Commander Powers and Guard Towers

[svett89]

Hi,

There was a rather heated debate in a public game tonight regarding the use of commander powers to bring down Guard Towers. From my understanding, it's the Airstrike + Cruise Missile combo which instantly kills a Guard Tower unless the cruise missile is intercepted.

This feels like it goes against the spirit of the game - it requires no team coordination and encourages the commander to go on a solo mission to take down base defences. It's also very frustrating for the team on the receiving end since there's very little you can do unless you have someone constantly ready to intercept cruise missiles above their own base. This was experienced on Reservoir but might be easily doable on more maps. What makes this worse is that an SBH is ideal for performing this strategy and GDI GT's are especially designed to protect against SBH's. This means that any map where it can be done can turn into an SBH sneak fest very easily.

Could we please get a nerf to this strategy? I'm OK with the cruise missile hurting the GT but taking one out should require at least some team coordination. If this combo brought the GT to, say, 30 % HP it would still require some kind of coordinated follow-up with a few rockets or the like, making the strategy feel much more fair. As it is, it's just frustrating and turns something which should require team coordination into a solo effort.

EDIT: Phrasing

Edited November 21, 2020 by svett89

[roweboat]

Yes it's been a problem ever since cruise missiles were introduced. Of course since Guard Towers and Turrets have been around much longer than Cruise missiles. The towers weren't put in maps with Cruise missiles in mind.

 

One solution of course is to add anti air to any map that has destroyable defenses.

[Mystic~]

I like the idea of the large bunker buster bomb packs from another game for destroying things like guard towers as it feels like it fits with the game and the spirit of what might be required to destroy one, something a bit more powerful than a timed C4 charge. On the Walls map I frequently get an SBH with an airstrike and call it in point blank range and if most of the shots land its enough to destroy a Sam tower, although this can be combined with the C4 and this won't get shot down; and if two people do this then GDI air defences can come down quite early on in the game. Cruise missiles to me are similar to airstrikes and need to be called from range using some sort of animation similar to the airstrike and perhaps a laser guided aim, but I really don't like flares being placed on the battle field because as soon as its seen by the enemy, their tanks just back off and I feel like you're wasting so much CP - this is one reason why I advocate for time recharging abilities and not point dependent abilities. I do however think cruise missiles should be powerful enough to completely destroy a Guard Tower, they're usually only wood or concrete but I admit it feels like a cheap tactic when you can't replace one, that said cruise missiles are not always easy to aim and there's quite a risk in terms of lost cp if it misses. I sort of feel Nod has too much of an advantage if their commander can choose the SBH character and call in abilities without being seen.

[slashes]

altho this tactic is dirty why not instead ask them to add a way for people to build turrets in there own base using the beacon animation.

ya buy a beacon ya place it down taking couple of seconds then afther 30 section a guard tower/turret or whatever is build there.this allows the players themselfs to build defences in a better position instead of it being open right now.

there should be a high cost attatcht to this with costs depanding on what defence ya want.

Edited November 21, 2020 by slashes

[AshbyJones]

1000 times yes.

 

On 11/21/2020 at 9:00 AM, roweboat said:

Yes it's been a problem ever since cruise missiles were introduced. Of course since Guard Towers and Turrets have been around much longer than Cruise missiles. The towers weren't put in maps with Cruise missiles in mind.

 

One solution of course is to add anti air to any map that has destroyable defenses.

Solution is to prohibit cruises on gts—like airstrikes on nukes.  Cruises on gts are basically an exploit

...and you cruise gts...

 

[roweboat]

Sometimes it's just too tempting

[Handepsilon]

I do agree on the part where instakilling defenses with a cruise is just cheeseball

[crazfulla]

I didn't think insta killing was still possible... pretty sure the damage cruise missiles do to GTs was reduced at some stage already. Any further nerfs may render them practically worthless considering the CP cost and the fact they can be shot down.

Perhaps a simple solution would be for cruise missiles to block airstrikes momentarily.