It’s been a long time coming but the massive (7) range of the planetary fortress with the upgrade needs to be addressed. It’s insane that Terran can just defend their base with 15 of these non-supply costing units against my 200/200 drone army. Reduce the range to 1 and make it fair. Also maybe consider increasing the supply cost of a Fortress to 8, considering it usually costs me that many drones before I kill one. Thank you.
4 Likes
One of the biggest crocks of sheet in this game is the PF that costs 550/150 total with 150/150 of that being the PF upgrade. 150/150 for something that rivals the Thor in damage and can be insta repaired.
Every static defense structure has at least 7 range. Planetary Fortresses and Auto-turrets are the only units that require an upgrade to reach that.
If a player is building extra Planetary Fortresses as Turrets, they are by far the most expensive and the most awkward to place, due to their very large size and requirement to stay 3 grid squares away from any resource nodes. Planetaries cannot always cover a mineral line either, as some maps have enough space behind Mineral patches (for one reason or another) that ranged units can attack workers from outside of the Fortress’s range.
Furthermore, every single faction has units that can break Planetaries from outside of their range (Tanks, Colossus, Tempests, Brood Lords, Lurkers, etc). Zerg can also use Blinding Cloud on Planetaries and Bunkers to attack with minimal or no retaliation, and some other units like Immortals, Thors, Banelings (albeit inefficiently), or Marauders can also break a Planetary directly.
2 Likes
In TvT, the unit I find the best at assaulting Planetary Fortresses is actually the Cyclone (not sure about it after the proposed balance changes though). When Mag-Field Accelerator is researched, a group of them can power through a Planetary Fortress very quickly while only getting attacked once (to get the initial lock-on). Tanks are pretty good too and there is a small sweet spot where they can hit repairing SCVs on the far side while still being out of range of the Planetary Fortress’ Twin Iblis Cannon. The advantage of Cyclones though is that they can instantly disengage and drive to safety if the engagement gets unfavourable.
For Protoss, the Immortal is the best unit, while Archons and High Templar can deal with SCVs, especially the latter with some well-placed Psionic Storms. Void Rays and Tempests are pretty good choices too.
Zerg has many options… lots and lots of Banelings (albeit very cost-inefficient), Hydralisk/Viper (Blinding Cloud on the Planetary itself), Swarm Hosts… heck, even the humble Corruptor can destroy them, although if there’s too many Missile Turrets around, then Brood Lords are probably better.
3 Likes
Cyclone lockon is instant while most turrets must wait for a damage point before firing, so if you shift+queue a lock-on command followed by a command to retreat, a Cyclone can lockon to a turret with no retaliation. The Planetary Fortress turret also has to turn to attack, so you may have a bit of extra time to work with on that one.
You trolling me right? You can’t attack Planetary Fortresses with drones!!
2 Likes
Drone army? Seriously.
Anyway planetary fortress are weak against long range units like siege tanks/broodlords/collosus and air units.
So no nerf required.
Pf was armored structure colossus just tickle it while protoss needs bunch of immortals or a few tempest witch resonate upgrade
It is easy to nerf PF without altering stats though, just make their target priority lower than SCVs (so that units will prefer to attack SCVs instead of a PF). I can already see terrans complain about this.
1 Like
That would force the opponent to right-click the Planetary Fortress when they want to attack it. It is not a bad idea, but it does have that downside.
well if you kill all the scvs then no you would not have to right click the planetary, atleast untill other army units show up.
The main thing PF prevents is multi-prong attack. Protoss may attack 4 bases at once with 8 zealots each. Current PF - NO damage as to speak. If the target priority is changed there is going to be serious damage. You cannot control those zealots while simultaneously threaten the terran’s main army with disruptors/HT at once. Same idea with zerg. It is a huge nerf if the target priority is made that way.
Yeah PFs are kinda weird. Like, making them is a detriment because you lose MULES and scans…but if you repair them, they take an abysmal amount of units to kill.
Not really a problem but it’s like Terrans who float their buildings after they’ve lost in hopes of forcing a tie: it’s just one of those obnoxious little things you have to know about in advance because the wrong decision will get you killed.
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The whole floating buildings needs to go, im so tired of people who lost the game float there stuff away just to waste time because there a sore loser. Thats getting old they need to delete that mechanic from the game entirely. Its rediculous almost every other terran i come accross does this when they die just to be %==>. Seriously who ever came up with this idea sure picked the right race to do it for since you know the majority of terrans are babies.
1 Like
I just to feel this way but now, meh, just means takes a bit longer to win.