The Case for Increasing Unit Health

1: Fun

It's simply a lot more fun. Battles last longer and unit's don't just vaporize as soon as they get in range of each other. The longer battles last, the more fun players and spectators have.

2: Increased Strategic Depth

Because engagements last longer, they matter more. Retreating is perfectly viable. Unit composition matters a lot more.

Go Try it

Go play RCBM. Or there's a mod floating around here with increased unit health.

All we need to do is (roughly) double unit health. Tweak it a little, and Infernos and Vanguards shouldn't get a full doubling of their health, but it's a good rough starting point.

Increased unit health simply is a lot more fun.

And I know Uber really wants eSports to be a thing. Well, longer lasting engagements means more excitement for spectators and more time zooming in close to the combat.

Seriously Uber and all you naysayers. Go give increased unit health a try. It is tons of fun.

I have played these mods, and really, units still get vaporised when 2 death blobs converge.

It's inevitable, having 50 units all focus fire is simply going to shared enemy units, making battles last just as long on the top scale regardless due to how easy it is to stack fire-power.

A +100% HP buff is only going to effect the lower scale battles, never the medium and large.

I kinda do see how i.e. dox are basically one hit down, but I don't think that is that bad. You have a ton of them as well. Losing a dox is like losing a hitpoint I guess a +100% buff might look a little better, but it's a tweak I would add after fixing a lot of other much more important things first.

So let's just make all units 99% more cheaper. Less sim speed = longer engagements

Oh god...

I have enjoyed the dox v dox setup more now simply because there is MOAR! = more destruction and bigger armies and more carnage + explosions~!

Except that when two death blobs converge there is no such thing as focus fire...

There is no need for that really. 2 big armies that shoot at each other = units in the front line get destroyed super fast. That won't change unless you have a really questionable dps to hp ratio.

That may be the case but no matter how you turn it, as long as you double the HP of each unit you need twice the firepower to destroy any amount of units and therefore any engagement will last longer.

I disagree with point 1, things get absurd when units resist tons of impacts. I remmember in warcraft3 how stupid was to beat a small guy with huge axes again and again and again and again and...

This is only true if you make the assumption the the rate at which units are killed is limited by total damage output. But this complete ignores overkill, which is an important aspect I would think. I.e. if normally 10 units shoot at the same target, it is still going to be insta-killed regardless of this HP boost. And in the same amount of time! I don't know exact number, but it is clear that for at least Dox this is very relevant.

But like OP said: the only way to get a feeling for it is by testing, as it's too complex to be theorizing about.

Death blobs are an unrelated topic. They come from the lack of friendly fire (or at least collision detection) which makes a true multi ranked unit compositions rather ... optional. I mean, why use grenadiers when you can just stack cheap Dox? Especially when that Dox-blob is also more agile and efficient amd reaches higher DPS than a complex formation. Plus spacing between units is waaaaaayyyyyyy too low, which in combination with the weapon range is the second prerequisite for forming deathballs.

While I can agree on this, I would argue that PA is currently way too far on the other end of the spectrum. A slight health boost would help, perhaps.

Naval needs at least triple their current health - even if the other units remain untouched - because they're so large and slow that they need to survive long enough to not go poof or else naval combat is a tremendous letdown. The comical example is that a Leviathan can be killed with 2 or 3 T1 bombers.

I hate that to. However, doubling PA unit health doesn't resist tons of impacts. All it really means is they resist... 3 or 4 ish shots rather than getting blown up on the first or second shot.

I would highly recommend giving it a try before you say you don't like it. Because it is most definitely not two units sitting and shooting at each other 20 times.

Why not just halve all units damage? Cause i can see if u double the doxes health, with the current ballance, they will raid too efficiently....

There's a number of issues with the Dox... really need an overhaul.

This is my stab at it:

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-igndox.65575/

Makes bombers much, much stronger.

Anti-popcorn is the "other" (see PAMM) mod floating around, and it actually does a pretty good job at dealing with the dox.

It doubles the health of all units (except infernos/vanguards, which only get 1.5)
doubles damage of all defenses. I've been thinking about changing this to double ROF so they are better at popping dox
cheaper and longer range combat fabbers.

The important thing to note here is that dox still die in one shot from an ant (84 damage vs 80 health) making them suicide against any group of tanks, especially if they are bolstered by combat fabbers.

and deathball engagements do last longer, (though do tend to drain metal supplies VERY fast thanks to com fabs, which I think adds an interesting bit of strategy of choosing when to engage an opponent)

EDIT: for full info https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-anti-popcorn-units.63209/

I feel like increasing HP will increase the reward for micro. If units can pummel each other, then there is more of an incentive to focus fire on individual units in every engagement. Once people catch on to it, then you will have to micro focus fire in every game or risk your opponent doing it to you. Then again, I haven't played with double health so this is mostly speculation.

I used to be very much against increasing unit health for that exact reason.

But then I gave it a try and it's awesome.

Yep, micro doesn't really become a factor until you triple or quadruple the health of units.