Ok, which possible unit roles are really missing in PA right now, and which have been given already? I'm going to leave naval out of this, because it's too unfinished to judge. Bots: T1 - Dox as the "raiding" unit. So a quick, cheap unit to flank enemy formations, and harass the enemy economy. It is also the best cannon fodder around there atm. They're your "Infantry". Soon, with the grenadier change, it will also be able to kill laser towers behind walls. Maybe that will make it a bit too versatile. - Stinger: A quick and cheap ground to air unit. - Combat fabricator: The medic. - Boom: the baneling (kamikaze bot) T2 - Slammer: Basically a better dox atm. - Gil-E: Sniper. - Advanced combat frabrication bot: Another medic, just better. Vehicles: T1 - Skitter: recon. - Spinner: A slow anti-air vehicle. - Ant (idc): Robust and cheap vehicle. - Inferno: Even more robust melee vehicle. The "Tank". T2 - Leveler: A better robust tank. - Sheller: Extremely high damage, high range, aoe and high accuracy mobile artillery. In short: Total madness. Is that a role? - Vanguard: The insane version of the slow moving "Tank". Air: - Firefly: air recon. - Hummingbird: quick moving and cheap fighter. - Bumblebee: slow, single-target bomber. T2 - Peregrine: A machine of murder. - Kestrel: Quick moving harassment units. Or as some people call them: Robot Mutalisks. - Hornet: Your counter to unit blops. - Pelican: Air transport. Alright... Now let's get ourselves a better overview: Overlapping roles are Ant and Leveler, Dox and Slammer, Combat fabricator and Advanced combat fabricator, Hummingbird and Pelegrine, Bumblebee and Hornet, Inferno and Vanguard, Stinger and Spinner, Firefly and Skitter. So in total that would be 16 units sharing roles, without counting in orbital, naval and structures. I suggest that we find new roles for 8 of these units. Which roles have not been given, or could potentially be given? - Hovering Infantry - Hovering Tanks - Amphibic Tanks - Tank Hunters - Unit lobbers (Unit Cannon for example) - Shock-Troops (teleporting units) - Stealth Units (Commandoes or stealth recon) - An "Attacker", a fighter against ground targets - Anti-Air Helicopters - Mobile Barrage Artillery - Airplanes able to move between orbits - Air-carriers - Mobile Infantry - Militia (more spam, less results) - Siege Units That's all from the top of my head for now. We don't have to use those roles, they're just ideas. What we should do now is to collect your ideas and pick the best of them. That should be the first step into finding out which roles the community really misses the most atm. Greetings
I would like to see a tougher transport unit that could transport multiple units at once. Both air and orbital. That role could be fulfilled by a large number of single unit transports but something is appealing to such a larger transport unit. There could also be a naval transport unit that can transport non-amphibious ground units to a shore and disembark them there. PS: This post exists because I was stupid and wrote a useless post that had be replaced with something remotely useful.
Hey dude. This isn't a useless post. And if you're going to come in and say something, then you should at least contribute. Say why you think it is a "useless post" otherwise your post is the useless post.
I hope you understand that I was talking about my own post. And now we have created TWO useless posts instead of the one that I already turned into something useful. Good job.
Your post said nothing but "useless post – delete" I took that as your comment saying OP's post was useless. You should be a little more clear.
There's definitely room for an amphibious tank as that would add more attacking options on water planets. I like the idea of a gatling bot of some kind since the Dox has turned into a form of rocket bot but i'm not too sure what role it would play. The skitter could be diversified into a Fast Attack Buggy with a slow firing rocket on it good against mex's and other buildings. Its hard to find too many roles for units to play as we only have a simple health system to measure units longevity. Adding armour would lead us down the rock,paper,scissors route which in my opinion is a terrible design decision. If different terrain (mountains, desert, etc) affected units movement we could have more specialised units for each terrain type....
Dox- quick raids, standard feeling weaponry, not to fast firing, not too much damage. Stinger- very slow rate of fire, better damaging missiles, longer range, still doesn't 1 hit kill air. Combat Fabber- Healer, mine layer, Fast, Fragile Slammer- Half Range, two guns, double fire rate, little less damage a bullet, can target two units at once. Brawlers. NEW BOT- standard range, weapon high-arcs over walls, standard damage, isn't good tracking, basically counters walls Adv. Combat Fabber- Healer, mine layer, slow as a standard tank, more durable Gil-E- Lethal bullet damage, long range sniper, low health, low speed, low fire rate, good for snipes bad for high-volume-numbers Bot Fabbers- Fast as dox, fragile, standard efficiency Vehicle Fabbers: fast as ant, slightly more durable, standard efficiency Ant: slower than quick raid dox, better health, higher damage weapon, slower fire rate, just like it is Spinner: rapid fire missiles, lower damage missiles, same dps as stinger, can shoot 2 missiles if 2 air targets are present Inferno: same speed as standard tank, same cost as standard tank, twice the health, low range, fairly damaging weapon. Like it is now except same speed as ant and same cost for twice the health. Cost efficient to allow to get shot. Leveler: slight longer range than ant, doublefires at same damage as ant, twice as long as ant between shots, same health as ant, costs more. Not cost effective directly against ants without using one's own ants or infernos. Sheller: same health as ant, same damage as ant, same rate of fire as ant, longer range and hi arc, little slower. Vanguard: High health like now, low speed like now, no weapon, radar range of scout vision. Lack of mobility and weapon make it different than inferno, easier to prepare a counter against, more rewarding a bullet sponge per cost. Oh, and infernos would become the new drop unit, their damage is still respectable and health is hard to get off you, and they would be fast enough to glue to their target to make damage worthwhile to use in snipes. Hummingbird- Medium range AA missiles, medium rate, faster speed than Air Fabber Bumblebee- twice as long a carpet as a current hornet, much less damage, much more aoe, used against army blobs, bring health closer to hornets, as fast as air fabber air fabber- less efficiency, only slightly faster than bot fabbers, can fly so worth it. pelican- fast as air fabber, enough health to survive 2 stinger missiles but not 3, or 2 hummingbird missiles. Hornet- slightly slower than air fabber, single fastfalling bomb, does big damage with no aoe, slow reloading. Peregrine- uses same hummingbird missiles, fires 50% farther, reloads three times more slowly. Used to peck at enemy fighters from safety of base. BONUS: NAVAL: 4 bluebottles for the price of 1 leviathan, 1 bluebottle for the price of a leveler, 1 narwahl for the price of a bluebottle, fabber cost as much as vehicle fabber, scout cost as much as skitter. bluebottle- slightly faster than vanguard, cannons average range to a leveler, damages like leveler, cannons are independent with same reload speed as leveler naval fabber- as fast and efficient as bot fabber narwahl- multirole ship, fast as ant single cannon like bluebottle and leveler, single missile launcher like stinger leviathan- cannons average range to shellers, as fast as vanguard, more health stingray- missiles like pelters range, damage, and rate. Can target air. Sea Combat Fabber: same as bot combat fabber Sea adv. combat fabber: same as adv bot combat fabber except ship speed instead of ant speed and ship health instead of ant health.
I would like to see an anti-air orbital unit. That's because I believe that it should be possible to clear a perimeter on an occupied planet from orbit. You send in your orbital fighting force first (area attack command) and it clears the enemy orbit, air and land forces from that area (which is why we also need a decent anti-ground units...kind of like what the anchor was when it was able to move and shoot ground). And then you send in your orbital invasion force which consists of orbital transports that drop units onto the ground to fortify your position (maybe it should be possible to drop some defense structures, too ? Like some weaker kind of turrets or something (could be shot down easily by aa so it can't be dropped into enemy bases)). Once that breachhead is secured you could build teleporters to send in the bulk of your army and conquer the whole planet. This approach would also allow the defender to prepare for the attack a little bit, making for some interesting battles. And you need to stop hitting F5 as much. My post said "Useless post - delete" for like 2 minutes before I changed it into what it is now. That was enough time for you to jump on it and interpret it in a negative way. Generally you need to stop interpreting my posts in such negative ways. You were offended by one of my posts before although it clearly was not aimed at you. If these misunderstandings continue, we will get in trouble without needing to.
It's not that I don't like the idea behind this post, but didn't many of these ideas get put into Supreme Commander, and ended up being game breakers? Take Amphibious/hovering tanks, for example. The former were mostly useless, and the latter, at times, made building a navy pointless and useless. I remember Aeon having an AA gunship in FA, and it being extremely overpowered as well. I'm not saying these are bad ideas, just that historically they've proven hard to balance.
I would love to have a Ninja: a t1 bot Invisible tot radar. Not very powerful, but useful. I would love to have a tank that creates fake radar signatures
Ok so, let's be a bit more specific here. Let's talk about those units that need new roles assigned to them. Inferno - Vanguard: They both offer high melee damage, slow movement and high hitpoints. They're ideal drop units. My suggestion is to take away the weapon of the vanguard and make it into a moving wall. In formations they'll take front, sides and back. They should be cheaper and quicker. That will let the Vanguard fill an entirely new role and the Inferno will be the no 1 drop unit. Ant - Leveler: To have an advanced tank that is better than your usual tank is not a sin. The goal should be to have many basic tanks and a few advanced tanks in a group. You can accomplish that by making the Leveler cost more until the point, that producing ants is more cost efficient than producing Levelers. Why would people still produce Levelers, then? Because the extra range and damage alone will make mixing them into your formations consisting of basic units let them have higher cost efficiency. I don't know if you can follow me here. I have an example for those that have played Starcraft 2: When playing Protoss, you wanted to have Colossi in your mix. They had high range and high aoe damage, but building only Colossi would make you lose, because they were too fragile to take too much enemy fire. Building no Colossi would leave you without the necessary damage, most of the time. You needed the right mix of Colossi and basic units to be most cost efficient. And the same could happen to Levelers. Combat Fabricator - Advanced Combat Fabricator: I'd like to see the Advanced Combat Fabricator have an aoe heal instead of a single target heal. It would be a lot weaker than the single target heal, but it would affect whole groups of units at once. Kind of like an AOE channeled heal over time effect that you know from MMOs. This way, you'd have to decide based on the amounts of units you field, whether having Advanced Combat Fabricators is better than fielding normal ones, or if you want both of them together. Skitter - Firefly: I'd make the Skitter a stealth unit for stealth recon. At the moment there is nothing that makes you produce Skitters instead of Fireflies if you have the choice. So the Skitter would become very potent in the early game for reliable recon, until your enemy puts up their first radar. In conjunction to this, I think that basic radar shouldn't detect stealth units, while advanced radar should. Bumblebee - Hornet: This is difficult, I don't really have a suggestion here. Hummingbird - Pelegrine: Make the Hummingbird the standard anti-air fighter, and the Pelegrine either able to move between orbits (and nerf them a lot), or make them into "Attackers", Fighters that can attack air and ground. Doxes - Slammers: I think Doxes should get a speed buff, and Slammers should get the ability to shoot over walls. Case closed. Anti-Air Bot - Anti-Air Vehicle: This is also difficult. Maybe one of them could be better against fighters and gunships, the other one better against bombers, if that isn't already the case. Greetings
I would be really interested in seeing a focus on roles that exist in reality. Taking bots, with heavy influence from Battlefield. An assault rifle bot. An anti-air bot (I know, not strictly a role of infantry) A medic bot A "designated marksman" recon bot. A demolition bot (heavier weapons, still direct fire) An indirect fire bot. A sniper bot. Shotgun bot. Suicide bot. Err... I guess other infantry weapons are valid too. Haven't really thought about vehicles in all that much depth, but those are my thoughts for the bot factory.
