The Case for Increasing Unit Health

well I feel that SupCom battles are better because of this bigger health!

Load up the anti-popcorn mod and try it for yourself (and do give feedback on it, no one ever seems to do that...). It does a little more than just double unit health but I feel it remains true to the idea.

the only real reward to micro is flanking a deathball to get at com fabs.

It's not only more health. Units are also much slower compared to the size of the maps, so even though they have more health, they can't penetrate any further without dying, plus it's far more difficult to dodge attacks. There is also a much larger spacing in formations, so missing with high spread weapons does NOT mean just hitting the next unit.

And while there are still people who manage to dance against artillery in SupCom or FAF, it's not something which would be possible in every situation, so the larger health on units goes down much more reliably.

Just increasing health without dealing with broken dodge mechanics, spacing in formations and unit speed doesn't help much. On the contrary, it only means that some units can suddenly launch much harder attacks against fortified positions. That's not helping at taking the neck breaking speed out of encounters, on the contrary, it makes fast reaction (or solid walls!) even more essential since your stationary defenses alone are having an even harder time at keeping their ground, even against smaller forces.

Really, it isn't such a bad idea. Make units have more health, but a trade to -15% on all unit speed. That way, less micro is involved, and more army-smashing. Also favors turrets a little more.

Given how painful it is to move vehicles and navy on large planets as-is, that last thing I want is a cut to unit speed... unless we're talking Dox.

You called for a dox nerf?

Well, the dox having the highest number, as well as air, would recieve the largest reduction (-3 or -4 for dox, -10 for air and maybe air shouldn't even be changed for fragility).

Naval should likely keep their speed, besides 1/6 of 5 is less than a whole number so there is that arguement.

Fabbers also should keep their current speed?

Large planets are the only arugement for unit's current speed, which are inconsistent across the board, and locks their health as low so they can't simply perimeter run a defense to get inside a base with their combined high health and speed. Really, if you lowered speed for more health, you have less popcorn-y units and you can just use teleporters (or bots would still be fast-ish)

Naval speed is a bit to low anyway, but it's not that much of a problem, given that most planets don't even have water bodies big enough for naval to work as intended, primarily using their range against distant targets and not just as an artillery replacement.

Dox speed is just way too high. -10 sounds perfectly reasonable, considering that the still have 200 acceleration and 720°/s turn rate, meaning they can still turn on a dime. You could as well triple its health (it would still have not even have HALF the health a Ant has right now), but only when it looses the ability to dodge in return. Well, maybe "only" -5 when you decrease acceleration and foremost the turn rate.

Reducing air speed is tricky, question is: How should air units behave in comparison to land, and how should they behave in relation to each other? Do all air units actually need to be significantly faster than ground units? Or wouldn't it be reasonable to let e.g. the vehicle scout be faster than a gunship, or in other terms: Slow the gunships down so far that they can be deployed with the land based army? Think flying tank with inferior range, and before you say it's inferior: Think of it more as a "surprise Inferno" which bypasses natural obstacles rather than quick strike team. Maybe even put it into "ground target class" too, so tanks and laser towers can strike back.

And how does a tanky bomber behave? Can it be allowed to fly the same patterns as it does now? Or does it require a weapon charge sequence in return to keep the damage/livetime ratio the same?

Should a fighter ever by "tanky"? Or should it be ripped apart by any defense to prevent it from being used as AA bait? Remember that if the bomber is made more tanky with reduced RoF, it will require more than a single run so the trick to use fighters as meat shields no longer works.

What about air transports? Ghetto gunship or transporter? Remember that we have portals, so having armored transports could actually turn out quite interesting, with the simple intent of turning former ground units into air units without boosting the speed to far. (That idea was actually inspired by the "Inferno-Astreus from hell" bug.)

Unless you also lower speed, raising unit health will have the effect of making static defenses even more useless than they already are. Enemy units will be able to more effectively stream past your defenses to damage important targets because you just can't kill them fast enough.

dunno about speed(unless if is naval), about dancing Arty... it's depend what arty and what unit, but a Lobo will generaly wins a "Lab", and a Aeon Arty will win only PDs

Except that you are not only dancing arty in PA. Certain units like the infamous Dox can dodge about anything, even bombs dropped right above their heads or shots from point-blank range. Even though dodging any type of artillery at close distance by confusing the lead algorithm is a somewhat dirty trick. Not saying anything about dodging long range arty, since it's rather obviously designed to hit only stationary targets.

In Reality Naval should get more speed, I mean they are F*%# Slow

for fabber the actual speed is good because they don't go to combat

and about Large Planets well this is a big problem!

well I mean in SupCom this is possible, but it's is a game w/ a much better balance than PA is...

Anti-popcorn mod buffs towers damage to avoid this problem.

You kind of negate your point by saying 'go play RCBM'. I don't particularly have a problem with unit health right now, and if I did I guess i would try RCBM and other mods that aimed to change this aspect of the game. It is certainly an interesting thing to tweak, and would make micro battles a bit more tactical I suppose... but only a bit, I think. In a way you could argue that increasing unit health across the board just draws out the conflict unnecessarily.

PA seems to be all about MOAR UNITS to me.. constantly striving for more eco, more factories, more production, more units.... so it's really about who has the larger army. If 20 tanks hit 30 tanks, or a mixed squad of 50 units or so hits a similar mix of 100.... well, you know who's gonna win. It would still be the same outcome with more unit health, just more drawn out. And the game is supposed to be about macro as well, so who wants to monitor all of these engagements to try and pull out/retreat units.

Anyway, point is, Uber have let us mod the game to change this things very easily, as people have done with RCBM, Statera, etc. Not sure I want to try though, i barely have enough time to learn the vanilla game I'm just really glad PA was made with modding in mind from the start, I think it is so great that we have all these mods to let us change aspects of the game like this, to suit our personal preferences

I don't negate my points at all by saying to play a modded version of this game.

I used to be a nay-sayer for this exact argument – until I played with the unit health increased. Once I played it I was sold on it.

If you don't want to learn a whole new balance, go play that mod that just increases unit health. Can't remember what it's called but it was mentioned in this thread several times. It takes the current units and current balance, and just makes the engagements last longer and makes strategy and unit composition more important.

Why didn´t you link the mod? And why isn´t it listed, shown and advertised at PA Matches?!

Hornet-Gameplay is pure micro, our team often uses the APM-Power of an entire PLAYER just to do Hornet Micro...
...but they turn out pretty powerfull!

I only meant you negate your point by asking "Uber and all you naysayers. Go give increased unit health a try." and then immediately point out that there are mods that do just that. I don't necessarily see that vanilla should be changed right now in that regard. But I'll certainly give the mod that only increases unit health a try, could be interesting

Like your point is fair, but I don't think asking Uber to try it is relevant (because a) they've probably already tried it in internal testing and settled on the way it is now for a reason, and b) because mods allow for it). That's what I meant, I guess.

Why didn't I link it? Because I was being lazy.

Why isn't it on PA Matches? Because PA Matches is a MASSIVE website updated by only me. I've given people the opportunity and capabilities to add their mods to PA Matches themselves, but no one seems interested in the free promotion to thousands of people each month (and that's just in the mods section). It's getting quite tiring adding all the mods myself. And I've even had people complain that I have listed their mods on PA Matches claiming I was in copyright infringement by linking to their forum post about their mod.

I don't see how it negates anything. I'm telling people to give it a try and giving them suggestions on how they could try it out.

Why is me asking people to try invalid it if there's mods that do it?

So if a mod does it or a mod allows for it we shouldn't ever talk about it?

agreed buffed health all around seems an obvious upgrade for PA