Fix tactical artillery - Battleships/T2/T3 mobile artillery

See title. It's silly that they don't have similar ranges that can compete with each other. Also, they should all shoot high arch as artillery does.

For reference:
-battleships (cyb/sera) have 128 range and shoots low arch. This is great, but almost OP against bases.
-T2 artillery has 115 range and low arc. This is decent, but leaves land largely helpless against battleships.
-T3 mobile artillery has 90 range and high arch. This is terrible for most purposes and makes them easily the worst indirect at T2/T3.

I think it's pretty clear that these should all have the same range and high arch for purposes of balance. The shared range should probably be something like 110 or 120.

1. Yes, this would constitute a huge buff to T3 mobile arty. However, T3 mobile arty are currently terrible, so this is fine. Also, all factions have T3 mobile arty, so it shouldnt imbalance factions.
2. Yes, this is a modest nerf to battleships, but they still have ~50,000 hp and will be fine and perfectly able to kill destroyers.
3. This is either a small buff or a small nerf to T2 static artillery, but those should be fine regardless. (Also, T2 static artillery should use high-arch trajectories to make them more like somewhat worse versions of T3 mobile artillery.)

Thank you and merry christmas.

modest nerf? you just completely kneecapped uef battleships and made uef the worst at yet another tech level and superbuffed aeon bs

arc

@ftxcommando said in Fix tactical artillery - Battleships/T2/T3 mobile artillery:

ships and made uef the w

No no no, you misunderstand me. Under my proposal, the UEF battleship would still have superior range. This is why I specified (cyb/sera).

That said, I think if cyb/sera battleship range is nerfed a little (say 128 --> 120) that UEF and Aeon battleship ranges should be nerfed by the same amount or proportion, but keep their relative values (Aeon having shorter range, UEF having longer range).

Obviously, if the "natural" tactical artillery range is 120, it's fine if each faction has its own Navy unit that surpasses this range. UEF would have battleships + cruisers, Aeon would have Tempest + Missile ship, Cybran would have Stealth SMS sub, and Seraphim would have Battleship nuke + Carrier/cruiser TML.

@zob Sorry. If the FAF unit DB was not broken, I would have made sure to use the exact terms for everything.

@funkoff said in Fix tactical artillery - Battleships/T2/T3 mobile artillery:

I think it's pretty clear that these should all have the same range and high arch for purposes of balance.

How and why would this improve balance?

Make all laser weapons the same range. They have to be, for balance reasons

@deribus I'm glad you asked.

1- It would buff T3 mobile artillery, which are currently under-used. (Although I think the main issue is their extremely low HP, this HP issue can be mitigated with use of shields. Their damage is low, but their damage radius is very good which mitigates that. That basically leaves the range as the only problem.
2- This would serve not as a nerf to battleships mainly, but as a modest hedge against their domination against bases.
3- T2 static artillery seem relatively balanced (aside from their weakness to battleships) and so changes should focus on requiring minimum changes to them.

Regarding #1 in particular, I've been sure to watch ALL the LoTS games on Youtube. These games surely represent the top tier of play. In my view, it's pretty clear that direct combat units of all tiers (tanks, T2 tanks, T3 bots) take precedence generally, and only in specific situations do the 'support' units such as MMLs and T3 mobile artillery warrant consideration. Hypothetically, the game could be balanced in the reverse, that mobile artillery are always better than tanks, except in rare/specific circumstances.

I'm not asking for a paradigm shift, just a modest adjustment.

Why should a T2 unit be able to hold its own against a significantly more expensive T3 unit?

@indexlibrorum I agree with you that a T2 unit shouldnt hold its own against a T3 units without a large resource/numerical advantage. This is, in fact, why I propose that T3 mobile artillery should have an improved range to help them combat T2 artillery. Regarding t2 artillery against battleships, under my proposal, battleships will still win, at least until T3 shields are used to help aid the defense of the t2 static artillery.

@funkoff then, do you propose to decrease the damage output of the static T2 arty?

@indexlibrorum If the balance team deems it necessary to reduce the raw DPS of the T2 static artillery for this purpose, then I'm sure it is a needed change. I will only add that a transition from low arc to high arc will likely change the effective DPS of the T2 static arty without needing to change the raw DPS because it's much more likely to miss entirely and less likely to hit valid targets behind the intended target even when nominal misses occur. Therefore, the high arc will reduce the raw DPS somewhat, but a range increase may make a nominal damage decrease necessary in addition to that.

@funkoff I dont understand why t3 mobile artillery should be better than t2 stationary when the t2 costs x2.5. Also if you make some cringe arcs with t2 artillery its going to be a huge buff to a fatboy, the things are more interconnected than meets the eye.
A small incompetent balance change may lead to enormous amount of balance tweaks in other areas that will ruin balance, balance is not about arty vs ships, its about how every units is interconnected to each other, also note that if you make too much of an arch the air units will be hit, rn they dont fly that high

As a general concept, I fail to see why mobile artillery should be better than stationary. Also, do people actually think t3 mobile arty needs a buff? I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask for that. I see them used quite often and they can be exceptionally good at base breaking unless countered by Ravagers or even more T2 arty.

@ftxcommando said in Fix tactical artillery - Battleships/T2/T3 mobile artillery:

made uef the worst at yet another tech level

Made a list just to check if it's true.

T1 land -> arguably yes, but not by a lot
T2 land -> no, Cybran is
T3 land -> no, Cybran is
T4 land -> sure

T1 air -> arguably yes, but by a tiny margin
T2 air -> yes
T3 air -> no, Sera is
T4 air -> arguable since they have Novax and it's not like Cybran bug is any good

T1 navy -> after Aeon buffs, sure
T2 navy -> no, Cybran is
T3 navy -> no clue
T4 navy -> no, Cybran and Sera are by not having naval exps

cybran worst at t2 navy, ur actually insane

and i was talking about navy stage

@snoog I would like you to find a single LOTS game in which they were used. (I believe I saw one, myself, but just one. And I wont tell you which it was )

@funkoff Don't even know what LOTS is.