More T2 Unit Variety

Excuse me if I am missing what you said completely, but why is it that you say one thing and then continue to put in direct upgrades? I totally support your ideology, but it is frustrating to be told that the goal is to have all units be viable at every point of the game and then go on to add units that make other units completely obsolete. One of the reasons I supported this game is because it was said very early on that units would not become obsolete (something that is just non-existent in many other RTS's). Can you see the concern?

I'm not sure what you are reading into my words.

By T1 units being useful I mean they can usefully be used in the game to accomplish strategic goals. Not that no other unit can have the same role and be more powerful at it.

E.g. not every unit has to be completely unique in functionality to have a useful role.

I'm just looking specifically at this statement: " I don't want the T1 units to become useless later in the game. That's the driver. This was mostly in response to previous games with their t1->t2->t3 upgrade path stuff that made t1 units useless. If they are useless then why have them?" How can you say this and then wonder why people question the basic vs advanced situation of Ants/Levelers, Inferno/Vanguard, BumbleBee/Hornet, (I don't even know the name of the basic fighter because it is useless to build once peregrines are available)/Peregrine, Dox/Slammer, Destroyer/Leviathan? Every one of those situations has exactly what you claim that you don't want. I am really having trouble grasping how you can say what you said, and then wonder how I am reading it.

Theres no way to make a game that does not have "some" straight upgrade units.

I think there doing a great job (uber) as even late game i use ants and infernos for a good part of my main force.

Strategy should be about choices, not stats of units.

Now for some humor; im retired US Navy
and physically fit at 225 lbs, bruce lee was 135 lbs and well .....a badazz.

By unit logic i should be superior to lee, but due to his speed and specialization, id lose lol

T1 units will always be viable meat shields. Or I mean, metal shields.

In other words, he avoided saying anything relevant.

They don't have to be completely unique, but when you say they can be 'usefully used' after reaching T2 I'm not sure if you mean the ones that have already been built should be worth something, or if you mean it should still be useful to build them even after reaching T2. I hope it's the later of the two.
As an example, any differences in mechanics that might give the dox an edge at some task are strongly outweighed by the slammer's much higher general cost effectiveness. We're talking +150% health/metal invested, +250% damage/metal invested, +25% range. You have to spend way more metal to even come close to performing the same task here, much more than twice as much. So once you can build slammers, building dox is nothing but a waste of resources, they're useless.

I agree that a few relatively straight upgrades are fine, and would even say it's good to have a "standard" unit that's reasonably effective at each tier; I also have no problems with overlapping roles. I think the main problem here is degree. T2 can and should be better, but right now, for say Slammers vs. Dox, they are "+150% health/metal invested, +250% damage/metal invested, +25% range" better, as aevs put it. This seems like it's a little too much; while people could still fight with T1, they would have to do so at a huge economic disadvantage, which no serious player would do. Thus, T1 becomes useless as it's too inefficient to be used against another player who has invested in T2.

Is the PA launcher still going to have the ability to deliver multiple builds? I think it would be an interesting experiment to release a test build that had T2 nerfed down and see how people liked/hated it if possible, so there would be less speculation and more gameplay going into determining whether this would be good.

If t1 units have a t2 unit, where the t2 unit has the same role, and is more powerful at it, then by definition that makes t2 a straight upgrade.

Then the T2 unit invalidates the t1 unit out of opportunity cost. You can produce the t2 unit, or you can produce the t1 unit.


Yes, the t1 unit can still be used. But it does its job worse than a t2 unit.

Essentially, if you play a game like say, Rise of Nations or Age of Empires, its why you immediately start teching up your army once the new age becomes available.

Technically, yes, you're old units will still be effective, and if you could still build them after you'd upgraded, they could still usefully be used to accomplish goals.

But practically, no. Every old unit you build could have been a new unit, which will achieve exactly the same job much more effectively.


I remember one game I had - my front lines were mostly t1 tanks reinforced with t2 tanks. I rolled 1 t2 tank into the opponents base from the flank. It killed something like 7 powergens, a turret or two, a factory and a bunch of t1 tanks before it died.

That t2 tank could have been 3 t1 tanks. But 3 t1 tanks wouldn't have achieved that task nearly so well.

Just because something is a straight upgrade stats wise does not mean they have the same role.

Take the Dox and Slammer as examples. Stats wise the Slammer is clearly the better unit and you should replace Doxes with Slammers. I build T1 Bot Factories all over the map to establish map and build Doxes for raiding and anti-raiding purposes. I'm not going to be building T2 Bot Factories all over the place to build Slammer raiding forces. Its not worth the investment to build all those T2 factories just to raid some expansion.

Also, if your goal is to destroy some undefended mexes on the backend of the planet building Slammers is wasteful. You don't need Slammers to destroy mexes and all the extra metal you spend on the raiding force is metal you wont spend on one of your main unit blobs.

I think the way PA is shaping up however T1 units do stay relevant right up to the point that things go interplanetary. At the end of the day, if you've built 10 t1 vehicle labs, and you've just got a t2 lab up- does that now mean you have to stop making the t1 tanks?! If you want to win the land battle you keep making the t1 tanks, whilst expanding your t2 production. There are very few scenarios in this game I can think of that would make you actively want to stop T1 production. Now grated for a straight up brawl on the front line against your opponents heavies you need to send as much T2 as possible. The T1 units however are quick and plentiful so this is where you start sending squads on different attack vectors to divide your opponents forces up.

I'd actually say that the t1 tanks are used more in my experience than T2 due to the cost of the factory. Most games I see players make a single T2 land factory mainly to get the fabbers and continue to increase t1 production. 40 T1 tank factories all running full tilt are hard to stop with any amount of defences. My own preference is to get T2 bots + T1 tanks as GIL-E are wonderful to micro with some AA units behind a wall of tanks to give them the extra oomph they need to push through heavy defences.

What I would say is that there are allot of slots for new units that would mix things up a bit more. The GIL-E is superb so makes the T2 bot factory very much worth it. The slammer is ok but to be honest I'd rather use Dox or T1 tanks as support. The Adv Air factory now has transports and gunships which are game changers, whilst T2 bombers are nicely different in function to T1. My only concern with T2 air right now is that the fighter is a bit too strong but I'm sure that will get tweaked. The T2 tank factory has artillery of course which can be very useful to open a nice hole up in a defence wall.

Some real 'game changing' units that probably should be included in T2 are amphibious units (either hover or submersible) and all terrain units, as these would give you a way to launch attacks on flanks your opponents isn't expecting. Other useful T2 units would include mobile radar, a radar jammer and mobile anti nukes.

Correct.

Except Slammers only cost 3 Dox and beat 3 Dox in combat. So using Slammers to raid means your opponent has to spend MORE metal to remove your raiding force.

I.e. Slammers have kicked Dox out of their role as front line units. The only reason they have not kicked Dox out of their role as raiding units is because you can not afford the necessary Slammers. As soon as that occurs, what is the role of the Dox?

Cost of factory is fine, if you are considering symmetrical gameplay. But strategy is not symmetrical. Scenarios with T1 starts vs T2 starts (which kinda should be viable) are not. If you start with equal T1 production to your opponents T2 production, you are behind militarily. They can just attack your main army and brute force it. You can raid them, but a greater proportion of your economy is tied up in front line units compared to theirs.


Think about SupCom. Invading commander lands on planet with established standing army of T3 units. Who wins?

As for number of factories, forget about it. We are talking about units. It is currently more efficient to get 32 fabbers to assist your T2 factory, rather than build a second one.

If PA Matches has correct info, it's more ridiculous than that. A slammer costs only two dox according to Brian's wiki. There is no reason to build them once T2 is up, and I'd argue no reason to build them at all.

Except that you *cant* start T2. And due to the roll off delay and cost of the T2 factory you can outproduce a player who rushes to T2 and crush them with T1. If you do what you say and rush a t2 bot factory and don't make any t1 units- I'll be at your gate with a horde of T1 tanks or bots before you've finished your factory.

Once you have your factory up I'll have 5 T1 factories (at least) all pumping out units and will have expanded farther than you (as I have early raiding units and you don't) and can easily supplement my horde of T1 units with some T2 and steamroller you.

The argument of "t2 replaces T1" is only valid on A: very large maps where you have ample time to expand with no harassment or B: in very resource constrained scenarios. I agree that in TA and in Spring- T2 cost such a large amount you usually couldn't afford to run it with T1 (in fact to speed up going T2 I'd normally reclaim the T1 lab). However in PA- although *technically* T2 is more cost effective, metal is rarely a limiting factor so it's better to keep everything running and spend everything you've got than not.

Or in games that last longer than 10 minutes...

But then Supreme Commander/FA never had straight upgrade units either - you always started on T1 and had to climb up the efficiency ladder. I call nonsense on that line of thought.

This is completely incorrect in the current patch. T2 rush is the only viable strategy. You invest a lot of time in travelling to my base and my t1 radar gives more than enough warning to put up turrets which stop you dead. I probably also have t2 units out by then which give me 5:1 or better cost effective engagements against your t1 units.

Nope, because turrets are hilariously cheap right now compared to t1. You can't get to my front door, or even harass my economy until T2, because laser turrets at a price less than 2 dox each will stop you dead. If you spend resources on Pelters, you're going to fall behind economically, and won't have much to show for it.

A T2 bot factory will cost 5500 metal. Every slammer will save you at least 500 metal in effective firepower versus dox, far more versus turrets, and that's not even counting the ridiculous economy boost you will get. You recoup the cost of going T2 very, very quickly, and the risk is low because of how bad T1 is.

If you think you can crush a T2 rush with T1, you're flat out wrong.

That has also been my observation. I think turrets need a rate of fire nerf (maybe down to 60-75% of their current rate) - they'd still be super nasty against small groups but this would allow numbers to overrun them more easily. Dachsunds would have a much more legitimate use as harassers and large T1 groups wouldn't get completely derped by a couple of lasers.

That is true - the better unit will be superior in the old unit's role as well as its own role, though, which equates to a potential double upgrade in efficiency and versatility. Using the old unit becomes very silly very quickly at this point.
Adding insult to injury, this effectively reduces the meaningful options in the unit roster as soon as the better unit is available - why would Uber want to spend resources on reducing gameplay options? I always thought the clearly defined unit roles were a design as well as an economic decision and all of a sudden it is not even a decision anymore. Colour me confused.