Pounders, Levellers and vehicles in general.

No it wouldn't. And having a big sized unit, like the megabot, would not automatically define on how it acts. Agreed?

Agreed? You disagreed with me and then repeated what I said on how a units literal size means noting in the end.

So yes?

So why do you see a problem with mega-units, when simply being a "mega"-unit doesn't define anything about how they'd act ingame?

I am sure you know what we mean. Small health/metal cost units vs. large health/metal cost units.

Because you are directly putting a distinction between a unit that is mega or not, and then arguing that mega doesn't mean more powerful.

So why even use mega then? Why confuse people of your point when what you mean is just another unit?

I don't have a problem with that, its balance as always, but if you go off the deep end with scale, why would I not want the one base wreaking machine over the fodder?

Why do high metal cost units automatically have to have high amounts of hitpoints?
I could make a mega-unit that has 1 hitpoint. One. It could have amazing weaponry, but the first shot would kill it.

And then I could test it and balance it from there. I'd see that 1 hp is probably not enough, and I'd adjust it.
But nobody forces me to give it a bazillion hitpoints just because it's expensive and big.

That's imo a close minded mentality, that because of it's size it has to have a fitting amount of hitpoints. But that's not true. It just has to work as desired. The design is the master, the stats the servant. Not the other way around.

This is very pithy and quotable, I like it.

I am not suggesting that as metal cost rises so should hit points. There will always be loads of exceptions. This was simply aimed at the small tank/big tank debate.

Its easy to break someone's point by going to extremes. If this didn't go to extremes would you still have a problem with it?

If you wanna make a large tank with a specialised or more singular role on the battlefield (That isn't something silly like, its a game tie beaker, or a total base destroyer).

Then I'll vote for it.

No. Just stop. You're going about this all wrong.

Why? I'm pretty sure it's a good way to balance those things. And (probably) no matter what you say, it won't change my mind. But I'm still interested on hearing it.

Oh yes! Give me some real space battleships!

You're creating the attributes before the unit. It's fluff for the sake of fluff. Try this instead. First figure out what the game NEEDS to play in a desirable way. Then build a unit to serve that function.

Instead of creating a game full of different units, you get a game full of the units it needs to be FUN.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Thanks.

Here are the Stats

In the new patch, The Pounder has 125 health, the Leveller has 625.

In the new patch, the Pounder does 42 damage, the Leveller has been nerfed from 500 to 50, and still has range of 120.

So yes, you're right, it does less damage than the 3 tanks you could have produced for the same cost, but has twice as much health and a little more range.


So good, the topic has already moved along to where I was hoping it would end up.

No problem. That's part of the problem as well. Dox comments aren't totally on topic, but they do illustrate a point that I was going to include in my OP, but decided not to because that balance may change further down the line.

There is a similar comparison to be made with Dox and Slammers. Except Slammers actually fit a defined role compared to the Dox. And because they have the same range as Ants, they don't actually do very well against Ants. So Slammers are better for attacking undefended structures and singular targets that they can get in range of (e.g. a turret focuses on the Slammer instead of the Doxen) because while the Slammer takes damage, it doesn't actually lose firepower until it dies, unlike a clump of Dox. It also acts a health boost for Dox vs Ants, it tanks all the damage and doesn't reduce the Doxens firepower. Plus you can keep a tight grouping (whereas the issue with just spamming more Dox is that the firepower gets too spread out, or the waves are too spaced out)

Still to test Slammers in current patch

Also the reason the flame tank doesn't work is because the lifetime of the ammunition is only 0.1, which technically means that it should be able to travel 50 distance units before it dies.


However, I've literally had a flame tank sitting on a mex. I think the weapon dies before it travels anywhere.

Yeah that's basically the correct understanding of my post, yes.

My issue with the 58772 Leveller is that because it's just a more advanced Ant, you should just spam Ants until you can spam Levellers, and never build Ants again.

In current build it seems to be a jack of all trades, master of none, but doesn't seem to actually have a defined role. I disagree with that design. It's kind of encouraging you to spam it instead of building a diverse army, but at the same time it isn't actually as effective as building a more diverse army. I'm hoping the 50 damage is a typo.

Yeah I see what you're saying, but basically I will always disagree with this idea of "building a superunit that is better than an army".

With regards to army composition of units, I'm thinking of Sins: Rebellion.

Firstly, not every player builds every single unit (in fleet composition), not because they aren't useful, but because it comes down to playstyle, and it also depends on what your opponent is doing.

Secondly not every player builds the same fleets, because fleet composition depends on your overall strategy.

For those that aren't aware, the basic strategy is spam basic units, find out what your opponent is doing, spam more units to counter that approach etc., and you end up in a situation where you've got many different kinds of bread and butter units in your fleet, augmented with some of the more advanced units.

In a team game, the strategy seems to be for some players to attack the enemy worlds with their fleet, while the other players econ-boom and feed them resources. In that situation you only see large fleets of more advanced units when the econ players fleet-up late game and start attacking as well.

Additionally, most units are viable at every stage of the game. The "basic bread and butter unit" of the early game kind of becomes less important for a while, but then gains some abilities that are very powerful at attacking enemy units that have special abilities, so it's still relevant.

Meanwhile, the "mega-unit" of the game is very good at killing large fleets with lots and lots of frigates. But the special abilities don't affect corvettes, cruisers and capital ships, so those units can be used to counter it provided that frigates don't make up the backbone of your fleet.

And the corvette is one of the most cost effective units.

but yeah. In summary every unit should have a role to play, having one particular type of unit avashould not make other units totally redundant, unless you have some strategic reason to start phasing them out. ( Like Bots in 58772)

I think units should have a more unique differentiating factor than just better than x.


And I still think that implementation of the Leveller is weak

Sorry for double post.

Riiiiiiight.......

Presumably that's what happened to the Leveller.

Scathis, can you please clarify exactly what is happening with T1/T2?

In SupCom, or Rise of Nations, or Age of Empires, you build a completely balanced army with the "t1" units. Then you upgrade to T2, immediately start upgrading your existing army so that it is better. You effectively just upgrade the units you already have. In Rise of Nations, it works so that a horde waving spears and using bows and arrows isn't worth anything against a couple of machine guns. As was the case in world history.

In Sins: Rebellion, you can create a completely balanced army using only the frigates and capital ships. You can also expand on the basic roles that those provide and use cruisers to expand on the fleet diversity and perform specalised roles. Some of those you'll only ever want to make up maybe 5% of your total fleet makeup. You can make a large fleet using frigates as the backbone though. Every ship has a role to play, and they play that role throughout the game. (Actually late game capital ships become the backbone, cruisers are used to support the capital ships, titans start eating frigates too much, and frigates start being used increasingly in hit and run attacks)


It seems like PA is currently exactly halfway between "T2 units are just better" and "T1 units are the backbone, T2 units give the specialisation"

That actually sounds like quite a good position for it to be in StormingKiwi...?

The balance is very much in progress- still I don't really see a problem with some straight up upgrades. TA had this- Raiders > Reapers for example. Whilst t2 also had some more specialised stuff (e.g. Diplomat long range rockets, mobile anti nukes, mobile flack cannons and so on).

I don't really see an issue in one unit being superseded by another- my main concern would be that there is *something* worth building out of the t1 vehicle factories once I've got t2 up.

What might be interesting, if we keep the "bots = infantry" concept is to make vehicles be:

* Much longer range
* Much higher armor
* Much slower
* Higher damage per second AND higher damage per shot
* Waaaaay more expensive

Like you can produce 10 Doxes in the time/metal it takes to make 1 Ant but the Ant has more health and more DPS than 10 Dox combined. If you go all Dox you'll be very mobile and able to quickly split your force, surround targets, bypass defenses, etc, but if you can't bypass a good static defense line, your Doxes will tend to get massacred. They're not very efficient in terms of metal-per-hitpoint or metal-per-damage. They're just fast and cheap.

Meanwhile if you make only Ants, you'll be very good at rumbling up to static defense lines and taking them on head to head but the enemy is going to have all day to react to you because your tanks are so slow and it won't be terribly practical to split off and go destroy scattered metal fabricators -- it'll just take too long.

This keeps bots as the mobile infantry and lets vehicles be the lumbering bunker-busters.

I don't agree that they should be both in any single unit.

Yes good dps units, yes good burst units.

But not both.

Well.. That's my objection really.

I can't think of many games where you build advanced units are just better AND advanced units give specialisation, so that basic units are still relevant late game. And I don't think it makes sense from a gameplay perspective - you can't have a situation in the Galactic War where a commander invades a world that already has an established base including t2 factories. .

In a game like RoN/SupCom, T2 is age advance, armies are specialised at t1. That's my issue. There's no such thing as a t1 vs t2 battle, because the t2 units just walk all over the t1 units before they have time to tech up and defend.

You may as well just make a factory capable of self upgrading itself to apply universal upgrades to units.