Introducing a new Dev

One of the key enablers to battle strategy is the ability to alter the way engagements are fought over time; including retreating, reinforcing and manoeuvrings of sections of armies. Unfortunately, the current "paper" armor of units does not allow this, as any combat requires 100% commitment (attempting to withdraw from a fight leads to an even greater defeat, and the fight is over too quick for reinforcement). Ideally, armies would have a staying presence in the field, and engagements actually take a meaningful amount of time, in order to make alternative strategies to "all-in" viable. To do this, the HP to DPS ratio of units needs to be increased dramatically (either by increasing HP or decreasing DPS). This also has the advantage of lowering the effective power of turtling, as it becomes possible to cause attrition to defences due to the longer life of mobile units. @sirvladamir, what are your thoughts with regards to the current HP/damage ratios, and is this something likely to see a large change?

I would like RTS games to be like this! I am greatly interested in using tactical maneuvers. I find in PA when I am losing a tank engagement, it's more efficient to simply let the units die, killing off as much as they can. Retreating, falling back, etc needs to be done early or not at all. like you said, 100% commitment.

I imagine in this same scenario, all other game play mechanics would need to slow down as well, otherwise units would be built faster than they are destroyed! Games on one planet all ready can last 3 hours, not sure how I would feel about playing a game that lasted longer >_<

It is a great gameplay style, I think the game Ruse had that kind of feel to it. But it doesn't seem to fit with PA in my opinion...sadly

There have been long discussions about this in i.e. the economy thread.
Basically I agree with you, currently it is bad. Also once we have a working pause function and a bit more modding possibilites it will be possible to make a mod that automatically pauses some workers/factories to emulate the system of FA. So basically imho this needs to be changed or such a mod would create a huge advantage for people who use it.

I disagree. The current system prevents even stronger energy fluctuations then we have atm and gives players a better picture on how they stand. Additionally I still don't believe that we will be allowed to have such mods for standard play as if you can automate this, mods that automate even more will be easily possible, to the detriment of the game imo.


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Since this thread suddenly got serious about high level balance: Wreckages and their role in battle.

Currently, wreckages could not exist as well as they have almost no influence on engagements as there often are no wreckages left behind after destruction due the high dps to health ratio. Wreckages in TA worked well in slowing down concentrated attack as they soaked up a lot of firepower (much more then in SupCom). Although they brought some issues with pathfinding and unit ai.

Personally, I'd like to see this role brought back to them. Iirc, wreckages were sometimes even harder to destroy then their preciding unit as some weapons seemed to do less damages against wreckages in general.

The current system results in energy stalls hurting players far far more and makes it far harder to manage the economy. Economy fluctuations like in the older system are not bad. They are far easier to resolve than an energy stall in PA and they also don't hurt the player as much.
Pausing and unpausing are tasks that can be done in the UI without problems (once related UI features and modding features are in), so allowed or not it will be possible to make such a mod and use it. Also I don't think a mod can easily automate stuff like army movement. Pausing and unpausing are really easy things to do compared to that. FA btw also has such mods to manage metal converters, but since metal converters are rarely used it doesnt matter as much.

Basically PA should provide the best UI/Gameplay possible so automation mods can't give the player an advantage anyway. Having an economy that does not require the player to pause/unpause all the time is imho part of that. Even without the mod the current system asks the player to unpause/pause all the time to be really efficient. That's a ton of micro. Lot's of people in this forums go about how the game should not need such tedious micro tasks. Pause/Unpause micro is imho the worst kind of micro you can get. So why not remove it?

With this mod, metal converters actually became usable. Without the mod, I only ever used metal converters in fun games in well planed templates which would ensure a +-0 energy balance. With the mod, building half a dozen metal converters "just in case" turned out to be quite helpful with avoiding energy waste. Yeah sure, payoff time and stuff, so it's still not very efficient. But at least more efficient than wasting energy because I didn't like to spend hours on planing my build queue to achieve a perfectly balanced economy.

absolutely right. It is simple math and if a pause function comes, a mod for that will be done. And everyone who would not use that mod, would be in disadvantage. This needs to be fixed directly in the game. Engineers who have not enough mass should adjust their build rate and energy rate to the mass rate they get. That only makes sense imo.

I'm on the fence whether this should be changed or not, but I was of the opinion that this was something relatively set in and wouldn't be changed.

I would like to see a chance in ships. They fire too fast and the projectile speed is too fast as well. The metal cost needs to go up as well.

I think I would also like to see a smaller/cheaper/weaker/faster boat. If you imagine the currant ships to be the sea equivalent of ants (slow/strong/long range), these ships would be something more like Dox.

It's nice to see that there is someone dedicated to balance. Good luck. I'm curious about your experience, what have you balanced or designed in the past?

I actually enjoyed the way fa does wrecks, rather than having them as temporary barriers. and that way will potentially become a really nice way of getting more mass once this new mass point nerf comes in. But if we want to do it that way, wreckage needs to be a 'ghost' on the battlefield so it does not get hit, otherwise the same thing we are seeing with large battles currently will continue in removing all wreckage from a battlefield before you have a chance to reclaim it.

So my stance is the opposite. I have a feeling with the new technology the game uses such as improved pathfinding and targetting algorithms, it may not work as you experienced it in TA.

@sirvladamir are you also likely to be identifying areas for new units or modifying unit roles / abilities or are you downstream from that and mainly concentrating on making each designed unit fit their intended role whilst integrating with the rest of the game?

1) if you are going to decrease meal deposits then decrease T2 factories cost or else it will take 4ever to build
2) more bots/tanks wreckage as we are going to have less metal spots
3) unfinished building that are left out by engineers should decay to death
3) walls r expensive and should not be auto targeted nor show on radar
4) bots vs tanks tweaking. bots are highly maneuverable (need some micro though) but too week and fragile
5) commander should be able to auto repair itself slowly (health regeneration)
6) commander's main weapon is too slow vs bots, increase it a bit to increase the hit chance
7) increase ants HP a bit to be able to have an extra 1 shot at turrets before getting destroyed
8) increase T1 radar range a bit, it is too small
9) need T2 anti air (land units and stationaries)
10) bombers misses a lot, either increase accuracy or make it carpet bomb
11) Levelers are too strong vs ants, need some tweaking
12) Give Commander his Radar ability back.
13) solve energy fluctuation issue
14) decrease units rollout time from factory ramps.
15) ants should not fire at air or at least nerf it.

T2 mex need to generate only 50% more metal than t1 max, maybe less. This makes all t2 mexes still not give you infinite economy.

Most units themselves are balanced ish. Levelers could use less anti air accuracy.

Nuke are good, the anti needs to have the same radius to intercept as the nuke has aoe. You could still use nukes at edge for aoe chip like this.

Maybe squeeze even longer time into "ready" animations for factories, nuke build, and other stuff, so individual factory will continue to exceed one factory mass assist. This might only apply to t2 factories, they could use the extended roll off time the most, but t1 factories would control scale of early game, and altogether would increase value of surface area ownership.

Balance naval, difficult and not many suggestions, but do it.

I find you claim of Levelers being balanced laughable. They're 'Ant 2.0'. They don't fit into the balance paradigm of Basic and Advanced units one bit.

And even if they were balanced they are boring. As said, they're ants 2.0. that oneshot every other unit besides themselves (they need 2 shots for that).

Whats their niche, their intended purpose? Base assault? Not enough health for that. Main combat units? You get more then 6 ants for it that can trade effectively. (You can overkill ants as much as you like, still can only kill one per shot.) Additional firepower? Shellers are better at it.

Personally I'd give them a massive hp boost while lowering its damage. And give them a low arc cannon. Make them good at base assaults and shooting over walls (but not higher objects, its firing arc should be fairly limited). Ants would swarm them but they'd be reliable to get into range of enemy turrets and do damage against them.

Please do not remove the ability for all ground units to hit air, it does not make any sense to do so.

At most make them less good at doing it.

well aa ground units should sure be able to hit air.
But it is very bad how currently ant's make real aa units unnecessary.

Of course it is. I don't think anyone would try to defend Ants (and Levelers) being as powerful as they currently are against Air. If there are such people I'd like to know their names... so I can ignore them

I agree with them currently being too good at hitting air, the the other way around where airplanes have completely clear skies over enemies just because they are of the wrong "type" is even worse.

AA should be specialized to hit air but also able to shoot at ground, other tanks and bots should be specialized against ground but also able to hit air.