The Case for Increasing Unit Health

Actually I CAN presume, I've actually tried it, a lot. I'm the creator of anti-popcorn, do you really think I'd release it into the wild without testing it? I realize not everyone will like it, but arguing theory against practice doesn't work

As to the claim of engagement length not affecting enjoyment, do you really find base building that interesting? Because the actual fights right now make up a too small portion of the game as it is.

We are not so much comparing here a short engagement vs a long engagement as we are comparing engagements vs non-engagements. Longer engagements increase that ratio, which is where the enjoyment comes in.

Also an argument could be made for long vs short engagements. Consider a hockey game, what's more exciting; a goal on an empty net or a hard fought struggle between offense and defense, multiple brilliant saves before the defense is finally overwhelmed and a goal is scored.

Also, asking people to try a mod is a perfectly logical method of argument. Theory crafting is all good and fine, bit you need to try it to find how it actually plays

1. Confirmation bias due to creation; not a logical argument. Stating that theory doesn't work against theory is both fallacious and without merit.

Theory can argue against reality, that's the whole point of coming up with theories. Secondly, it's not theory when I back it up with examples grounded in reality (MOBAs).

Attack the arguments, not my credentials

2. Longer engagements doesn't make base - building shorter. False equivalence. The time spent fighting is a subjective concern and your ideals shouldn't be forced on the base game.

3. More false equivalence, this one wrapped in a bad analogy (most analogies are bad, this isn't an insult). You're constructing a biased, unrelated scenario as an equivalence to altering the length of a specific set of engagements in PA.

Don't do this.

3. People weren't being asked to try the mod. Uber was being TOLD to implement the mod. No twisting of words, please.

On phone, so forgive me if I'm coming across too short / angry. I'm not!

You haven't given one reason showing that instant vaporization is more enjoyable then longer engagements. So far all you've been saying longer engagements is wrong, but not that shorter engagements are right.

You're right. The sweeping generalization across all games that longer fights automatically means more fun is not true. But it doesn't mean that it's automatically false either.

This isn't a sweeping generalization.

The increased strategy, tactics, variety, and options provided by an increase of health in Planetary Annihilation makes gameplay more fun.

Strategy and tactics matter more. You can retreat and reposition your forces and it actually matters. You can do small feint attacks to test defenses without losing your entire army. Army composition matters more. That also means that we have more variety in our armies. All of which adds up to greater enjoyment.

I am by no means saying "fights last longer, and since fights last longer they're more fun."

I am saying that by making individual engagements last longer, it provides an increase in strategy, depth, variety, and so much more which makes the game more fun and strategic.

The existing state of affairs isn't instant vaporisation. To frame it as such exposes your bias on the topic.

I can't give solid reasons on whether or not something is more 'fun' or not because fun is subjective; something you don't seem to have considered.

All I can do - heck, all I have to do, is point out why your reasoning for changing the status quo is flawed. You're the one arguing for the change, you see.

1. I'm not stating that theory doesn't work against theory, I'm stating that theory doesn't work against practice. As a scientist in RL, I'd be ignored, and lose all credibility, if I tried arguing a theory without evidence (the original purpose of the mod I made was to provide this evidence (though for a different thread), it just snowballed a bit since then). This isn't climate science, I can't in good conscience just make **** up.

2. Not saying it makes it shorter, saying the portion of the game devoted solely to base building, which I consider about as exciting as watching grass grow, is decreased, which thus has proportionally more combat, thus more interesting.

3. Never tell a Canadian that hockey makes for a bad analogy.

In all seriousness though, analogies are a method of providing comparative insight, something I feel is rather important here, since we clearly don't agree on PA examples.

So, to this end, lets do a PA case study.
Lets take vanilla armies. say, vehicles with com fabs against roughly equal size force.
from time of engagement to time of engagement end: a few seconds, on average, add a few if the com fabs are in a position to repair infernos, which they likely will not be by default thanks to silly formations/short range repair.
double health: fight will take approx 1.5x as long, though varies quite a bit with formation and obliquity of engagement. The sub-linear increase is a result of the fact that armies proximity effects damage output as they close distance, causing front rank units to get vaporized pretty fast regardless of health. The more direct the engagement (that is, whether they are engaging directly or simply passing close enough to exchange shots) the less effect health increases will have.
anti-popcorn: Since I didn't find the time increase useful enough with a pure 2x health increase in any kind of tactical manner, I also buffed the com fabs to have double range. This means that unless you commit a force, you are not likely to see major losses (though your economy will still take the same hit). This also allows for the possibility of retreat, as your units reach extreme range, they are unlikely to die. The important thing to note is that this effects your strategic position, not your economic position, as com fabs drain the same resources as it would take to replace those units. You just don't have to replace them and move them around back into position. It also provides greater rewards for engaging an enemy flank, exposing utility vehicles and the weaker ants to the highly repairable infernos, which I feel is a good thing.

The important point here is with more units surviving, the more units will likely be in more interesting positions, rather than just rolling more off the assembly line and hurling them straight at the enemy.

You've said I'm biased. Perhaps understandable, probably true, but keep in mind, bias is not the same as deception, ignorance or automatic fallacy. ALL scientists are biased. heck, all HUMANS are biased.

3.1. quoting OP: "Seriously Uber and all you naysayers. Go give increased unit health a try. It is tons of fun."
ummmmmmmmm ya, not getting your argument on this point, he kinda did say try, a bit...

Brian may come across a bit strong at times, but that is an issue of tone (difficult to get right at the best of times, let alone on forum) not actual intent.

In short, try out anti-popcorn, share where you feel it goes wrong (seriously, I get little enough feedback as it is) etc. If you can give specific examples of why the arguments presented in this thread fail, it'll really help, rather than just point to subjective argument as a point of fallacy, which is a bit trivial frankly since all argument is subjective.

Apologies in advance if I'm coming across a bit strong as well, I'm rather drunk atm.

I mistyped, my bad; I meant theory against practise. I've already provided examples within the gaming sphere and so far you've both ignored them.

Disregarding the point about climate science (I sincerely hope you don't mean change), you have nothing supporting your side other than 'this is fun'. Fun is not an objective measure.

This is why there are mods for the game, so you can play the game the way you want it.

2. We have a problem here then. You argued that the game length doesn't increase. But then you said that we're not shortening the 'boring' segments (we're increasing combat duration). Ergo, game length is increasing.

Which is it?

3. Analogies are pretty much unequivocally bad, because they're so often misused and / or flawed in some way. In your case, you crafted a clearly biased comparison that doesn't reflect actual game events. This is where your bias affects the arguments you put forward. It weakens them. Humans are innately biased, but this fact doesn't magically excuse your increased bias for this change.

Based on your scenario alone you've already implemented a second change that is also highly important - the Commander fabricator change - which also has knock-on effect with other aspects of the game (surely). The OP is telling Uber to just double the health.

4. We're debating semantics (again) with this. The intent of the OP was to tell Uber (and people) to try this change. There was no other end goal to this thread, from a poster who has become notoriously critical of Uber, who both relied on 'fun' as an argument and committed to sweeping generalisations.

Which he has since admitted, but then turned the discussion on me. It's not my case to prove, and levels of enjoyment aren't a reliable piece of evidence.

1. The point about climate science (yes, I did mean change) was just my drunken venting at my professor's promotion of academic dishonesty that I currently have to put up with, feel free to ignore it as it is totally off topic.

2. Because base building (I include blob building in this as well, or in general, any point in the game where the purpose is preparation for combat) can overlap with combat. They are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps a better way of putting it is it increases this overlap.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one though, this thread has been derailed long enough and is starting to get a little too far into the sticks.

HA HA HA HA

Get out.

If you can't accept the basic premise of the topic, why are you here? In ANY fight over ten units, the units are gone within 2-4 seconds. That's not instant - but it's much faster than the reaction time with latency necessary to retreat with minimal losses.

well hopefully some balance occurs sometime soon

Oh @Gorbles... You're making me laugh.

Go play it and stop theory crafting.

Well to be honest, this change doesn't really do all that much, when 2 armys collide they still kinda vaporise each other within a second because of all that raw alpha damage or sustained DPS.

Even in my mod, the units still vaporise each other when they get into range, that doesn't change that.


All the HP buff does is change the very small encounters between units for at max, an extra 2 or 3 shots.


Something that literally means jack when you really, really, REALLY should be playing with at minimum 300 unit size armys.

Is the change nice for the 5 min scrub rush? Yeah, but other then that it'll be hard to fix anything with rate of fire and damage being so bloody high. That or the effective damage from accuracy I suppose.

That's why I have the wreckages back in my mod with a ludicrous amount of HP, to act as cover for drawn out battles.

That amount of units is almost always gong to shred each other, the HP doesn't do much at all.

Solid counterarguments. Well-read.

I don't want to play it, because increasing the length of an already-length game in any aspect without actually thinking through the connotations is basically an egotistic attempt at pretending you're superior to the devs you often criticise.

Have fun with that echo chamber Give me a shout when you can actually tolerate a differing opinion to your own.

Then go away please. You are provoking all kinds of negativity just for the sake of trolling instead of trying out what the proposed changes actually mean for gameplay. Literally everyone who tried this stated that
- It is more fun
- Engagements last longer, but games don't
- It makes unit composition matter more

Yet you still rave around how everything about this is untrue and how "The existing state of affairs isn't instant vaporisation" - which costs you every credibility you had about this topic.
Brian is not the only person wanting an overall increase in unit health - there have been numerous requests and threads on this topic with lots of people wanting the same.

Equating my posts to trolling, is, in fact, trolling. Kindly go do it elsewhere.

The fact that 2 - 4 seconds is more than a lifetime in most twitch-based games, and also in fast-paced strategy games is a complete aside. If someone has a decent APM (let's say 100, I disdain the horrific knock-on effect Starcraft-levels of APM have had on RTS design over the past decade and a half), you can expect at least 6 actions over the span of 4 seconds (technically that would be 90 APM).

Increasing unit health is a one-dimensional band-aid that doesn't even recognise the core issues at fault.

Fun is subjective. Stop using it as an argument, and stop calling people trolls just because they disagree with you. Really testing my patience, hah.

Did you not read all of my other posts?

Or read the part where I said I used to be against increasing unit health? If I didn't listen to counter arguments or only listened to an echo chamber, how could I have done a complete 180 on my opinion?

As far as echo chamber goes... wouldn't that apply to you since you don't bother responding to the main points brought up and don't even bother trying it? You theory craft and ignore, and you call me the echo chamber?

Quite easily. Anyone can change their opinion. The point is, you think it's correct. I think it's incorrect.

What matters is the points we raise, and you brushing off my posts in an insulting manner isn't going to endear me to a serious debate.

What main points have I not addressed?

And I call more than just you the echo chamber. There's a few of ya

in big games with more than 4 players, sure! But in 1v1 ranked, that would suck, imagine people doing rushes, it would change the game completly. Players already do bomber rushes, how are you supposed to defend boom bots if it gets more hp? they wont die before the target, its kinda absurd, the same to other units. And 1v1 games would take longer. The ideal would be to have a build in option to change to 2-4 times more hp in custom games, and the default in 1v1 ranked.

Im hoping for more micro based stuff actually, like skills in units for example, or "special units", that would be fun. With that 1v1's with more hp would work, massive boombots coming, aoe skill or cc to stop them for a while, emp or smth, that would be great and would add way more depth into the game. Also , people would invest more into learning.

Thats what this game is lacking, more UNIQUE units. Like, all units do the same in each group, one attacks the floor, other attacks the air, other has to get closer and does more dmg and he's more tanky, its all autoattacking. Thats why past 3-5min there is no build order. Because there are no upgrades and you end up doing a bit of everything, theres 2 choices, vehicles or bots.

Its not bad, but its all about map control and macro/economy/mass production, if they would add upgrades, special units/skills, it would raise the bar and we would notice a far bigger diference between a uber player and a platinum one.

PS: Im not talking about adding way more units, 3-4 would be enough as long as they are unique. I didnt want to bring other games up, but stacraft (i know its a different style of rts) has units that create barriers for choke points for example, thats a unique unit. Just to clarify my suggestion.