New Build Walls Discussion – Good? Bad? Indifferent?

^ This! I remember in C&C and C&C Red Alert units would only automatically fire at walls if they got in the way of their movement. Perhaps this would be a nice balance. That way you can order a group of tanks through some walls and they'll shoot them down only if they get blocked by them.

Another thing I'd like to see if the health bar removed. This would happen automatically if they were wrecks. The health bars look silly on walls.

I like walls the way are now. In the new patch, I feel like building defenses is less complex than it use to be, and the renewed relevance of walls is one of the things that has helped to make up for that. Walls make it even easier to fortify a single location, but do not make it much easier to fortify everything (turtle). That is because the wall is a very cost effective reinforcement to existing defenses, but the defenses themselves (AA and lasers) remain somewhat expensive (though obviously being cheaper now). The strategic implication of this is that you have the option to protect some locations, but you have to choose wisely. It also makes defense building as a response to impending attacks more effective, which I think is nice. I think walls probably have even more potential than this, but that it would require more APM than I can spare right now.

In 1v1 under the current patch, I have never encountered a scenario where an actual row of walls was built, let alone seeing one be effective. In bigger games, rows of walls are mostly just an inconvenience that noobs build. They do seem to be somewhat helpful for stopping mid to late game raids or even ground pushes, but I doubt they are worth it (though I haven't done the math.

Having said all that, I think there are possible versions of PA that are great without walls as they are now, so I wont necessarily get upset if I see them go.

Sounds all like good proposals.

I would also add a couple.

1. Units should never target walls but default (robots can't be that stupid, right?). They should instead try to hit what's behind. If walls are on the way, then the walls will intercept the fire.

2. Also, walls could be graphically a bit taller.

Since walls are so cheap now, and so powerful, point 1. should be a problem.

Beside that, lately I don't build walls at all. I still win most of my online games like a bad ***.

I think they are good how they are now. I think they should be powerful. Walls are walls, you can't just poke a wall and make it fall

My vote for walls would be to move them to the implementation in OTA / Spring.

Walls should be passive, non-target-able structures. Unit's should ignore them from a targeting point of view and attack whatever is behind them (with the walls blocking some of the damage until destroyed). The counter to walls should be to reclaim them, or just go around them (as if they aren't targeted by default all you need to do is come at your target from a different angle). I think size and health of walls aren't an issue if they weren't the default target of units.

You should read about today's Bunker Busters. Walls and fortifications mean nothing to them.

And that's technology we have today. Let alone what we have in the future.

Lol. I wish I could play w/ them...

Have school though

No. Real life bunker busters that our modern military uses.



Bombs that are able to penetrate up to 60 meters of reinforced concrete and blow up whatever is on the other side.

And to be honest, that's the specs for old bunker busters. Whatever the military's latest and greatest bunker busters can probably do a lot more damage than that.

To be fair, we're also supposedly able to produce(in nonpractical quantities) materials that can hold hold an elephant with a one atom thick sheet. Without bending.

So I'd expect those to be more commonplace for defenses in the future as well.

Touché.

I still like the idea of two wall types.

One that is a low height, high health, and low cost. Units can shoot over it and it's mainly meant to force choke points.

The other wall type is taller, costs more, and has less hp – but still a decent amount of HP. This is meant to block direct fire but defensive structures and artillery can shoot over it.

Since the second wall type costs more, it's only really supposed to be put in front of defensive structures, while the other walls can be used to create funnels for enemy units.

Didn't we have pretty much the same in TA?

Edit:

In TA we had dragon's teeth which would block most direct fire from land units but not from turrets as they were taller.
We also had walls which would block pretty much all direct fire in T2 (people didn't use them often IIRC).

Completely off topic comment. We as a species spent something like half of our resources, at any given time in history, to weaponize our societies. Societies that did not comply with this rule, disappeared. Other species do not behave differently, otherwise they would be extinct as well.

So unfortunately, wasting huge resources in offensive/defensive structures seems to be a law of Nature. Yeah, Evolution is a bitch.

Lol, walls..

To be fair, the tall variant was pretty lame. Dragon's teeth were more than good enough for field use.

Ultimately the end goal of a defense is to reduce the options your enemy has to attack. Don't go nuts with them, it's counter productive.