I have been playing PA a fair bit, and have had some very unique situations as well (Pretty sure I had the first aerial Commander vs Commander fight in PA history) and have noticed a few balance issues overall. I understand more units are on the way, but these observations are mostly to help guide how some of those units might function. I just want to clarify, most of my balancing is not "This does too much damage" but more of the type of, "My enemy is spamming this unit, how should I counteract that?". For every action there should be a counter action. Problems: Basic Naval: Ignoring the balance of naval units, defending from them is awkward. Most of them have very long range and as a result defending can be really strange, even if you have a number of pelters on the shore line. Fix: Torpedo launchers should have a longer range, currently they are basically outranged by everything they are trying to kill. Pelters almost effectively act as a good counter. Personally, I believe they just need a very minor range increase, but maybe a decrease in structure based damage. Advanced Naval: In one word, broken. Stingrays 1 hit that 8000 metal ship you just bought, and your subs and well, just about anything. I'll get to Stingrays later, but for now, as a whole, for their cost, advanced ships should be more robust HP wise. Sonars also extend so far, submarines have very little use, even if you are defending. Fix: Double the HP of advanced naval units. Lower range of sonar. Artillery OP: Title says it all. The Stingray is the best point and case here. It can move. It has insane range. It one hits almost anything it sees. Catapult is similar but fortunately that doesn't move. Holkins is also a similar issue. If a decent defence is setup by your opponent, by the time you get close to them with your force, half of it is gone and you will just lose your army. Moreover, if these are in range of your base, well, good luck getting anything done. The only practical counter to artillery is more artillery than that artillery... which you can't build because artillery. Air units, Advanced or Basic do not do enough damage to take down artillery so long as they have some really basic air defences. As a result, any sustained conflict becomes an artillery war. Fix: My personal belief is that you need a shield unit (Yes I said the taboo word). A stationary shield is not going to work. It doesn't encourage taking out the artillery, it encourages sitting in the one spot and and building more artillery. The brilliant thing about PA here is that projectiles are actually that, projectiles. Not magic homing missiles (unless they are meant to be). If something gets in their way, they hit it. Because of this, you can have a mobile umbrella like shield generator. And I don't mean the umbrella unit, but a shield which only protects from aerial attacks. This gives land units a method of approach under high artillery fire. I'll come back to this unit again later. Orbital OP: Well since the umbrella got mostly fixed this is less true, but still a large issue. First person to get a stable orbital stage often wins (assuming they haven't lost planetary control.) Why? Well basically orbital units are the only real way to fight orbital units. If you have more avengers, you have orbital control, no one else can produce orbital units. But with umbrellas that is mostly solved. So why is this still a problem? Answer is orbital lasers. They counter their counters. Oh you were building an umbrella? Nope. That's a nice orbital launcher you have their, it would be a shame if something happened to it. The umbrella is a blessing here, but what if I just landed on another planet? If your opponent sends an orbital laser at the same time you land on another planet, you have lost. The time it takes to get hold of some form of orbital defence is too long. There is no way to get a defence happening. Fix: The shield generator. This can cover for you while you build that umbrella. You can protect something small from a cheap orbital/artillery attack. The alternative solution is that there is an Advanced unit with orbital attack ability. This means instead of having to make advanced builders and then an umbrella, you can just make an anti-orbital unit. This slows your construction on that planet, but it means a single orbital laser isn't your end. Long Range: Long range units can just out maneuver short ranged ones. Longer range always wins provided the player doesn't just charge. Fix: Just have a short range unit with decent offence/defence that moves quickly. Weaker than your standard ants/droxs, but faster and able to get in range easily. I think that's about all I have to say right now.
