaccuracy into account. Not use it as if it were perfectly accurate and complain about misses.

If you are saying there should be random deflection that does not lead shots, I would agree that that approach makes a lot of sense. But if artillery is perfectly accurate, such that it will hit a single enemy unit's exact position unless it moves, then you really are forcing the other player to ensure their units are always moving. And you are forcing the artillery user to target fire enemies that are not moving, if there are any.

Perfect draws do happen. Stop theorising, and play the game.

At t1, bringing mobile artillery isn't an option. At t2, mobile artillery doesn't outrange holkins/catapults.

I suggest you think about that sentence for a while, and then think about turn based games you've played, and then resume thinking about that sentence.

Exactly. Read scathis's post again a couple of times. You're forcing artillery to only be effective against a large group of units, while still allowing sufficient weight to push through static defences.

Idk, if the missiles fabricate fast enough, store 10 per catapult, and with area attack commands, you could actually make it pretty reliably volley a group of structures OR an incoming army, but limiting it's constant use to just destroy everything in an area period.

It is in my opinion an acceptable way for it to go. Autofire would even be worthy to keep if it fabricated missiles, meeting in the middle.

After hearing this comment, Garat, I just had to.

Oh! I got a balance issue that maybe you could fix?

Stop units shooting through their own buildings. It makes raiding hard and it's a bit unfair when army of tanks can't kill a laser turret because it's behind a factory, but that turret kills my army.

Stardoge.

Here's an idea for Arty/TML: MRSI Volleys/Sub-munitions.

The trick comes with how they spread, against a static target the grouping remains tight and the destructive power concentrated, but against a moving target the spread widens in proportion to how fast it's going.

This removes the need for playing too much with accuracy settings but lessens the effectiveness of them against all but big blobs of units.

Assume everything you know about the balance of PA is going away.

I am creating a new foundation to build from. One that can carry us into final ship.

I am going to start posting this everywhere just an FYI.

Mike

I'm especially liking the idea of those "medics" that were being talked about.
But all those ideas are impressive and definitely go into the right direction imo. Quicker build time for combat units? Awesome!

Brianpurkiss actually mentioned a problem with avengers being built by orbital fabs instead of the orbital launchers, and I agree with him. You should check out his thread.
I think it's one of those units that you need a lot of. And that's why I'd prefer having to build multiple factories (orbital launchers) for it. I can't really explain why. My gutt tells me so, as the Americans might phrase it.

If you guys continue to go on like this, this game will become absolutely legen-wait for it-dary.

The only thing built by orbital launchers, at the moment, are orbital fabs, landers, and the basic radar satellite.