For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

Is it too big? Too small? I can't say. I don't know what it's supposed to do! :lol:

It started as an art display. I wasn't going to soap box the thing! I do enough of that elsewhere.

As you might have guessed from my thousand+ posts, I am quite excited about PA. My interest lies mostly in the development of the core rule set, because IMO that's the most important part of the game. Just as a good game engine is flexible and stable, strong game fundamentals allow for many interactions and rule additions before things fall apart. Catching a problem early means its easier to solve the issues and come back with something even better than before.

There are a vast number of games where a weak set of core rules caused things to break, and some of them even existed in Supcom. People out there do nothing more than dissect and break games, and I get some fun doing that now and then(ever notice my odd fascination with pointing out rules from other games?). You can find some egregious examples in DnD 3.5. I'd be remiss if I didn't express concern over mechanics that seem inappropriate, unnecessary, or are doomed to fail.

Ehhhh. It's not so much that. When a unit is a blatantly different class from the wheat and chaff, then it's big enough to not play the same game. There are any number of rules for big units to pick up, so that they can be unique and stand out from the standard grunts. Big guns are just ONE option of many, and special abilities don't always mean "magick powahz". For example:

- Big units can be directly involved in causing planetary damage. Perhaps their weapons or death deals permanent damage in some way. This guarantees a permanent change in the map without necessarily causing huge damage up front.
- Big units can be ideal turtle crackers for invading a world. Impact damage plus a heavy armament makes an initial landing difficult to defend. Large explosive death further increases their value as line breakers.
- Big units can adopt support roles that can not otherwise be given to a small unit. This might include mobile factories, air support carriers, repair facilities, or specialized base deployers. We already know of 3 options in the form of asteroid engines, the unit cannon, and the orbital weapon system. Teleporters seem a sure thing as well.
- Big units can demand energy infrastructure that isn't important for normal units. Gigantic cannons and huge servo motors mean big power plants in the background. With planet-bound energy, it's a very effective way to limit big unit spam during an invasion.

It's important for big things to follow the same fundamentals that tie everything else together. Standard units are emphasized through their unique excellence and trade offs in their role. Big units should be no different. At the same time, it's important they follow their own vision in a way that fits into PA's world. Every unit is ultimately trying to expand upon the game, adding their own unique purpose no matter the scale involved.

My opinion is that the bot is too big. My preferred size would be perhaps half again as tall and bulky as the commander, double the commander at max.

The problem with such things is that they make other things look like toys in comparison. If you had no super units you would be pretty happy when your heavy battle tanks rolled out of the factories. I had that feeling with bulldogs in TA (That is the arm one right?) but if you have super units then your heavy tanks are suddenly just slightly bigger toy tanks than the medium tank and lose that feel of being a big tough unit.

If you were to have super units then giving them special abilities makes good sense apart from the fact you risk adding a lot more micro and I didn't think you wanted to do that.

I am not against super units but I don't want them to be too big and toy-ify (new word ha) the rest of the game and I don't want them to become one or five man bot armies which makes the end game all about them.
Cheers.

There are actually two things which bother me about the concept of "make it bigger and give it tons of oversized guns".

It tends to become just a bigger version of bots you already have in game and distorts the scale. It also contributes to the "single unit army" feeling since it just feels "bigger", but not "different".

I would consider moving away from just upscaling "classic" designs for tier 3 units and give them a more "experimental" look. E.g. compare SupCom's Mavor with the Scathis, first one was just an even further upsized T3 artillery which was just improved in every way, while the second one actually had an experimental touch. Not that any sane engineer would have tried to rotate barrels like that, but it did look experimental. I would even go that far, to say that experimental units don't need to be oversized that much, twice the size of an regular T2 unit is just fair, as long as the looks make it distinguishable.



The conclusion that people want special units to be "special" instead of just "bigger" is correct. But apart from that, there is only ONE thing people expect units of this class to have in common, and thats high survivability to make up for the investment.

As for the combat role, to me there are two things important.
First of all, I want my experimental to be a one-of-a-kind. If it has special abilities, i prefer if they are unique and not stackable. Just make them so, that placing two of a type into the same army doesn't give you any further advantage.
Second, don't make them one-man-armies. Give them high survivability in terms of high hitpoints and maybe regenerative personal shields, but don't fall for stuffing them with dozens of weapon systems, counter abilities and regular support abilities like radar. Especially their damage output shouldn't be that much above that of a regular unit, so you will never see them just as the next stage of canon fooder, but rather as what they are: A highly specialized unit with unique features.


Last but not least: Buildtime.
In SupCom, if you looked at the build time as it was listed in the tooltip it looked epic, but if you just threw enough engineers into assisting it, even the biggest experimentals (except for Paragon and the experimental nuke) could be build in a few minutes and even worse: In parallel.
The cause of that issue? They used just regular resources, so they were treated like every other unit in the game. Consider untangling them from the regular factory system by making them only capturable from ancient wrecks (kind of "king of the hill" metagame, minimum time for capture attempt) or requiring to recover "relics"/blueprints (trucks) from the map to fixed locations in order to unlock the right to build / summon a single experimental unit. Maybe even upgrade your ACU or any other special unit you received at the beginning to experimental grade for a one time boost. There are so many possibilities to make the receipt of an experimental to feel like an actual reward and not just an indicator for a maxed out economy.

Too big for my taste if it is to remain a robot shape similar to a commander. I'd go obviously larger than the commander, but not that crazy big.

Now if you are talking big block tanks or spider-bots or a godzilla-bot or stay-puft-man or a freaking huge python thing or something, that big might be cool. It would need to lumber about super slow though. Maybe if it fell it would crush his own guys.

I have to say that I love that thing. I looks like a robot with some punch beamers attached to the arms, direct fire rockets in the shoulders and some arching longer range rockets on top of the shoulders that may or may not be able to act as AoE AA.

First off, I appreciate the effort and the fact Uber is sharing this stuff so I hope it continues.

All this talk about giant robots reminded of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 1to#t=100s :lol:

The show and the song.

About the size, i actually think it does look out of place at the moment. Whether that's the size or not i don't know.

Anywho agree with exterminans (not sure about relics adds the element of you were closer stuff though, that said it would be one way to solve the mass of experiments idea), amay200 and ledarsi, however it wasn't actually stated what was meant by "special powers".

Would a stealth mine field launcher type special power be more interesting than just a missile salvo power?

If were having impressive big unit that have a unique purpose but also drawback then why not consider a world devastator inspired unit:



Basically they would wreck on the planet but mass produce units while they do so.

Wow, enormous amount of posts in such a short amount of time.

A few thoughts while I was reading:

Units of Unusual Size
Regardless of the final result of this discussion, I would really like to see some thought & programming effort going into pathing and movement for huge units, including ships. So if you have size 1,2,3,4 units already planned, what happens if you put unit size 5,6,7 and 8 in later.
Top ideas would be:

• Being able to walk between / under large units
• Being able to step over / onto terrain features based on size, rather than being limited to the same movement as regular units. Eg, step up a small cliff, wade through deep water, step over chasms in the ground.
• I'm not sure if it's possible, but a way to pathfind for each foot within a contraint? So each foot moves independently, and blocks other units independently.

Whether a 100% implementation needs to be a stretch goal, I'm all for putting the technology in to make units that are not treated like boxes.

From there, I believe it's quite possible to figure out the balance / purpose / ultimate scale of these units.

Huge Units Highlight Engine limitations

Something to keep in mind is that in order to make a game, shortcuts need to be taken. Usually these can be hidden - who would notice if a single t1 mech doesn't quite aim straight at the target with his weapon when you've got 100 of them?

Making units huge, however, brings these shortcuts into sharp focus, and break the immersion. When you see a Monkeylord sliding in a circle as it turns, or a Galactic Colossus walking with his arms stiffly stuck at 90 degree angles, the limitations in the engine become a lot more visible.

So the question is - will the PA engine be able to hold up as good as, and hopefully better than Supcom does, in terms of visuals, if we have huge units?

Absolutely love it. 100%. Please put up that stretch goal, though maybe in a month or so as I couldn't contribute a ton out of the blue :lol:

As for feedback: Ideally, I'd have something King Kriptor sized. That's not super important though, and that looks "big enough".

It should be able to hit every thing and have a medium to long range so it can help all of the troops it is going in to battle with.

arm cannon-Short

laser-Medium

rockets-Long

maybe it could have a personal regenerating shield that soaks up a small amount? and recharges after not being hit after so long.

*should be able to go through water
*should be able to shoot planes
*should be able to crush units that collide with its foot/treads
*should be able to be teleported to other playable spheres
*should be not slow but not "rofl-stomp" fast

I still want to be able to land troops on a huge experimental and capture it for my own purposes.. A gameplay element at the late stage of the game in which you can jetpack onto an ancient reanimated war machine and take control of it to turn it against your enemy...

I love how this is one of the few posts that actually took a different approach to the whole superunit/experimental issue, and the whole discussion just flowed around it like it wasn't there.

He makes a good point. If the unit just becomes another Krogoth/Galactic Colossus/Monkeylord, then either the endgame will revolve around it or no-one will use it at all. It would be far more interesting to have it act as a 'force multiplier', something which can turn a battle in your favor by doing something no other unit does. A sniper, a mobile shield, a giant-*** transport, a mobile Big Bertha, or, in his example, a walking Macross Missile Massacre.

See his post for a better explanation. He's basically thinking the same things I'm thinking, but is better at putting it into words.

I would prefer an emphasis on them being highly specialised, which doesn't necessarily mean having special powers, but doesn't excludes it either.

A perfectly reasonable response.

Capture would be a bad idea.

1. It should be build from your own metal
2. I do not like it being there for capturable

As for those speculating on "too big to transport" or "big with lots of guns doesn't fit a niche", I would really like to point something out.

The first and only thought that ran through my head when I saw the megabot was, "Ahh! It's one of these:

...with legs."

I've seen few complaints about the megabot which wouldn't also apply to the battleship.

I think from a development side, it may help to look at it from that perspective.

Not that I believe that the megabot should be identical to the battleship unit, but that they should play a similar role.

I'm not sure exactly what Uber intends for aquatic warfare overall, but I think it makes sense that land forces could benefit from a similar option to that chunky capital ship.

As for scale, I'd say it's about right. Maybe a little smaller, to hold with the theme of a 'more compact' battleship with legs. It is much more difficult to make something large able to walk than it is to make it able to float, after all.

I would be really cool to have the big spider-bot in PA, sweeping away armies with its big laser

But yes, I think it ain't only about size but also about a special use for them.

Naval units (both in real world and fiction) have always been larger than land units, both for logistical reasons and because water allows them to. Not only that, but since the advent of aircraft carriers, a large disparity in sizes has also been seen. But there's actually a physical limit to how large a land unit can be without crushing itself. You're also spot on about the legs issue.

When I see a small unit, and a giant one, I ask myself: "Where's the in-between units?" Because it makes no sense for such an enormous gap in land unit sizes. It makes it completely out of touch with the rest. Compare the size of the megalith in SupCom 2 with land units, then compare the King Kryptor. One of these experimentals fits in, the other doesn't. Mega Bipedal walkers especially just should not exist.

Also,

:roll:

I know this is against the popular opinion But I am much more worried about the balance and gameplay that occurs during and after the transition to 1 planet to many planets. Think about it, As cool as Super Units are, they are not what is going to differentiate PA from other RTS's. What is going to differentiate PA is multi-planet battles and the \transition from mono planet to multi planet should be the point where PA really opens up. But if that transition does not work or if the endgame interplanetary does not work. Then PA stays locked at mono-Planet which is cutting the game short.

Also realize that the ground based combat, air based combat, and even Naval Combat is understood fairly well. By this I mean people on Uber has all worked on games where these things existed (SupCom/FA/TA/C&C/Battle for Middle Earth). In all of these games ground(especially ground) air and Naval combat existed. But the transition into space is far from represented.

<Speculation> and look at the units we have seen art for there are 7 land, 5 bot, 8 air, 9 Navel, and 4 space Excluding structures. Uber has tons of Ideas for land Naval and air but seems very tentative on space. Not only that but because we see concept for them they believe that these Ideas are good enough that they are worth putting the time and money to model them. Now look at space. only 4 space unit ideas were considered good enough to make concept <\Speculation>

For this reason I would really hope uber focuses honing space gameplay over Super Units like the epic mega bot in the concept until after the space stuff has been play tested. This is because I would bet that none of us have any idea what it would look like and that is exactly why uber should work on that first. Unlike Super units.

Long Story Short: Lets concept Space First
face it kinetic bombardment trumps Korgoths anyways

I don't like the general idea of superunits for the sole reason that they come with the uneasy fanfare of 'OMG, BIGGAH UNITS!'.

If it's mush easier for Uber Entertainment to just not have superunits, I'd rather they didn't.

I said it in the Super Units thread and i think this thread does not change my mind actually.

I like Experimentals that have a rather unique role. I like the Fatboy and the Atlantis from Supcom 1, because they were something you couldn't really achieve otherwise. The Fatboy is a mobile forward base: it can hold its own in battle and when needed it can quickly whip up an army. Same for the Atlantis: move in past all those annoying cruisers, surface and deploy surprise!.

In that same respect, i never really felt the Colossus was a *good* unit because it's a tank with a huge gun. I do like the Monkeylord, but that's because its a rather different and cool design.

In my opinion, the unit shown is a typical Colossus. It's big, powerful, and that's all it is.

The size is fine: it's big enough. I am not sure why it would roll off a factory, i liked the "build as building" idea. The Experimental Gantry design of Supcom2 didn't appeal to me, it was too much like a "really big unit phase" rather than "this is a gamble and could cost me the game but also win it".

I don't like the design. It's big with a lot of guns, and while i understand it gets the message across, it doesn't give me the feeling "i want this". Which i got by the way from the new T2 tank.

From a "visual information" perspective, it look too much like a Big Commander (and yes i think that's what steve (it was steve right?) used as a basis). I think this could be confusing, especially if we're going to zoom in and out a lot and might misinterpret the scale.

From a unit style perspective: Pretty much all the units have a similar (good!) style and they're the "standard" warmachine. I personally think this is the time to break out the more Cybran/Aeon (please no Seraphim) style of design. Make it look like something unique and recognizeable. But of course, that's for future passes.




All in all, i'm not that hyped. I think that in principle, Experimentals are cool. I just don't want a "Bring Out the Experimentals!" phase in the game. Nor do i want a Krogoth.

I hope that helps. i realize it's a tough situation for you guys to be in. I personally would say "we're gonna do it but not now".

First off: never care about the Popular Opinion, care about your own. It's easy to say "yes i agree", it's harder to say "i don't like it because ..."


Anyway, i fully agree here, we have an entirely new theater of war (Orbit) and we have an entirely new map-based rule system (Airless moon, gas giant, water planet). the amount of new interactions are staggering and mindblowing and i think this is a much, MUCH more important thing to do right than a big unit.


OH and i just noticed: Neutrino, the best option would indeed be a stretch goal in case this thing gets green-lit. If you're gonna do it, do it right.