Since Interceptors and ASF can target other interceptors and ASF, and gunships can target other gunships, clearly bombers should be able to target other bombers.

... Of which I am one...

Try playing more zoomed out. The more time you spend at max zoom the more time you spend watching for flanks and planning your own. You pretty much only need to zoom in to build structures or micro your units - everything else should be zoomed out. If you find yourself still not spending much time zoomed out, then you need to start making allowances because intel is critical in this game. -> "do I care how precisely these buildings are placed / is it alright if these units don't make it" this is an attention game after all...

My suggestion is to allow factories to set their waypoint to a unit group. When the factory finishes constructing a unit, it'll receive the same orders as the rest of the units in the group. If there's more than one order, it'll assign one randomly (or maybe by unit type)

The reason I want this is because then I can setup air patrols to be continuously replenished by a factory. Right now if you make a patrol order from a factory then give an order to the patroling units, there's no way for them to rejoin the patrol again. But if a unit group had the order and the factory was just assisting the unit group, then you could give the units any order you wanted and the factory would create more units for them.

Make repair cheaper and make engineering stations automatically repair units nearby is my suggestion

Give it an upgrade that adds 4 t1 AA turrets (one on each corner) and a shield generator that costs ~100 energy. Also give it +100 energy production and the equivalent of 4 energy storages. Basically an upgrade that makes it immune to t1 bombers and gives your com enough energy storage to overcharge anything.

Similar to how air units can return to air staging facilities to be repaired, I believe land units should have a button that marches them home to the nearest engineering station (maybe with a shorter range than the air staging facilities) to be repaired.

Also, engineering stations should automatically repair units near them. When I was first learning the game that's what I thought they did, sorta like a stationary mechanic or field hospital. However they don't do that, and I think it'd be pretty neat if they did.

There's been some great discussion on the viability of increasing repair speed / decreasing repair costs so I'm not going to comment on that. Besides, I'm only rank ~300 or so on ladder so my opinions aren't worth much.

Right now repairing is an underutilized mechanic. Whether that's good or bad is beyond me, but the fact is that people don't use it. I think this suggestion would add an automatic method of using it, which helps prevent it from being the APM sink that it is now.

In terms of how this'd affect the game, I believe it would encourage players to keep their units alive rather than throwing them to their doom. This encourages players to be less wasteful, and it gives the engineering station another role besides "passive stationary build power" which could already be accomplished by spamming engineers.

It'd also add additional flavor to the space behind the frontline / firebases, which could do with some additional utility. Right now firebases are mainly used to control space, but with an engineering station repairing units just behind them they could act as a rallying banner for previous missions to regroup at before again pushing into enemy territory.

The way I picture it working is the player selects a group of units, some damaged some not, hits the "return to engineering station" button, then queues up an additional movement order for afterwards. Essentially, "repair yourself if you need it then meet up here" - this would allow the player to send some damaged units home partway through a mission, while keeping the undamaged units on task. Sorta like how if you select all your air units and then make an order that only some of them can follow (like, shoot down that spy plane) only the interceptors will move to engage while everyone else will do nothing / do any other orders you specify (like "shoot down that spy plane and then return to an air staging facility" causing the bombers and spy planes to immediately go repair+refuel)

I believe this adds an interesting decision for the player to make - do I send my units home to repair, or do I push further and risk losing them?
More meaningful decisions == more gameplay == more fun.

This is my first suggestion so let me know what you think.

@bulliednoob I literally never see anyone else doing that so it's probably just a noob trap that I fell for lol don't listen to me xD

I like the wings. It makes it easier to tell which target to prioritize when I have tanks in their base.

... Of which I am one...

Try playing more zoomed out. The more time you spend at max zoom the more time you spend watching for flanks and planning your own. You pretty much only need to zoom in to build structures or micro your units - everything else should be zoomed out. If you find yourself still not spending much time zoomed out, then you need to start making allowances because intel is critical in this game. -> "do I care how precisely these buildings are placed / is it alright if these units don't make it" this is an attention game after all...

Maybe if you mouse-over the marker it shows the name of the player who created it and a button to remove it from your screen?

I like the idea of adding either utility or defensiveness to the hydro. I think it's a mistake to add additional throughput, because it reduces the choices made by the player - from "do I need defense, utility, or neither" to "do I have enough to upgrade this right now because I gotta do it eventually" and to me that seems like a false choice.

I like to put land scouts in my armies, especially on large maps. A bullet that hits a scout is one fewer hit that my tanks can take. I also usually do ~1 scout per 5 tanks, and that ensures they can see the enemy.

Also sometimes I make factories and their entire job is to spit out an endless barrage of scouts and artillery and just attack move at the enemy's firebase. If they have t2 pd then I bump it up to tac missiles. The scouts find the buildings, and the artillery blasts it.

Downside is that move is easily countered with mobile units - so I try to have a lot of tanks in the area too. But I don't attack-move them.

That makes sense to me. Would that also increase their range? After all, with a faster projectile all they'd have to do is lower the angle a bit and it'd reach farther.

@deribus said in Weekly Discussion #20 - T1 arty:

I'd like them to explore the option of increasing projectile speed so that the time to impact increases.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but wouldn't increasing the speed decrease the time to impact? Meaning it hits the target quicker

To me Artillery is best against stationary targets. I like the idea of having slower shells to allow for counterplay - there should be a rock-paper-scissors element where tanks beat land units, arty beats point defence and un-micro'd units and LABs beat the backline. Slower shells means more time to move your units, but it also reduces their combat effectiveness... I dunno, I feel like they're in a pretty good spot right now. Frankly they have a bit too much utility in the t2 and early t3 stage.

Make repair cheaper and make engineering stations automatically repair units nearby is my suggestion

I like this idea, +1

Since Interceptors and ASF can target other interceptors and ASF, and gunships can target other gunships, clearly bombers should be able to target other bombers.