What units beat what?

As far as I can recall, the units in PA were supposed to be like rock-paper-scissors, so unit A beats B, B beats C, and unit C beats unit A.

Is this implemented in the beta, and if so, what units beat what?

er, i dont know who told you that units are supposed to be rock paper sissors ala starcraft but they were wrong

To be fair, there is some degree of RPS elements to what many want from PA, but not to the degree that Starcraft has it where the use of armor and damage types is prevalent and used to "Program" unit interaction.

In PA the hope is that things will be much more emergent, so for Example in an open field Tanks might beat Bots easily because the tanks are faster and have a longer range, but in rough terrain like a mountain pass the Bots are much more capable of out maneuvering or attacking the Tanks from areas they can't shoot back at or such.

There are also things like the fact that turrets have a set turn rate, so attacking from behind can create a huge advantage for any unit because the Turrets have to turn 180 degrees before they can fire(IF they can even turn that much!) so the relationship between units is much more dynamic.

It's less about Unit X beats Unit A and more about Unit X can beat Unit A in Situation G, H and M, but A Beats X in Situations O, P and T.

Mike

Yeah, pretty much that. However I do wanna say that such situationally dependent countering is also very prevalent in SC and SC2. It's not as simple as unit X counters unit Y. Often times unit X can counter unit Y and vice versa, depending on a)terrain(chokes or open ground for example), b)player's micro skill, c)unit-specific upgrades, d)supporting units in the army and e)numbers.
Examples just off the top of my head for
a) Pretty much any low-range or melee unit is generally favoured against longer-ranged units when it gets enough surface area on the open, but it gets crushed by longer-ranged units when it is used to attack into a chokepoint or without flanking.
b) For example, without micro, banelings hardcounter marines. With godly micro, it is possible to counter banelings with marines. With just decent micro from the terran you can trade almost evenly.
c) Just as one example, zealots without charge get countered by anything that can kite them, like marauders. When charge is researched, roles switch due to marauder's inability to kite with inpunity(and their dps against zealots is pretty low).
d) Stalkers are bad against roaches in a straight-up fight without upgrades. Once you add sentries to the mix, stalkers suddenly get decent against roaches due to their synergy with forcefields(they have a 2 range advantage over roaches).
e) In smaller numbers, void rays get hardcountered by hydralisks. In larger numbers, it gets much better for void rays due to their ability to stack(air units) compared to hydralisks which can't stack(ground units) and will thus lose a lot of DPS.

However, I do agree that TA is and hopefully PA will be more subtle and dynamic about RPS compared to Starcraft. They are such different games and what works for SC2 wouldn't necessarily work for a TA-style game.

Air beats non-AA units, AA beats air unless you have enough air to kill the AA. Ground units hold equal footing for the most part with other ground units (with variants between bots and tanks involving turret rotation and speed). Advanced units right now will totally cream basic units. Nukes kill almost everything unless you have anti-nukes. Orbital death lasers kill everything unless you have orbital defense.

Oh, and asteroids kill everything. So I guess rock beats both paper and scissors, huh?

All RTS games have some element of RPS, just to different extents. During alpha this wasnt the case, because tank beat all sooooo, but thats changed and its nice now. I dont see why people have a problem with units having roles =.=

So basically you're agreeing with me? That is basically what I was saying, or trying to at least.

Mike

asteroids

I don't mean to necro the thread, but I wanted to ask if we would more elements added to the game which would make these nuances more obvious/prevalent?

Because (and I know that this is beta) right now you can throw any combination of ground units at any other ground army, and it will be a blood-bath (circuit-bath(?)) with the major determination of victory being who has the larger army.

That should come naturally as more units get added and the roles available are expanded upon.

Mike

until now, no, but I suggest to add a Skirmish bot: beat tank, but not doxes in M/M,
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but thinking about it, is better be only tanks and bots in T-1. T-2 is another history

Factions played a role in the rock paper scissors element in other RTS' as well.
For instance the SupCom experimentals had a very blatant rock paper scissors to them. (The spider walker could use the death beam on the shielded turtle tank and pop it very fast. The Aeon's walker was effective against the spider walker but so slow that the turtle's long range would pummel it to death before it could get close)...sorry for the names i used for those...I dont remember them...
Throwing in FA added a bit of a strange element to this as it was now a 4 faction system(although FA was fantastic)
The lack of factions leads to equal choices for all players, and "faction" comes down to the units the player favours in his strategy.

you mean MonkeyLord, FatBoy and GC.

A Fatboy vs a Monkeylord on an open field is a win for the Fatboy every time. The ML needs advantageous terrain or for the UEF player to fail at scouting to win, so it wasn't an RPS situation.

All bots have lower health, damage, and range than their respective tracked units, but move faster; they can run away and move around tank columns and commanders (both types of tanks and the commander move at the same speed) to strike at poorly defended areas, but will go die quickly versus tanks.

Tanks are slow and have short range but deal a ton of damage and beat out bots.

Artillery units have longer range, but lower health and speed than their tank/bot counterparts; they will be caught and killed during a retreat.

Levelers and stompers have greater range and equal to or greater speed than ants, so they can "kite" ants, by moving and shooting just beyond their reach. Stompers can also kite levelers. Slammers can kite doxes. Use bots to chase down stompers. Attack levelers and slammers with greater numbers or artillery.

Stationary artillery has long range and high power but very low health. They are particularly vulnerable to air attacks. Ground anti air doesn't have enough range to shoot down bombers before nearby artillery is air striked.

Stationary defenses are very powerful. You need a massively overwhelming force, or longer range artillery to take them out.

Bombers can attack anything not covered by anti air, and fab air is by far the fastest fabrication vehicle; they can set up radar and defenses as battles unfold. But fab air die quickly to scout air and fighters. Fighters can chase down bombers, but don't follow them into an AA nest.

Most units have relatively low vision range. In order to use artillery and levelers effectively, you must have either scout units or radar assisting.

Scout units move faster than anything else in the game. They cannot be chased down, and must be caught unaware. But they die in one hit, so don't move them in range of anything.

Maybe in terms of movement speed, but in terms of build power they are the slowest and least energy efficient Fabbers.

Mike

But once you have unlimited energy, that ceases to matter.

Yeah. As far as fab vehicles and energy efficiency goes, the commander is the best, building at 30 metal and costing 1500 energy, that's only 50 energy per unit metal built. Fab bots and vehicles are the next best, all at 100 energy per unit metal built. Sea fabbers are worse than fab bots and vehicles, at something like 150 energy per unit metal built, not too sure on the exact. And air fabbers are the worst for energy efficiency, at 200 energy per unit metal built; not only that, but they also build less metal per unit, at 6 metal per second, compared to 10 of all the other basic fabbers.

Advanced fab units build 3x as much metal with the same efficiency, but cost a lot more metal to build than an equivalent number of basic fabbers. Fab bots are slightly cheaper than fab vehicles.

Building extra power plants takes up metal and ties up fabbers which could otherwise be used for accelerating economy through expansion or attacking other economies.

So, if you have a bunch of bot factories (most strategies do), make sure to use lots of basic fab bots, unless you have a particular need for variants.

Factories are slightly more energy efficient than fabbers, but cost more metal. Put a few fabbers on a factory, but build more factories instead of piling on fabbers.

Except there is no such things as unlimited energy.

Mike

Yes, but there's nothing stopping you from building hundreds of solar satellites or t2 energy other than the cost in mass to do so. So if you wanted to fly around a host of air engys late game, efficiency needn't be a concern.