No counter to 5x SSX1304 lasers ?

Lasers should take a few seconds to come online after interplanetary travels.
Because currently, if you know exactly where the enemy commander is on another planet, you can build 5 lasers and attack move them on the commander, they will travel there and instakill the commander as soon as they come into orbit. No matter how many anchors surround his commander, he will die.
This of course can also work if the enemy commander is on your own planet, just send your lasers to another planet and bring them back with an attack move.
Exploit? I think so.

I didn't even know you could properly attack move interplanetary units. I'm assuming it's as easy as you say, so it probably should be changed. If Anchors can't handle it, it's overpowered, even if it's not severely overpowered.

Have you tried keeping your commander on a decent-sized patrol path, protected by umbrellas and anchors?

However a similar issue right now is that if you move a load of anchors at the same time, the lasers are not prioritised which they of course should be.

Patrols don't work with the new SSX they track and kill without problem.
Not sure if the interplanetary attack move will still work on a moving commander but anyway the scenario I describe shouldn't be allowed to happen.

Explain? Are you saying SXX does not fire directly below it and can aim at things at an angle? Then perhaps you need a larger patrol path.

Attack move is a silly choice because that would attack anything. You would queue up a move command followed by attack command on the commander (perhaps just an attack command would also move the unit, I don't know).

What I mean IS an attack command on the commander, from another planet. The SSX can shoot at a slight angle.

Right so as I said if you have a decent sized patrol route for your commander, how are they going to land directly above him and kill him? It takes a couple seconds to kill the lasers so you would have to land directly above him which would be very difficult to accurately time without a huge amount of practice and a perfect knowledge of the commander's patrol route.

I think the main issue is how position is resolved after arriving in another sphere of influence. After the 'capture burn' the traveling unit just... appears exactly over wherever you sent it. That seems hecka wrong.

Also I haven't checked but if you send lasers with an attack command on a patrolling commander on another planet, those lasers might actually appear right above him even if he was miles away when you placed that command.
You might need to maintain intel all along during the trip.

I'm not using a move command with the lasers, I use an attack command

Either way I don't think we should require to set one's commander on a patrol route to be safe. One should be able to turtle all he wants without having to worry about someone pulling a move like that.
100 Anchors should be able to kill a few lasers as they pop onto them into orbit before they're able to shoot.

This is something I discovered last week, much to burntcustard's dismay. They enter orbit and immediately fire. There should be a short delay, at the least, so umbrellas or anchors can take them down. Having the mindset to watch for them, too, and keeping your comm by a stargate would be a good idea.

every time I see "SSX" I think of the "SSX Tricky" snowboarding game for original xbox. "EA sports... BIG" was the intro spash screen (as much as I hate EA for killing Westwood studios, but that's a different topic), followed by the games theme song by Run DMC "Tricky... It's Tricky!! woot woot". good times.



ok, sorry.

this thread may now return to its originally assigned topic.

Ok so I just tested this.
If the commander is on patrol and you do that attack command with your lasers from another planet no-matter whether you have intel during full transit time or lose it right after you ordered the attack, the laser will show up in orbit at the location where the commander was when you placed the attack command.

The ancient attack move exploit is still valid, if you only have intel when you place the attack command (then I turned off my radars), and the commander is long gone by the time the laser arrives, the laser will still know exactly where to head to go find that target.
Maybe it extrapolates its probable location based on the direction the target was heading but I have the feeling it just knows exactly where to go.

So yes ZaphodX the commander on patrol will prevent the scenario described in the original post from happening. It's still OP though.

No that's the whole point @SXX is supposed to be O.P. <3

Why? If you leave your commander idle you deserve to get sniped. So putting him on a patrol route is just a basic late game comm preservation tactic. So if you can't snipe someone in the way you mentioned, why is it op?

I personally think one shot kill tactics are rather cheap. The astreaus + vanguard drop is another one that is poor. Putting the commander on patrol is reasonable enough to prevent insta kill lasers (but the no intel bug needs to be fixed). The astreaus dropping a vanguard without passing through the defence layers also needs fixing.

The whole point of a game like this is the fun of managing large armies, dealing with large scale battles and reacting to the changing circumstances all this presents you. I'm personally against tactics that present you with inta win (I don't count asteroid smashing as you can spot it coming and get outa there!). Nukes, although currently OP are counter-able as well.

I think I heard at gamma launch that some form of stealth was being considerer- making the comm that much harder to find would certainly help prevent allot of this.

I don't think "not setting the commander to perform a constant patrol around a circular path of radius 250/some other value" should be a losing condition for the game, but that's just me.

As for the laser snipe itself though, I don't think it's feasible, at least not until you're swimming in Eco. Those things are expensive, and chances are your opponent will see you building them, so I think this exploit isn't usually a good idea to bother using.

I think the interplanetary travel exploit is more of a problem for other reasons, as some units can be sent to and from a moon sooner than they can be moved from one side of a large planet to the other, and can be moved back and forth to avoid traveling through orbital defenses and to avoid fire by attacking/unloading quickly and being sent back off planet to avoid umbrellas.
Something about interplanetary travel should be changed so that hopping back and forth can't be used this way.

Im thinking we need another zone above orbital where the orbital units arrive into then descend to the orbital layer. Similar to astraeus movement from planet to orbital and back where it is still partially vulnerable to attacks.

Doesn't the "Astraious?" currently have a bug where it doesn't need to actually decent to drop off a unit?

That fix might make or brake any vanguard drop....as to be expected.

Edit: whoops....umm

So instant firing lasers are a problem?

Ehh, I never find the time to finish building them, however.

Could they have a charge up time to attack? To lock on with a targeting laser effect so players on the ground can see a "imm a charging mah laser" guy in orbit and attempt to invade?

Sort of like the siren sound for asteroids and nukes....a little additional effect or something for the player to sense (With something that isn't their eyes) that a super weapon has been fired.

A cool charge up sound?