Why is the T2 rush back in 68331?

Unless you counter it with X.

But I don't see the problem there, that's strategy.

It's not strategy, it's having to mindlessly build counter-unit after counter-unit until both of your armies counter everything in each other. RPS is boring.

Strategy is when you decide to lure his forces away from his base so that you can come in through the hole.

Force composition has just as much strategy in it as battlefield tactics, otherwise we would only need 1 type of unit, a obscure counter for a military unit or force.

Having force composition is important because it changed how you tackle the battlefield each time.

If all we have are dox, the battlefield is more like a bacterial war were one army grinds down another, the battle will be same in most respects.

But with the inclusion of different unit types, you change what tactics you need to use in order to get a favourable outcome if not simply to retreat to fight a more favourable battle later on.

RPS is boring because it's too small, too few combinations, but then again no strategy game uses only 3 units, most have many, many more leading to massively different strategy, based on one unit countering another, games like command and conquer have direct upfront counters, missile beats tank, tank beats car, car beats troop, troop beats rocket.

PA also has a counter system based on it's more fluid projectile physics, one unit counters another by how it's weapon responds to physics, but in the end, you still have RPS AA beats bomber, bomber beats tank, tank beats AA.

To say RPS is boring, is to say that all RTS games are boring and that infact only games like risk and go are actually fun.

And that's an injustice, because you clearly like PA, so really you do actually like RPS, you just don't like small RPS, or simple RPS.

There are ways to make a unit composition based game without having hard counters.

Indeed, that's why we use (And should use more) a projectile physics game.

The balance is in the physics, less then the literal stats like speed and hp of the unit it's self.

With enough variety that is good.

In street fighter, a turtle character can be good against projectiles, a different turtle can be good against cqc, a different turtle can be good against other turtles, and a variety of different projectile characters can be good against cqc but not other projectile or projectile but not cqc.

It is that there are 5-6 focuses a character can both have and have focus against. A character can posess 2 focuses, be aimed against 2 focuses, and be relatively mundane or undirective against the last.

But that is a micro game, a 1v1 game. Still yet, in RTS you can have units that can fire at air and land and have low dps at range and higher dps closer and compared to hitbox. You can have a similar unit fire at air and land and have AOE but not high damage. You can have another unit fire at air and land and have highly fatal low rate single hit damage. All of them would vary in effectiveness against each other, against bombers, tanks, and bots. All of them are a flavor, with scouting or to supplement other unit composition one would prefer a specific one. If using ant tanks, one would use a low damage one that hits more units, if using strider rapid-fire tanks one would prefer a more single shot high damage units to supplement.

One can argue small differences give too much complexity, why build this or that. However, with proper balance one can roughly choose "any composition of direct fire and hybrid AA" if they don't care for specifics and complexity.

There is an extent to which I agree with both IGN and Stuart.

On the one hand, a game should promote strategic decision-making, not just the "Make X to counter Y" of hard counters.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that hard-counters preclude strategy.

Example: Let's say your opponent has a handful of flak turrets scattered at key locations throughout his base. In theory, Flak Turrets counter large swarms of aircraft. Rock-paper-scissors, right? Flak precludes attack by mass air.

Nevertheless, you still have strategic options in this situation. You can:

• Attack somewhere else (flak is expensive); harass.
  
• Spread your attack out over a wide area so the effectiveness of flak is diminished; you lose forces, but you do significant damage to your enemy
• Take out the flak with a surgical strike, then attack with mass air; alternatively, send in units one at a time until the flak is dead, or attack from four different directions at the same time.
• Tech-switch -- your opponent has invested money in flak? Attack with a small army of ground units

So you still have strategic choices, even in this hard-counter situation.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily agree that physics = balance.

Rather, I would offer up the following: in an environment like Planetary Annihilation, units are more easily subject to balance by mathematical analysis.

Why?

• Metal is the only cost you're working with -- you don't have to worry about ancillary resources like Vespene Gas, and energy is decoupled from unit cost because the energy cost of a unit depends on what fabbers you have working on it and how long they work
• PA doesn't have too many variables to balance -- you don't have to worry about things like special abilities or the effective of extensive micro. All you have to worry about are range, damage, health, speed, and any other special qualities a unit has
• The streaming economics of the game are far more predictable than the granular economies of other games

I suppose what I'm getting at here is, "What are the mathematics of balance?"

For starters, I'll bring up a point made by Exterminans in a previous thread:

The quotient of weapon range by collision size is the most important key number when dealing with deathball effects!

Second key number is the delay between the first unit being in range of the defender and attacking units reaching damage peak. Latter one is reached when the front units are on direct touch with the target and the outmost line of units is barely in weapon range. (source)
​

In addition, I would argue that unit grain size must be taken into account when balancing similar units on a DPS/cost and health/cost basis.

Here, I define a "small-grain" unit as something that doesn't have a lot of health, damage, or cost; by contrast, a "large-grain" unit is something that has a large amount of health and damage and a correspondingly higher cost. T1 tank is a small-grain unit; Leveler is a large-grain unit. Experimental units from the Supreme Commander series are even larger-grain units.

Why?

Let's say you have 10 small-grain units with 10 DPS each and 100 health each against a single large-grain unit with 100 DPS and 1000 health; let's assume that the large-grain unit is not crippled by rate-of-fire or turret rotation speed so, in theory, it can do damage to the small-grain units without overkill or spending too much time not firing.

As the battle progresses, the small-grain unit ball will lose DPS as individual group members are killed, whereas the large grain-size unit will continue to spew out 100 DPS until its 1000 health is gone.

Of course, if the large-grain unit has a turret traverse that is too slow, or its rate of fire is granular (as opposed to constant), then it will have a great deal more trouble and the advantage shifts in favor of the little guys again.

All of this needs to be accounted for when balancing T1 versus T2 units.

Actually this has been bugging me lately, why are we thinking of it in terms of Basic VERSUS Advanced? Why is it this "Either/Or" deal when we should being thinking more about how we can make Basic and Advanced work together?

Mike

Because there are a number of ways of modeling T1 and T2, and PA hasn't quite decided how it wants to address this yet.

One model:

• T1: General-purpose units
  
• T2: Specialists that compliment T1 units

Another model:

• T1: Basic units
• T2: Bigger, better, less-efficient versions of the same unit (larger grain size, less HP/cost and DPS/cost)

Yet another model:

• T1: Early-game
• T2: End-game

All of these models can work, but PA doesn't quite know what it wants to be. In fact, it appears to incorporate all three:

• Vehicles: T1 = basic units; T2 = bigger, better, less-efficient versions of these units; at the same time, the Sheller seems very much like an end-game unit
  
• Air: T1 = general-purpose units; T2 = specialists that compliment T1
• Bots: T1 = early game; T2 = end game (Bluehawk for siege, GIL-E for anti-missile work, Slammer for those pesky situations when a commander is hiding under water...)

This might be why balance feels so weird right now.

Perhaps this needs to be its own thread: what T1/T2 model should PA use?

You're joking, right?

Should have been here 6 months ago nearly a year ago when we first started banging our heads against a brick wall.

Short answer is that Scathis and Metabolical don't want to use a unified system for where units are placed, nor a unified direction for what consitutes a " T1 " or " T2 " unit.

Forgive me for editorializing, but I assume that the sentiment you are trying to express here is that you don't trust the devs. It sounds as though you feel that they're out-of-touch with the player base and don't have a clue as to what "real" multiplayer is like.

If so, I understand. That said: Planetary Annihilation isn't finished by any means; the mere fact that they're still adding and removing units proves that.

I would hypothesize that the devs are, in fact, concerned about balance, but I also feel that they've got a lot on their plates. They have to optimize the game, chase down bugs, and implement features like unit cannons and moving planets around. These features might not be important to you, but the devs are obligated to deliver the product they pitched.

In the meantime, the devs do pay attention to these forums. You may feel that the situation is futile, but who knows? Maybe the right thread at the right time will catch the eye of Scathis or Metabolical, and they'll respond.

All we can do is our best to give the devs feedback that can be used to balance the game; whether or not they use that information is up to them. And if they don't, perhaps everyone will drift over to TheRealm's balance mod; the devs will almost certainly notice if noone is playing vanilla PA.

Your thoughts?

Scathis has literally said that they don't have a proper plan and are going by "feel", and this direction goes directly against Dev comments from earlier in development stated that they did want to something that, if it wasn't quite the Basic/Generalist - Advanced/Specialist format many in the community wanted/hoped for it wouldn't result in obsolete units and now we have the current balance.

And it wasn't a case of "we tried it and we didn't think it worked" because they never once talked about even trying it and we can see form the RCBM that it does work, to the point that in every playtest I build like 90% Basic Tanks and still do pretty damn well in most cases, admittedly this was mostly earlier when the RCBM still had a long way to go but given Nano/MadSci I'm confident it hasn't changed. ;p

This is reasonable enough to say, but it's not what seems to be going on. Based on prior comments while I'm sure Meta and Scathis do wear many "hats" in regards to Development it seems as thought the Balance/Gameplay is the biggest hat they wear and yet we get gems like this;

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/why-the-balance-forum-feels-like-a-waste-of-my-time.59284/

Mike

As long as Mods are gated behind a "filter", I doubt modding will take off in a big way for the average user.

If Mods are this game's future, Uber need to seriously consider putting Mods on the front page sooner rather than later. Give us the tools to manage mods, search for mods, have mods recommended, have mods downloadable, ratable and most importantly, give Modders more than just the time of day on the forums.

Mods have been slated to be "first-class citizens", and it certainly doesn't feel like that is the case so far.

I hear you. The advanced units should augment the basic units by providing some sort of support instead of a raw HP, DPS Boost.

One example I really like is the idea of a radar jamming unit that can shroud a small AOE from Radar. This would be a very effective Support unit and would fall clearly in the Advanced category. we could even go a bit further with this concept and have units that boost range, damage, or firing rate of a group of units within a small AOE.

Some of the Advanced units that are acting as augmentation units in theory would be the sheller and the sniper bot. They are broken right now, or have been broken, because they can be used effectively as the primary unit of a force. The thing that has made both of these units too over powered is their ability to shoot on the run. Forcing both of these units to remain rooted to fire would go a long way to balancing them against the other units. Next they both need to have range and damage reduced to be more in line with a defensive turret.

The general consensus that I am seeing here indicates that several players feel that the balance devs are out-of-touch with the community, regardless of how many other hats they wear.

Though I don't think the devs should be utterly beholden to the community (its their game, they can do as they wish), I, personally, would feel a lot better if there was some comprehensive write-up of the current metagame, complete with sample videos, for the devs to respond to.

PA has the potential to revolutionize competitive RTS gameplay; to me, it already outclasses its competitors in terms of scope, elegance, and simplicity.

Now all we need to do is get the balance aspect right, and that means listening to top-tier players about what works and what doesn't work, and why. And not just one or two players, but a broad sampling of them, because who knows? One top-tier player may be winning based on skill alone, but many competitive players win by finding the most broken aspects of the game and abusing the heck out them.

I wouldn't hold your breath.

Mike

t2 rush not viable strat. anyone want to prove me wrong?

I think Brianpurkiss might have given it a shot already here.

I'd make the thread myself, but I'm not qualified -- I'm a noob with good intentions and a big mouth.

Other, more capable folks, on the other hand...

That was WPMarshall. Brian just posted the vid.

I was referring to the thread, not the vid, but your point is well taken. =)