merls and diplomats

[Justin Case]

IMO the missiles should travel faster and there should be a low-trajectory mode. Its so annoying that kbots and tanks can just walk away from the missiles. Or perhaps the explosions could be bigger

[munch]

IMO the missiles should travel faster and there should be a low-trajectory mode. Its so annoying that kbots and tanks can just walk away from the missiles. Or perhaps the explosions could be bigger

They're not intended for use against mobile units. They're supposed to sit at the back of the pack and take out HLTs and the like so your ground troops can go forward without getting mashed.

It's true that with XTA you can force build large numbers of a single kind of unit and take a player out with just that one type of unit. But even in XTA not all units have the same basic role!

Dips, Merls, Doms and now Ravens (and of course mobile artillery) are all basically in a mobile atillery role - i.e. ranged attacks, and softening up prior to ground assault. They're not so good at fire support once your ground assulat starts - and they're not meant to be: you'll find that you hit your own troops as much as the enemy. Use morty's or fixed, medium range artillery for that (i.e. toasters/guadians etc).

Cheers

Munch

[Kixxe]

I think merls are suposed to hit staonary defences while artillery is good for Tanks and stuff (when not in hig trajectory, offcourse).

And missiles should miss. They have low reload and shit cuz they are good for ambushing defences and slow/stationary units.

You need to micro to hit, annoying? A litthe. A big problem? no.


Oh, and if we are talking XTA here, there is STILL and xta balance treadh.

[SwiftSpear]

Merls could use a boost now that ravens are in the game. If they had the range to joust with gaurdians, popups and immolaters merls would have much more of a neiche role, right now they are just kindof, "that sucky artillery" slower firing then mobile arty's with about the same range, small AOE compared to ravens (which just spalsh all over the place) and really not much damage per second compared to either.

[IMSabbel]

but they hit where they aim at. at least compared to ravens, that a bonus. Ravens are good for general carnage, but for taking down that xxx-tower they are basically useless.

[SwiftSpear]

but they hit where they aim at. at least compared to ravens, that a bonus. Ravens are good for general carnage, but for taking down that xxx-tower they are basically useless.

Ya they hit where they aim at, but it's generally for less damage to the object you are aiming at then a raven shooting at the same place. Raven missles do unnerveingly high damage. I took out several popups one game with 5 ravens, just because they were busy destracted by bulldogs, and the 1-2 missles that acctually hit per raven did more damage then a merl rocket anyways. Plus ravens have that last line of defence desperation shotgun fire, which will blast the hell out of a full fledged goli if you have enough ravens shooting.

[Kaptain.Kryptek]

it's what i love about TA, mobile carnage. It's why I got sick of Warcraft 3. Anyway, it's a good thing how missiles are easy to dodge... in fact, they aren't that easy to dodge, you gotta have good micro to do such a thing because battles can get quite... full.

[tanelorn]

The biggest problem with artillery is that you can park far away from the enemy, be jammed and out of sight, but once you hit them, the AI makes them return fire and still kill all your diplomats.

[SwiftSpear]

it's what i love about TA, mobile carnage. It's why I got sick of Warcraft 3. Anyway, it's a good thing how missiles are easy to dodge... in fact, they aren't that easy to dodge, you gotta have good micro to do such a thing because battles can get quite... full.

The thing is, it isn't even a crisis of a couple merls hit your units. They do low enough damage and small enough AoE that you can pretty much shrug off merl damage unless you have a pretty frigging small military force. Comparitively a well targeted raven shot will blow up 5 or more L1 units in one volly, and more ravens just means more blowupage. However, if merls had a range just skirting the range of a popup cannon then the story would be way different. Merls could offencively artillery crawl, and do alot of damage with strong first strike capabilities. They would become a new highly devistating anti porc weapon. Something which arm desperately needs in the current XTA. Core has superunits that can walk through increadible lines of porc defence, arm has nothng. Once 5-6 bulldogs die at the front of the pack you get a corpse wall that stops up your units up and can sometimes keep you compleatly unable to enter your opponents base, expecially on maps with smallish chokepoint passages, like 4 skulls.

However with a good mobile arterillery you could crawl your forces forward through practically anything. I tryed doing it with ravens one game and they didn't have the range/reliability to kill an annihilator wall. Merls have less range and hitpoints, mobile artys have WAY less range and still too few hitpoints (but they have a disturbing RoF). I think boosting one of those units to the point where they could fullfill te wall smashing role for arm is exactly what the game needs.

[Warlord Zsinj]

So are you suggesting that the merl is underpowered, or that the raven is overpowered?

Sounds like the latter.

[Min3mat]

ravens OP? the only good thing they can do is take out lvl1 swarms or guerrila warfare!

[Guessmyname]

The biggest problem with artillery is that you can park far away from the enemy, be jammed and out of sight, but once you hit them, the AI makes them return fire and still kill all your diplomats.

That, I'd imagine, would be quite annoying.

On the other hand, I've yet to play TA Spring online (Can't play OTA online due to crappyness of Tesco Broadband proxy servers), so my opinion on this matter doesn't count for much :P Really should get around to that.

[tanelorn]

Typical. People who don't know jack about jack still feel the need to post on forums.

[Guessmyname]

[sarcasm]Oh, I'm sorry for agreeing with you (on that issue) Tanelorn.[/sarcasm]

[Zoombie]

Yeup Ravesn are great for hit and run, due to there high (for artillery) speed. There addition to the game is welcome!

[FireCrack]

Typical. People who don't know jack about jack still feel the need to post on forums.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocricy

[SwiftSpear]

Yeup Ravesn are great for hit and run, due to there high (for artillery) speed. There addition to the game is welcome!

I agree, I love the raven. But it does date the merl.

[Zoombie]

lol hypocrites are hillarious.

But i would like to commend the SY's for adding in the raven! Now the ARM has a K-bot that can actually be classed as Artillery!

[Justin Case]

IMO the missiles should travel faster and there should be a low-trajectory mode. Its so annoying that kbots and tanks can just walk away from the missiles. Or perhaps the explosions could be bigger

They're not intended for use against mobile units. They're supposed to sit at the back of the pack and take out HLTs and the like so your ground troops can go forward without getting mashed.

It's true that with XTA you can force build large numbers of a single kind of unit and take a player out with just that one type of unit. But even in XTA not all units have the same basic role!

Dips, Merls, Doms and now Ravens (and of course mobile artillery) are all basically in a mobile atillery role - i.e. ranged attacks, and softening up prior to ground assault. They're not so good at fire support once your ground assulat starts - and they're not meant to be: you'll find that you hit your own troops as much as the enemy. Use morty's or fixed, medium range artillery for that (i.e. toasters/guadians etc).

Cheers

Munch

ok man, I get it, isnt the trajectory on mobileartillery a bit low though? I'll have to check it