Pounders, Levellers and vehicles in general.

I've been meaning to make this thread for a while now, but decided I'd hang on until the new patch.


Essentially, nothing has changed in the balance between these two units, except unit costs.



Previously, the Leveller cost 1575 metal, and the Ant cost 225. The Leveller 35 seconds to build unassisted, the Ant took 15. The Advanced Vehicle factory costs 45 metal to run, the Basic costs 15.



Comparing costs and so on,

The Leveller costs 7 times as much as an Ant, but in the same time it takes to produce a Leveller you can produce 6 Ants. So it's basically equivalent to an additional 6 Ants in terms of Opportunity cost.

It does as much damage as 11.9 Ants.
It has as much health as 5 Ants.
It has 20 more range than an Ant.
It's the same speed.


The Leveller now has a metal cost of 450, the Pounder a cost of 150.

The Leveller and the Ant now have an equal time to build. So now in terms of Opportunity cost, the Leveller is equivalent to 3 Pounders.

• It takes 6 Ants 3 seconds to kill a Leveller, assuming an Ant dies each second, while it takes a Leveller 6 seconds to kill 6 Ants.
• Clearly 3 Pounders cannot kill a Leveller on a flat playing field.

This means that the equilibrium has now shifted firmly in favor of the Leveller. I may note that previously, Levellers were purely superior to Ants.
That assumes that the Ants can get into range of Levellers. In reality, a Leveller has 20 more range, so provided it can actually use that range, the Leveller can just kite an infinite number of Ants indefinitely and come out on top.

That makes the Leveller a completely superior unit to attack other armies, and bases, provided you don't try and smash right into the other army.


Essentially, there is no point building Pounders once you've gone T2, and you may as well just start phasing them out of your armies.


I think that's a problem with the unit design, and I think that Levellers should have 100 range and still cost "6 pounders" to build.. That way the Pounder is still relevant at T2.

I also think that gives a Leveller and the Pounder an Advanced and basic role. For your buck, you get a lot more bang against a single target by building the Leveller, while a Leveller takes a longer time to kill 6 Pounders than another Leveller.

So basically Pounders are better at attacking multiple targets which individually don't have a large HP pool, while Levellers are better at attacking single targets with a large HP pool.

This is based on their on paper values and based on build 58772 - 6 Ants do less damage, but hit 6 targets a second, while one leveller does more damage but only attacks a single target.


On a related note, I still don't see the need to build Shellers to attack bases. Essentially they're so slow that by the time they've come into range of an enemy base, the Ants and Levellers escorting them have already destroyed whatever the intended target was. Defensively I can see a use for them, but if you're going to use them defensively in build 58772 you may as well have built pelters, and it seems like in current build you may as well build the inferno or the vanguard.

I think a mod should move this thread to the general forum for visibility please.

I still use ants a fodder, though I mostly use bots though.
Anyone notice how incredibly powerful T2 flak is I mean... dang... 200 bombers taken out by one volley of 12 t2 flak.

yes T2 flack is a little OP... ok a lot

Must have to bunch them up pretty tight to see those kinds of results, I've only seen them built spread out and they were good but not an air assault showstopper.

If I am understanding your post correctly stormingkiwi, essentially this is about the basic/advanced distinction with respect to vehicles specifically. And how basic units should not become obsolete when a player has access to advanced units, but rather the player's options for mutually viable units expands. This is a complex and delicate balance that will take time to get right, but I definitely agree that it should be the goal.

I think the basic tank should be the "best" vehicle to acquire in large numbers because it is efficient and flexible. Advanced units can offer powerful functionality, but there should be tradeoffs which mean that basic units are never obsolete. Cost alone is not enough of a tradeoff- it simply means that you need economy first. Once the resources are available, it becomes preferable to switch over to mass-production of advanced units if the only downside is expense.

For example, if the Pounder had a machine gun in addition to its tank cannon that allowed it to engage air units and small targets at short ranges, in addition to its main gun. Not that the Pounder really needs to change at all to still be a good example of a normal tank. The Pounder currently is a basic tank that just has a cannon that is effective against most ground targets.

But the Leveler still seems pretty much like a basic tank, just a bigger, better one for a higher cost. The unit's design is fine, but it could also be in the basic vehicle factory even though you start mass-producing them later in the game due to higher unit cost.

An advanced vehicle can be more specialized, and better at a specific job, but not as versatile and consequently more unstable to have in large quantities. Advanced specialists would have the potential to be much more powerful when used well, or to do almost nothing if used poorly. Such as a tank destroyer with a fantastic gun, but greatly reduced armor compared to a battle tank. It could even cost less than a main battle tank- advanced units do not necessarily have to be more expensive. Or the converse, a heavily armored but inflexible tank, could also be a specialist from the advanced factory. Advanced units can be designed to be very strong, but I still think your main line mass-production should come from basic factories at all points in the game, with advanced factories giving you powerful auxiliaries and specialists to augment a core army.

A simple heavy tank which costs more and has more armor and damage could just be an additional type of basic unit, regardless of its cost.

You're looking too far into this without all the stats. Levellers don't do much damage against t1 tanks any more. Also balance is going to be all out of whack for a while.

This is true. I had a couple of games of PA this morning, could not get the AI to cooperate properly, and typed that up in 10 minutes before heading to work. I'm definitely going to test my theories, but I am still not convinced that the equilibrium position is in a good place.

I'll watch your gameplay video and see if that helps me. Otherwise waiting for PA stats to update. I assumed that because they hadn't appeared to change that the Leveller/Ant equilibrium was in the same place.

Good point. Advanced units could function as support, and be effective only if combined with an organic, well composed army, so that you can better exploit the potential of each single unit in the group. While if sent by themselves they should perform very poorly.

Well, but I suppose we can have both. Powerful and expensive T2 units, and specialized T2 units which do not need to be that expensive, but useless if not properly handled.

This anyway would require a better grouping mechanic, and some more speed granted to the slowest units. Perhaps Air units grouped with Ground unit should keep the pace.

Well, but there's a reason that advanced tech is more expensive in general.
Because advanced tech comes with time, and after a while you have more and more metal.

This game just got interplanetary with the addition of teleporters. So that means that you'll see much more games where players/teams have multiple planets under their control, and sitting on 300-400% metal income, without knowing what to do. The game is lagging, you have more units than you'd ever want to micro, you're getting lazy because it's going on for so long already. It would be really nice, if at that point you would be able to start building really, really expensive stuff, instead of hundreds of more T1 factories.

It would reduce micro overall, and keep you interested in the game, because you'd shift a bit from many cheap units, to fewer expensive units. You all know that feeling, where you have uncountable amounts of factories, orbital launchers, nuke launchers, and whatnot, and the game is still dragging on, and you're still having 300-400% metal income. Really expensive units would solve that issue imo.

And they wouldn't have to replace basic units. They'd be the crown on the kings head, they'd be the cream on your coffee, the foam on your beer, the strawberry on your icecream, the Jaegermeister in your Jaeger-Bomb, you know what I mean...

It's as others have said already, if you'd make them lose against basic units in a straight up battle, but give them abilities that will complement your armies instead of making them obsolete, then I'd see them working without destroying the game.

Essentially I am saying that you should always want more basic units, out to an arbitrarily large number. For a combat unit of which you want to acquire as many as possible, no exceptions, just make it a basic unit. By contrast, advanced units might be liabilities in certain circumstances, or exceptionally useful in others. You don't necessarily want as many as possible, out to an unlimited number, and would rather have a balance of different types or just more basic units instead. It is possible to have "enough" of them, at least until your army of basic units is even larger and it comes time to get more specialists to go along with them.

Bigger units could still be basic units, right up to the biggest and most expensive main combat units available. Larger, more expensive units will naturally be fewer in number on the same level of economy, and behave differently due to their size. Diversity of units with different behavior opens up tactical options. If your forces are predominantly X, it makes sense to downplay production of X and mix in more of other things. The most common example is when you have a lot of main combat units you should probably mix in more support units, specialists, and/or bigger units, whichever you prefer.

As your economy grows it is likely you are going to want an increasing proportion of more expensive units than earlier in the game when they were impossible or very difficult to acquire. The small units should still be very strong in the late game due to higher raw efficiency. But when you already have a lot of small units, it makes sense to skew your production to diversify since you gain more utility from the different capabilities of bigger units than from adding even more small ones. And you don't even need an advanced factory. If bigger main combat units are still in the basic factory, you don't necessarily need an advanced factory to diversify by mixing in a small number of bigger units.

Locking units behind a tech requirement and making units high cost both have the effect of delaying when they can be acquired, but that doesn't mean they must go together. Expense alone delays when a unit can be obtained. In Zero-K you can literally build any unit right out of the gate, but you must wait to build expensive units until you can afford them. Big, basic units in PA would be time-limited in this manner, and players could transition to a higher ratio of more expensive units using a large economy if desired.

On the other hand, advanced units don't have to be strictly larger and more expensive. The tech requirement can be used to delay powerful, inexpensive specialists until later in the game. For example, an affordable, specialized anti-heavy long-range missile unit might be problematic as a comm sniper if it were available from the basic factory. That unit can be delayed by putting it in the advanced factory, ensuring there are lots of other units in play when it hits the field. But that isn't a unit you necessarily want to have hundreds of, like you do for Doxes or Pounders, or for bigger units which are like the Dox/Pounder but have higher stats for a higher cost. Those units can go in the basic factory alongside the smaller variants.

May I add the flame tank doesn't work..... also why waste time on the ant/ pounder when you can crank dox out at almost 2:1.....

Sorry not trying to derail, just a slight input. To me the ant has lost nearly all usefulness. One vehicle factory is required only to unleash t2 tanks.

No. You're flat out wrong. We've already been down this road with Supcom. We've seen what happens. It does NOT work like you claim.

You do not design new units the same way you design idle clicking games. That's lazy, that's stupid, and it's a dead end.

I disagree. Supcomm went wrong when the bigger unit was better in every way. That doesn't need to be the case.

Look at TA, you get massive costly tanks that do a lot of damage. However they are slow, clumsy and easily killable via a few smaller units that have a combined cost of less then the big tank.

Also try and be a little less aggressive. Shouting louder doesn't win any points when you debate.

Also wrong.

But it doesn't matter. The scale isn't very important. The problem is that you aren't giving them new roles. You're mudflating for the sake of mudflation. There is nothing interesting to be derived from it.

Roles can be shared; more then one unit can fill the same role.

Bigger units don't have to be better in every way, and if they do make smaller units obsolete then stuff needs to change. Suggesting that bigger units will always make smaller units obsolete is just ignorant.

I love you.

A units size is just a symptom of the problem we are referring to.

How is that?

Well the unit could be the size of a dox, but that wouldn't matter to how it actually acts.