Why upgrades are important

I'm not particularly concerned about it at all. PA is a game made to appeal to TA fans, and TA had no upgrades. But despite that the game played better than most games with the feature, so putting in upgrades would not only change a critical feature of the game, but also piss off the fans that had a certain expectation for the game. (Especially considering how the upgrades changed Supcom 2.) Judging by how the devs are backing away from even the minimal upgrades of Supcom 1, I think they have a fairly good idea as to exactly how important upgrades are. To remove from the game.

I'm not particular for upgrades either but I do like a rank/veteran system like they had in SupCom but not as drastic. More granular so the unit improves slowly as it racks up kills but even at the highest rank isn't what supcom vets were.

With that and the ability to name units there's some character added to the game.

Hahaha neat strategy.

Woo recognition

The issue with veterancy is one of the same issues that upgrades have and that is the readability of situations. When it comes down to a fight you wont be able predict how powerful a unit is just by looking at it because it could be fresh off the production line, but it could also have killed a bunch of units and gained a boost.

Sure, this could be treated by giving vet units a glow or something, but there is also another issue, and that is that it encourages players to micro more in order to keep units alive to gain a better force. This does two things:

1) Encourages micro when PA is focused on macro strategies. If a player is managing battles on multiple fronts, on multiple planets, putting focus on keeping a squad alive because of vet bonus, or growing attached to a specific squad because they have a lot of veterancy, is not a good thing. It is good for games like XCOM where players manage a personalised squad, but it shouldnt be the focus here.

2) You get somewhat of a snowball effect which sets up an imbalance. If a player loses a battle it's their fault. But if they then meet the enemy again with an equal force of units, they shouldnt be at a disadvantage because the enemy squad is now arbitrarily more powerful. They were punished for losing the units, resources used in the units, and whatever ground and resource points they lost as a result, they should however still be able to fight back on even footing if they have an equal force to meet the enemy.

All this said Neutrino has expressed a dislike for unit veterancy, and doesnt think we will see it in PA. However there is no reason why we shouldnt have battle stats on each unit (how many units it has killed etc) and I recall Neutrino saying that situation is more likely.

I don't really like upgrades. I think it is waste of resources to research upgrade that gives +1 weapon damage or +1 armor. To me it makes no sense.

Tiers on the other hand give you totally new unit to play with. So I am for more units than upgrades.

But I had a idea how you could get an unit "upgrade." Just make a "officer" bot that has field of influence. This field would coordinate targeting systems of all the units in range. Coordinated targeting would increase rate of fire by reduced targeting time. "Officer" bot would also have a radar to allow for beyond line of sight fire.

So I think there´s no need for upgrades. More specialized units is better option.

How about the Commander wearing his units as Upgrades and Armor?

So what do you think of the idea of Units that Synergize with the commander by Transforming into power armor or Jetpacks for your commander.

I think if it was done right they should not be special units but have commander slots on standard Tech 2 unit.

This is like doing Commander upgrades in reverse as the commander is the upgrade.

So say you have a Tech 2 air transport. The commander could link with it making it one unit that Fly's and gets the commanders ability added to it. it could also take damage first and if destroyed the commander ejects and fights on foot until a new Tech 2 unit shows up to merge with.

Tech 2 Bots would act as replaceable mobile armor suits for the commander.
with the commander adding auto repair from his Nano-Lath and his Uber-Weapon to the bots stats maybe even a speed upgrade from the commanders power core.

This would make it like every unit was an extension of the commander and let you bunker the commander anywhere with the other units HP.

This also lets you customize the commander in the battle and if your good gives the commander the effective HP of your entire army making him hard to snipe.

That sounds like something that would take a huge amount of time and effort to make look properly, so I don't think it's going to happen. Having to model 100 commanders to look good with all sorts of T2 units... :|

That Depends on how much of the commander shows they could make it so there is only one model change for each tech 2 unit to let you know a commander is on-board especially if its only on larger units like carriers and heavy lift air transports.

Not necessarily, viable options lead to more strategies. You can have 30 upgrades and 1 unit or 30 units and 1 upgrade, wether you have upgrades or not doesn't decide how many plausible strategies you have available.

Players are already forced to make economic choices by dedicating certain amount of resources to different types of production. (land/sea/air/space/doomsday projects and quantity/quality)

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Timing_Attack

It isn't limited to upgrades, if you push out a early specialized unit and press that advantage that is also a timing attack.

The choice between quality over quantity is there in a different form, you can try to rush out a big tank or you can spam loads of little ones for the same price.

You don't need a upgrade system to add strenght and weaknesses, as long as you have the option to build units with different roles there will be good strategic depth. Depth is shortened if certain units overshadow the others in cost/preformance.

And why do they need to switch roles? If you need a new counter you add a new unit to your army by redirecting your economy.

Now this might just be my preference, but when it comes between adding a +1 or seeing my army grow 4 times its size, I feel more satisfied when I can see my army/production growing.

This doesn't come down to upgrades but rather how T1 preforms in relation to T2. What I gather from the info floating around, T2 units are supposed to be niche roles while T1 will always be your main army. But this has more to do with balancing cost/preformance than adding a upgrade system.

I liked the TA unit unlocking system and I think that is something that PA should do to. If you remove the upgrading aspects (weapons, armor & skills) there should be more room for more units. This will itself contribute to tactical decisions instead of having a few units with a lot of different abilities to upgrade.

I still think the basic problem with upgrades is readability.

In SC2, how will I know my 30 marines will beat his 30 marines? Does he have more upgrades than me? Who knows? I'd have to run my units at his units and fight to find out, and that might just lose the game for me.

Meanwhile, in SupCom/TA, I know exactly how powerful my enemy is if I can get a scout to spot his stuffs. The key in SupCom/TA is to actually hide your units from the enemy.

In starcraft you just click on one of his marines.

Though i am against upgrades in PA,

That is true, I have always found that a little awkward however. With readability as one of the guiding principles in PA's design it would be better be able to know by looking at each unit type and not having to click on each unit type to double check if they are upgraded versions or not.

Although it sounds like I am singing to the choir

My few cents on this topic, is the upgrades from TA and SupCom are the best kind and makes most sense.

Your commander can build any and everything, but he lacks the resources to do so, which means he will start from the bottom with T1, small tech structures, power plants and buildings and then slowly get an economy going that will suffice for an ever growing empire and a huge army.

While it would be cool in SupCom, to be able to build a Monkeylord or a T3 assault bot from the start, it wouldn't make much sense, because the Commander generate enough resources himself, to be able to build such things.

I don't like the system Starcraft has, where your firepower is locked till you research bigger claws/Uranium tipped rounds. Doesn't make sense for PA anyway.

TLR - Tiered upgrades upgrades are beast.
T1 factories -> T3 factories
Small energy generators at 20 energi -> HUGE energy generators at 2500 energy
T1 radar with standard sensor -> T3 radar with huge radius and close ranged omni sensor (if you decide to include something like that)

No SupCom 2 or Starcraft 2 upgrade system for me.

Where did the OP go?

I don't know that there are many RTSs that give you access to every unit right from the start. I think that would make for some boring play.

I don't know where you're getting this replace concept from either. Upgrades combat having to replace units. No upgrades means you need to build a whole new set up units once you unlock them (typically in order to replace your older, weaker units).

It is rare that the cost of an upgrade is the same as quadrupling the size of your army. It would be crazy not to take a 4 fold army size increase over a single upgrade.

People keep bringing up that upgrades present readability issue. But that being an issue is really up to the devs. They could choose to not make it an issue, but many just leave it as one.

Working on my own game. It's time consuming

Did you actually play TA or SupCom?

You unlock new units by building better factorys.

And the point is to avoid having to replace units, in TA your bread and butter were the first unit you could build, sure you could build an army of advanced units but by the rate you should really be going thorugh them 'replacing' the basic ones is not going to be a problem.

That's why in supcom we have the ability to turn factorys onto infinate production, becuse losing units was just a part of the game.

Building a new set of unit's can just be the same as building another wave of the other units, but in PA the devs want it so that the higher tier units support the low tier units with better but more specilised functions.

And another problem with upgrades (And I know few games that arn't like this) is how once the upgrade is copleate it instanty affects every one every where.

Built a unit 20 mins ago? Well now I can remotly upgrade it instsntly once the reserch is finished, and for no cost in time or resources other then the reserch, just suddenly 'Poof!' my marines rifle turned into a anti-tank cannon! every one of them got it! and good news too, as they had been cornered in a part of the map for ages and had no way of getting support.....so where did the new guns come from? Or did they just decide to pull them out of their ***?

I hate this in SupCom 2 as well.

igncom1 covered your first two points well so I'll just cover this part of your post.

Yes aralepus's maths may have been exaggerated but that is not the point. The point is that upgrades do not offer the same kind of satisfaction as increasing the size of the army. In a game which is all about the macro, having large numbers of units clashing on multiple fronts on multiple planets, it makes far more sense to build more units than to waste time and resources on upgrades.

What is your solution then? the easiest solution is to not have them. We are working with one unified pool of units divided into two tiers. Rather than incrementally upgrading a unit it makes more sense to have units designed from the outset for specific tasks. A dedicated unit is always going to be more readable than a unit which looks the same except for little differences depending on what upgrades they have received.

Put simply, I would rather the developers spend more time making a larger pool of units to chose from, rather than spend time thinking about upgrades for a smaller pool of units and developing ways of making it readable.

[Edited for clarity and spelling]

What consili said:
+ 20 units in your army == AWESOME
+1 in the stats when you hover over a tank == meh

I'll not even repeat the argument for easy readability of unit strength and stuff.

Well it sounds like someone hasn't played TA or SupCom. I recommend picking up TA for cheap off of GOG.com.

Odd that you would call that a problem. That's kind of the point.