We need a defence against the Helios + Manhattan drop

Every time you kill a comment it's technically a comm snipe, just depends on how much resistance is there. Build more anti-air/orbital.

Can an astraeus transport a Manhattan? If so, can it be made to hang out in orbit? What I'm wondering is this: Can you leave a Manhattan in orbit around your planet as a nuclear mine? Enemy units arrive at your planet, attack astraeus, Manhattan takes out everything near it. That is, if the Manhattan explodes while in orbit. Come to think of it, orbital mines as their own unit might be kinda cool...

manhattan cannot be transported ... gating is the only way for it ... as it should be imho

Well there goes that idea...

Excuse me if I'm mistaken, but isn't the point of Titans is that they are supposed to end games? And isn't the Helios supposed to be the scariest titan specifically designed to crack open the most heavily defended planets when Anihalaser/Haleys are not an option?

Or do you think it should be possible for one or both factions to turtle down and be invincible? It used to be that if your enemy got a planet locked down good enough, it was impossible to invade. Do you want things to go back to the way they were?

I guess it's a balance really. Personally, I think you should be able to always get a foothold even on a well defended planet- it's just as it is the Helios can spawn in *directly above your most heavily defended base* and wreck everything.

I'd be happy with it being that powerful (as you can stop it after a while), *if* there was some way I could keep my commander out of the fight (i.e. some way to hide it). I've got no issue with a good helios invasion, I'd just think fighting off said invasion is way more epic than the current mechanic which is:

- Opponent spots your com with adv orbital radar (can't kill that fast enough to avoid this).
- They then send in a helios + large force of stuff queued up at a gate on their planet *directly above your com*
- Helios activates, dropps a load of t2 around your com- boom. Game over.

It's the fact the com is that easy to find and kill when you get towards the late game that feels wrong to me. It takes what would have been an epic fight of my large forces vs the invaders and turns it into 10 seconds of 'I win' for the attacking player. If they couldn't find your com (at least while you have lots of t2 power), then they'd be forced to take your eco out first which would lead to more chance to actually fight with these large t2 armies.

I feel the problem is with the Manhattan itself. the unit is a creeping instant nuke. It can destroy base defenses by its sheer blast radius even before it enters shooting range. Taking it on with units always results into you losing them, except for a handful of long range sniping units.

I don't want to nerf completely the manhattan helios snipe, but it should be counterable.

The solution however is simple: Give the Manhattan a deploy mechanic.

- Regular destruction causes a substantial default explosion that damages nearby units, but not a nuclear one.
- When told to self destruct the unit takes 10 seconds to charge up its nuke, then explodes with a nuclear explosion.
- If the unit is destroyed before its self destruct timer completes, the unit explodes with its default explosion instead.

This will do a few things:

- The unit needs to be used more tactically, The charge up mechanic ensures players need to either deploy them an mass, as to overwhelm an opponents ability to counter it, or deploy them at lightly defended positions.

- It will still cause damage if destroyed, so they could still act as a hot-drop bomb even if they don't get set off.

- Deploying a Helios nuke blob will be counter effective, if one Manhattan is destroyed the others nearby will also be destroyed, they should be deployed either more spaced out or with more time in between to be effective.

the more i read these posts, the more i think we need a game mode in witch when the comm dies the games goes on. Cause i can see it seems most people here hate snipes....
Correction: hates being sniped....

as it would be if you can not let teleport the manhattan. That's the easiest method. had to go with a mod.