Factory Complex

I think I see a problem with your terminology which is causing a conflict. I think arachnis does not think about cost when he says a unit is better whereas nanolathe does.

If you have the choice of receiving, for free, one of two units then you are likely to want the more expensive one (in a well balanced game). This should be obvious, if you have to pay more for a unit then clearly it has to be better than cheaper options. I think this is where the statement "You just have to spend more resources on them" comes from (correct me if I am wrong).

This is not a particularly useful of the sense of the word 'better' because if there is a large cost difference between two units any comparison of the other attributes of the units is meaningless. So people who discuss balance, nanolathe and myself included, tend to use better in a way that reflects this. Basically, when is it better to build the unit, this takes its cost into account.

There may be two combat unit which are identical in attributes except one has twice the health and 10x the cost of the other. Clearly if a unit of each type fight with each other the healthier one will win. But in this example the cheaper unit is (probably) a better unit because if you are trying to decide what to build you should go for the cheaper option.

The statement "They're just bigger and better at what they do. You just have to spend more resources on them." is a tautology with this definition of better. Nobody needs to say tautologies which is why I think arachnis is using a different definition, one in which this statement is not obvious. I think this definition is at the core of the argument.

(wow you two posted a lot in the last 15 minutes, I am not so sure any more)

I think you 2 would be very good friends... Or enemies, if you "fight" like this on the forum, I wanne see you 2 go at it ingame.

EDIT: Arachnis VS Nanolathe

Mr Frog, I do think about cost, but I see it as an imperfect balancing factor, and certainly not one to be used in isolation.

To effectively balance a unit against another you can not rely solely on increasing the cost linearly alongside the unit's ability (at least, not in my opinion). All such a system promotes is obsolescence as your economic power increases, something I am avid in my attempts to avoid.

Not to add gas to this fire but, star craft2 is the worst rts ive played in years.

I am just trying to communicate the idea that cost should be taken whenever someone says that a unit is better or worse than other. I have merely said that cost should be taken into account but beyond my trivial example there is no guide as to how to take cost into account or how to factor it into balance. I know about the things you are alluding to but it seemed like a lot of complexity to pack into a post where I am just trying to convey the initial idea.

For an example of the further complexities I don't need to look any further than your post. If you take the post at face value you effectively imply that there is a linear scale for unit ability. I see the point you are making but if someone was starting from scratch it would take a large amount of discussion to try to pin down a linear scale and then go through the many effects which make such a scale silly. (Please don't respond to me for this bit. It's just an example and I know what you mean).

Maybe we should collect the previous discussions into some sort of monolithic balance discussion primer. Although that would be based on the assumption that we are going about discussion in the right way.

That's the issue. Our desired direction is not a 100% consensus on the forums, this thread being prime evidence of that.

Not to add gas to the fire but, you probably suck at it.

Typical noob troll response, i stopped playing it because of the lack of skill needed to play. And by all means dont make asumptions about how good i was at anything just because you have managed to start another worthless thread and are now flaming about other people calling you out on it.

Oh, the lack of skill needed to play? That truly dismantles everything you said. Because only people that suck at Starcraft 2 think that there's no skill involved. I doubt that you ever made it above gold league to be able to feel the "real" metagame and gameplay of that game.

if you want to build things faster then build up your eco more, built more fabricators to assist and/or built more factories ...
even then you would still do the same with complexes so what would be the point? getting a few bonuses in the danger of causing a chainreaction if those get destroyed while it looked like a neat idea in SupCom it didn´t realy add anything different to the game ... but only a neccesity to clump up your buildings even more because you know that you were at a production disadvantage if you wouldn´t ... so no, thanks

Finally a constructive comment, keep it coming.
Also GoogleFrog had one post where it was explained very explicitly how it would work. He didn't necessarily agree with me, but he had it right on the spot.

So if you find that post, I think that it will explain a lot more to you.

Here it is:

So that's the basic idea. From then on we had a discussion on why T2 units shouldn't be just like T1 units. Which was completely meaningless if you ask me.

Lol, ok kid. Spamming one type of unit (marines) is all i had to do to win matches.....no depth no skill needed.

Oh sry my mistake, you probably didn't even make it above silver-league. Else you'd know that marines can easily be countered by many, many things.

Guys, please stop talking about SC2 like this. It's not a useful discussion at all.

It's actually an interesting discussion Colin. It points out the different definitions of skill that people adhere to and how it's completely impossible to reach a consensus when everyone doesn't even agree on basic semantics.

Like you, when you call buildings units.
I know it would be right if you'd take "units" literally.
But I haven't played one single game where that's the case.

Technically he's right. The game doesn't differentiate between the two. As far as it's concerned, buildings are just units that don't move.

For the record, technically correct is the best kind of correct

Sure, but do you call walls in age of empire units? Nobody does that.
And it would be really weird if people would do it here.

The typical sentence "He doesn't have that many units." from a commentator always aims to describe the amount of actual troops, not the buildings. I'd find it very disconcerting if it would be otherwise.

Guards!

Bring me the forms I need to fill out to have him taken away.

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Why you're bringing up AoE I'll never know, since now you're just derailing your own thread, but...

I'd call them units. In TA, walls were wrecks... which technically was also a 'unit'; a wreck was just an unselectable, unmoving model swap that could be destroyed or reclaimed... same as every other unit, building or otherwise.

There is no definition of a unit that is commonly adhered to by the community, so you arguing that your one way is correct and every other way is 'weird' is amusing to say the least. Very big-headed of you.

Show me one renown game-commentator that does that kind of thing, and calls walls units in an everyday manner.
Edit: So many different topics in this thread.

I find it very big-headed of you to draw in semantics into this thread to create a defence for your previously stated arguments, so that you didn't have to answer the real arguments I've made.

So before this escalates, I'll stop right here. You seem to always need the last word, and use informal fallacies to downplay the other side's argument. You don't offer any constructivity. So I see no more sense in talking to you.