reviving the Megabot discussion in light of recent events

I missed the original megabot post, so I'll just say in this thread I myself like the idea of having megabots. (krogoth was my favoritest unit) but I see the balance challenges they would present so I understand the reasoning of the opposition.

I don't think megabots have to be combat units, a mobile walking factory like mentioned above would be pretty cool, not many balance issues to worry about that I can think of.

Isn't a large scale unit at least as epic as a large group of small units though? I think both options fit PA's big scale design goal in a different way.

No, the large scale of such a unit takes away from many of the points of the game.

Namely the reason for commanders and for the nanolate, as any sufficiently large unit would remove the need for both.

Huge units are amazing the first time you use them. The 104th time? Not so much. Huge units might drive sales, but they don't drive gameplay.

I honestly think, if it cost current orbital, was a ground only unit, and was a bot larger than the commander, slightly slower, same health, same weapon, same combomb, no metal or energy buff, a highish constant energy consumption, and only a fabric gun that assists and reclaims not builds and is as efficient as an air fabber...

Id take it. Think about it. The game currently works with t3 missiles and t3 strength orbitals, most of the game is played with bulk units, with an occasional t2 hitsquad. The game barely ever reaches t3 atm, so why not add a single ground unit to the roster?

Also, it would be nice to play with an expendable commander.

Also, know how this could contribute to gameplay? A larger commander unit would be nice to build to leave back on a planet when you move forward onto a new planet with your commander.

I don't see any of that as an argument for A megabot, nor the-elephant-in-the-room that is 'T3'

If Standard and Adv.Units aren't working as intended then fix Standard and Adv.Units.
Plastering over them with a Megabot band aid and upgrading everything to T3 was what SupCom did, and it was a lesser game than TA because of it.

The point was that. The game isn't so broken it requires t3 units. The game is so well spaced out, that t3 units don't have the same problems as the other unspeakable game, because t3 is so delayed until endgame and by then full war is already going on and then the units are unique enough not to be able to simply replace all units with endgame. Especially as long as there isn't a t3 everything. Currently, t2 is just more useful for a strike units. Most t1 are one of a kind, not repeated in t2. Most current t3 is just as koy. They aren't copied in t2.

Really, an expendable weaker commander was a good example of a unit that we all know is well balanced and we all know is semi useful and we all know doesn't repeat anywhere and we all know we can't throw at everything and we all know it's main strength is that a single unit is generally multicapable. Generally, if it cost a nuke to build, it would still have more longevity than a nuke and would gurantee some damage with it, but would still generally be less useful than a nuke because a nuke you can chip at edge of antinuke range and gurantee quick easy results being a badly damaged enemy base.

Yet a commander unit really is combat useful for reclaim-and-repair, last line defense, suicide attack, and meatying up an army. You would need an army to go along with it, so it replaces nothing. You couldn't build them fast enough to use in bulk, not like they would help in bulk. You could only really use it as heavy filler.

Hell, I say if they were to test it in an early build to see how it plays, you go ahead and try to prove your side against it by including a few midgame screenshots showing how you played up to t3 and then replaced your army with t3 and continued to win the game with mass produced t3. If it is a strategy nearly as common as bombers are now, then by golly delete that megabot

Im confused about the sudden introduction of T3 to this discussion.

Anyway, the problem with a Megabot is this:

It's a very fine line to walk. It's cost is huge, and so it's benefit has to be equally huge. But it can't be too huge or else it breaks the game. but it can also not be too weak because, why then build a Megabot?

or:

#1:Cost balance
#2: power balance
#3: usefulness

I think the Megalith II from Supcom 2 is an excellent megabot. Except i never use it because it's cannon fodder in that game(#3). The only time i truly got to use it was in a non-massconverter game(#2). Same with the Cybranosaurus: a very useful and powerful unit, but seriously why build one when you can have a Monkeylord?(Again #3)

This balance is a very, very thin line to walk and it will take ages to get it right. It's a money, time and skill pit that could be used to make a dozen units cooler and better(in balance and implementation).

The thing is: Uber's time is finite and having a megabot, a PROPER megabot means, say, no orbital power plant. Or less balance. or whatever, name something.

A real useful megabot is either a niche unit (reduces #3) or a "more dakka" version of something (messes with #1, #2 #3).

We're better off having Uber spend that time and money and availability on making the other 99.9% of the game better.

Having an upgrade tiered system results in the exact problems of SupCom, no matter the scale. Currently Adv.Units are just upgrades to standard units. Just making 'Adv.Adv.Units' that are just upgrades to them Leaves us in the exact same issues of redundancy and 'race-to-the-top' gameplay.

This should be avoided. A race is not a deep strategic exercise... all you need to do is pace yourself, which in this case, is just a calculation.

So you completely remove the uniqueness of the Commander by having nearly exact copies of him... expendable, copies that are basically just 'larger'?

Pass.

People need to stop saying 'you can't build it very fast.' like that actually means something... like there's any mechanic in the game that prevents you building something fast.

With an ever expanding economy it is entirely feasible to fast-track the construction of any unit, thus making it spammable, be that Nukes, Asteroid Engines, Space Stations or this completely false notion of 'T3'.

Stop using the term 'T3'. Neutrino has decreed that there is to be no such thing as 'tiers', and certainly not an upgrade, this-bot-is-just-better-than-that-bot mentality behind their design.

The current balance is not indicative (hopefully) of the future direction this game will head in.
Adv.Units are a strategic choice to use, not a mandatory and obligatory upgrade over Standard Units.

There you have it in plain english. Adv.Units have downsides and tradeoffs that do not invalidate the earlier tech units...

Such a system of upgrading tiered tech would be foolish anyway, considering the lore of the setting.

Easy way for us all to have a megabot send a fabber onto the asteroid it'll build a weapon of mass destruction heading towards your enemy now that is a megabot right there and then.

Some people don't consider a mobile asteroid... or even the Death-Star-like Metal Planet a 'Mega-bot'.
...
I don't understand some people.

Some people also don't consider what a single unit does could be considered mega if used the right way. In my mind the Metal planet is a sleeping version of Unicron

Um, ill just say what i did last time.

No please.

I think LordQ has made some really good points, megabots are great for appeal, but get old after awhile, as well as diverting gameplay from mass army macro, to small army micro.

As much as I hate admitting it, megabots just don't make sense in pvp.

Campaign on the other hand! Megabots would be perfect for those epic climatic battles. Balance and logic is thrown out the door for those wonderful times! Too bad there won't be a campaign for which to include them in.....

Actually, that gives me an idea, what about the idea of including them as rogue neutral units/enemies on metal planets? Roaming gargantuan machines, purely there for athstetic reasons. Have them only appear on metal planets rarely, maybe with or without weapons for returning fire.
I don't know, obviously a low priority, no major gameplay addition. But it would be cool me thinks, a head nod to the notion of large megabots.

Cause I want my megabots to have legs and arm cannons and and and eye lasers! If it can't crush other robots under its feet, it's not mega enough

So, larger would mean couldn't leave planet and slower. A low tier fab gun without any "blueprints" prevents him from being commander-replaceable, with only the basic repair and reclaim and assist ability but not even an efficient build assist at that. And cost means you could build one of him or a nuke, and really the nuke would be more useful in application but the nuke doesn't actually fight in your army.

Really, we know the commander is a fairly well balanced unit. He is only unique because he is game over and he is most efficient builder. Even in spite of that, people in team will combomb with him. He would take very little time to program in, would be a very simple one-patch-try-and-see for Uber to implement and for you to show us ingame how it is a bad idea. I don't see how it would replace the commander, as the commander uses the tools as inexpendable as he is only for last stand defence, while having a megabot would allow a player an attempt to utilize that power semi-recklessly.

You know what the balance for the megabot would be? The nuke, artillery, bombers... you know why I know this? It is the current counter against any frontline commanders. Easy balance deduction.

And as far as no t3, that is a chant, one of the like which cheerleaders do. "A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet". Okay, my miswording, it "isn't t3", it is "an advanced level unit like a ground orbital or a unitized nuke". Because there isn't such thing as t3. Which means a megabot not being t3 but existing, is just as good lest you argue that we need to remove nukes and orbitals and advanced mexes, all the creation of a fabber's factory's fabber's factory's fabber...

(and let me be honest, in early game design I thought by the discussion that the game wouldn't have fabber's factory's fabber's factory's fabber's creations anyway, because that was what it seemed everyone didn't want, yet here the game is and nobody is complaining about this)

I really have no idea what you're trying to say with 'The Commander is a balanced unit.'

The whole point of the Commander is that he's not a balanced unit. He's an overpowered and super efficient combat and construction unit that is only 'balanced' by the fact that you lose the game when he dies. Remove that proviso and you have one of the most overpowered units in the game; one that you could easily mass produce given how the current economy spirals to absurd levels.

Frankly the idea that you could balance a unit that is a walking Nuke, a one-shot-kill uber cannon and having enough health to survive a direct hit from an opposing player's nuke is laughable.

Also, if you're saying that you might as well build a nuke as it would be more useful nine times out of ten, then I don't see the point in wasting the developers time trying to fruitlessly balance a fundamentally imbalanced unit that you probably won't use. You don't need a walking liability to saunter in with your ground troops. You're begging him to get sniped and turn into a great big backfire.

Units get sniped. Artillery gets sniped. Your argument of sniping it and how the actual commander manages to avoid it, are arguments that it isn't a unit to overproduce, you wouldn't get results with multiple.

It is even balanceable. Want to nerf it more, remove the (really short range) uber cannon, maybe reduce its combomb radius, i would say even just make it a normal blend of fabber and leveler, but THAT would be something you could mass produce to replace everything outright.

Let's be honest here, you're not going to "see" anything as an argument for anything you don't like. That's just how you work.

Also, SupCom was a lesser game in your opinion. As mushroomars wisely said near the start of the thread, there are people that are in the TA camp, and there are people that are in the SupCom camp. Don't toss your subjective opinion around like some holy fact.

A general guideline for rational argument is "attack the argument, not the arguer". If you like megabots, perhaps you should discuss their merits, rather than claim someone is too set in their ways to ever acknowledge them. It brings nothing to a discussion other than irritating people.

Although I'm currently on the fence about megabots, there is actually a glimmer of an idea here that I like the sound of. We know that there must be some mechanism by which players are able to activate metal-planets. So far, I think most people envisage this as repairing some sort of control structure found on the surface of a metal world. However, in order for this to appear at a reasonable point in the game, without forcing all solar systems with a metal world to degenerate into a "getting to the metal world first = win!", the repair process would have to be most expensive. This could potentially entail a large amount of sitting around, watching green goop fly. It is obvious that there must be a barrier of some description in order to prevent metal worlds becoming overpowered. So, what if instead of being a purely economic barrier, we had a more militarily focused one?

The idea is that mega-bots would roam the metal planet, ostensibly as it's guardians, left over from when the world was built. The control structure is much cheaper to repair, but megabots will converge on it and destroy any units, if anyone should try and repair it. This way, the barrier to operating a metal world is not a "throw 10,000,000 metal at it", but a case of who can remove the guardians.

Just an idle speculation, but it might be an interesting idea.