Ground combat is 1 dimensional. Can we get a megabot already?

So I was just roaming around and decided to come and post again. Why not do something similar to how SupCom 2 tried to do the megabot. To be more specific, make them slightly bigger(maybe 50-70%) then normal units with a nice boost to hp with high damage weapons that take a long time to fire and/or have a min range they can fire from. This would make it so that they are PART of an army and not THE army. There are other things that can be done like making them have a lot of small weapons for many targets but the are very slow as to be like a mobile defense with the range of say a point defense.

So T2 units?

Yes, we are going to have those.

I wanna see tanks become a thing again, even if just mixed in with the army, not just strictly t2 bots or t1 bots, even tho those are fast passed games a lot of the time

Hi guys, I'd like to try to answer viaknar first by saying making megabots like sup com 2 just creates a third tier
of units, and that means adding complexity without really adding depth. Which was the major failing (in my eyes)
with sup com FA. For all it's glory, it was the one thing I kept stumbling over and never quite new how to deal with- 3 separate tiers of income and factories.

Secondly, but on the first note I remember playing with some mods on Forged alliance Forever (look it up), where extra experimentals were added, which really dwarfed the Cybran megabot. Now I'm a real big fan of having the monkeylord
and other various doom sayers, but for me having bigger and bigger units in that particular game made the first 20-40 minutes a micro spam fest
of upgrading and income and a race to whoever had the bigger guns.

To summarise, I think there is a place for a krogoth/monkeylord, or maybe fatboy. But the following points first
need to be addressed, and this is what I'm hoping you guys will pick up on and debate on.

The fact is that Totala, and SC:FA did not have extra planets and moons, and I really don't consider the orbital laser for UEF to be a valid example in this context (but it might be a valid unit in the broad context of PA).

So, if we want to successfully implement a one dimensional answerall megabot, we need to address how it fits in with scaled down nukes (currently; relative to SC:FA and Totala), and orbital units/weapons, and also being able to collide units.
I really hope we can avoid the trap of just building the next bigger and better thing that kills everything it comes across.

Can the megabot attack air/orbital? How does it's cost effectiveness match up to orbital weapons/defense?
or expanding to other planets and bring them down on your enemy? If we can find an answer to the differences between supcom/totala and PA, we'll have a better job of answering how practical a megabot will be.

Also SC:FA didn't have the diversity that Totala and PA have, where bots and vehicles actually do have separate roles, which one cannot replace the other. That by itself is a stroke of genius as far as I can see. Variety in land, air and naval and orbital provide the crux of the gameplay, gives depth and scale without anyone defaulting to the "one-button-win" if you had one unit, or 3 that between them could kill land, air, orbital and naval.

Have I left my post open enough for people to feel comfortable putting in ideas? solutions? counterarguments? points that I missed?

I think you'll find there are precisely four dimensions: height, width, depth and time. Chronocam is such a wonderful thing.

That's very clever, I do like.

I do pray you note the difference, however, between the dependence of a commander to create an army of various mobile weapons with an equally various number of roles, or simply have a 1-click-build thing that does every thing, and then only build that from minute 30-end of game.

Secondly, and lastly, the krogoth really only attacked other land units, and was not amphibious. The main dealbreaker people see with megabots is that SupCom "experimental" units, could do many things at once, including deflect or destroy tac missiles. I wonder if we simply put more guns on a pair of wheels, and not let it swim, fly or shoot air- if that provides some semblance of balance on top of any other reasonably functional ideas.

Provided of course that any megabot solution is actually cheaper and less effective than dropping a moon on your opponent.

I don't recall a single experimental having a missile defense of any kind.

Ah, maybe your right. I could be thinking of the cybran T3 bot. On the other hand, an experimental bot that can shoot up, shoot down with missiles, has a laser that sweeps through lesser units like a hot knife through butter, or has 4 sets of naval bombardment cannons as on the fatboy. And both can go underwater, and in some cases fire underwater too. Compared to the Krogoth who had a sniper type laser, high damage but very low rate of fire, and 2 guns, and 1-2 missiles and walked slowly, and no amphibious ability, too big to transport, and no anti air. Which is the main point.

'Twas the Loyalist T3 Bot. You are right, of course, in general but I think you picked your examples poorly. The Monkeylord (that I think you are referring to with the laser and missiles) was one of the most useful yet balanced experimentals while the Fatboy (that ship gun thingy) was total crap on offense and cost-inefficient on defense.
Sorry if I came off as being rude!

All experimentals had a certain focus. Sure the Monkeylord had AA, but it wasn't exactly good and you'd be mad to send it out without air cover.

Exactly. It was meant as a 100 ton sneaky bastard stealthing its way into an enemy base and catch the commander unawares, destroying him or at least half of his base in the process.
And now repeat that sentence while keeping a straight face.

You are of course perfectly right, both of you. But poorly or not they were examples, and the monkeylords typically were sent out in 3's, and it was basically a gun on legs. The most powerful weapon in the game if I recall, but relatively speaking the weakest experimental in terms of health and armour. On the flipside though, the overarching point is that people do not want experimentals in this game, and I'd tend to agree because they've been overshadowed by orbital weapons, and just incase you hadn't noticed- asteroids/moons.

So, yes- the monkeylord isn't 100% effective at naval, and also land, and also air. I'll thank you to please put it into perspective, and compare the practical balance and effectiveness of a big land unit that everyone can build, against many much more specific purpose built land units. Without making the first level land units completely redundant (which is paraphrased directly off one of the Uber livestreams). And further again balanced against orbital technology and moon and asteroid smashing. The last 2 cannot be found in Supreme Commander.
So even though my examples of experimentals were imperfect, you can see the point I was making was in fact not how effective each individual experimental unit was, and actually how it usually made obsolete other units and at the very end game, all you did was spam experimentals. Which by itself is not bad, but it becomes difficult to balance and fit in neatly with asteroid smashing. Without making one too expensive, or the other too weak; and also without turning the experimentals into just another tech tier to be upgraded to.

finally someone that gets it.
experimentals were only as overpowered as people here are saying they were, if you didn't play the game right.
1st: your using a LOT of resources to build it, which gives you nothing in return until it's done, leaving you very vulnerable in the meantime. which you wouldn't know unless you scouted.
2nd: even if you DO build it, they all had huge glaring weakness's. in supcom especially, this was air units. which you would know to build some bombers if you scouted.
3rd: even with no air units, an experimental had a very hard time beating a t3 spam of equal resources. meaning the army actually came out ahead. which you would know to start building if you scouted.
bottom line: experimantals were most useful if your opponent didn't scout. of course, that goes for asteroid smashing to. and nukes. and large armies. and, well, everything in an rts, really.
the problem I'm seeing in a lot of these posts, is it's like a lot of you guys think the experimentals were beat-all units... and they were by no means that. it didn't matter which one it was, they all had huge weakness's and strengths. and if you lost your experimantal of 150,000 resources, to a thing of bombers that cost only 50,000, it usually meant you had lost, not won.
this is why, if you actually watched ranked games, they rarely if ever used them. they were to risky, unless you already had the advantage, and by then you didn't need them anyway.

now bringing this to this game:
the point of a megabot is essentially the extreme of the 'risk vs reward' mechanic. your risking a lot, to potentially get a huge reward. that doesn't have to be a megabot to do that. but let's say it is.
let's say, for example, we just transplanted a galactic colossus from supcom into PA.
1: this means you just spent a TON of resources trying to build it for a while. what has your opponent been doing? he might now be ready to drop an asteroid on your head, making the colossus 100% useless.
2: he might not even be on the planet anymore. there's no way your transporting that thing, meaning again, it's 100% useless towards you fighting him on another world.
3: let's say this is a 1 planet system, for simplicity sake. so you know he's somewhere. but there's a problem. your shiny new megabot is completely useless against both bombers and orbital lasers. which again, you've given your opponent a HUGE lead on trying to obtain.
4: now, FINALLY, if none of the above are true, then congratulations! you may be able to win the game since your opponent didn't see the megabot coming, and now doesn't have time to react because he kept trying to turtle or spam rush you. (which would've probably killed you off long ago due to point #1) oh wait he turtled. so he probably has enough defenses to 1 shot your megabot anyway.

so what am I saying? I'm saying because now we have multiple planets and such, now is the perfect time to revisit megabots, because now there are many more ways to make them not effective. in supcom, you only had air units and nukes and huge spam of armoured units. now in PA you not only have those, but orbital units and asteroids to. it's point in the game is going to be a large investment/risk way to try to take out heavily armoured bases, without killing the whole planet via asteroids.

but that being said, it is still way to early to put them in, when we haven't even seen the rest of the units yet.

I've read a bit around this thread, and it came to my mind, couldn't have we already something similar in scope to the Megabot?

The Vanguard.

That unit is ridiculously overpowered. It's like Scathis wanted to slap in the face who laughed at the idea of a flame thrower unit in Planetary Annihilation.

De facto, let your guard down and allowing two or three Vanguards to walk into your base, may have the same devastating effect of a Megabot. Just the Vanguards are way cheaper and thanks to the Pelican much faster.