About T2: Upgrades vs Sidegrades

What do you mean by this exactly?

I have the feeling that you mean to say that the game plays out the same, regardless of whether both players have all T1 or both players have all T2 tanks. As both are tanks that behave toughly the same.

If I understand that correctly, then I strongly disagree. Of course that is true, but the beginning and the end of the game are not the interesting part. The interesting part if when one player has T2 before the other, and there is a disparity in the army compositions!

If I don't understand that correctly please elaborate, for I do not understand your point.


P.S. Geez guys, lighten up! Don't jump to conclusions, use nuance, be inquisitive and constructive. And if you do have something to say personally that doesn't really contribute, send the guy/gal a PM. Or start your own thread.

You guys are lucky that I'm no moderator. I would have gone Team Liquid style! Stern, but fair!

This is a good point, and I think it's timely well made. The only thing I could add is that T2 units can also work as 'premium upgrades' of T1 units, wherein they are actually slightly more expensive pound for pound (in terms of their dps/hp/etc.) but are still useful in that they can apply that dps in a much more focused, concentrated punch, or they add in some sort of bonus functionality (extra range, or aoe, for example) that gives them a slightly more focused situational role.

Simply being one unit instead of five can actually be a benefit (though it can also be a drawback). A good example is when you're trying to group units together as tightly as possible to make a hole in an enemy defence line (you can use 10 tightly-packed vanguards to breach a defence line that 50 infernos couldn't break). The 'surface area' of a given formation of units is important in fights because it represents the area across which the formation can take damage. smaller unit formations with a smaller surface area win against less dense formations with equivalent total hp/dps because they can can't take damage as quickly.

Also, Mered, Cola_colin, can I respectfully and politely ask you to take a break from this back-and-forth posting? You are nice people, you mean each other well, and your game knowledge is too important to be wasted like this; please do talk over skype/TS, and work together to put your ideas into a form you can both agree on.

I am happy to oblige.
In short: you generalised a tad too much there. I was only referring to units that are strictly better than another unit, thus obsoleting it.
And here comes the essay-length version of it: I am really out of the loop right now, so I cannot provide a PA-example, I am afraid. So let me illustrate. Assume having a unit, let us call it the Dox, and another one, let us call it the Rox. They have the same stats, cost, build time, movement type, size et cetera, apart from the Rox having double the fire rate of the Dox. As soon as you are able to build the Rox, you would have no reason to build Dox anymore. But since the Rox does not behave differently, does not bring anything new to table, only a better statline, it is essentially the same unit with a different skin.
The game could just as well have removed the Dox from play entirely, you would not have noticed. Which means, that the addition of the Rox has not expanded the unit roster - since its addition is an effective removal of the Dox, nothing has changed but the visuals. Now this is a valid way of going about things, but it goes slightly against what was hinted at by Uber and implied by PA's heritage. Plus, it is a waste of visually distinct units in an already limited unit roster.

Mind you, all this ignores the fact that the Dox may come from a T1 factory, whereas the Rox may come from a T2 factory. This most often only serves to delay the Dox becoming obsolete, though, not prevent it. Still, it would be disingenuous to not at least mention it.

I think there's no problem making some T1 basic units obsolete with T2, so long as both T1 and T2 produce something the other tier can't. And right now, most do!

Example: You've got T2 vehicles and an enemy with a heavy air force. Your multiple T1 factories can be reassigned to pumping spinners while you use the T2 factories to pump tanks. The T2 factories could make spinners too, of course, but why waste build time not making T2 when you have plenty of T1 factories for that?

Likewise, T1 air factories keep being viable because they produce AA fighters, and T1 bot factories produce boom-bots. Also worth noting is that a hybrid T1-T2 army is much stronger because weaker units can take damage for and supplement the larger ones, thereby extending the use of the T2 units in a given fight.

Even so, this mostly applies to Bolod and Dox. Most other units are exclusive to their tier, such as rocket-firing Bluehawks and rocket-countering Gil-Es, gunships, shellers... it works better than you'd think.

The problem is 1v1 does not showcase these dynamics, not because of the cost of T2 but the fast nature of the 1v1 format.

Are you not just advocating a non-upgrades approach? Having no overlap in roles between tiers is what most proponents of the T2-specialists stance ask, after all.

Well, some overlap is helpful to prevent lategame lag-spam and enable force consolidation. Armchair example; assuming a Slammer is worth 4 Dox, then 200 Dox and 50 Slammers, or just 100 Slammers, is a lot less lag than 400 Dox.

If that is the case, why not drop the Dox and be done with the lag. Performance should not necessitate obsolescence.