I know this has been discussed ad infinium, but right now balance isn't that good. The game is as balanced as a elephant standing on a pencil. (Which apparently would rip through a saran rap thick sheet of graphene.) The bots feel slow and clumsy. Vehicles are like big turtles with a weak spot for holkins, pelters, and catapults. The air feels weak and barely is a good idea for attacking, and lacks functionality. The naval is very functional and powerful, but is really close ranged and slow. Orbital isn't even good for a lot of things except spying, transportation, energy, and using a superslow laser to take out one ant at a time. All of these things, in my opinion, are unbalanced... ...Anyone else want to protest meaninglessly?
meaningless is a good word. Balance is pointless at this point since every third update or so drastically changes the game balance. And we don't even have half of the unit roster. The balance is better than it was a few patches ago.
It really depends heavily on planet size. On small planets, I think the game is balanced fairly well. On larger planets, ground warfare is pointless. It takes units far to long to get anywhere causing artillery and nukes to be the primary weapons of war. I'm hoping that the addition of air transports will alleviate this problem. Faster raiding units (think Flash or Zipper from TA) and formations (reducing artillery damage by spreading out) will also help, as well as giving artillery some built-in inaccuracy.
Yeah. Really looking forward to transports. Hm... what if the unit cannon could be built on large planets and be used to launch units onto a different part of the same planet?
I don't think the gameplay balance has changed that drastically since alpha was released. People still spam tanks just as they always have. A few things have gotten some arguably OP buffs (pelters/T2 bombers), but tank spam is still the name of the game. Balance discussion is not pointless. The game is going to change as units are added in, yes, but that doesn't mean you can't anticipate their addition (as I did above) and extrapolate out what that will mean in terms of balance. Also you can talk about balance in broad terms for now, without worrying about fine details that will be tweaked down the line. Knight posted an idea for a miniature mobile deployable unit cannon for such a purpose in some other thread. Also I think if naval transports are added in, they should have a mini unit cannon for deploying units back to the land. Also stop posting faster than me...
Maybe a automatic balance adjuster equation that is applied to every planet could work? Planet size x variable for unit damage, speed, and strength = game balance
No, I don't think that is a good idea. Firstly, how would you determine the appropriate balance based on planet size? Secondly, how would it work in multi-planet games? If I fire a tank from a small moon to another planet, it would be odd for it to gain more health or move faster... That would be very unintuitive. It is possible to balance the game for larger planets and smaller ones at the same time without introducing odd mechanics.
Maybe they should introduce almost a customization thingy. I want a dox with heavy, medium, or light armor, slow, medium, or fast speed, near, medium, or far range, and low, medium, or high damage. They could have be multipliers for the price. Every lowest choice = 1x price. Every medium = 1.5 times price, and highest = 2 times price. Or it could be cheaper to make lowest choice ones. Not only balance is the players opinion, it also adds a touch of customization and sentimental value. (Visuals could be added.
.... why not just wait for the other units to be added in... or upgrade to advanced... or build more factories...
This sounds a lot like modular units: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/modular-units.53577/ This would be much better off as a mod I think. Its an interesting idea, but you really have to build the game from the ground up this way. You can't have a few units that are modular and the rest are normal. You really have to make all of them that way, which would require a complete redesign by Uber. I doubt they would do that this late in the game. Instead, they could just add a few different bot units. One that is slow with high armor, or faster with lower armor, etc.
Actually, you could just add a few boxes to make it look stronger , or add a kind color indicating the different levels,.
That to me feels limiting. All they just need to please me is units to be able to attack against two of the three, air, land, naval. And a weak all around one, and a scout.
There have been tons of major gameplay changes. First ants were king. Then their turret rotations were slowed. Bots were king. Then ants got a damage buff and Ants were king. Then units would lead targets and bots lost a lot of their effectiveness. Then Laser Defense Towers were king since they could destroy ants in one shot. Then they were nerfed. Then Hornets were king because they could obliterate, then they were nerfed. Right now, pelters are king with the buff they got. Now the anti-nukes got a buff, and that's another major gameplay change.
I don't think those are really major gameplay changes. That was mostly all just minor number tweaking. It takes all of 2 seconds to go and change the number to something else. IMO, major gameplay changes would be adding a new mechanic or fundamentally changing the way something works. Sure, changing things like unit hp/cost/dmg/speed can change the way the game is played, but not much more than making the unit more/less desirable for a given situation, whereas changing something like making all units cost energy to move/fire is a major gameplay change. I don't think that the unit "flavor of the month" shifting from one to the next is really anything major. You don't have to change your strategy much to start pumping out a different unit, but something that causes a radical shift in the way the game is played would be a major change. Anyways, this is really just semantics and its all just my opinion so I hope you don't read too much into it. The point is that major gameplay changes should be discussed now, because they have a lasting effect on the game. However, I agree with you that small things like unit hp/dmg/etc can wait until later, because they are easy to modify and its difficult to say what they should be without major components of the game already existing.
You can't tell people what size map to play on. You can only give them a good line of fast units and transport options. New, interesting units require new mechanics. We might have a good idea of what they are and could be, but it still takes time to get them in. Number tweaks are still important to get the nuance right between the basic tier stuff.
I think its a real shame how much bots depend on not encountering resistance, and how artillery is used to engage armies (negating turrets almost completely because nothing ever gets near.) Bots aren't quite effective enough to draw fire from an Ant blob. They are decent flanking units. But they aren't particularly super.
Had a game yesterday on a Scale 4 planet with 2v2v2v2, was able to win the game by using nukes in conjunction with 40 vehicle factories, the biggest problem was the pathfinding, the units kept getting stuck behind mountains on their way to the rally point. I wouldn't say balance is a problem for the same reason Brianpurrkiss stated but also because the current game build works for its stage in development, this game has a lot of other issues much more important to fix first.
Actually having a few factors change for units based on the planet dimensions and terrain type makes allot of sense and HAS been done before, I'm not talking health, but range and movement speed. Both TA and Spring have gravity, and for appropriate weapons (e.g. plasma / artillery) range increases as gravity reduces. In spring impulse also increases on low gravity maps (so playing low grav lunar maps is epic with heavy cannons- sending units flying in multiple directions). Spring also has the option for a movement speed multiplier based on terrain type and can have multiple speeds on different terrains on the same maps and for different units (e.g. tanks get increased speed on hard surfaces, bots get advantage on softer terrain etc). I think having this in PA would make sense- units could move faster on hard rocky terrain and slower through sand or vegetation. Planet size / gravity could also effect range of arty and so on, meaning in theory a T3 heavy cannon on a very small moon *could* have the power to shoot down to a large planet but the same cannon on the planet wouldn't have the range to fire back. Mind you at the moment ranges in PA don't even scale based on height as far as I can tell, this is probably something that should get added in first- a long range cannon placed high up should be able to fire further than on lower ground. It's little details like these that makes a game- in spring there are very real advantages to taking the high ground and certain terrain types.
