Thoughts on bringing more Unit Flavour to PA

I had a bit of an "Oh!" moment earlier today and I think I've found what might be the cause of the weird "disconnect" I've been feeling with PA as it's become more and more developed,
the units feel very 'plain'. I know that's nowhere near descriptive enough on it's own so let me explain a bit. I'm not referring to the Aesthetic or anything like that. I'm talking about more so the Mechanics of how things are.

A good example are the units.

What is the Leveler? An average Tank

What is the Boom? A Bot that Explodes

What is the Sheller? An Average Artillery Unit

There isn't any real character to those units, nothing that makes them stand out. SupCom, for all its various Flaws, did a pretty good job overall in this department.

I mean, just look at the T1 Artillery units.

The Cybran Medusa shot an EMP Shell
The UEF Lobo had a "Shell Cam" That gave a tine bit of vision right before it hit.
The Aeon Fevor Was very accurate and did a lot of point damage.

Heck, in PA each of those could be it's own unit! Each of those units takes the same basic principle, that has been used thousands of times before, but gives it just the slightest of twists to give it character. Sure in SupCom this sometimes results in units being out-performed but thier factional counterparts due to not have access to all of them and because they were all meant to be as homogeneous as possible and not always allow to excel in thier specialization, the Medusa is a good example of that.

Obviously PA doesn't have a large enough roster(right now) to allow for that many variants on a single unit role but are all those variations aren't needed up front, and some things are done better by different units. For example. Shell Cam works alright on a Artillery unit, but you know where it would work even better? On a scout! What if the Firefly was actually a bomber loaded with Droppable cameras? To me, that sound pretty interesting!

I was going to shift gears a bit, but heck, lets stay with units instead because I know a lot about those.

So you know what else is a problem because of this "Boilerplate" approach to unit design? Progression! Yeah that's right, That thing that is supposed to be created by the Advanced Tier.....that is filled with more boilerplate units, some of them copies of basic boilerplate units. Oh man do I ever feel like I'm Progressing!

Even ignoring the issue that we need that specific kind of Progression(we don't) having more "characterful" units would actually help! You're actually getting different units, however slight. What if, instead of firing from both barrels at the same time, the Leveler alternated Barrels, so instead of firing 2 simultaneous shots every 2 seconds, it fired 1 shot every second from alternating barrels. This is a super slight change, it doesn't affect balance in any meaningful way nor does it affect how the unit otherwise functions but it provides a very slight amount of character.

Of course were it up to me I wouldn't stop there.

At the extreme end of this spectrum you get heavy unit Specialization, the Medusa no longer does any damage and JUST stuns thing, the Lobo ONLY provides the Shell Cam and so on. Sometimes those can be decent enough units anywhere, other times, the unit roster needs to be built to support that level of specialization. Now PA isn't taking that route, but they can still do this kind of stuff, they just need to make sure it doesn't get over done. I think NOT doing this at all with these Core Initial units is actually a huge mistake, or at leas will result in effort being require to update them down the line when they could have saved the effort and done it up front.

Anyways, there is still development to be done and things can change and there is still a lot to be done.

Edited for intended tonality, I jumped the gun a bit last night, I got too excited about my epiphany.

Mike

There are a lot of different typess of people out there. It's really hard cater for everyone. The aspects of the game that some think are game breaking others may not.

All I want is playability. Does the game play well. Is it fun. I really don't care how units look once they interact well with each other. I don't care if it's a big green lazer hitting a unit or a small bullet. I don't care if the trees are bigger or smaller than the mountains which are the same size of the units. This is just me.

I'm not saying your ideas won't make the game better but for me they are not an issue.

Someone didn't have their happy pills today

But seriously PA is already better than TA and Supcom/FA/supcom2 even at this stage and I was there for them all (as was Knight of course). I will reply with more when I can.

No.

an cube of space an time...with lots of replys, like no im in derp derp mode today

I remember that on kickstarter times we had a decision: more factions or one faction with more units. What we have now? One faction with just basic units. I want to see bots and tanks to work simmilar, but have other character. One player will go tanks heavy, other bots. This can ends like 2 factions play. I like more this idea than using all avaiable units becouse it can give more strategys and different plays. Like in TA. I want to see asault bot, artylery bot, fast bot, stealth bot, radar bot, AA bot and many other and similar in tanks tech. ( like light asault tank and medium asalt tank and on adv heavy asault) Now you can play with it, bot artylery will have emp, when the tank artylery will get biger spread.

Other people have different taste than you. What you consider fun, others might consider boring and vice versa. You have to accept his style, consider it, if you don't you only gonna create drama

It is like with everything, some like Justin, some don't. Some like communism, some don't. Neither of them is right/wrong, both sides have their reasons.

It just occurred to me yesterday, that units lack a bit of personality as I was playing. Personally I don't have a massive problem with the way the game currently is, although I'm one of the lesser minds when it comes to rts design, but I do see Mike's point.

But something I did spot is the way weapon effects currently are, just round blobs thrown around. Poof. Poof. Poof. Well mostly anyway.

I understand that most of these are still placeholders until the artists move on to them from more pressing matters, but still, I always preferred wargame's way of doing tank shells and missiles, and I'd like to see bots getting their own weapon style, more burst fire-like, while tanks having their shells.

im more 50 50 on this i sure woulde like to see it personality better units but then again no. but then again yes.
Im haveing alot of fun playing the game. im more of a superweapon kind of guy. i like huge bangs and awesome units.
that woulde be orbital lasers, nukes, smasheing, more lasers, superscary omg i have to kill that kind of unit ect.
i guess i really have no saying in this simply because i dont care about tiny tanks and littel bots
I like massing units tho

They should add Giant Sandworms.

I feel the same way Mike, the only units i really like are 2 commanders, they look cool, they feel strong, there just awesome! But most of the units are indeed so basic, nothing you build has a special feel to them. I'm not suggesting it should be a tic tac toe kind of game like Starcraft. But as Popededi said everything just shoots blops. No lazers, No plasma guns, no nothing special, yeah a fire tank.............seriously a fire tank where everything is 10inch metal plated....it's a abomination (my opinion) so yeah i would love some changes to some of them, cool designs, different weapon types with awesome sound effects would be awesome!

Read something or commented by somebody who just plays for fun or hobby is one thing.

Another is to read something written by Knight its serious.
someone who has great wisdom in this matter.

To who not know, Knight was one that created for SupCom: Forged Alliance fans one of the best mods with completely new units and an enviable quality.

For this reason and others, when I read what he writes, even iff he dont think like that , I read with due respect and attention.

I cant explain properly because language some off his worries , but following your thinking and preoccupation, i completely understand and agree completely.

The purpose of this new TA, we all know that it is TA successor was Uber that told before start production off PA.
Its not get at least for now achieve the stated goals .

There are lot new players here that never new what TA was or even what SC(FAF) is ,but thats not bad its good have new players, so that new players obvius will say we are rong, this game is awsome ,got all best features in a rts so on so on, i respect that has they dont play like us since 1 TA its has been a long road in our lives thats the true.

Planetary Anhilation at least for now is far from what we expected .

I'm not saying that in the future will not be corrected errors that at the moment we see, because I believe that the units must be more varied, more balance between them, because for now this does not make much sense to have units that have lack of originality and lack of utility.

They should have thought in more units wasnt this game supose to be EPIC BATTLES?
Or its just like simcity, stay home no fight on planet with great units, and just lunch a planet against other and thats it!! GAME OVER, is that the Epic fights????

I'll give an example: look at the huge amount of options for all kinds of situations we have in FAF http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Complete_unit_list
And think in PA what you guys miss here and maybe between those two parameters may understand some concerns that must be rethought.

Im start to see too many simcity players here!

But has Knight say ( I've not given up hope, regardless what Uber does in this department we will hopefully have strong Mod support that will enable countless people to take up the cause and work it out themselves.)

Keep the good work

That does sound very interesting. Maybe require X energy to replenish a bomb, Y energy to run the camera, and a small sight radius Z for the camera. Possibly make the camera intermittent (say 1 second of vision every 10 seconds) for some interesting fog of war blinking and to make it different from keeping a proper presence there.

Make the fire green and call it plasma. Job done

I like that the units are basic and arn't gimmicky at all in that half of them have an 'alt fire'. This makes the game accessible. One of the things that drew me to PA.

Instead of a thousand different choices of weapon types, damage types etc which really only tends to get messy both design wise and visually.

TA was awesome man!

I think that the new Dox is a good example of this. Uber had the chance to take one unit and turn it into two, but instead opted to remove a a unit in order to add another. I fully support giving the grenadier role to a new unit and keeping the Dox as it is.

Of course, the change is experimental, so I suppose we'll see how that turns out.

What I would like to see either are units and tower experience and level ups with a bit more health and power like in SC. So that it would be better that your units survive a Battle and gain exp instead of throwing them in countless waves against the defense of your opponents.

"Okay in Supreme Commander I did the same thing ,sometimes, but there it felts different."
In SC it was not really important but for the towers. But it was a nice detail for individual gameplay.

And to KNights post: I agree that in PA are a lot things what oldschool TA gamers will missing and I hope "of course" that Uber will hear us and add more variety to the game.. not only units also buildings we could use for some tactics.
They face a big challenge because we expect a better or even game than/with Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. Because of that I did not understand why they decided to leave off some features who have proven themselves... *cough.t3.experimentalunits.factions.cough*<--but this is not the only things I`m missing.

Ahh I dont know this game feels so... so... Basic like u said. Its still far from finished.

After around 90hours PA and several hundred hours SC/TA I think I can say "I hope for and expect more. If not... I have to learn how to mod a game"^^

While I kind of agree, I just can't shake the feeling that we are getting less of things like units (at least at the moment, excepting post release content and mods) because we are getting so much more in terms of unique features. I mean, the team have had less time and money than most big game dev teams to make a truly unique rts, which uses a game engine made from scratch and involves an almost unprecedented scale.

I think it's fine to want more, and Uber have said all through this process that they intend to add more and more and more once the game is released, and to work with modders wholeheartedly. I just think we should consider that Uber have even said themselves that they see this as the first stage, more as a concept with incredible potential for improvement, than a complete, fully realised project from the start.

I remember feeling excited when the vanguard came out because it was the same unit ever in PA that did more than one thing (radar plus it's slightly more distinct, if currently unbalanced role, as a super close range tough tank). I thought 'aha, at last uber are gearing up to start modifying units, creating specific niches and roles', but so far I've seen no signs of such.

I agree 100% knight.

I enjoy chess quite alot, and all it has is 6 different units, to me the depth comes from the interaction not the unit itself