Unit veterancy

So there's an ongoing discussion here about skipping unit veterancy in Planetary Annihilation.

Unit veterancy essentially means that as a unit gains more 'experience' (e.g., kills, more damage done to enemy units, destroying more 'difficult' units, whatever...), it becomes more effective in some way. Essentially, it becomes a mechanic for encouraging players to repair their units rather than losing them.

Obviously, how "experience" is calculated, and what kind of bonus a more experienced unit gets is up for debate... but I felt that a poll would be able to capture the community feel a little bit better.

Unit veterancy was in Total Annihilation, and it was based on the number of kills a unit made in its lifetime -- but someone else can probably better explain how it worked there.

In my opinion unit veterancy is not a necessary feature in a game of this scale, but, depending on how it is implemented, it might be nice little addition to the gameplay, it just shouldn't be too significant.
I liked the way it was in forged alliance, even though the bonuses gained by getting a lot of kills seemed slightly too high, especially on the commander who could keep himself alive in a battle simply by receiving a sudden burst of health by getting a higher level of veterancy.
That would probably be too much, but rewarding a player for keeping his units alive or using his commander more aggressively, why not?

What I would like is a rudimentary veterancy, that only slightly increases some stats of a unit, so that excruciatingly microing a single unit will not gain you much, but overall it might have a non-graspable effect on a strategic scale

I support a Veterency system in the engine, but not enabled for PA.

Mike

I changed my vote...

I am not against veterancy in any way, but other features are indeed more preferable.
Especially if a good veterancy system would be expensive to make.

Shouldn't Yes and Maybe be different options? cause right now looks kinda weighted...

Mike

I would argue that they are kinda the same thing: we'd be supporting veterancy in some way, but the devil is always in the details.

Except that some would want Vet regardless, just how some don't want Any Vet at all.

Mike

My vote is for no Vet, but if it is included, something small like just a max HP boost would be fine. And not a current HP boost, so to really get the benefit you'd need to get those units back and repaired.

No vet. We don't need any of that rediculousness.

To which I would put the question: If the effect is so small then why go through the trouble of putting it in?

Small effects don't always mean small consequences.

In a game of this scale and budget the KISS principle is really important. Veterancy not just takes up dev time, it adds more bugs and subtle and complex balance issues. Is it worth the investment? I doubt it.

And why do we really need to encourage repairing units over building new ones? Isn't the game supposed to downplay micro? Not even Starcraft has this feature.

So I think it can safely be scrapped.

The only unit I can see it work with is the commander. But I don't think that's necessary either.

Veterancy was a _huge_ deal for the commander.

Also everyone complaining about this being a difficult feature to code, its a kill counter and a hp buff. Come On!

But what does it actually improve? How does it make the game better? It just seems unnecessarily tedious for a game of this scope. How does delving into the micromanagement of individual units contribute to the awesomeness of grand strategic warfare?

It's of arguable importance because when talking about the commander.

In FA, when levelling up, there was;

• 10% max health bonus,
  10% health refund (don't quote me on the exact value here),
  significant increase in automagic health repair.

Naturally these numbers need not apply for PA, but in FA people would dance and dodge and micro their commanders to engage and destroy early attacking forces. There's many games were a commander would push all the way across the map by itself - taking damage the entire damn time - and arrive at the destination with more health than it began with.

If people want veterancy for the commander, I'd be tempted to allow them it, but only because it creates a bit of drama and edge-of-seat action. And it had a scaling problem of zero. You had one commander, and only one commander. If it died, you lost.

nah, vet for commanders (assuming there's any intention of them being combat units). i thought it was great in supcom.

Veterancy in SupCom sounds completely ridiculous - 2x firepower, 2x armour etc? Nah.

But I reckon someone in the other thread had it about right: veterancy should be based on the expense of the units it kills relative to itself. That way big super-units (uber-units? ) would not get so much advantage - hey, they're big and powerful already - but smaller lighter units can become more useful if used wisely.

I'd go for that - and it shouldn't increase a units abilities by much more than 50% total, I think...

SupCom's veterancy bonus capped out at 50% extra health. There was never a two-times damage bonus.

OK thanks for the info, but that's still 50% extra health alone. Multiply that by 50% extra damage, plus taking less damage from weapons? Plus other bonuses and you can end up doubling a units abilities and then some.