After all the discussion on how many tiers there should/shouldn't be and if experimentals are good or bad I thought about what happens in the game when you have unit tiers. In supcom there were essentially 4 tiers of units and for land units there was a unit that is basically a t1 tank, a t2 tank, a t3 tank and a t4 tank and each of these unit served the exact same purpose except that some were better/worse than others, and because higher tier units were better than lower tier units after you got to a certain tech level there was no reason to make lower tier tanks anymore (this culminated in experimental spam in the late game). I think that there should be no unit that is the same as a lower tier unit except that it's higher tier and better in every way. I think that instead of having tiers there should be one unit in the game for each role (but a lot of different roles) Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be factory tiers or units that are more expensive than others, for instance if there was a big bertha on wheels then I obviously would want that to cost significantly more than every other land unit and maybe come from an "adv factory" or something similar. To further complicate things I'd like to suggest that in some cases having a unit that seems to perform the same role but weaker can serve a fundamentally different role, for example if the enemy has slow firing single target defenses then massing a whole bunch of weak units i.e. peewees can be used to attack, but if the enemy has a lot of aoe damage or very fast firing defenses then massing a weaker unit is the wrong thing to do. However using this criteria to look at supcom you can see that games degraded into experimental wars because units like the monkey lord were better than every other cybran land unit at killing other land units and therefore they got spammed in the end game. Air superiority fighters suffered from the same problem resulting in them getting spammed every game. I'd love to see PA be a game where every unit in the game has a situation in which it can be used no matter how far into the game you are.
In FA, a T2 tank was better than the T1 tank in the following regards; More health, Faster, Saw further, Guns hurt more, Guns shot further. T1 tanks were more cost-effective than T2 (ala. dps/cost), but they still failed against higher tier armies because of points 4 and 5, and occassionally point 2. My medium sized blob of T2 tanks could destroy all your T1 tanks before they got into range. I think the best way to keep all units useful is just to not let the above happen. There was a FA mod (Supremilated ATW) that did some clever things involving turret turn rates. Their best example was UEF(blue) T2 tanks - they had enough health and damage to rival most T3 units, but the turrets turned so slowly that you could flank them with small, fast units and rip them to shreds. [EDIT: I kan spell gud lyke]
Yeah that's the point I'm trying to make, after you got t2 there was no real reason to get t1 tanks again. t1 arty was still effective though because it had a different role.
I was originally very much of the opinion that stratifying tiers is good for gameplay, because it encourages large investments which change the pattern of the game after they are constructed. However, then I discovered Complete Annihilation (now Zero K), and it completely changed my mind. A flat tech tree is absolutely brilliant. Having every constructor able to build anything greatly simplifies the game, and it also makes more powerful assets much easier to balance. After all, we want players to spend a lot of resources on powerful weapons. Locking the ability to construct something behind a tech requirement is a justification to make that asset cheaper/more powerful for cost, because upfront investment is required before any can be built at all. Higher "tech" units should be buildable at any time. However you obviously don't want to build them until you can afford to do so. So the tech tree itself is actually entirely unnecessary.
I kind of understand that point, but I actually tend to think unit tiers are a good thing. The big problem was veterancy. The higher tier units became increasingly more powerful if you had a lot of lower tier units still around because they were easy kills, and the more units the higher tier units kill, the stronger they become. Not only was it useless for you to send a large group of t1 units against a small group of t3 units, but it was actually very useful to the opposing player for that to happen because his t3 units would become stronger. If we get rid of veterancy then at the very minimum your lower tier units still can at least do some effective damage against higher tiers. Of course the need for tiers has already been discussed and I think there are a few good arguments for having distinct unit tiers. But rather than plagarize those arguments I would just recommend reading this post: viewtopic.php?p=506357#p506357
Aren't there hundreds of threads about this... anyway... Sup com, while it had 3 factory levels and experimentals above that, also had half teir units the best examples being in teir 2: The UEF and Cybran heavy tanks and Aeon hover tank are teri 2 standard units, roughly 200 mass, 1000 health, 60 dps (some significant average happening there but shut up) The Seraphim assault bot and Aeon Heavy tank are what can be called teir 2.5, they are equivalent to two other units added together, almost twice the mass cost (360), more than twice the health (2300) and nearly twice the damage (110). The model that PA is touted as using is the TA model with two teirs that are more or less equivalent to a single set of teir 1 units with advanced units being teir 1.5. this means that while moderately superior to the preceeding units their extra costs are more towards specialisation (for sup com examples you need to check teir 3 mostly). For a comparison Arm Stumpy Medium Assault Tank (basic teir) is about 150 metal, 1000 hp and something around 30 dps (i'm not entierly sure how the reload works) Arm Bulldog Heavy Assault Tank (advancd teir) is 460 metal, 2100 hp and about 40 dps Arm Anaconda Hover Tank (advanced teir) is 270 metal, 880 hp and 60 dps So as you can see the units aren't that different except that you pay a real premium for all that health. or you pay premium for damage and hover at the cost of health, but you have those choices to branch out after advanced techs.
