Hotfix build 77725 now live

It could be a firing arc issue; the smaller the planet, the greater the curvature, meaning the greater arc needed at max range to hit a target in orbit. On small planets, this may be greater than the max defined angle in the umbrella.

Realisticly, given that umbrellas are firing coherent beams of ions, they "should" be able to fire anywhere in LOS. There is no projectile drop and its not a missile that will run out of fuel. I understand the gameplay reasons not to implement this, as two or three umbrellas could then lock down a planet (or entire system). With the recent addition of anti orbital tac missiles I would like to see the umbrellas moved towards being most effective against drop pods and fighters/fabbers and less so against buildings. Anti orbital missiles should be able to engage from outside an anchor's range, but have a chance to be shot down.

Going back a step in this conversation. Bluehawks are the T2 bots, they should be able to shoot anchors (I've certainly seen them shoot other orbital units), so maybe there is a planet size bug.

@boylobster said "flew" under the anchors, which sounds like he's getting his unit names mixed up. The T2 bomber (Hornet) can't hit orbital (http://pa-db.com/unit/bomber_adv) so will just sit there and get shot, that's to be expected.

I suspect he may have gotten them mixed up too, but the Bluehawk problem is definitely there, and not just on very small planets.

I've successfully made them fire at orbital units, but never Anchors. Might be a simple programming oversight.

Meanwhile Anchors are quickly becoming the premier sniping/early cheese tool. I've killed a bunch of commanders just by building a single one over the enemy base early on, and it's easy to completely lock down a moon for later expansion by building a few of them. I sometimes see players just rush orbital and build them on every planet they can reach to claim terrain. The quick build speed, ground vision + large range and rapid fire really are making them very overpowered, and the SXX is almost obsolete thanks to it.

I hope an anti-Anchor orbital unit is in the cards relatively soon.

I disagree... SXXs aren't nearly obsolete, I think they're even better than the Anchors right now Maybe people just need some time to get used to orbital being more useful now? I still hate Umbrella versus Anchor creeping though. One of them needs to have clearly longer range to stop it being so... fuzzy.

Umbrellas should definitely always have longer range. Otherwise getting into orbital first and getting one Anchor up above the opponent is pretty much an instant win. You need more than a dozen Avengers to take down an Anchor in the current build, which is good, but it does mean that Anchors early game have no counters whatsoever if or when they outrange Umbrellas.

I spend some time spectating a live game, but second counter in steam did not increase. I joined the game when it was already in progress, so it might be caused to this. Also, why does spectating after you are destroyed not count towards the achievement?

I LOVE the new SXX laser.

So much better then that attempted super weapon from before.

I disagree

I think that umbrellas should have longer range than the anchors. Anchors really need to be primarily defensive (still capable of offense though) that way planetary defense is greater than orbital. The SXX should be the ground offensive satellite, rather then people using anchors to attack. Let the anchors be a method to secure space over a planet. It would also be nice if nukes were better balanced do they could clear out umbrellas that are heavily defended.

+1. Umbrellas should outrange anchors without any micro.

Can you no longer build random planets in AI skirmish?

Random planet generation has temporary been removed due to some of its limitations. They plan to add in a better version soon.

CHECK AND MATE, lol. Thank you for lifting the veil of ignorance.

...why the hell would you go and name a ground unit a blue hawk???

updated OP

Hotfix build 77582
-Stability fixes for Server.exe and PA.exe crashes
-Fix for Orbital Launcher on water

[Retracted]

urm the launcher won't update to 77582 for me. Any suggestions? "Sanity test" flashes up for 0.1 seconds when I press play or verify, but then nothing else happens.

I am not seeing this behavior -- launcher works here. Can you please post the contents of %localappdata%\Uber Entertainment\UberLauncher\UberLauncherLog.txt?

Just want to say that as soon as I clicked Create Game in the new build, the game froze on what's usually the "login successful" screen, except now there was no text on it.

Probably a fluke and I expect to be able to create a game when I reenter the game, but it means the the game is still not very stable.

Edit: I was too hopeful. Still can't create a game after 4 retries.

Deleted it (to clear of the last like 20 attempts) then started the launcher and pressed play, then verify.