"Wall cheese"

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by spazzdla, November 12, 2013.

  1. slywynsam

    slywynsam Active Member

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    I somehow managed to log into the wrong, nonexistent account. o_O
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  2. Xagar

    Xagar Active Member

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    Two MTs, and it was a column of ants as opposed to a blob. Maybe one MT would have died if it were a blob.

    Nobody remembers how ridiculous MTs and Slashers were in TA? The towers at least are back, baby.
  3. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    yea four ants one air, still wrong. not to mention there really isn't a case in PA where they'll automatically show up in a blob like you mention.
  4. Slamz

    Slamz Well-Known Member

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    As I recall, MTs in TA were pretty weak unless you had a big blob of them. Low damage against ground units and really low health. They were mainly for killing air.

    When you made a "spike" in TA, it was usually 3 missile turrets and 1 laser turret. You could do 4 MTs, but the LT added so much against ground attacks.

    In PA I almost never bother with LTs.
  5. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    neither do I, do you agree this is wrong?
  6. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Does a uni
    You recall right, except for that bit about air. You build MTs in huge numbers and you manually targeted them via radar. You didn't both with laser towers because the ground war was fought by missile units through radar targeting and missile units outranged laser towers.

    I'm sure there were a few maps where this wasn't the case (TA certainly had map diversity), but primarily it was missile units all the way because they dominated ground and air.
  7. Slamz

    Slamz Well-Known Member

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    Yes. And it wouldn't be so bad if MTs could only be effective against ground in "huge numbers".

    But you don't need huge numbers. You need, like, 4, behind a few wall segments, backed up by a Pelter, and that pretty well takes care of the T1 ground rush from that direction.
  8. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    yup. kill that army's intel too and you're golden.
  9. godde

    godde Well-Known Member

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    The Punisher was actually really accurate. The only problem was that without experience it wouldn't lead its' target at all.
    Also the projectile speed was much lower relative to Flash tanks compared to the Pelter projectile which is pretty fast compared to Ants and even Doxes.
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  10. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    Because walls are broken and they are known to be broken.

    Just like people get mad when someone uses an exploit in other games.

    The game is in beta and walls are broken. The balance had been improved, so that helps. But the main thing is not having the full unit roster as well as priority.

    Units shoot at walls rather than the proper targets. So once the unit's AI is improved, then it won't be quite the exploit/bug/glitch/broken/whatever.

    When artillery style units will shoot at the turrets rather than the wall spam, then thing'll be fine and walls won't be quite as broken.
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  11. stormingkiwi

    stormingkiwi Post Master General

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    Are you talking about current build?

    Because I ran 7 doxes into a missile tower. Not as a ball. As a long stringy line.

    I lost only 3. And they were part of a larger raiding group of 13, so it was no real loss.

    Then I threw a group of doxen up against an air defence, a laser, and a pelter.

    The pelter got some kills but mainly missed. The laser appeared to miss lots before getting a few. The air defence got maybe one or two.

    I think the doxen suffered 40% losses? It's kind of hard to see because it's on chronocam, so no unit count. but the three bombers circling overhead appeared to do the most damage.


    More testing is required.
    I checked in game - I threw a single dox up behind a wall. Then got him to target stuff on the other side.

    He always walked around the wall. Never fired through it.
  12. liquius

    liquius Well-Known Member

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    Unless they introduced some hidden changes in the latest patch, I am going to assume your testing was floored.

    I would suggest building a row of walls and then lining up ants behind it. When you get attacked the Ants should shoot over the wall but the enemy should only hit the wall.

    Also what did you target? Was it a wreck?
  13. stormingkiwi

    stormingkiwi Post Master General

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    It was 2nd most recent build. They updated just after I played

    I was targeting anything that came a long. A fabber came. Then a metal extractor was built within range. Etc.


    Oh dumb. That's a simulated projectile issue isn't it?
  14. liquius

    liquius Well-Known Member

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    I am telling you that that is how in worked before the recent patches. It may have change. I will test it out tonight. The 2nd most recent build broke the game for me, but I should be able to play it now.
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  15. Slamz

    Slamz Well-Known Member

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    Were you using walls?

    And yeah you're seeing issues with bugs about leading targets, which have come back. I was hoping last night's build fixed it (they *said* it did...) When Pelters actually leads targets correctly it's murder on all T1. Half of the bots should have been dead before they ever got into range.

    I also usually build 4 missile turrets together because 4 missiles = 1 dead Dox and they fire twice a second. My standard defensive cluster is 4 turrets, 1 pelter and 4-5 wall blocks to absorb shots. Unless someone sends a ridiculous force at me this handles T1 rushes without me having to send backup.

    Last night someone finally overran one of these......using so many bots that the game actually lagged from all the shooting (which I have never seen before). Of course, they needed a T2 economy to feed that many bot factories which kind of emphasizes my point from the other thread which is that T2 is king. T1 bot rushes don't actually work as a threat in T1.


    Maybe part of the problem is that factories are too expensive. The cost of 1 of my defensive clusters is roughly the cost of 4 bot factories. By the time someone affords 4-5 bot factories and produces enough bots to credibly threaten my defense, he's spent way more than me and is probably falling behind me on the rush to T2, with a T1 bot rush that isn't going to work.
  16. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    But surely he only needs to build one cluster of factories, how many clusters of defences do you need? And if he uses his bots defensively and not offensively aren't you spending more to defend less?
  17. Slamz

    Slamz Well-Known Member

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    Yes but in terms of a T1 rush actually being viable in T1, that up-front factory cost exceeding my up-front defense cost combined with the fact that defenses are awesome is going to be a problem for the guy trying to rush me.

    The problem with bots used defensively is that it's going to be much more tit-for-tat on spending. I have 10 bots attack my fixed defenses and probably I lost nothing. He has 10 bots attack his defenses, which consists of bots, and he's going to have to spend metal replacing lost units.


    Just for sake of comparison, in TA it was always viable to rush T1 because early defenses weren't that good. It didn't take many flash tanks to get within range of those early defenses to put some damage on them if not outright overrun them. Early defenses in TA were to provide backup to your units; not to be stand-alone barriers. In PA I don't find that to be the case, particularly with units loving to target walls and with the Pelter (when it's not beset by bugs) being so deadly.

    Now if the Pelter is missing because they lowered the accuracy, we may actually be back on track for T1 rushes being a viable tactic and unit-vs-unit battles may be the way to go.
  18. lilbthebasedlord

    lilbthebasedlord Active Member

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    This type of mentality is super terrible for competitive gaming. You can have that opinion, that's fine. Except we can't build this game around it.
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  19. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Not to mention it's a fantasy, Starcraft 2 players will engage in those tactics all the time, the reason they're not more common is because they're either an incredibly risky all-in, or easily defeated with scouting.
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  20. igncom1

    igncom1 Post Master General

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    So what is the problem with them? to sum up?

    I can find:

    Friendly can shoot through their own buildings inexplicably - and I agree with this point.

    Units target them, even if last they can be used to turn turrets leading to tactics of distractions - I am not sure I agree with this point, tanks aiming at air scouts was pushing it, but walls? Does it really matter?

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