Unit block list

Sometimes people like to play with unit restrictions, and to facilitate this please can you include a by-unit screen to enable or disable a given unit? Please don't do it by category only as in Supcom, as this reduces flexibility.

In a worst-case scenario, this could also enable a broken unit to be removed from the game in the event of the devs stopping support for some unforseeable reason.

How about both by-unit and by-category? Clicking once to disable all air units was nice at times.

With the modding possibilities built in anything is possible!

How about not implementing this feature at all? To prevent that players making their game experience worse.

Disable by unit or cap that unit to a certain count. We like to play games where you can only have 10 subcommanders.

A well designed game should not require such a feature. See Starcraft 2.
If I think of supcom, I immediately get the putrid smell of only-land-thermopylae matches which resulted in immense bunker fests.
Units are usually there for a reason. Removing them doesnt actually make the game better. An exception would definitely be mods, where additional thought-out gameplay can actually be combined with the removal of certain amounts of units.

This is a very good point.

Units are there for a reason.

If players want to deviate from the approved/expected manner of playing: by all means allow them to, it just needs to be understood by everyone that it's a bonus feature given to them, and isn't expected to be enjoyed by all.

yeah, big fan of "no" to unit restrictions.

Don't get me wrong, I can't stand Thermo no-air and all that nonsense. But, what happens if the game gets abandoned with an overpowered unit?

Well, if a unit is overpowered it should be nerfed, not banned. If I remember correctly, neutrino wrote on reddit that they plan to support PA for a long time.

I understand your concern, but the right way to solve this problem is by continuous detailed attention to balance. This is one area where Blizzard has always thrived. They were still patching Starcraft 1 all the way up until Starcraft 2's release as new weaknesses in unit balance were discovered.

If the game needs features to disable units, there is something wrong.

You're missing the point. The game doesn't *require* the feature. The point is that by restricting some units, you can turn the game into a different one. Restricting units isn't for changing the balance, it's for creating a new subgame. For example, imagine how different Starcraft 2 would play out if Marines, Zerglings, and Zealots didn't exist. I have no idea if it would be better, but some people might prefer it.

You're just not accounting for personal taste here. Why make one game when you could make ten all at the same time by simply allowing players to restrict some units and make their own games?

Arguably, of course, with even relatively minor modding capacity, this could be modded in.

Plus, of course, a little perspective here. Blizzard cut the Replicant from HoTS, because they thought preventing a unit improved the gameplay. How is that any different?

One of my favourite modes to play on supcom2 is a fun little commander deathmatch mode I play with people as a warm up: No air, no land, no naval. It's a silly mode, and it doesn't make for very long games at all, and that's what's fun about it! Also, sometimes I ban certain units which have become popular strategies amongst the group of people I tend to play with - it's not that the units are OP it just forces people to try something new and keep things fresh.

tl;dr: I don't see any reason not to have a unit block list

If the game is made well, means every unit is there for a purpose without redundancy, it can only get worse, because you propably just "deleted" a counter of something if you restrict stuff.

It would propably be totally broken, Im mean thats like to say "Hey, lets see what happens if we just don't build wings on that plane". It would be totally different, but not in a good way...

It's something different if the dev-team decides to scrap an unit or if you restrict it. Maybe they didn't liked the concept, maybe it took to few micro to be good. However, they are still developing the game and the "hole" this unit leaves will propably filled by some other unit(s).


If you implement such a feature, you also take the risk to split the community. I already imagine my self desperately searching for a nice game, but every time I join a server I see "No Air" or "No Asteroids" or "No cool stuff xy".

With FA there are proper games, which are played by people who want a fast-paced intense game, and silly noob games that involve teching up and launching experimentals at each other which they mistakenly believe is intense.

The people who play the 20NR No-interest games simply do not enjoy 1v1 games, and generally vice versa.

Is that splitting the community, or is it catering to a wider range of players? It does me no harm if some people who are happy to be perpetual noobs want to play a silly version of the game, and having a block list is not going to take a lot of work on the devs' part.

DeadMG said it very well.

Also, hello Dead! You may well not remember me, I was called Roho-S on GPG about four years back. Do you know about FA Forever? Would be good to see you back on the player list!

I really hope the implement one for local MP and Skirmish because i loved playing redalert 1 and only being able to build infantry and nothing higher.
I would have killed for a feature to disable Air and hightech stuff in TA so you could have massive ground battles

Even if matches with blocked units will most likely be totally broken, you should not restrict people from doing it.
I think it would rather help to gather more players and not split the community too much, since the players of the “broken” version of the game obviously don’t enjoy the standard mode as much, an many of them would probably quit the game earlier or play a lot less without the ability to block units.

At least that’s what I hope, because only finding no Air thermo games was indeed really annoying.

I'm pretty sure that in TA you could limit each unit individually, either ban it outright or limit the number that could be built. I may be wrong and it may be that I've imagined it, but I can picture the screen now.

I've half a mind to install it now just to check.

EDIT: Just installed it to check and I was right. However it's only available in multiplayer games and not in skirmishes. There's no way to include AI in the multiplayer, and there's no way to start a multiplayer game with just one person unfortunately.

This is simply not true. Just because a unit has a purpose doesn't mean that it cannot be banned without breaking everything. Especially if there are multiple units that can fulfill the same role. Just look at StarCraft 2. Terran is split into Bio and Mech and is perfectly viable while just using one of the two. Or Supreme Commander where ground warfare is completely viable without air.

Also, balance does not always have to be the highest goal. Just look at the random mono-battles of SC2(limited to one random unit-type per player). They are there just for fun and nobody cares that it's unbalanced.

Fun over balance. Options over restrictions.

No balance no fun at least for me.
The basic game like it will be played in normal 1v1 needs to be balanced. Apart from that it definitely isnt wrong to offer the option to play no air for example.



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also ofc monobattles is fun to joke around at 4 am.