Static vs Mobile Defenses

We've all seen porcing gone insane, most of us agree that pure porc should not be a winning strategy. However, there is an opposite problem which I see occur in certain games: the useless defense.

Static defenses are highly limited by their very nature: they don't move. Not only are they unable to dodge attacks, but they can only defend a limited location. As such, if it is possible to build a unit that is as powerful as a static defense, for the same price, that static defense is useless. If fact, immobility is such a penalty that even if the defense is half price, it still isn't worth it. Defenses can be out-ranged, swarmed, or just sit useless as the enemy attacks from a different direction.

Balancing static defenses, then, requires that those static defenses be imbalanced with regards to power, durability, range, or cost. In other words a properly balanced static defense should be far better then any unit. Historically, directly attacking defensive positions has always involved massive casualties for good reason: defense works. It can't win the war, but it can stop the enemy from winning.

Given the scale of PA, this is especially important, you can and will amass huge armies and bring them to bear against a specific point. The sheer amount of units and resources involved mean that defenses need to be able to handle such massive groups, or they simply won't be built. Generally speaking, defenses in most RTS games exist as newb bait, something that skilled players don't build because it's better to have the guns walking around and able to focus their fire. That seems a waste of developer time and money.

Now, the Porcupine problem. Porcing is only a viable strategy if ground isn't valuable, and there are methods to win the game without ever coming out to fight your enemy. The problem, my friends, is metal makers. Metal making is more useful the longer the game lasts, as such, it shouldn't be in PA, or it will dominate every late-game. Porcing also loses ground with the sheer scale of the super-weapons available in PA. No defensive position can survive the planet's destruction. Porc in PA and you will just make it that much simpler to destroy you.

Now, back to defenses. Assuming that Porcing is not viable, powerful defenses do not pose a problem, they merely become a tool. Strong defenses make games less prone to compounding victory, they reduce rushing as a strategy, and they encourage superior tactics over superior blobbing. Just some thoughts.

1) Extraction points make land valuable.
2) The status of metal makers is unknown. It would be nice to have a high cost, low yield resource that can just be spammed. It carries its own set of issues, though. We'll have to wait on the specifics of the PA economy.
3) Defenses can gain all the efficiency they need by demanding energy. A cheap structure that demands an expensive generator is still a cheap structure. There's no need to inflate stats beyond that. If anything, it'll make energy storage a key element of defense.
4) Just reclaim the defenses after you're done with them, and build them elsewhere. Nothing is permanent in the world of TA.

Oh, and
5) The best way to fight an army is with another army.

In Supcom:

-Naval out-ranges everything
-Only 1 faction has 1 t3 point defense
-tactical missile launcher requires micromanagement, and naval can counter them as well.
-t2 artillery has too small range to be useful and is pretty expensive, t3 artillery can't aim and is extremely expensive
-SAM launchers are useless against swarms of air planes
-AA flak artillery defenses are good but you must have dozens of them.

No wonder no one uses static defenses.

What if i tell you, not everybody thinks turteling up is fun.
But seriously, if u can win an game by just massing defence, it would be pretty boring.
Defence shouldnt be super cost efficient or totally overpowered, static defence is still useful, to just dont let someone attack from one side/slow down an attack or defend early game. Static defence should be more durable than normal Units but shouldnt be able to destroy an big army by massing them.

Turtling is not funny but bad static defenses won't stop people from putting megaliths or fatboys in the middle of their base.

At least static defenses should be able to do their job. They were only useful against AI.

You are, I suspect unintentionally, making my point for me. Defenses that demand energy while being crap would merely be that much more crap. Uninflated stats result in useless defenses which are not built, which leads to your fifth point. An army shouldn't be the ideal way to defeat any other army, that leads to blob tactics.

Reclaiming defenses behind the lines is one thing, but every base can be attacked from at least four directions, that means that it will have defenses that aren't used.

This reminds me of this one time I was playing SupCom 2 with the Revamp mod (trying to redeem that poor game), and the devs added this experimental static defense to every faction. They tried to make them more powerful than units to make the research worth while, but the turrets were beyond OP. I was playing against AI and it made about six to ten of them and their base was completely impregnable, against air or land. Their Mangetrons didn't help either, but there is no way in hell that Uber is putting those in. :lol:

So I'm kind of apprehensive about having either extremely OP static or mobile defenses. I don't really like either, and thought that just building units as mobile defense was just fine.

Turtling should depend on your economy, and the space needed for your economy should always outpace you ability to compact defences.

Energy costing defences, no shields.

However this does hopefully mean that players defences will be effective when used in defensible terrain, promoting players to spread out in the attempt to control easily defensible terrain, the use of stealth fields will prevent radar from dominating either side, hopefully no omni (No cloaking either), meaning that an effective defence will require a huge amount of power that is hard to set up.

High damage energy costing defences, stealth fields, access to strong artillery.

Tactical missiles were the only way to siege in revamp mod, and I kinda like it, both sides sitting just out of reach shelling each other until one caves and the winner can move the front line.

Just to check, all of you do realize that I'm rather against any form of turtling? It really should never be possible to sit behind your defenses for any length of time, doing so would allow the enemy complete control of the map. My issue remains one of cost-effective defenses.

Not being able to move is a massive disadvantage, one that should be countered by significant advantages. I do like the idea of energy intensive defenses, especially as it would make two pronged attacks actually valuable.

Turteling should only be as viable as one's economy, meaning that a turtle should have at leas as much territory as you in order not to get bombed to hell by mobile artillery, gunships and bombers.

Effectively a turtle should be locking down their territory with a network of turrets while pushing either for artillery that can raise to your base (i.e not from their starting position, but more half way towards your base) or for atomics to bombard from afar.

as a player who would be facing this your job would be to prevent the critical mass of economy from forming in their bases, raiding, mobile artillery and spreading your base all over the map to prevent a single bombardment from killing you should then also be key.

Economy is power (Literally).

Yes. One would presume, that if an argument is interpreted in the completely wrong way, then it would appear to be incorrect.

Search my posts for "negative cost". It's a really cool way to beef up defense, while not explicitly using stat inflation. Basically, energy demand means you need more generators, and generators still count as the cost of the weapon. The difference is that the weapon can be amazingly cheap to set up, while still demanding a full price tag to work.

Why worry about stealth? It'll be more interesting to see what happens if radar doesn't work on land units at all. Players will have to use actual perimeters and patrols, use high ground, and make solid use of air scouts, instead of putting all their faith into one structure.

Air threats demand extra large vision due to how easy it is for fast units to break a perimeter. Radar can still have strong use detecting air raids, ferries, patrols, and assisting air defense.

Why must you hate fun? The TotalA style cloak has so much potential for crazy shenanigans.

PA solves the turtling problem rather nicely I feel with planets, moons and asteroids. You can sit in your base, or on your planet all you want, I'll run around capping everything else and I'll just be able to out-Macro you with KEWs.

Done deal.

Mike

I like it, (Wrote that on the basis that radar would work like usual, T2 sup com really was the best part of the game with all its gadgets), maybe we could have a medium-short range camera structure to be used as a perimeter system?

Although in TA I did generally use the LLT for that role, allowing my 'fence' to pick of pesky scouts.

:roll: well ok, maybe just the one.

Now that's the part I am looking forward to, once the battle on the planet gets bogged down then we head into the void to employ some more.....creative solutions to the conflict, and I am not just thinking about a kinetic energy weapon.

Nope, no interpretation problem. Defenses would still require vastly more bang/buck for your system to work. I'll be honest, I like your system. Energy intensive defenses are a good idea. However, those defenses, even with the cost of the generators, would need to be cheaper than mobile units, simply because they aren't mobile. Otherwise why wouldn't I build something that costs the same, does the same damage, and can move where I want it to be?

Wait, the unit is even better actually, because it will keep working when I'm energy-stalled. In short I like the idea you have, I think it would work, but defenses still need to provide a clear advantage over mobile units in terms of durability or firepower.

Usually defences like the GAAT gun have superior range to most units, greater HP and a vastly better weapon.

In true RTS fashion you need artillery, or to take out their power to kill them with minimal losses.

And In true TA fashion, ignore the previous :lol:

Static defences in Sup Com are pretty bad. They work much better in TA:

- T2 cannons are moderately expensive, but have high armour and good damage and reloud time. Missile launchers can safely kill them, however, and the speed of the projectile allows some degree of dodging shots.
- The longest range guns in the game can't reach across the map, meaning turtling alone cannot win you the game, except via nuking (but nukes are less of a deal in TA).
- Laser towers work well in conjunction with walls, but require energy to fire
- Missile towers are fragile, low damage defences that can target air and ground
- Flak cannons deal with gunships and massed bombers.
- Navy doesn't ridiculously outrange everything

The fault in the system was the missile towers, however, as they were often simply spammed.

They worked all-right in zero-K because assault units shrugged them off for fun.

But of course their could be easily stacked.....maybe they could cost something like 50 metal a shot?

Good point, take Zero-K for example, the evolved big brother of TA. The average defense costs roughly a third of what the equivalent unit would cost. This sounds like it solves the problem, it still doesn't. Every single strategy guide still says "defense=wasted time" and they are mostly correct. Defense is just too inflexible to be useful, it can't be used to hurt your opponent and it means less units out there trying to control the map.

Let's take this a different direction, using basic economy questions. I want to defend something, call it X. Now, to keep X alive I need to defend X using a certain amount of defense, we'll call that defense Y.

Y must cost less than X, otherwise it is a better use of my money to allow X to be destroyed and replaced than to defend it. Or that would be the case except that the enemy is also using resources to destroy X. So, in the new formula it must cost the enemy more than (cost of X)+(cost of Y) to destroy X, otherwise I wasted my money. Now the enemy can use any amount of units to attack X, meaning that according to Lanchester's Square Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester's_laws#Lanchester.27s_Square_Law he will lose fewer units than I in terms of power. Therefore, Y needs to cost me a lot less in order to be a wise gamble.