Unit veterancy

BM just explained there is no damage bonus in supcom's vet (and no damage reduction).

a unit gets extra HP, and a small amount of HP regen. that's it. useless for 90% of units but worked really well on the commander (early game minor balance issues notwithstanding).

No veterancy. What you see is what you get. Mod it if you want it.

In TA2 the veterancy changed the looks of the unit. I think that having different look + a different attack (e.g. bigger bullets) may be fine.
Still: the game is clearly a macro-scale project, so it must not encourage players to manually control some units till they "grow up".

SupCom 2?

SupCom2 used research to change the unit(sometimes), not Vet.

Mike

Having it for the commander only might be ok with me, otherwise it's to hard to balance and I think microing your whole army should be the goal, not microing single units to make them more badass and win the game with an army of badass vet units. Balance is more important to me than special rewards for keeping one of your 10.000 units alive...

But I do like the idea of having a killcount and different visualizations for this "vet stat" without any gameplay changes. That tank killed 15 other tanks? Make it look awesome for that. Logical reason? None! Fun? For sure!

In the end that's just a small gimmick, but might be fun to see in the game. :twisted:

It's really interesting that the main arguments against veterancy target combat units but not armed structures. I agree that unit veterancy would be horrid and it only really works in games like Company of Heroes where you only use a handful of units and micro them carefully.

The main arguments against unit veterancy are as follows:

1. Recognising a veteran unit would be against 'what you see is what you get'. It also would be pretty hard to see with 100s and 1000s of units on the battlefield.

2. It doesn't make sense, why do robots get more HP and more damage after killing units? Wouldn't they already come with that on production.

3. It'll require more micro-management. Losing in a battle against vetted units even though you have more isn't very fun anyway.

But...

Why Structure Veterancy (for laser towers, artillery pieces, missile launchers) is Viable:

So...unit veterancy is out of the question but these things don't necessarily apply to defensive structures. For example, to tackle argument 1. buildings such as a single laser tower could upgrade to a double laser tower, then to a trple laser tower, and maybe a triple laser tower could upgrade to a doomsday-like tower in TA. It could get it's own personal radar, and a faster turn rate - these things are easily recognisable and something that would reward keeping your towers alive. argument 2. is a litter harder to justify, however, automated turrets arguable have an AI system which tells itself that 'enemies love to come in this way' and therefore it upgrades itself for free or maybe for a bit of metal and energy if available. argument 3. is easily tackled since you don't have to do a thing! You just let your turrets handle the work.

I think veterancy was thrown out the window too quickly and building veterancy is certainly viable! Vet should be something that is fairly hard to get, a single laser tower should need 20+ kills to upgrade, and more in subsequent versions of itself. I also don't think there should be any undetectable/hard to detect improvements such as HP or range, but upgrading to a better version of itself, with a higher fire rate and DPS it would be cool.

A great thing about structure veterancy for turrets, artillery or missile systems is that you can avoid the really cheap tactics, where you rush build a tower next to an enemy tower with loads of fabs to kill it, spamming walls to defend yourself. A vetted tower could take care of those kind of BS moments. Although the balance of towers is still ongoing and a feature like this would have to come either upon release or after, just so we can factor this into account when balancing turrets and other defensive structures.

Or you know, give the players cheap disposable turrets, and more expensive fortified turrets.

That kind of requires more management though

Ow dear, you actually have to play a game!

Placing a big turret where you want a big turret is less management than placing weak turret there and protecting it while waiting for it to upgrade.

Unit kill count it's one of my most wanted features...
Fact it's not yet available make me kind a sad...

You can still build a big turret, but there's an added feature where single laser turrets you build to defend mexes and key positions can be upgraded on their if they do their job instead of you having to go over there and build another one.

why "yes/maybe"? how about "yes ABSOLUTELY!" nothing spells fun like getting to say that one time this guy fed your commander 200 kills. or that one time you managed to get twelve kills with the micro of a single bomber.

Having hero units that returned decorated and war hardened. Yes they're machines, so what it still makes sense just the way it makes sense to say machines think (believe me they will, eventually) and Sup com didn't hve any issue doing it with it's robots.

i can tell you it always filled me with glee to spot a high kill count turret that had gotten an extra barrel, or a high kill count mechmarine with now just a tiny tiny extra health regen.

what does it matter when it doesn't change the survivability of the unit for more than a extra tank it takes to take it down?

plus it fits the WYSIWYG doctrine, whereupon if a unit got vet you can see it's extra barrel and you also saw it pull of the kills and survive so doesn't it deserve a cookie? or some bacon? i'm adding this to the poll.

It's not "WYSIWYG" if it suddenly changes when you are not looking at it, or had no action in making the change.

that's about the same as saying you scouted a place and there was no turret then you send your bot and he gets killed because in the meantime a turret was built there.

it is WYSIWYG because it's just like the unit's model :you can see it same idea that @neutrino has been trying to push.

If a unit looks kinda big then it ought to be more resistant and deal more damage.

I know this feeling! Today, I built an Emissary and it got 220 kills. Amazing.
I want a holkins to do that. What if a vet holkins with over 100 kills could fire like a Scathis...

If you go to place a small turret and it morphs into a turbo laser, then that is not what you see is what you get.

EDIT: and scouting is a poor comparison, as you should not need to scout your pre planed military every 5 mins to now judge is the unit has increased in quality.

That is just a upgrade, pure and simple.

If you want your turrets to improve with more barrels, build more turrets from the metal of dead enemy tanks, its the same thing.

What if the morphing takes a few seconds and looks like the green build nanolathe taking form

Well, dude...it's still just the unit upgrading it's self.

Thats not very macro gameplay, thats more like a rpg.

The amount of kills a unit gets is kinda pointless anyway, your army is disposable and field manufactured.

Feeding kills in a macro game....like the idea that it would be considered fun to brag about being fed kills, in a game of assassination or even supremacy where resources don't drain......it just so alien to the entire point of the game.

Getting kills only matters if it's the commander, as everything else is disposable.