Population Cap.

Guys right now the game is unlimited. Have at it if your PC's up for it.

The way I see it, the game is designed with this in mind, purely to prove a point. To attempt and create the biggest scale RTS to date. And 1,000,000 units is a good number to set in mind when going to make a game like this, the macro management would have to improve a lot, ie a planet manager. Because to get the 25,000 units out you are going to need many planets worth producing for long times.

Ofcourse, like the 166 nukes I'd love to see someone one day reach the 1 million units just to prove that it is indeed possible. But the game is quite a long way off that point.

Also, in terms of smaller maps/planets, I see no reason why a unit cap couldn't be employed, but I would want it to be default unlimited/1million so that I don't build 1000 factories (exaggerating) only to make the production.

In short, a unit cap would be good for deliberately smaller games, but not for the massive scale warfare envisioned as an end product.

That's the thing though, if units were beefier but had the same cost, you would get units being built and deployed faster than they're destroyed, which would make a big unit limit actually useful.

That, I want/need that.

good point.

Why would you keep the same cost and build time?

Slowing down the pace of the game is something you don't do by halves. You have to tackle the entire system or you'll get a massive disconnect between the speed of production and the speed of destruction.

The whole game is too fast, not just the battles.

To change the game dynamic Nano, to slow the game from insta death shoot matches to slugging matches!

Yes, but in such a game the exponential growth of an army, relative to how fast it can be destroyed becomes a problem. You end up with a scenario where the rate of replenishment beats the rate of destruction and no permanent damage can be done to an enemy army, nor position.

You aren't wrong, and that is why we have you here to poke holes in it!

They currently said, just because it is the maximum bit storage of their code for unit existence, that the game is technically already capped at 4.336 bil units that can exist throughout the play of any single game played.

This is just because the code that stores it is full when it hits that. So there is the current cap. I remember everyone welcoming that to stay, while it would be trivial to make a mod to LOWER it, and by trivial I don't mean useless I mean rather easy to make, as in why would the devs bother when you just need to change a config file.

That's nonsense. Stop being so hopelessly negative.

Are you therefore suggesting that the current extreme "squishiness" of units is the best possible scenario?

No. I'm suggesting that the pace of the game, as a whole, is too fast. Construction of an army is too fast and the destruction of an army is too fast, construction of Eco is too fast and the destruction of Eco is too fast, construction of defensive positions is too fast and the destruction of defensive positions is too fast.

The unit cap is being raced for by having units be made cheap, and die young.
Total Annihilation was a slow-paced strategically thought provoking RTS.
Planetary Annihilation is a squirrel on crack-cocaine by comparison and is won through logistics management, rather than strategic maneuvers.

I like how most units take between 1-5 shots to destroy. If scaled like that across everything and then well balanced, maybe even taking a lot of the 1 hitters or limiting a lot of the 2 hitters to where units have to already be slightly injured, then it would be pretty "cyclable" as nano said because everything can effectively kill a lot of something else before it is killed, as well as simple to balance because you aren't trying to wiggle small numbers back and forth but rather the numbers 1-5 instead.

As far as how easy armies and structures come and go, structures could have a bit more health but not much more, maybe tune arty down a wee bit, and besides arty I am sure a lot of later designed units will be more effective at killing other units on a larger scale than 1:1 so those will make armies less fragile only if you planned the "composition" of your army better.

So what do you suggest?

Gameplay design of course comes first. The fact is that the engine is designed to support such a number of units, which allows us that option if necessary.

Design and balance is a separate layer that we can impose limitation on to prevent games scaling that large without a sufficiency economy (micro or macro based, with multi-planet gameplay to consider) to match. Also, logistics. It's all very well making 25,000 units, but good luck coordinating them towards a single target.

At the moment Igncom1, I suggest patience until we have a decent unit roster to work with.

As a guideline however I would generally, slightly increase unit costs (thus making them take longer to build) and increase their durability to a greater degree.

My goal would be for a pitched battle between two forces to take roughly double the amount of time they currently do, while also taking the two players slightly longer to reach that stage...

That would be my starting point. I would then iterate on that baseline.

But that's not possible. The rate of income is fixed because extractor points are fixed. The rate of destruction is unlimited, since everything can fight. Even with wreckage, your scenario is not possible.

Also radioactive decay would like to have a word. Doubling the size of a battle does not double the time it takes to play out.

The overall combat pace is definitely too fast, but that's an issue of everything in the universe scoring OHKOs on each other. May the fastest OHKO machine gun unit win.

Just say no to unit cap.... no way fighting for a solar system or galaxy is feasible or even fun with only 1000 units. Even now when I play ta I hit unit cap at 1000..... and i beg for more!!!!

Don't forget the possibility of energy-to-metal structures/converters.