Ineter-Planetary Artillery

You know I have a feeling this is often forgotten when people are discussing Interplanetary tactics....

Inter-planetary artillery, in order to fire, must adhere to the following principle.

• Have vision of target(s)... Radar blips or actual vision.. Like normal Artillery
• EDIT.....FORGOT.................... TARGET AND FIRING PLANETS MUST HAVE ORIBITAL RELATIONSHIP

Special in-game things that make this not terribly OvP are listed below

• Planets rotate and orbit other celestial bodies... which means that artillery will have very limited firing time to hit the targets.. and the windows for firing on one unique target will be far and few in-between
• vision, while not terribly hard to obtain, can be difficult to maintain. If the players are equally skilled this will add a new level of importance to vision
• Orbital layer becomes more important, The radar satellites become important for target acquisition, and they provide an excellent focal point, in addition to the cannons obviously, for an attack by a competent defender.

One additional celestial-body-feature that could affect the balance, while adding a touch of realism would be,

• Axial wobbling..
• System manager options to change planet axial rotation and wobble, in addition to the current orbital path adjustment system.

How would this system acquire targets.... And effects on hit statistics

• The artillery should have a circular range that projects from the origin planet to the target planet... Obviously not to exceed a set range
• The likelihood of a "direct-hit" should be a function of the angle and whether or not your targeting a building or "moving" object.

1. All objects, in relation to the artillery, are moving... be it structures or units or whatever.. yeah I kinda understand that. Then again this would be for damaging infrastructure in preparation for a primary invasion.

The Artillery's munition type?

• we have a beam satellite.. and I'm not partial to adding beams where they shouldn't belong...
• single shell? not enough oommphh for some big honking interplanetary cannon....
• I really liked the fire animation and munition type that belonged to Sup Com's Quantum artillery. More shells and greater dispersion.\

Personal Caveats

• This artillery is not moon-to-planet only.. It should work both ways granted the requirements of vision are met however..... Planets with a larger radius and by assumption larger mass, would require more energy to fire from planet surface to orbiting body. A lot more.

Don't Forget that this invasion tool would benefit the invader rather then the defender providing there is a distinct power difference and the defender attacker relationship is "planet to moon" for moon-moon or moon-planet defender attacker scenarios, nukes would be more apt due to their damage range and the relatively small size of moons

• The planetary defender already has an infrastructure bonus and "immediate forces" bonus.. the artillery on the attackers orbiting moon they just "halley-ed" over should help compensate, but by no means be the primary factor.

additional banter....

• I'd do a sample in relation to earth and our moon but I'm not as adept at Photoshop and other image editing software to convey what im trying to say with picture.... so i hope my words are good enough..

DONT FORGET THIS EXISTS AS AN OPTION..... lets discuss this,

This is not a game of interplanetary iShoot.

Interplanetary artillery would be ridiculously OP because it is so easy to defend. Unit Cannons won't be because they have quite a few limitations on their operation, and they destroy a significant part of your base without a risk involved.

This artillery can't function the same as normal artillery because of planetary rotation.. just the same as unit cannon

eh, I'm ok with the idea, albeit target solutions using planetary curvature should let you hit from anywhere pretty much to anywhere. Including the orgin planet, anywhere. That's how gravity works anyway xept without atmosphere which makes this game invalid altogether.

as far as gameplay, I always thought this was just a place for catapults. Make them produce missiles like nukes, costly but still cheap, assistable, store like 5 or so for multifire, and make them interplanetary. In case nukes end up with different ranged missiles, make catapult missiles different ranged so interplanetary ones could be quite expensive

then make anti able to store many missiles, and have anticatapults as well, so it can function as antimissile. I say two different antimissiles because you don't want antinukes wasted on catas or anticatas to be op and take down nukes or either to overlap and delay so a nuke slips an anti.

This is the main reason that I don't think this is a good idea. It's not very intuitive to use, and this makes it one of the most complicated units in the game. People will be confused why it only fires some of the time, and it is difficult to tell when it can and cannot fire unless you zoom out to the orbital layer and check the positions of the planets. Artillery should be something that just works on its own.

Edit: Overall I think the idea of inter-planetary artillery would be cool, but it shouldn't have complex restrictions and it should be more of an attrition unit rather than a siege unit.

yeah
I know that you could hit the planet using gravity to your advantage at any point.... but from a balance perspective the artillery would become more OP

It would auto fire like other artillery units.... just when additional criteria are met.

Right, but the first time somebody builds one, they'll see its not firing, zoom out to orbital and see it's range, tell it to attack, and be confused why its not firing. It would be difficult to show the user it's restrictions in an intuitive way. Sure you could just write a long unit description for it, but every unit should really be able to be summed up in a single sentence.

Also, what if there are several moons orbiting your planet? Could you only fire when the moons aren't in the way? Obviously you don't want the rounds clipping through other planets, so you'd have to do some complex collision checks before you can even fire. What if you build the artillery on the north pole? Could you then always fire at the other planet? There are a lot of complex questions that come up when you introduce complex restrictions.

If the artillery is facing away from your target..... as in it is on the opposite side of the moon.... it cant fire... that is intuitive....
If you can't see your target that is intuitive, and you should get vision.....
If your target is out of range... click on your unit to see it's range.. that is intuitive..

Where or what will the intuition be associated with?

It is not possible to fire an unguided projectile from one orbital body to another. Let alone fire and hit the backside of another planet.

Objects that travel between planets must be guided.

We already have interplanetary artillery, it's called interplanetary nukes.

I think it would just be simpler to give it a spherical range and have it fire some sort of semi-guided projectile that transfers between planets just like nukes/orbital units do. That way they could re-use that system instead of making a separate one just for these projectiles.

If by guided you mean capable of coarse correction then your wrong.... And if you mean guided as in you need to calculate a trajectory from origin to target then that applies to everything in which case is an invalid point.

Why have artillery artillery at all then according to you, nukes are good enough justification?

I'm not suggesting that projectiles be allowed to hit the back side of planets.. that's not what i want... I want Line of sight trajectories only as to limit the capabilities of this device... not to mention nukes don't require vision, they require "intel"... IPA requires vision. There is a big difference

I just assumed that sticking booms into the unit cannon would be effectively the same thing...

Mavor mentioned this in a livestream. He said Interplanetary Artillery will eventually come, but it's not a priority. (I can't give you a source right now.) I know, everything is subject to change, so we can't be sure.

If you only want line of sight, then it'll be incredibly difficult to use when you time the line of sight. The UI for that would be a nightmare and using that artillery piece would be unlike anything else in the game.

Why limit yourself to just a very limited range when you can hit anywhere with nukes?

There's tons of awesome things that could be added to the game that would be cooler and more functional than this.

Each time one of these threads come up they're largely rejected by the community.

I am suggesting a limited range on the artillery for the same reason you would limit the range of ALL damage capable units... balancing purposes.

We have no Idea how the user interface would play out...

I imagine selecting the artillery and selecting a planet to "Aim" at then it will attempt to aim at that planet and fire at possible targets.

What turrets and artillery require manual input for firing? none..
It can be set to auto-prioritize buildings over units.

People are already complaining about current artillery and catapult range on small planetoids and want them limited. How fair over powered would it be to apply physical realism to this proposed idea and allow bombardment of a single point in space at any orbital location?
It wouldn't be fun or balanced.

How about instead of saying how "in-functional" this idea is how about you provide an example and instead saying how the community will reject the idea, you wait for the thread to accurately gauge the communities interest.

Map crossing artillery in SupCom was bad enough.

No, this is a very bad idea.

So what you're saying is that some people don't like the prospect of being bombarded without a way to stop it, and you want to expand that to allow for turtles on a planet have the ability to bombard other planets?

There's no way to stop being shot at.

People would hate it.

Except, this has been suggested quite a few times over the past months. So I have waited for to gauge the community's interest.

Range is a factor subject to change.

catapults cant be countered unless they are destroyed... For this IPA you just have to destroy the the cannon OR the vision.. Easier then current artillery and catapults.