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STAR WARS™ Empire at War: Gold Pack >  Workshop > STEINER MODDING GROUP OFFICIAL's Workshop > Awakening of the Rebellion 2.11.9: Jump To Hyperspace > Discussions
Awakening of the Rebellion 2.11.9: Jump To Hyperspace
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thermalwalnut98 Jul 24, 2021 @ 2:17pm
What use are Orbital Bombardments?
So, from my personal experience, orbital bombardments (Imperial specifically) are a massive disappointment in terms of actual usability. I have seen that they are great for wiping out groups of wide infantry formations or doing some damage to vehicles, but overall it feels like a bit of a letdown to be honest. The choice to make the bombardment fall over such a massive area with such random shot placements feels odd as well, it would make more sense, to me at least, if it was high damage and wide space between shots, or tight and low damage, but it is neither. The accuracy is horrible, and the damage is quite bad. Bombers are a far larger threat to bases than the bombardment is, which feels like an odd thing to have said, considering the ships raining down this hellfire are more often than not Imperial Star Destroyers. It feels like something is just not quite right when a Tector class, or any other ISD or VSD model that I just used to tear apart the enemy fleet in orbit is somehow unable to do much more than dent the ground base, if any of the shots land on the structure I want destroyed at all. It almost feels insulting when an Elite AT-AT is capable of more damage in one hit/salvo than a capital ship firing full power with intent to kill can accomplish. Most other mods, if they bother to change the base game bombardment at all, still tend to allow the bombardment to be a terrifying blow to the enemy (See Fall of The Republic for example) where as more often than not I will usually forget about the bombardment, or when I do use it I will be sorely disappointed in the results.

If I am simply using this asset incorrectly then that is my own fault and I would love to know how others use it to better effect, but from what I have seen, and how I attempt to use it, it feels like I am using a pea shooter and not a capital ship's main guns.
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Showing 1-10 of 10 comments
Arch56I Jul 24, 2021 @ 3:28pm 
Yeah, same to be said for the Rebel bombardment, more often than not i tend to change it from Ion shots to Turbolaser fire just for the CHANCE to kill something with it. The shot dispersion makes fire from WW2 battleships in WoWs look laser accurate by comparison, 8 out of 10 times the shots miss everything within the AOE and when they do hit a building it barely even scratches it. I'd like to know the point of the bombardments and what their intended use actually is.
#1
samuel.thomas.russell Jul 24, 2021 @ 5:43pm 
I’d agree that the bombardments are weak, but I think this is more an issue of gameplay being more important than flavor. Powerful bombardments don’t really have much counterplay and encourage a playstyle of turtling and waiting for your bombardment cool down. The devs want the ground game to be an interactive and interesting experience that you can’t solve by just holding a bunker and waiting for bombardments and bombing runs. The bombing run is stronger because AA provides some amount of counterplay.

As far as flavor, the larger problem is that space battles in EAW have a much larger scale than land battles. Land battles involve a few hundred troops at most. The crews for ships in large space battles may number more than 100,000. The in universe cost of space assets would be many times larger than the in universe cost of ground assets. A single ISD should have a garrison of numerous AT-ATs and thousands of storm troopers. Why does 5 x-wings in space cost a fraction of 3 x-wings on the ground? You simply can’t answer these questions and maintain a good ground battle experience. It just is how the base game was designed.
#2
thermalwalnut98 Jul 24, 2021 @ 6:12pm 
Originally posted by samuel.thomas.russell:
I’d agree that the bombardments are weak, but I think this is more an issue of gameplay being more important than flavor. Powerful bombardments don’t really have much counterplay and encourage a playstyle of turtling and waiting for your bombardment cool down. The devs want the ground game to be an interactive and interesting experience that you can’t solve by just holding a bunker and waiting for bombardments and bombing runs. The bombing run is stronger because AA provides some amount of counterplay.

As far as flavor, the larger problem is that space battles in EAW have a much larger scale than land battles. Land battles involve a few hundred troops at most. The crews for ships in large space battles may number more than 100,000. The in universe cost of space assets would be many times larger than the in universe cost of ground assets. A single ISD should have a garrison of numerous AT-ATs and thousands of storm troopers. Why does 5 x-wings in space cost a fraction of 3 x-wings on the ground? You simply can’t answer these questions and maintain a good ground battle experience. It just is how the base game was designed.

I understand that, and in counter I would like to bring up that shutter shields and Base shields do exist, which prevent this kind of thing. In fact that is the sole purpose of the shutter shield is just to prevent bombers and orbital strikes. Their upkeep is not exactly cheap either, so it seems odd to have something so expensive be a counter to something so weak and mostly useless in comparison. Since they have already implemented an asset meant to counter these two things, why not make them more viable to actually use? It is not like there is no way to stop them after all, but the devs seem to want to minimize the effect of crossover assets between space and ground battles.
#3
samuel.thomas.russell Jul 24, 2021 @ 9:24pm 
Base shields are a valid point since they frankly are also not worth their upkeep and the building slot. However, I just think that making bombardments powerful will trivialize the ground war.
#4
General Brooks  [developer] Jul 25, 2021 @ 3:37am 
Firstly, @Arch561, the rebel bombardments in AotR are turbolasers so not sure what you're saying there.
Beyond that, samuel is right in that gameplay considerations are very important here, there isn't much anyone can do about an orbital strike unless they have shields, so we wanted them to be useful more as OP describes, against big formations, than in just nuking targets.
That said, bombardments were nerfed in 2.9 by making their radius much larger and I personally think that was a step too far, I think they were balanced fine before then.
This might be the kind of thing that I could push for changes to if people complain about it in the survey we released.
#5
thermalwalnut98 Jul 25, 2021 @ 7:23am 
Originally posted by General Brooks:
Firstly, @Arch561, the rebel bombardments in AotR are turbolasers so not sure what you're saying there.
Beyond that, samuel is right in that gameplay considerations are very important here, there isn't much anyone can do about an orbital strike unless they have shields, so we wanted them to be useful more as OP describes, against big formations, than in just nuking targets.
That said, bombardments were nerfed in 2.9 by making their radius much larger and I personally think that was a step too far, I think they were balanced fine before then.
This might be the kind of thing that I could push for changes to if people complain about it in the survey we released.

Thank you for responding! I can admit I understand bombardments being a bit much given they can not be stopped at all from attacking without preparation on the defenders part, so I understand that from a gameplay point. If I had anything to say on it, I would say that perhaps lowering the upkeep of the base shields would be a better way of countering or lessening the effect of orbital support instead of making the orbital support less effective. Give a reason to build base defenses, make them more worth that massive upkeep price tag instead of making the thing they defend against less effective.

I will look for this survey, I would be happy to take part in it.
#6
General Brooks  [developer] Jul 25, 2021 @ 7:35am 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSextJbv3gcavVgSDtJwDp8HFggGZ6awg3goMvlA12iRsJ7yCw/viewform?usp=sf_link for the survey.
I get what you're saying. I suppose the balance is that we don't want shield generators to become a compulsory purchase, or for planets without them to just get nuked, they have to be usable against an army without shield gens without being overpowered.
#7
thermalwalnut98 Jul 25, 2021 @ 8:07am 
Originally posted by General Brooks:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSextJbv3gcavVgSDtJwDp8HFggGZ6awg3goMvlA12iRsJ7yCw/viewform?usp=sf_link for the survey.
I get what you're saying. I suppose the balance is that we don't want shield generators to become a compulsory purchase, or for planets without them to just get nuked, they have to be usable against an army without shield gens without being overpowered.

Thank you! I just finished the survey. The final thing I suppose I will say on the topic then would be that if you don't want the base shields to feel like a requirement (Understandable), then what is the purpose of the shutter shields at all? It just feels weird to have an asset that has a 62cr a week upkeep (I may have gotten that number wrong) that serves more of a comfort purpose than a useful purpose. Turbolaser towers have high upkeep but can tear through enemy vehicle formations which makes their price worth it.

What I am getting at, is shouldn't bombers/bombardments be just frightening enough to warrant at least considering building a base shield? Shields are a useless asset otherwise, and I say that from experience as I have only ever built a single shutter shield with intent to actually have it used in battle in all my hours of play, and never built a proper base shield, even before 2.9. I would think it would make sense to have these ground base defenses be similar to space defenses, where they are useful enough to warrant building them on frontline worlds but you would not want to have them on every planet.

Thank you again for responding to my concerns, and I hope my survey answers help!
Last edited by thermalwalnut98; Jul 25, 2021 @ 8:11am
#8
General Brooks  [developer] Jul 25, 2021 @ 8:23am 
Shutter shields are an alternative to base shields, they provide better defence against bombers and strikes and are cheaper, but don't block ground laser fire like base shields do.
I would dispute that shields are useless, both types can add quite a lot to a ground defence if used properly. I think they are powerful enough to consider building them already, if you want to build a true fortress on the ground. Try giving them a proper shot if you haven't already.
Thanks for the survey answer, appreciated :)
#9
Stele Aug 26, 2021 @ 4:21am 
In old rebellion/supremacy planets without shields and/or ground to space artilery could be pounded into submission by single ship only costing popular support for orbital bombardment. :P But they didn't had any ground battle mechanics to show.
#10
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