Introducing a new Dev

Nukes may not often kill their equivalent in metal cost but they don't have to. Just ask yourself, if you attack a base with your units, do they often kill their equivalent in metal?

Most likely not as almost all units trade very inefficiently against base defenses.


Also, with some baiting (fake attacks) you can often get a sizable part of the enemy army in their base defending. A nuke on top of lots of units and some t2 factories or power plants (5k for a factory and 2k for the plant) gets you that cost quite fast.

Don't know if this has been suggested already or talked about, 8 pages is a lot to go through, but Turret Defenses seem overly weak to me, understand about the certain gameplay which is aimed for here, going for lot less Turtle gameplay (though I think that's a totally viable tactic if you want to do that you should be aloud to) but for them to die almost instantly seems way to fast to me, not saying make them too damn awesome, just tweaking them so they can tank at least more then 1 shot lol..

Are you serious? They are a turtlers dream, it takes 36 shots from an ant to take one down, assuming theres no wall. Conversely they take out ants in 2 shots, one every second. Considering you cant even build 3 ants for the cost of a turret its clearly not overly weak.

From all the videos I've seen, from my own personally experience, they are so far from a turtles dream, you obviously have never gone up against any air attacks then because my stuff gets wasted almost instantly.. I haven't messed around with the walls yet, and its already confirmed that the ant is getting a bigger buff with the beta so its definitely going to be harder to kill anyway. If you're attack a fortified position with walls, then yeah, your not going to last long if you dont bring enough units, thats a given!!!

Will we be able to see this list by chance?

It is a great feature of PA (as it was in SupCom and TA) to have independent projectiles that move physically correct instead of having homing projectiles like in Starcraft 2. The whole simulation part is a really strong USP for games like PA and should not be abandoned. So missing projectiles are totally fine, even if it contradicts the game lore. It is also a mean of balancing. What makes bots different to tanks? That they are faster and that they are able to dodge tank projectiles while moving. Their tradeoff is their low HP. Imo this is balanced, it gives the player who actively controls his army an advantage and it's also fun. More fun than homing projectiles.

You know there is a middle ground, it's called leading your targets, which SupCom is known for. That's what Colin is talking about, not that everything needs to be a homing round.

Mike

The bot dodging projectiles is fine, but that should be the micro aspect, not trying to micro tanks to hit the bots which is the current problem. by default units should hit other units, not miss.

Its also not an argument of projectiles moving physically correct, but where the units target to hit other units that needs fixing.

This. Real tanks also have to follow real (really real ) physics laws and still can hit a moving target a few kilometers away with ease. So I'd expect the same of tanks in PA.

This also justifies them not being able to hit an air unit, real tanks can't do that either except if that plane was flying straight at it and only a few meters above the ground. It looks like the PA air units are flying close to the ground but that's because the whole planet is smaller.

I don't think it is actually that unrealistic for a high tech tank to shoot down an airplane, so yeah the "this is how it works in reality" argument isn't really gonna help a lot.

I promise you there's no tank (except for those with homing missiles) which can shoot down an airplane if that airplane isn't trying to get hit by it.

Well PA with tankshells hitting their target precicely over a distance of kilometres just would be boring, although it would be logic lore wise. But realistically spoken the tankshells in PA have to miss because they fly with a much lower speed than in reality. So if you want 100% precise tankshots they have to hit instantaneously (or else they would fly curves), which then would lead to worse readability and no good feeling when controling your units. Actually it is pretty fun to be able to dodge ballistic projectiles, so that should stay. It's not that every tank can dodge every shell, because units move in big blobs the splash damage hits them anyway.

Fun fact: Even C&C 1 (and after that every other C&C too) had tankshells that could miss moving objects, and that was one important part about the micro of C&C games, because it added a sandboxy feeling to the game where "everything is possible", whereas in Starcraft for example everything is determined by rules. TA also followed the "everything is possible" approach, even more than C&C did. The newly developed C&C which is currently in Alpha does not have that feature of indipendent projectiles anymore and earns lots of critic for that. I bet also PA would earn lot of critic if a feature that was present in TA and SupCom would be scrapped.

Yes I know PA is about macro, but why not let some features in to let players also set themselves apart with better micro.

And yes, being able to build a leader unit that enables tanks to fire more precicely would be a good idea and compromise. The leader would then make the other units target at the future positions of moving objects, and this would still enable active players to change movement directions and thus avoiding beeing hit. A player who is actively controlling his army should be rewarded somewhat, it should make a difference if a player controls his units in a fight and he should not feel as if he just watches a battle, but instead commands a battle.

You don't understand what is going on here, no one is asking for homing rounds that always hit, what we are asking for is for units to Lead thier targets, not shooting at where the unit IS, but where it would be if nothing changes about it's movement.

Basically the same deal as SupCom1/FA.

Mike

Wouldn't that make ground units hit air units much more effectively?

Assuming they are moving in a straight line and maintaining the same speed, Yes, but there are a lot of different factors at play and it's not quite that easy to say or explain.

Mike

What the system lacks, is an enforced, parametrized inaccuracy in leading the target, which must be in place both for automatic targeting and groundbased manual targeting. (Not the generic inaccuracy vs immobile targets!)

Thats something quite easy to balance, because it is something you can calculate. You can specify a specific chance to dodge while a movement is moving with a specific speed. All inside the simulation and you are NOT running into the risk that someone would be able to exploit it like it is happening with the current approach of limiting the turret turn speed.

Isn't that only the case if you assume a static target profile? couldn't things like target facing and height differences between the target and the shooter could lead to the actual hit chance being different from the calculated hit chance?

Mike

This really is all we are asking for.

Really, they do a decent job already. They just need mildly better understanding of, given a unit's direction and speed, where they will be when the shell has time to hit.

This way, when you click attack on a unit moving in a straight line, the tank will fire in front of it enough to land a direct hit when it meets up. No curving, if the unit isn't actually there then it misses as should. The unit itself should just do a better job at aiming ahead of time though.

Besides that, micro only benefits little, leave it in if you must.

Yes, the actual hit chance could be better than expected when shooting in plane into a dense group since you are going to hit a target anyway or when the target is approaching you head on and you are using direct fire weapons.

It couldn't be much worse though, because even when you fired at a different plane (or high arced into the same plane) you still had the spread which covered possible changes in movement.

Target facing and height differences have no impact at all, at least not for targets with a near cubic collision box. This only really affects ships when fired at from the front with direct fire weapons, but then again, they wouldn't be affected be the spread at all in that specific scenario.

So: Taking a direct fire unit in the same plane head on, is something you can't dodge, since even "misaimed" shots are still going to hit the target. Every other combination can not be (much) worse than the calculated hit chance and not much better either.

Perfect linear prediction for precise leading alone is a dangerous thing, because it ensures a 100% hit chance when not countered by any type of inaccuracy. The prediction for the lead may be accurate both in terms of space and time, but the execution most not be.

A inaccuracy in space (we already have that) ensures a miss chance against ALL targets. The chance of hitting the target is a constant and only depends on the spread and the targets size.

A inaccuracy in time (this is what we are missing in PA!) ensures a miss chance which is depended on the targets current movement speed. However contrary to classic dodging, this miss chance can not be influenced by the user and it can never become 100%.