Large-scale Units Discussion (backer's lounge edition)

Hey all,

I searched a bit for a topic about large units specifically, but I only found discussions pertaining to tech-levels, not scale.

I can see why so many people correlate tech levels with large units, though; Many of us are likely thinking of the Experimental class of units from the SupCom series, or the Krogoth (the very definition of end-game) from Total Annihilation.

I was curious what you all (and of course Uber, specifically) think about the scale of units in PA. With the caveat, of course, that we're all (except the devs, of course) spouting conjecture based on a trailer and some preliminary work done on a pre-production wallpaper.

So, on to the question(s): I noticed on the scale test renders that the buildings were pleasantly large, and that they dwarfed all the other units. Do you guys hope to see enormous units incorporated into PA, the likes of which would possibly rival or dwarf said buildings?

I ask this specific question because I am personally torn: to me, Planetary Annihilation looks like the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation more than Supreme Commander, and Total Annihilation was all about smaller units skirmishing. There weren't really any large units unless you're talking about naval units, or the Krogoth. The mise en scene (visual setup) was much grittier and intimate than in Supreme Commander, where the T1 and T2 units quickly gave way to colossal battleships and giant walking spiderbots. Smaller units would get lost on the battlefield, simply a set of icons on the strategic map milling around the Experimentals.

Do the devs feel like the experimentals, and larger scale units are more of a SupCom (Chris Taylor) thing, or would you guys like to incorporate ridiculous units eventually roll off the production lines, perhaps capable of independent space flight, or planet cracking? I assume we'll probably see some fairly large units in space, due to the increase in scale, but will the focus be on turning asteroids into giant gun turrets/projectiles as opposed to singularly produced units?

Of course I'd love to see huge units, but huge units are a large development investment, and it sounds like with all the battlefields the devs will have to spread units on, perhaps gigantic tanks, robots, interplanetary carriers, mining rams and the like will have to wait for modders.

TL;DR: Do you like huge units? Would you like to see them in PA?

-KK

I enjoy large powerful units as long as they don't make other units obsolete. This was my big pet peeve with Supcom 1 & 2. Units shouldn't become obsolete by you unlocking a bigger & better unit.

Well, large Units could be a nice thing, but it sucks when all the other Units become redundant because of one giant Unit. On the one hand it is very nice to see how One large scale unit blow up the enemys army, but on the other hand it's very boring. So i'm not sure how I feel about this.

I'm fine with the way the Krogoth was implemented. It was too expensive for practical use (much like a certain piece of artillery in Supcom), and was only used in rare situations, thus keeping the game from devolving into who can micro their giant bot better.

However, I did mention in the Planetary Assault thread how an experimental bot like this could be more useful than it was in TA.

Why is this a Backer lounge edition? I see no reason this couldn't be in the General Discussion Sub-Forum.

Anyways, Uber has said they want to do some larger units, I think the issue we need to deal with at this stage is how the role(s) and stats should be, and instead figuring out how they functions from the Game engine's perspective.

For example, a square or rectangular hit box works great for a tiny bot, but when you have a bot that 15x the size it's weird to see shots "hitting" it between the knees.

Mike

Frankly, I wasn't sure if we were more or less likely to hear from the devs on the topic inside or out of the Backer's Lounge, and with the recent frank exchange of opinions Chris Taylor and Jon Mavor had via Rock Paper Shotgun, I wanted to maximize the potential for dev response.

Back when I was a SupCom junkie, posting as KrogothKiller on the GPG message boards, before the days of release, I remember reading the interviews CT had with magazines hyping the game. Chris Taylor would go on, and at lengths, about the size, shape, and variety of enormous units he wanted to incorporate into SupCom. Remember how the Czar was supposed to be a flying aircraft carrier originally, and the canned, 'Experimentals' expansion for Forged Alliance (which I think turned into SupCom2? You might know better than I.)

I was mostly curious if the 'ALL BIG UNITS ALL THE TIME' mentality was something the whole team at GPG was behind, or if this was one of the 'clashes with design' as Mavor put it in the RPS interview, that he had with CT, which would likely mean we'll see the role of massive units (at least as a gimmick) downplayed in PA.

At this point, just stepping back and looking at it from an RTS player's perspective, it would have to be a thin line between the cost-effectiveness of 'launching a giant robot', and 'hitting it with a rock from orbit'. I mean, how much redundancy do we expect as far as methods of creating massive explosions go?

You do realize the reason the Backer Lounge exists is for Uber to share things with Backers, there is plenty of interaction in the General Discussion Sub-Forum with the Devs, both before and after the introduction of the Lounge.

Mike

I was just going off of Garat's Welcome post , "This forum is a place for backers to hang out, discuss, etc.", and, "The only real rule is that we do ask you to not share dev posts from this forum elsewhere. You may see quotes, screenshots, and other things that are "for your eyes only"."

Thus I hoped that they would possibly be more candid on the response to a topic such as this one. If I mis-read, mea culpa.

The problem is the backers lounger can split the community somewhat which is never ideal. I wouldn't mind if the mod had the power to move threads from the backers forum into the normal forum so more people could join the discussion.

I don't have a quote but I remember Neutrino saying he might have one or two big ones like the Krogoth but he was not keen for them to come to the fore as much as they did in Supreme Commander. I hope he sticks to this as it makes the normal units the core of the game and in some ways makes the impact of the larger unit that much stronger.

Some people love the big ones though so I am sure we will see a lot of mods with them in.

I love experimentals but I don't like them taking over the battlefield. In SupCom2 this could be partially countered with Research Stations OFF but yeah...

I guess just a matter of balancing with really high energy requirements to build or even operate and a long build time. Perhaps a limit on the number of experimentals that can be deployed on the battlefield? That's how it worked in TA right?
Also the way I see it, every unit once deployed is defined by it's offensive, defensive, range and speed. Usually experimentals should be really slow as they usually have high defense and offense (This was not the case with the Soul Reaper for example which annoys the hell out of me).

So I think in general they should be difficult and long to obtain, and then highly specialised but slow.
I'd like to see a Water Planet Specialised Fortress (Atlantis-like) to bring the battle to enemy water planets more easily.
An Anti-air specialised ground unit (I loved the pull-in-smash) maybe a yellow drone field generator could also be nice
A slow-mobile artillery unit (if maps are big enough).
A krogoth that relies on lots of energy (that way it could be partially shutdown by targeting energy generators).

But the one thing for sure - no more Experimental factories. The idea is pretty ugly, the experimental unit should be built by engineers because it is experimental. It isn't goddamn serial production unit.

Being large adds extra risk to a unit. There is a larger period of vulnerability when it is under construction, and it is easier to snipe the unit before it pays off. Larger units also tend to have more dangerous death explosions. Because of these tradeoffs it is acceptable to give the big unit modestly improved efficiency, in terms of land space, ease of use, or straight number hacks.

There are no shortage of unit roles that justify making large units. Planet killers, fusion plants, nukes and artillery are just a few examples. They have no choice but to be large and expensive, because they fill far reaching strategic roles rather than directly competing on the field. But making units big just because of big? That's trampling all over the purpose of massive robot battles, where the ideal weapon is a cheap, simple, and efficient unit.

Weapons that deal singular, high impact damage (like sniper weapons, monkeylord laser, or the d-gun) make short work of beefy units. After a certain point you're just throwing away money on on oversized unit.

That's an even uglier system. Every new experimental had to be built by hand, which makes it a very poor option for working across multiple worlds in the late game.

As I said, it isn't a serial unit. It's meant to be build by hand and that's why it's called experimental.

If I may say, I actually specifically avoided saying 'experimental' (except in reference to SupCom) because I think that's a SupCom moniker that certainly won't stick to PA. If there will be units that fill a similar role and function to SupCom's experimentals, I think production and implementation would need to be handled very differently. Let me expand on that:

In the SupCom universe, the experimentals were the be-all, end-all of the field of combat. They were huge, slow, basically immune to nukes unless you were very well-prepared, and could swat smaller units aside with ease. (This is barring, of course, the less useful or prohibitively expensive experimentals.) They cost a lot of resources to produce and protect while you were producing, and the pay-off was supposed to be spectacular.

I'd like to see large-scale units as a matter of course in PA. NOT, mind, Monkeylords quickly becoming the battlefield standard and making all previous tiers of tech obsolete, but the more obvious roles that a huge unit could practically fill without making the battle its involved in lopsided.

An example that has no doubt been brought up before:

-A naval carrier that can be launched into space, and make waterfall on an enemy planet, releasing swarms of battleships/aircraft. No fleet-ending weapons, just unprecendented storage and deployment capability.

I think the moniker 'experimental' carries with it the stigma that this is untested, with greak risk, for potential great result. I'd just like to see larger units that fill a role that is simply impossible for smaller units, without making them obsolete. I'd also love to see a shout-out to the Krogoth or the SupCom experimentals, handled in an interesting way, but perhaps with the knowledge that they aren't necessarily supposed to bring the world crashing down around them; they're an ant compared to an asteroid.

What gives me pause, is where in the speculative economy could these fit? We simply can't know until we know how long you're supposed to play the game before asteroids, which appear to be the game-enders, come knocking.

I think large-scale units should be rare and very unique units that only appear on occasion or in special situations. They rather have to be, because if they are not you end up in a situation where they are both over-powered and actually rather boring, which was too often the case in the Sup Com series. You lose that "oh ****" moment when an experimental is deployed almost every game.

So what I'd really like to see are really unusual, expensive yet potentially powerful experimental units. Units which are not necessarily used for straight-up battles but instead as for mobile defense platforms, rapid movement, sneak attacks and etc. That, I think, would be a lot more interesting.

Just make them untransferrable between planets. That should limit their role. And for actually use one you should estabilish a base on enemy planet and build it there.
Or build them on the orbit to be deployable only once. It can be justified by weight of these units.

Large scale defensive units already exist. They're called structures and they can not move between worlds. They can only be reclaimed and rebuilt elsewhere.

That's a terrible idea. Why would you make a large unit if it can't invade? If anything, the whole point of a large unit is to spearhead an invasion!

For example, take 3 Krogoths and drop them on a world. It doesn't matter how good their guns are. When they die, they blow up. That explosion gives you all the landing space you need for a base, guaranteed.

If the opponent defends with Krogoths of his own, congratulate him on placing a walking nuke inside his base. Then blow it up.

I didn't say it can't invade. I only said it would need an outpost to actually take it in action.

While I loved the feel of the larger units I do feel that the late game battles were to much about them, giant robots are awesome but if we just keep spamming the same robots it quickly becomes not so...
Massive supporting units I could see working, things that help make your normal units more effective but wont win by themselves.

On the factory argument, we are in a battlefield where they have refined units for centuries or longer. Why on earth would they need to call it an experimental and build it by hand?!?!

"The tip of the spear". Large expensive units could be good to use to spearhead an invasion but should lose against an army of smaller and cheaper units with similar cost.