lotsofideas ! N°2 : Make-it-yourself experimentals

hi again !

here's my second idea, and yes, it's about "experimental" units again, since it's not completely excluded and i love huge, overkill units =D

many of us have played supcom, but what has been bugging me is what they call "expermimental" units are actually not so experiment-looking. what i think would be great, and really experimental, is "make-it-yourself" units.

the idea is that you don't have "prebuilt" XPs, you start by picking a chassis : it can be anything, mega robot, huge submarine, spiderbot, flying fortress or giant tunnel-digging drill (yes, i'm in favor of tunnels !), each having different terrain capabilities/restriction. for example a spiderbot would be able to climb on cliffs, mega-robot would have heavy armor and so on...

but for now, they're empty, so you have to fill it with what you want, that's as simple as that. you can take a spiderbot and stuff it with anti-air cannons to clear the sky, or put a factory on top of it, take a big naval platform and fold an unit cannon plus a T1 factory inside, add extra armor, a construction tower or whatever... just do what pleases you !

actually, it doesn't even have to be excessively powerful or expensive, it is basically about inventing a solution to your problem. therefore, it's a true experimental unit


but now, how to make the building process in game ? with some thinking, i came up with two main ideas. the first is deciding what to put inside using some kind of "tree system", you choose a chassis, it has a number of "slots" organized in a certain way, you pick what you want and place it where you want (front, rear, on top, left/right arm...), and when you're over, the construction can start.

the other option is to start by building the empty chassis, and when you're done with that, you can just take your engineer and ask it to build a factory on top of it , just like if you were building it on ground (or better, build a construction tower and sent it aways while it auto-builds the rest). another detail is that the structure should become a full part of the experimental unit, so if it's bristled with turrets, a few bombs shouldn't be able to shave it, leaving it defenseless. I am not a programmer, but maybe this would be easier to implement, or maybe not, i don't know.

now of course, if it's only about putting a bunch of turrets or factories on legs, it won't seem that fun, but i guess it shouldn't be very difficult to imagine huge and ridiculously overkill weapons or tools that can be only put on experimental units, such as megalaser, large-range EMP weapons, apocalyptic artilleries, magnetic attractor-shredders or suicide mini black-hole device, let your imagination go wild ! :lol:

(wait, that's why we are here, right ?)

There's been a few threads on designing your own units. The general consensus was we should not include them. Too much work for the devs and less readability overall. Lots of balance issues as well.

actually it could work but hevaly limitations would not to be put on it like using a point system a chassis can not exed a sertent amount of points given to them and I give them all the same points just etch module could cost differently. that would fix the balancing sins the modules would be the same across the board and armor would always total to the same point no mater what you put on it

This is just so KKND2 style, if you guys don't know what I'm talking about you should try, its hilarious.

I think it's alot of work for the devs aswell, this is why we got mod support.

Great idea for a mod, not for the core game!

The ability to make a custom experimental always has been and always will be very cool.

Given that however, you would require a suitable number of components, which all need to be balanced but also need to maintain the experimental mantra. That is supreme firepower in one place (sometimes abilities and other cool things but at its most basic levels, we talk about sheer battle strength). Glossing over any usability issues from the designing interface these supreme units have to be almost unique, because that's what the game is going for, huge armies wiping entire continents clean in a tide of metal. An experimental needs to be something truly extraordinary above that tide of metal because otherwise, as happened in long games of sup com, they become a part of or replacement for those other units.

So your experimentals are big and huge, you're probably going to end up with your own preferred unit that becomes yours. That got me thinking, doesn't this personality then begin to overlap with your choice of commander? You end up adding all this overhead to the game for allowing custom experimentals, which wouldn't be mechanicaly that different from normal experimentals (because if they were you are going outside what an experimental should be), and the main personality is already brought forth by your commander?

i'm not sure it would be really hard to balance, basically the cost and building time would simply the sum of the chassis plus whatever you put inside (with maybe a small discount ?)

well, it still need to balance the chassis and experimental-only weapons, but just setting the price so that the health/DPS/mass ratio is not too far from average should work as a first try.

the problem i have with supcom XP is that they are basically impossible do blow up with anything else than an other XP. and i'm not so fond of mods actually, if you play a game, but you're adding your own homemade rule, well, you're no longer playing the same game

@nuendo : i played kknd2, the custom unit system was kind of funny, but in the end i felt that those units were kind of under-efficient, but the system used could be good a lead.

Whole greater than the sum of it's parts, yada yada yada.

Whenever you create a customisable "load out" for anything there will always be optimal, and sub-optimal (for cost) ways to do things in a competitive environment.

This leads to your beautiful "custom" load out becoming the same cookie-cutter thing every game as you find, not the coolest way to build it, but the most effective combination of weapon, chassis, power source, etc.

You do this because in a competitive game, be it vs AI or Human, you want to win.

Building units is NOT easy. It's a very involved and austim loaded process. There won't be time to do it in game.

what if you did it like supcom commanders?

you get a basic frame and you just pick "upgrades". the experemental becomes a "test-bed" for techonlogies.

what about a base structure for an experimental then you get to pick the weapons that go on it as upgrades or something

No Upgrades Damn It!

Upgrades have been pitched time and time again and if Uber isn't going to make commanders upgradable in-the-field we're sure as hell not getting it on Experimentals.

I seriously hope that there is no such thing as "experimental" technology in PA, it grates with the theme of ultimately refined tech.

How does tech get refined and perfected if it's never tested on the field? :roll:

There's no reason to consider any form of gun as "experimental", regardless of the weapon's scale. Anything that uses a gun to shoot other units to death has been effective since the dawn of firearms. We know it works. If the unit's design is "apply hot flaming plasma death until victory", then it's NOT experimental warfare.

Experimental tech belongs to things that aren't typical weapons. An experimental gadget should be solving a problem in an unusual and non traditional way. For example, a 1-way teleporter(handful of units) allows for rapid expansion and surprise attacks on enemy bases. It's not a standard attack. It's not victory through raw numbers. It's an unusual transit option that may be effective in different ways. Even then, the "experimental" part is more on the dev's side, as these robots could have been using such tech forever.

:mrgreen: I always loved this idea of "Custom Units". After I played Spore, this idea has been in my brain like a mushroom on a rotting corpse.

The earth 21X0 series did custom units it was great fun but a much slower more ponderous game style.

Please try to search for existing threads before making duplicate threads, it clutters the forum and makes it more difficult for people to find topics in future.

A cursory search found three threads on experimental units, and I know I have seen far more on these forums.

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=37304

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=35496&start=0

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=37161

Another thing I would add is that putting these threads on the general discussion forums would ensure that more people were able to contribute. There is no hard rule against posting here but it is nice to be inclusive. I feel that discussion here should at least be more geared towards the backer only content that Uber release that they dont want everyone to see just yet.

That said, while I was initially for the idea of experimental (particularly the mini variety that was seen in supcom2 despite all of it's flaws). I have since become more and more convinced that it doesn't really fit what is being proposed for PA, it begins to encourage micromanagement in a game which is all about managing massive armies across multiple planets and that is not a good thing.

As far as the idea of 'build your own' custom experimental units goes I am very much against such a notion. If you see the amount of discussion that has gone on for custom commanders you will see it is a generally unpopular idea even there (although I am supportive of Ubers plan for commander abilities). Having players design their own experimental units makes them focus even more on specific units and not look at the larger picture which is something to avoid. On top of which it would provide a lot of balancing work trying to see how every possible combination works against every other combination. This is a lot of work, taking time (and consequently money) that would be better spent on features which have more gameplay benefit.

This would be a fantastic idea for an add in patch after the game is finished, polished and put on to steam or what ever distribution method they pick, and the first few waves of initial patches go out.

This could be fantastic to work with, imagine if you were able to save a build you like and have it pre-loaded into a slot, what if you engineered your experimentals via a UI that simply combined a series of chassis and weapon systems into a bot (this could be done in game but not playing or during a game when you get a spare 30 seconds) and hit the build button.

One way to balance it could be give a weapon a score based on damage so if its high damage it gets a high score, mobility speed again high speed gets a high score, then put a cap on the bots equipment score. So you could have the armoured heavy gun platform of doom but it might take 3 days to move 5KM down the road, making it very open to fast moving attackers who can change course quickly. There are a million possible ways to balance these bots and I think time and effort by us would prevail with a workable system.

Again IMO this would be a fantastic content patch for after release or possibly as a small expansion pack that allows us to customize some units slightly as well. (IE do you want to stick an extra cannon on that model of tank or put a light AA gun on top. That sorta thing) Maybe via a tech building and or experience tree from kills like you could in CNC Generals, but make your choice fixed for the game.

i didn't mean upgrades to the experimental im really bad at wording stuff

you build a base experimental unit then you build individual guns to go on it that makes all experimental different i think i worded it better now

Nope that's just as bad.

Experimentals do not belong in an army that claims to already assimilated and refined ALL technology to its logical end-point. I'm glad that Uber is not putting them into the base game, they go against the "lore" of the world Uber has created.

A lot of people are still tripping over the Terminology, 'Experimental' it's just a word and basically refers to large units. of similar scale and power to to things like th Krogoth and SupCom/FA/Supcom2 T4s.

Mike