Internal Playtest – Balance Build, Social Features Reveal, and More! – 4/4

I am by no means a top tier player, if I was to play online I would get beaten by most "average schmoes". That doesn't prevent average schmoes from understanding the mechanics. The main differentiating factor from average players and good players is knowledge. If I can rush to advanced, and beat most average players online, through superior knowledge, that doesn't make me a top tier player. It really doesn't make me a good player either, I'm just more experienced.

It makes me a fairly average player who understands the fundamental mechanics enough to win against players who don't have similar knowledge.

Dude, I had a game against the AI where it lost because it never built a second factory with its commander, but instead tried to get air fabbers to build the second factory.

Built air fabber? Fighter snipe.
Built air fabber? Fighter snipe.
Built fighter? Fighter snipe.
Built air fabber? Fighter snipe.
Built AA turret, built air fabber? Fighter snipe.

Needless to say, it was a very one sided game.

There are things it is able to do - mainly it had to build a second factory, get land based fabbers and land based AA on the floor.

By the time it built a land factory, I was simply too far ahead, and there wasn't anything it could do to catch up.

To clarify - this is an example of cut-off. To clarify, I think this is the good cut-off, because you're opening build doesn't end until you have two factories up.

I resurrect this thread. I remember Scathis building lines of mines but they were destroyed because of the radar support.
A radar jammer would be the perfect combo for the mines but land and air units would be too easy to take down and the presence of mines would be obvious.

This is where the Orbital radar jammer comes to the party. It has many potential uses such as the mine field support as i wrote about but also for planetary invasion.

Its downside for the gameplay compared to ground level radar jammers is that it would be harder to spot orbital units, and it's not easy already.

Letting them only jam the radars on the ground level isn't intuitive.

That mines are visible to your enemy is plain silly. It invalidates the very reason to put mines (underground) in the first place, specially considering that in the last LiveStream Vanguards and Infernos were able to vaporize mines with their flame/plasma thrower as soon as in range.

Mines are detectable by radar.

Not vision.

So really you can't use mines offensively, but with the massive power of T2 radar and orbital radars....it's actually really hard to hide at all.


Im not a fan of having a mobile radar that's better then a static one, id rather they only be able to see below them in a smaller area, but have more manoeuvrability.

I do not think detection of mines via radar is necessary. It should be a short range thing.

What if mines could be detected by one specific unit, and you can pick up what you prefer: The Combat Fabber? The T1 bot? The Firefly? But not by radar. Radar shouldn't be able to detect mines, that's a job for Sonars.

That would increase micro.

It would require that you pay extra attention to armies to watch out for mines.

No it wouldn't. Once detected, units could shoot at mines. It would require you to send units to clear a mine field however, rather than picking up mines on radar and shooting them from a distance.

If you can simply see all mines through radar (meaning that you are going to find them without taking any action of specifically looking for them, thus defeating their very purpose) they can as well be removed from the game.

Yes. More or less what I've said myself as well: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/...eveal-and-more-–-4-4.58539/page-6#post-910297

Perhaps. But already now, since we can spot mines anyway, we micro our armies in order to avoid them. Ultimately, as I've seen in any match, microing your armies at some degree, grants you victory over less cautious players. I'm afraid it's unavoidable.

Anyway, the Firefly could act as a mini AWACS, if we could extend its radar coverage a tiny bit, and giving it a sonar, then more savy and balanced players would get an advantage by mixing T1 with T2 - that's what we want, right? The same concept can be applied to other T1 units, giving them other purposes.

On the other hand, this would make T1 specialized, instead of T2...

Keep in mind, mines are more than just on water. So building mine detection around sonar is pointless.

You're right, microing will give an advantage. That's unavoidable, and a good thing to have.

However, we shouldn't build in mechanics that encourage micro.

Remember, the goal of PA is to have massive wars controlled by one player. So we have multiple bases on multiple planets with multiple battles happening on multiple planets.

We should avoid micro wherever possible indeed.

But if detecting mines means adding some unit to your armies that can detect/destroy mines I don't think it adds much micromanagement.

There needs to be a way of detecting and destroying mines, obviously, else you would have no other choice but to micro around the minefield.

Edit: Well, you can also have a special, cheap unit, that does nothing but run into the minefield and trigger the mines, therefore removing the threat.

Edit2: Actually I believe having such a unit would be the most elegant solution. You would still have to guess where there are mines (making them effective) and you could remove the minefields easily without affecting the balance of other units (else you have to think about whether they can shoot the mines, which unit can detect the mines and so on...).

Obviously, if your armies are being killed by mines, you just include a greater proportion of minesweepers in your armies.

I hate having specific detector units.

If that's their only role, I see your point.

But it should not be their only role.

It would still suck to have to rely on one unit in the game to defeat something else.

You seem to be implying something about some other game mechanic...

Sonars can be used on land as well, not just on water. Here we go: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2087389,00.asp

Anyway, PA is a game, so screw realism for the sake of realism.

Once we get to T2, T1 bots become extremely cheap (for example). Let's use them as cannon fodder to trigger mines. Specially now that they're becoming pretty useless as grenadiers, poor kids.

How about bots can see mines but tanks can't? Or how about land scouts, dox and combat fabs can see mines?

I agree with others about radar. The coverage is so big even at t1 that it makes mines rather pointless.

Why?

The unit would have multiple roles (unlike the antinuke). Minesweeping would be one of those roles. You can rely on many other units to minesweep.

Just they do it more sacrificially.