Catapults

Just wanted to throw this out there, i think catapults should have to build there ammo, instead of firing a no stop stream of missles kinda like the tactical missle launcher in supcom fa. By ammo, i dont mean energy, but queing up 10 or more to be built
Then having to fire them manually.

If this doesnt seem like something you wanna do, do you think we should have a unit that can shoot these down?

what?

man, less clicks= Better

this is a talk about the design of the catapult. it has nothing to do about apm.

I too thought, and still think, that the design of the catapult is a low cost nuke/cruise missile esque building. In its current form, it overlaps with the holkins far too much.

Give it far better range, force it so the missiles have to be built, allow orbital targetting (maybe better for a different building than the catapult), or something that just makes it a different to an anti-ground 1 shot 1 kill building.

Still clicking your heart out trying to replace all the units you just lost, because theres no good way to crack a catapult net

it's not a click to make it build ammo that's needed, it's to change its working method from homing, to manual-fire, location specific.

if you spam up a cata not too near yet not too far of an enemy commander, he's done for, no getting out of it's range before imminent death, the only saving factor would be to have a aestreus right next to him.

I agree with op. I would like to see the catapult become some kind of tac missile launcher. If this where to happen, the range should be increased and some kind of anti tac-missle introduced.

I just feel that the Catapult's homing missiles shouldn't readjust their lock. They should massively overkill a location, not divide fire.

Right now Catapults do use energy to fire. If you stall out on energy, they won't fire.

I'm for and against the tac missile launchers though... If they do become manual tac missiles, then they'd need a buff to make up for the manual nature of them. In SupCom, I pretty much never used the Tac missiles because they required too much Micro to use.

Yea, micromanagement doesn't exactly "fix" Catapults as much as it renders them irrelevant. Holks have better range and lack target trackng, and Catapults are cheaper and shorter range, so they balance out. And both do (or should) need energy economy to fire. Future changes are never out of the question, though.

how does it overlap the holkins????? Holkins smashes a giant hole in a blob whilst the catapult only hits one unit or building. Then the holkins can't fire if a an obstruction is to close while the catapult can. Also the obvious range difference......

Now does the catapult have way to high of a fire rate???? HYFR!!!!!! Way to fast for the damage it dishes out, especially h as op mentioned, in large numbers they create an invincible wall of missiles......

My suggested solution: since the vanguard is pulling so hard for multiple missiles from the nuke launcher there's no point to make it a tac launcher, but throwing a clip on it just like bombers seems like a good solution 3-5 shots then reload for x amount of time. Really amount of shots is variable as well, just used that amount as an example.....

That's an incorrect statement..
I have heard no talk within the vanguard of wanting or pushing for anything in game at all ..

No it doesn't. The catapult's "high rate of fire" is caused because it never overkills. If you removed the ability to switch targets after launch, that would "reduce" its fire rate, because more shots would miss.

well on the defensive there let me re phrase so everyone's feelings are ok...... knight has suggested it and I feel his idea for missiles of different effects is pretty cool, but the classic nuke shouldn't go anywhere.....

@stormingkiwi that would work eliminate the New target search leftover missiles perform

I have noticed knight has had a mentioned a couple of time because he has been strongly opinionated on things in the past,
I can assure during the whole time from the "beginning of the letter to uber" and "up until now" i have not seen knight push "His own agenda" or push for any for of anything other then "Finding a way to better facilitate 2 way communication between both parties uber and community"
I think poor knight now has it harder than anyone else because he now needs to clearly state when something he is stating his own opinion or one of the vanguard when replying to something that could be interpreted as internal information being passed on.. (not sure if i said that right)

Anyway im not trying to defend knight but just letting you know that i have not seen him push his own agenda yet inside the vanguard system, i have seen nobody push their own agenda's ..

To give you a bit of inside info on what's happening inside the vanguards.. (I may get in trouble for posting this)
The most talk has been about how we can do our job effectively and also working out how to answer peoples questions in the "Introducing the vanguards" Thread and others without misinforming them.. which as you might imagine is very difficult to do..

I had them, artillery and nukes on hotkeys 8,9 and 0 which made it as easy to micro as my army. Very handy for support fire when pushing forward.

Nifty. Very smart move.

I feel dumb for not thinking that. Thanks.

The Problem with having something that is essentially the Tactical Missile Launcher from SupCom is that I don't think it'll be manageable considering PA's scale both in terms if playing area and targets. In SupCom you might not have had necessarily smaller playing areas, but but having borders they tended to be more straight forward so it was a lot easier to focus on setting up TMLs and using them, but in PA with spheres that becomes a lot more complex and requires more focus. I also think that unlike SupCom PA won't likely have those big targets like T3 and T4s that result in the benefited the TML-er due to it's high Costower ratio.

Mike

The only change I think would be interesting for the Catapult is to make it dumb-fire -- no target tracking. And then lower the cost.

I rarely build them anymore because Holkins are hands down superior. The only thing that really amuses me about Catapults is that if you can catch the enemy commander within range of one, you'll probably kill him since the only quick defense against it is to run out of range.

If we made it dumb-fire, it would stop being such a threat to commanders but would still be great for destroying structures.

Let the Holkins be anti-everything (at a high price tag) while the Catapult is anti-structure (and much cheaper).

Not only dumb fire but an option maybe for missile types. Like an anti Air fuel carpet bomb missile, or orbital deterrent. Currently its just a more accurate holkins, its role needs to be redefined, like you mentioned.