Pelter/Holkins the new Laser Tower?

Seams to me no one builds laser towers any more, rather they build pelters / hokins / catapults.
what do you all think? Has artillery replaced point defense?

I know I build holkens/pelters instead of laser towers because of the range and the fact the line of sight doesn't matter with a long range weapon. If you have a group attacking, they can just go around your laser towers. Its not so easy to do with a pelter.

Range == power. This may be a problem that can only be fixed as more mobile options and movement skills get added.

Map design may also play a role. TA maps usually had extreme hills or ledges, which blocks this sort of stuff and forces battle into melee. Similar map designs were shown in the early staged pics for PA. Later games became much more flat, which is an artillery wet dream.

In PA, map obstructions are great to put pelters behind because of the high firing arc. If you put pelters behind a row of desert cliffs, nothing can get close enough to hit them.

Once the biomes are updated then we should see more of the smaller turrets again. Like when there is a choke point between two cliffs that holkens cant shoot over, it would be pointless to aim the holkens down the gully and limit its range of fire...so just put up a lot of laser towers.

Pelter and Holkins are both far too accurate.

Laser defenses were critical in TA because the artillery was all horribly inaccurate. You could potentially build a Bertha in range of another Bertha, while being shot at by it, and complete your Bertha and start firing back because the first Bertha was just too inaccurate and didn't get a shot on you. TA artillery was more of an area attack weapon. If one got put up in range of your base it would kill SOMETHING....just not necessarily what it was aiming at.

Similarly, the short range artillery lobbed big explosive rounds but with slow fire and high inaccuracy. They were still helpful against blobs of units but it was the laser and missile towers that did the bulk of the work.

In PA, the arty is so accurate (with catapults being the kings of that...) that there's not much call for the laser towers except in very special conditions.

Not replaced but they are certainly outclassed.

Kinda pointless poll.

But the Pelter certainly is extremely powerful now.

Easy way to fix this interesting problem: Make pelters more inaccurate.

If they do that, however, they need to make t2 laser turrets as deadly to levelers as t1s are to ants - because right now, they are outclassed. Imho, the only difference between the three towers should be fire rate. After all, their only aesthetic difference is more turrets and taller structure.

I use pelters in late game to weed out levelers and tanks from the front lines of an incoming blob. I use units to defend against most of these attacks. To be honest, if i am being attacked like that in a 1v1 then I have probably already lost.

its still a balance thing..
I mostly build artillary and a few (2 or 3) laser towers, but the cheapest one.

the big one are just waste of time to build, same range but 3 times the firepower?
then I use more 1 barrel lasertowers.

The problem is that the laser tower isn't qualitatively superior as a local defense compared to artillery. Artillery is so accurate it effectively clears its range as if it were a laser tower.

The artillery is more expensive, but covers such a larger area that it is more efficient than building so many shorter-range defenses that you could cover the same area. The artillery is also much harder to destroy because of its range, making it still more efficient.

Wouldn't mind seeing lazer towers get a buff or at least making the pelter inaccurate, having some lazer towers with walls at critical points around and in your base in conjunction with pelters works much better than just spamming pelters because it is more economical and slows down the enemy tanks squadrons.

Most people forget to build walls around their turrets.

O god. No please NO!

Trauma?

No. I consider arrtillery to be quite over powered right now so if laser towers where to be buffed in to viability then the turtles would become unstoppable. Im at war with them, on the forms and in game

Hehe then Godspeed to you sir. Hopefully it will be balanced with either new units or stat changes soon.

I agree the pole could of been pointless. However 30% seem to think artillery hasn't replaced laser turrets. A most intrusting result! I must study this further in my internet lab of science!

In my opinion it is premature to talk about the balance of pretty much anything. However artillery certainly seems to not be very artillery-like in design, regardless of whether it is too strong.

Redesigning artillery to serve as fire support is much better than just nerfing it. Make artillery inaccurate before we start discussing whether it is too strong. In addition, mobile artillery probably needs even more range to go along with its reduced accuracy.

Laser turrets are horribly overpowered as is. You don't notice because artillery is even worse.
I'd like to see an overall nerf to static defenses: Rate of fire, damage, accuracy (especially for artillery).
(And increase the goddamn unit HP already)

I guess people don't seem to realise is that laser turrets are defiantly not overpowered, not in the slightest.

Not when you have units that can out range them, bots that can out run their turret turn speed and tanks that simply do more damage them them.