Walled T1 point defence OP

[zachyattacky]

I was watching a replay the other day and I saw a pair of walled t1 pd take out two t2 seraphim bots and a t3 tank, and I don't think either lost more than 25% of their health. That just seems a little bit broke.

I watch quite a few replays and there are many times where those little pd take out ridiculous amounts of units without taking a scratch. Sometimes it appears to be worse than others, I don't know if it's placement or some units have worse hit reg on them, but there's been multiple times where I've seen 3-5 t2 units get taken down while a single pd barely took any damage.

If we are trying to reduce turtling I think changing this is a good way to start. Or is it just a game mechanic I'm gonna have to get used to? I tried searching the forums, didn't find any other topics about this, so sorry if it's been brought up before.

Also, I'm only talking about the walled PD, obviously t1 artillery is the way to go, I know how to kill them, it just seems poorly balanced.

[IceDreamer]

One you'll have to get used to mate. Walls don't have huge use in the game, but this is one of them, and it kinda makes sense. They're meant to block fire, after all

[speed2]

There is a different thing with that. There is a bug that when firing from some angles at walled PD, you shoot through the PD the wall behind it. Problems with hitboxes that no one managed to solve yet...

One thing that will reduce this a lot is the lowered wall HP that will arrive with the next patch

[zachyattacky]

There is a different thing with that. There is a bug that when firing from some angles at walled PD, you shoot through the PD the wall behind it. Problems with hitboxes that no one managed to solve yet...

One thing that will reduce this a lot is the lowered wall HP that will arrive with the next patch

So it's an exploitation of a bug which is against the rules, is it not? Someone tell me why we make an exception here.

Add edit: I know it's been like that since gpg vanilla days, but don't you think it's a severely broken aspect of the t1 game? We have a turtle unit, killing 10x mass to mass cost of units (insert what ever number you want there, but when you do the math of it it gets ridiculous.)

How many games have you guys played where you out play your opponent, get some units to his base where you could do a bit of damage. But then surprise, he builds a pd, and then all you managed to do was deliver free mass right to his doorstep.

I mean lets talk about this is a reasonable manner, how do you think the game play would change if this were fixed? Maybe all it would take would be to change the footprint of the pd to fix it, you can still put a wall around it, but maybe it'll fix the hit reg.

An unwalled pd can be a pretty formidable little unit provided you failed to diversify your army, but when you have certain factions or units that completely fail to be effective due to a game bug against the walled pd it really seems unbalanced.

[Uveso]

I checked the hitboxes from the walls. Looks ok for me:

walhit1.png (322.06 KiB) Viewed 3873 times

walhit2.png (77.37 KiB) Viewed 3873 times

You can see the hitbox (blue) only goes flat to the ground. So you maybe shoot "under" a wall and PD if you are on a hill an then hit the wall or building behind it.
In this case we can make the hitbox larger on y axis (high) so you can't fire under the building.

[ZLO_RD]

at the same time you have to consider that t1 pd with walls dies to single t1 arty (36 mass, 56 mass for sera) pretty quick (bit slower for cybran)
walled t1 pd sometimes not get damaged by mml is an small issue
edit2: also with introduction of attack move fix you no longer have to click precicely on PD to make your arty shoot instead of suicide

Real problem here is unpredictability and inconsistency, you never know if your units will hit PD or hit walls or both.
some units on some maps are amazing against walled t1 pd (wagner, yentze), while some units always miss, some are mostly inconsistent.

Edit, nice research Uveso, can you check t1 why t1 aa always get hit by everything and does not get good protection from walls
while walled t1 pd sometimes even makes gunships miss >_<

[zachyattacky]

Real problem here is unpredictability and inconsistency, you never know if your units will hit PD or hit walls or both.
some units on some maps are amazing against walled t1 pd (wagner, yentze), while some units always miss, some are mostly inconsistent.

Yeah, well put, the unpredictability is really annoying, and you're right, certain units seem to be unaffected, while others fail miserably. (add edit -->) I've also wondered why the t1 aa seems to not be as well protected by the wall.

I checked the hitboxes from the walls. Looks ok for me:
You can see the hitbox (blue) only goes flat to the ground. So you maybe shoot "under" a wall and PD if you are on a hill an then hit the wall or building behind it.
In this case we can make the hitbox larger on y axis (high) so you can't fire under the building.

This would explain why the wall segment furthest away from the direction of fire takes the most damage, while the pd remains relatively unharmed. I hope we can fix this in a logical way.

[Uveso]

Well now take a deeper look at the hitboxes and there is indeed a slight gap.

On a hill you can fire under or through the walls and pd and hit the wall behind:

walhit3.png (284.08 KiB) Viewed 3861 times

walhit4.png (289.62 KiB) Viewed 3861 times

Maybe we should make the hitboxes from the walls not only higher. We should also make them 5% bigger so they overlap a small bit.

[Zock]

i dont think thats the real issue, shots don't go through any "gap", they go right through the middle of the wall if it happens. I believe icedreamer (among some others) tried to fix the hitboxes already but couldn't, so maybe he can tell more.

[speed2]

I know it all looks good Uveso but I can tell you what happens (sometimes)
You build a PD, enemy ACU is already shooting at it and hitting it. It's not moving. You build a single wall next to the PD, and ACU shots start to go through the PD and hitting the wall instead.
And with 8 walls around the PD there are higher chances for this to happen. And it does happen, enough to make a PD quite OP.


Maybe it's not excatly a hitbox problem, but there is some problem.