What Units Are These?

Like the title says, what units are these?

They have pages on the wiki and even stats, but I haven't been able to find them ingame. New units for the new builds that got snuck into the wiki? Older units that have been removed? I dunno!

They were added in build 54357 -which is fairly

Someone trolling?

Someone found them in the game files somehow?

They're not playable units yet.

They're in the game, and likely will be added into actual gameplay (though they might not). But they're not playable.

I'm guessing some of them will be added in the next page which (hopefully) will come out tomorrow or over the weekend.

As for the PA Matches wiki, the things that were in the game but were removed can be found here: http://pamatches.com/wiki/removed-from-the-game/

I'm guessing units that are only in the files or that can be hacked in. I believe Brian Purkiss runs PA matches? Perhaps he can tell us what's up?

EDIT: Ninja.

Not trolling. They're in the game files, but not playable.

Sorry there were missing words there.

I'm glad it's the latter case.

They look interesting! Amphibious tanks, robots that apparently can crawl over anything?(I wonder what that means?). Anti-ship planes!!

There's also others. Like gun ships. A different type of power plant. Orbital mines. All sorts of fun goodies.

Keep in mind, that even though they're in the game files, they aren't guaranteed to be in the game. So who knows what will happen.

I think gunships will be a really good addition to counter Dox and Ant rushes.

Sorta like how fighters can counter bombers because bombers can't shoot fighters, currently there's nothing you can do against doxes or ants other than "build more doxes and ants!"

Being able to build something like a gunship would give you a cheaper alternative that doesn't turn the game into a manufacturing war like it currently is.

"Build EVEN MORE stuff" isn't really a smart counter, it doesn't require a decision other than "How many factories should I build" and is somewhat kind of boring.

Gunships will add to that dynamic more than a little, I think. Because it turns the decision into "Do I just try to match them, or do I try to go for gunships and counter/harrass them?"

I agree about the gunships. They're a fun unit and add more strategic depth. Although, before we start a war, there's quite a few very in depth threads debating gunships. Seems that most of the nay sayers don't like gunship blobs.

However, there are improvements to be made to air units – particularly Bumblebees and Hornets. Specifically, they'll try and lead targets with their bombs, making them more accurate against moving units. Also, there will be area commands. So if you get a swarm of Bumblebees and tell them to attack the incoming Ant blob, they won't all drop their bombs on one unit. They'll intelligently decide how many bombs are needed per attacking Ant and then they'll carpet bomb the incoming units, spreading out the bombs to do as much damage to all the attacking units as possible.

I CANNOT wait until area commands are in the game. They will make both Artillery units and Bombers much more effective.

I've always been a huge fan of having a strong air force, but right now, it's just not worth it. For now.

But see I think gunships can lead to an interesting progression of units, which ends up leading to a variety of units being built. I mean, right now there's not even choice in it. You build bot factories, you pump out Dox, and when it's convenient you build vehicle factories and built ants, then you build slammers and levelers, and then one of you wins.

That's literally how almost all of the matches seem to go right now that don't involve artillery creep or something else kinda cheesy.

But you introduce gunships(Which can't shoot air, only ground or other gunships) and it becomes:

"What's he building? Gunships? So I build fighters."

"Oh he's building fighters, what do I build? AA"

"He's building AA, what do I build? Doxes/levelers"

"He's building Doxes/levelers, what do I build?"

etc etc. It gives people a reason to actually build something else, because right now there isn't really anything to counter doxes and ants. Bombers -could- work(You can give them an 'area command' by giving them an attack move near the ant/dox blob) but they build -ssssssssssssssooooooooooo- slowly.

This highlights a problem about RTS games.

You build dox.

He builds gunships.

You build AA.

He builds dox.

His dox kills your AA.
Your AA kills gunships.
His dox and your dox battle each other.

It's tricky unit balance... It's a knife edge, and if they do it wrong you'll still end up with death balls of the highest dps unit in the game.

I think the idea here is to NOT generalize. There will always be something that is "best" in certain situations, you'll never ever bring bombers to a dogfight for example. The path to achieving that goal is, in my opinion, making it so that units are good in VERY specific roles and not being afraid to push those roles hard. If you want to make a Sniper unit don't be all "Well it'll have slightly longer range and slightly lower health than a Tank" you PUSH it and say "It greatly out ranges Tanks, but if anything gets close it's toast". So now you've got all these units that have clear strengths and weaknesses to the point that trying to mass any single unit is folly and it'll come down to composition and execution rather than just who has the most of a single unit.

That's the goal at least, the execution is always easier said than done.

Mike

I'm confused about what you're trying to say.

How is it a problem that there is unit diversity and you have to use strategy to counter different units?

Would you prefer only one unit that does everything?

I think what he is trying to say is that if the game becomes too rock/paper/scissors, in the end everyone will just be bashing rocks together.

Basically, if I build gunships to shoot your doxes, and you counter with AA, then I counter your AA with my own doxes, in the end would I have been better off just building more doxes in the first place and smashing your rock with a bigger one?

Personally, I don't really agree, and I think that would only become a problem if things were done poorly.

But that's what he's trying to say.

If someone's building Doxes you don't really want to build AA in that situation because they can't shoot back at the Doxes. =p Unless you can be sure you have your own Doxes to keep them safe, you'd build fighters in that situation.

If they have gunships, wouldn't the correct response to be to get AA and then an air factory to transition to Dox-proof jetfighters?

That said, I certainly don't want to be bashing rocks together, but RPS systems have a tendancy to backfire... For example, if there's only one easily-acquirable "counter" to a unit at a given stage in the game, and you shut it down, it's basically game over. I'd much prefer counters to be suggestions, rather than hard rules - especially in a game where big numbers of units get thrown around willy-nilly.

The Recluse is the only interesting one the rest are straight from sup. Hoping the Recluse is def in game bc this means terrain will be a definite factor in battles, something that was sorely missing from sup com..
They def need a gun ship similar to Ta and sum large air transports to give more strategy in attacking turtles

Basically what you are seeing is in progress type stuff. Think about it like a feature that's developing but isn't fully baked yet.

Stuff like spider bots, crawling bombs, gunships, transports etc.

The plan is to flesh out the unit roster more from where we are before ship (but we will still be leaving some roles for post ship so that we can evolve the game).

I started a unit thread a while ago to gather ideas for how to flesh this stuff out...

Thank you for the clarification. =)