Bots vs Tanks

Welp, to begin I'd like to address the issue of unit sharing similar roles. Some believe that unit roles should not overlap no matter what as it pollutes the unit roster. I say this is actually bad thinking especially in a game that has one faction that currently has 1 unit for a role. One of PA's promises early on was that even though there would only be one faction, only having a single faction would allow for a much grater amount of units being able to be built. Currently this not the case, with our current unit roster even with the Titans expansion being rather lacking compared to other games, most notably Supreme Commander Forged Alliance. In this game the roles of units overlap to the extreme with the game having at-least 30 front line assault bots or tank across all the factions that did about the same thing, however, each basic front line unit still operated slightly different even though they had the same role, which in turn supplemented a players specific play style as they chose which factions and units to use over others, even though a lot of times the differences were rather small and the units were carrying out what was about the same role in the game. With PA as we have only one faction we should be able to do the same, not only building units for the role they carry out but also the way they carry it out as seen in other RTS games with multiple factions.

Now that is out of the way lets move on the a problem I believe PA currently has that being that you can not build every role out of individual factories and that our unit roster is lacking when compared to games with multiple factions. What I mean by this is that a t1 bot factory does not have a good front line unit while the t1 vehicle factory has no t1 raider unit and many other roles both factories lack in some way. Currently this is in the detriment to the bot side of things as currently the lack of proper anti-air and a proper front line Assault bot makes the bot factory a rather horrid choice of factory when compared to just building more vehicle factories. Generally a player will build one or two bot factories to get the auxiliary options that the t1 bots have, however, building more than a couple early on is a horrible idea as tanks are simply the better choice for main army composition while bots just have units that are built on a lower level to harass or accomplish very specific roles that the tanks lack. At first the seems okay but nevertheless as we only have one faction in the game I feel we lack specific play styles that other game have when it comes to which "Faction" they chose. What I'm proposing is that each factory gets all the roles and unit archetypes but they also have rather different ways of going about it. This way players can hone their play styles according to their factory choice rather than always sticking to the current use of bots as either raiders or healers and vehicles as the main army composition. Now on to my actual suggestion-

Changes to T1 Bot Factory:

-Add a T1 Assault bot, I know people will say "Thats the dox!" but its not what I have in mind. I mean something to be the equivalent to the BOLO, something that can be used as a front line unit that is used a main army composition unit. So I suggest this,

• Costs 200 metal
• Fires a fast firing laser weapon that has a slightly higher DPS than the BOLO
• Has a little less health than the bolo, in other words can sustain about the same amount of tank shots, but to rapid fire it has that little less amount of health
• About the same speed as BOLO
• Make the model look like the Supreme Commander T3 UEF Assualt Bot, not exactly but just the idea of the bipedal bot with two lasers is good, but make it different enough to differiantiate itself from the dox model, also size wise its about the same size height wise as the current t2 assault bot but with less armor on the model making it look more like a t1 unit

This gives the t1 bot factory a good front line unit, making it not just a bad idea to build lots of bot factories when compared to vehicle factories

-BRING BACK THE STINGER

• Why exactly was it ever taken out????
• Make it rather slow weak and cheap, but still have the good old homing missiles giving us a proper bot AA unit to accompany the new front line bot

This means if your opponent if going air, and your going bot, your not immediately screwed

-Give the vehicle factory a raider

• Perhaps give the scout a weapon to fire and increase its speed as well as cost, making something more akin to a attack jeep

-Give the vehicle factory a t1 artillery and improve the way the current bot t1 arty works

• Artillery in t1 feels lacking and giving the vehicle factory early arty would supplement that
• Also the Grenadiers role is still odd, I suggest making it more of a base defense breaker than anything else same with the new vehicle arty

Anyways more Units are always interesting and allowing players to sort of pseudo select a faction by making each factory hold more units just seems like it could give the battlefield a lot more variety than it currently holds. Also any other unit ideas are welcome and I would like some critique on my suggested changes. Also, the argument that roles should not cross over each-other and overlap is honestly just stupid, we have one faction, give us more units within this one faction, even if they are slight differences it still adds a lot more to the ability to define a play style than we currently can. That is all.


inb4 Someone yells at me for wanting new units :L

I like the idea, but I think that you're going about it the wrong way. If the assault bot was the same speed as the yolo then they would be more or less functionally identical. You need to differentiate based on speed, cost, and HP. There are two main approaches to this:

The Vanilla/Statera approach gives bots a medium cost, with good speed and good DPS. Tanks cost a little more, have a lot more health, are slower, and have a bit less DPS for their metal cost.

The RCBM/Galactic Annihilation approach gives bots a low cost with decent but not amazing speed and good DPS, while tanks have a high cost with more range and a faster speed (along with more health, but comparable hp/metal).

If you keep movement speeds the same between classes then the different factories really do feel the same.

Well my differentiation was based on two major things, the weapon being a automatic DPS based rather than a immediate attack, and lesser health for slightly higher speed. If Speed was the huge differentiation then we'd just have a better more useful dox, which I'm also fine with.

Isn't the spark a good equivalent to the bolo? It's still a bit less tanky, has shorter range, but the combination of low cost and insane damage+aoe is incredible for punching through enemy lines.

It really doesn't have the health, range, and the damage is actually rather low, it just has a nice AOE










....Plus the unit model looks weird

Assaults are characterized by high health. Bots don't have one.

bots are not meant to be frontline units but support and utility .. thats also why tanks are limted to range, hp and alpha damage ... i would rather consider it blant to only have the need to build one factorytype to have all the roles in .. a bot factory should NOT have a unit that tanks high damage .. we don't need a vanguardlike bot when there is a vanguardtank already .. we don't need a snipingvehicle when there is the gil'e already .. you argue about overlapping roles but then ask about basicaly just duplicating roles even more ..

units are only intresting when they don't feel alike ..

It's straight up two time the bolos damage with the same ROF plus AOE, that's more than any other T1 unit outside the inferno.

Compared to other bots it's almost tanky.

Don't diss the beatles.

You obviously didn't get my point. My point was NO CLASS/FACTORY OF UNITS SHOULD BE LIMITED TO A SINGLE ROLE

It's simple stupid to do so and limit the amount of units possible especially when you have ONE faction to play as.

no i understand your point and disagree with it ..

asking to have a more bololike assaultbot, bringing back the stinger ... this to me is just duplicating roles making certain units less unique or intresting .. and even lowering the incentive to combine unittypes ...

I get where you are coming from, EB, but we'd need a LOT more than just two or three new units to add a significant amount of variety and feel to the game. Honestly, there should be more units that are focused on terrain advantages. For example, a unit with a high DPS laser and high range. This unit wouldn't be as useful on a small moon, but it would be great on larger planets due to the planet eating the laser before it hits.

Or a unit that fires a projectile a certain predetermined distance before detonating. In this case, the range is determined by the distance traveled, and if the unit can shoot at anything, that means it would be good at shooting land and air from range but meh at everything else.

Etc.

There's tons of ideas floating around. Uber will look into when they can. Patience.

While I agree that we need a lot more units, I disagree with you on the idea that units should depend on planet size. The idea of a unit being made useless because the planet isn't flat enough for it is to me ludicrous. It's not WYSIWIG and depends on bad mechanics.

I think mered was saying that a small planet has a large curvature, therefore direct fire weapons that' aren't situated very high (eg, those on a mobile unit) get a natural reduction in effective range because they can't fire "over the horizon".

You can't get more WYSIWIG than a unit shooting at the ground because the planet curves too much. I mean, just look at it....

I'd just assume it's a bug and report it in the support forum.

In fact, it was a bug.

You can't tell if the planet it too small for it or not until it shoots and you see a moment of truth where it either hits the ground or hits the enemy (or misses both), and until you build it and see that you can't tell for sure. That's how it's not WYSIWYG.

I've been trying to add in some custom units for the fun of it, and one thing that's been bugging me is unit range vs unit size and speed. Especially speed, but if units are made slower and kept at the same size they'll just look silly, so the two are basically coupled.
The vast majority of units have a very short range relative to their speed, and it makes the dynamics between units kind of dull. Implementing a unit half way between a dox and a bolo* shows pretty clearly that the two units fill very similar roles; the new unit ends up being very similar to both, because the difference is small enough that trying to fit in a role between them ends up being highly redundant. That shouldn't be the case; my opinion is that the two units should fill very different roles, and overlap shouldn't be that high.

Spoiler: (regarding the unit in question)*

The unit I tested out basically took the geometric mean of each unit's stats. 80 metal, 100 health, 30dps, 85 range, turning faster than the bolo but slower than a dox, etc. I called it the Ant™, since I'm trying to make a new bot-like tech branch themed mostly around arthropods.

Range differences between front line units have an impact when units are slow enough, or have low enough health, that units can't close the gap before taking significant damage. Since PA's ranges are so small compared to units speed, those gaps are closed very quickly, and almost all units need to be popcorn for range to matter.

I suspect most people agree that the popcorn units are a big part of the issue, and I hope people can agree that the range / speed issue is probably one of the causes. Unless a sweeping change to either range or speed (and scale) is implemented, I don't think direct fire units can be differentiated much.

Honestly, pop corn units are fine for some units.

Artillery, raiders, support and the like are all fine being squishy.

But tanks could use a HP buff with a fire rate nerf? I dunno, not that concerned with balance all that much, id much prefer lore based "balance".

But yeah, when the AI puts it's infernos up front with stuff behind, cracking that shell is hella fun. Artillery that cross the infernos pop the bots at the back, but slam into the bulk with seemingly little effect.

BUT OH MAN DO THE COMBAT FABBERS LIGHT UP AFTERWARDS!

Feelsgoodman.png

I agree with that; dox and booms for instance are fine having low health. But in my opinion popcorn unit balance shouldn't be as pervasive as is is now.

EDIT:

Problem with that is it can be hard to tell from directly above or far away.

I meant a LASER WEAPON.