Masterplan for artillery?

Ok, i want ask about plans for artilleryunits. In TA arty-units had a more important roll.
There were those pop-up cannons, the guardian and this lasertower (annihilator? dont get the name atm).

Will there be artilleryunits that have more power and impact then the ones we have in the current build of PA?

It's wierd, because the holkins has the longest range of any unit in PA and enough damage to kill a commander in 2 to 4 hits depending on how much splash.

They are pretty strong, but TA had mapwide artillery and an actual map limit. It is like if PA had interplanetary artillery. And that would be hard to balance if too strong, a tactic would be turtle'n'shell to win.

Now, a larger variety of artillery and stronger ones? I doubt it but it would be cool.

No, i dont meant how much damage the make. Its more a look and feel thing. So the pelter and the holkins are nearly the same unit and both are not as impressive as i would suggest a (heavy) artillery installation.

I know this game is about mass units and scale. I dont want to favour turtel play, but some more defensive(or offensive) installations are missing compared to TA...

Asking for the Holkins to look cooler?

I'm on it.

+1 for pop-up cannons, I think those would be even more valuable in PA than they were in TA.

We need a short range, Phalanx-style autocannon to deal with these hordes of Dox.

Popo-ups are useless because the armor bonus only matters when the turret isn't shooting, which negates the purpose of the armor bonus in the first place.

Not against air attacks ...

Or artillery fire.
Pop-up cannons in TA would even survive a nuke.

I'd love to see the pelter fall more into a guardian / punisher role. Fairly heavily armored medium range base defense. Right now with its paper thin armor and high trajectory fire that results in a very long flight time it just seems useless.

Yes I'm aware that in the alpha it had a much lower trajectory which resulted it in outshining the laser towers as a base defense, but this could be solved a number of other ways. I'd give it a low trajecotry, scale damage up, ROF down, give it a small splash radius, and a minimum range. That way it could soften heavier targets, or punch holes in blobs of lighter targets. Fast targets could close in the distance to engage so you'd have to back it up with laser turrets or it could easily be overrun.

...or nukes, or orbital lasers, or asteroid smashes.

Personally, I think the problem with artillery in PA is the economy.

It's all focused on exponential growth, with little to no feedback loops. In short, that results in ridiculous amounts of metal being available at any point of the match.

TA and also SupCom artillery were mostly game enders. Expensive to build, but equally powerful.

With PAs current eco, metal value isn't discouraging the construction of expensive units (unless of course there is a cheaper/easier alternative), so making units possible game enders can't be balanced by any means.
Nukes are an exception since they are hard countered by anti nukes.

The infamous SXX snipe however shows perfectly how rentles players are able to spend metal rathe, executing near inevitable (not counting in exploits like hiding your Commander in a transport) game ending tactics rather early in the game.

They haven't worked for this goal. They just happened to have the eco to spam game enders in addition to pumping out regular units for suicide missions.

With working feedback loops in the eco (and in return nerved mex yields!), enmassing the metal for game ender weapons would be a far more difficult task, since paying of such an unit purely from mex income would be unfeasible.

You would need to rely either on savings or on "donations" from your enemies. First one would prove that your enemies didn't do anything to hinder you for at least 10-15 minutes, second one would prove that your defenses are impenetrable and your enemy was foolish to send his army on a suicide mission. (And also that he did literally gift you the metal for a game ender....)

Both scenarios indicate a stale mate which justifies the existence of a game ender. These indicators simply don't exist in the current game, since the eco always comes eventually to the point where game ender class units can be considered "cheap", even while the battle has neither come to a stalemate yet nor one player is clearly dominant.

Hiding com in aestrus isn't an exploit, it's a limitation of the SXX

It is also actually more risky, since orbital fighters can equally snipe this instantly upon entering orbit right atop it, and orbital fighters are cheaper than SXX.

I don't believe SXX can hit air, isn't pelicans better for this as long as you have planet control? Or at the very least, an astraeus in the air layer?

Actually I do mean both. Both the Astreus on endless patrol (which in fact IS invulnerable, since there is no delay at all, unlike the time required for Avengers to adjust their weapon bone, we are talking about a window of 1/10th of a second here), as well as a Pelikan flying circles in an area where no AA could possibly be ever deployed.

The only counter to extreme range artillery is shields, not enough people demanded shields so the end result is nerfed artillery. Enjoy.

Not really...
It did work like this in SupCom on some maps, but for different reasons. Mostly because some maps were too big for anything short of T3 rush being feasible so it suffered from the same problems PA would have now, artillery popping up way to soon, sometimes even before the first batch of units made it once across the map.

What else do you think the Catalysts on metal planets are, if not the equivalent of fatal long range artillery? They somewhat behave like artillery, even though they still suffer from the same problem every other game ender in PA has: They are still too cheap, even given their ridiculous cost, there's just nothing you couldn't eventually pay off on your own in PA. As a result - just like in SupCom - the only real counter is to destroy the artillery while under construction. Because face it, even if you have shields on all of your bases in SupCom, artillery has still a ton of unprotected targets to choose from and it's one of the most valuable targets your enemy has to offer.

Plus, they currently lack an enforced precharge delay of a few minutes, since - given the eco problems - these can pop up quite fast. SupCom didn't have this on artillery either, only on nukes. Building artillery is the equivalent of declaring "Check", and being able to fire is the equivalent of "Check Mate". Even though SupCom tried to lever that by relying heavily on the shield mechanic, reducing it from fatal threat to a simple harassment.

I think long range, planet spanning artillery could actually work in PA, not in the role of a game ender, but as a dedicated harassment. Sufficient ground footage, permanent energy upkeep cost which increases footage even further by enforcing additional energy plants, and finally a rather low damage splash projectile. Not enough to kill a commander or to weed out a base - possibly not even enough to counter the repair power of a handful of fabbers - but still enough to provide fire support against unprotected targets like roaming T1 patrols or sole mexes, out of range of any fabber which could possibly repair them.

Somewhat inspired by this beast in mechanics: http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Aeon_T3_Rapid-Fire_Artillery_Installation Even if damage should still be scaled down quite a lot, making a single shot non lethal for anything bigger than a T1 scout.

I thought so as well until I played the game.

Considering the number of threads we have discussed this, especially shields all I can say is LOL.

No there were huuuge threads discussing shields about shields. The bottom line though was that Uber was pretty indifferent on them, but that they'd take to much dev time and that the general response from community was nooo thank you.

Edit: What, said there were a double post.