For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

Yay experimentals *Hold thumbs for them to reach the final version*.

Wouldent mind it a bit bigger, but the current scale is okey.

Personaly i would prefear none humanoid looking experimentals.

While I like Uber-Mechs, I don't want the Experiments of SupCom either. I think the PA designers get that and will balance the "Uberments" accordingly...

I think that keeping them the size that they have in the first post would be just fine. It's in the goldy-locks of sizes. Not to small, and not too big. It's big enough to be impressive, but not big enough to be totally devastating.

It's more of an "Older-Brother" bot instead of a "Thor-Bot."

Super unit... I like the idea.

A super unit is fun to have and to play with. Even thou it would have its limitations.
Cost, Build time, Terrain, build time.

An exosuit is a fun idea.
- needs commander
- it cant build stuff (commander inside cant build
- more firepower
- lots of health can survive a nuke or astroid
- difficult to assasinate

Size
Tanks, make it easier to see the differrence
Ships, make them smaller (or land units bigger)(T1 tank fits inside a battleship cannon)
Super unit, maybe a bit bigger

Tactical
Let the super unit have its own building or build it around the commander.
I vote to make it a fun unit not a good tactical solution
(If you can build this unit in a game you should have won a long time ago)

Super unit, I would like to have 1
PS make it more cooler, less bulky, bit more delta commander ish.

As a long time player of Supcom and TA, I'd prefer no mega units. I don't know, i just feel it takes away from the image I had in my head for this game. The huge units are going to stick out like a sore thumb from the epic battles going on between smaller units. Its hard to explain but in my mind its either:

theres a huge war going on between equal forces

or

theres a massive robot attacking a base/army


I'd much prefer the first option, a feeling of a true war between two forces, not one side fighting a massive robot. I know some will say "yeah but the other guys will have one too maybe" True, but then you have two huge robots going at it, instead of the all out war between "armies" that i had pictured this game to be all about.

You missed the point of my post completely, I just gave visual feedback, what the stats of the unit would be is completely irrelevant, it can be an easy kill as well(would make it easier to balance it) but at this very moment it is not important.

They want feedback about the scale of the unit(and should it exist at all) not his potential abilities.

Having a huge bot that looks magnificent is just great, regardless of his power.

I wouldn't mind having him as a structure(a statue) that boosts the stats of other units or something, as an actual bot that fights he will be rather difficult to work with.

Not if correctly balanced. Most of us are asking for them in a context of cool unit that's a fun toy but not very workable for a competitive game.

Also, theres the make it a commander suit idea.

+1

Ugh... I'm getting kind've frightened by all this and it makes my head ache... I think right now I could use some input from uber ): I don't want to see them have to painstakingly compromise over some large unit that can be released in a later patch or expansion and have our base game be ruined... Does that make sense? D: (com suit?)

Neutrino stated multiple times anything more than the doodles of the kind you see in OP would be as another stretch goal with its own funding (I.E. not doing it unless they can get the extra money and time to fund it on top of everything else).

Why is that a bad thing? Wasnt that the beauty of SupCom where you had fights on such a huge scale and hordes of small units fighting together with larger and huge units?

I think they could be an option (one of multiple) to break a stalemate without having to totally annihilate a planet. Say, you want to keep a planet intact because you need the ressources for your plan to conquer the rest of the solar system. But the enemy has turtled. You can't just drop an asteroid on the planet because it could cause massive damage. It's just another option for massive damage on the ground. There are already such options in other "mediums" (naval - battleship, space - orbital strikes/asteroids/possibly nukes).

In the end, you need to support the large unit if the enemy has proper defenses to use it for good effect. If the enemy has heavy defenses, you need the super unit to break a hole into it for other units to pour through.

I think the size that the devs gave it on the picture is spot-on. Kind off on the level of a battleship or large facility. Bigger would be silly imo, the planets aren't that big after all, so if it was much bigger, it would look kinda like this .

To me, it depends on the Ratios. If you have a large Army of T1 & T2 units with one or two of the Mega-units, the Mega Units contrast nicely with the large and expansive army. This also works the other way, if you have lots of Mega units, and a few T1 and T2 units the Smaller scale of the T1 and T2 units is very apparent.

Things get messy when you have Lots of everything thought, that's when the awkward jump in scale between T1/T2 and the Mega units feels awkward and strange.

Mike

Wow, Only one day and there are 23+ pages of posts that I don't have nearly enough time to do more than just glance through...

1) I like the scale. It isn't ridiculous big, but it will definitely stick out when you're looking at a force composed of it and regular units.

2) A sentiment I have heard in some posts is that people don't like how Exp. units in SupCom make just about everything else obsolete (or a liability considering the vet system in supcom). I am in agreement here, and I think that Neutrino's comment ...

has a lot of potential to keep super-units from taking over the game. Don't make this a race to the big gun. Make a big exp that is slow and heavily armored and has a huge gun that can one-shot most buildings and units but has a long reload time, and thus will be decimated by a swarm of regular units (as an example). Really good for certain things but counterable by someone who has made different strategic decisions that don't include super units.

3)I'd be okay if this is something that gets put in later. Originally TA didn't have Krogoths and it was still a fine game then. Just don't eliminate the future possibility for these kinds of units with decisions you are making now. Hopefully the game is uber-successful and you have enough revenue post-launch to make an expansion with hundreds of different kinds of super-units (okay, maybe that's a little bit of hyperbole, but you get the idea). I'm not in the games industry, but it doesn't take much financial know-how to figure that the $2m+ that you got from the Kickstarter is pretty low compared to a typical development budget. I don't expect a game that has every bell and whistle straight out of the chute. I do expect something that is fun to play, works well, and forms a good foundation for a variety of fun and interesting expansions/mods. Focus on delivering that as quickly as you can, because I'm guessing the revenue from your Kickstarter limits the amount of time you have to deliver.

Reading through the thread, there does seem to be a consensus... of sorts.

People seem to want the megabot to have a size proportionate to its intent. That is:

a. People who think it should be an army-slaying destructo-bot tend to want it bigger.

b. People who think it should be helpless without support but still have powerful strategic/specialized uses tend think it's a good size as is.

c. People who think it needs to be either discreet support itself, or very specialized, so as to not risk outshining the rest of the army, tend to think it should be smaller.

So, all in all I actually found this thread quite informative as to large unit scale by design, despite (and in fact, because of) the tangents.

Hopefully it's as helpful to Uber as it was to me. (n.n)

I like it!

Already posted my reservations about the concept of mega-units elsewhere. (Quick summary: They're like salt. If you really need it, use it sparingly, and it should accentuate the flavor.)

Otherwise, now I know what I want for my midlife crisis!

First I would like to say that those super units would be a plus but are not critical too me. I would not want them delaying the release. They would make a nice extension/DLC through.

Size is ok. but I would imagine something more massive than a bot. A big tank chassis or spiderlike would probably be more appropriate.

For me those units only make sense if they are a "force multiplier" or "battlefield changer" (in the sense that it changes the rules of engagement, i.e. forcing the opponent to change/adapt his tactics, not by dominating). I would make them very specialized and with a specific unique ability which cannot be matched by regular units. However, they would be completely useless by themselves. In particular I don't expect them to be very good at defending themselves.

Some examples:
> A big strong mobile anti air & artillery shield (like in SC2 but probably better without the energie release manual action, would not block direct fire or similar low angle shot) -> this counter/disable air superiority and allow to crack an artillery turtle, no defense by itself
> mobile heavy artillery (medium to long range) -> force turtling player to attack, no defense by itself
> mobile factory (whatever type), but would not put with as much range/firepower as the fatboy which could be used as an "long range assault tank", make it primary a factory which move with maybe some defensive weapons. The factory should not be ultra fast either. Instead of weapon, I would make it ultra trough -> Just allow to reduce logistic delay, keep pressure on the enemy and allow fast strategy shift.

Basically units which open new ways to play and increase strategic depth. But which could not be scaled down without losing their utility.

Finding a good movement/pathfinding solution is essential. Otherwise, it is better not have them as it would break immersion/frustrate players. Naval and air superunit are probably easier in this respect.

--
Just a casual gamer

Personally I like super units. But it seems alot of people here don't. One suggestion on the top of my head would be a selection to turn them on or off in a game. That way everyone can be happy?

Three people screaming NO, doesnt represent the crowd, same for 20 saying yes.

But if you can have them for offense, they can have them for defense. So basically it becomes a few big units vs a few big units instead of a hundred small units vs a hundred small units. SupCom 2 quickly dissolved into the same cycle...

I feel that this is a great observation on the scale, and I'd +1 that!

Aesthetically, there's just something extremely satisfying to me about finally building that army-killing uber-bot and marching it to your enemy's stronghold, but equally satisfying is having enough to destroy an enemy's uber-bot before it does much.

Balance-wise, I think that "super-bots" can be implemented in a way that does not overpower the core content of the game. Also, Having more specialized units allows for more specific and unique strategies, but probably introduces more balancing difficulties. All of that, however, is a task to be handled further down the line.

TLR version
Scale depends on functionality, +1 to Sethna
I feel more manly having bigger robots AND slaying bigger robots
Balance can be done, when the time comes.