For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

I liked TA with Krogoth.
In SupCom, it is very different, you can see the "Monkey Lord rush" and it is a very different kind of game than TA

Please, in PA, target TA

Great to see TA fans crawling out of the woodwork.

This concept reminds me of Metal Conflict, it sure was great, but it would take a lot of time to do it, the T1 T2 units would be almost useless, and it would be hard to balance it.

So after you build the Core, you then build the Arm?

See what I did there? :lol:

I think that doing that would be very awkward. Especially compared to the rest of the game.... It's way too complex, especially since the rest of the game is, basically, simple.

Man... TA was the first game I remember playing on a PC.... So it's unofficially my first RTS as well. It came as a "Demo" on my mom's "new" computer at the time... It had Skirmish and Campaign... So much fun... Very Providential, if ya' ask me... Playing one of the greatest games of all time for most of my childhood. Some would call me spoiled. :lol:

i'll comment only on aesthetic aspect.
i think the head is too small / overshadowed by the shoulder-rocket-thingie
it might end up looking like it had no head at all.
i'd say remove the rocket-pod right next to the head, or go head-less.

the hip-gun is a bit off too, kinda doesn't go along with the other weapons..

next i'd say add tons of flaps, with uber animation as it opens all chamber and unleash fury..! :twisted: added delay during animation could also add possible tactical twist for the opponent.

all in all i'm in for super-units, its unique, iconic, and awesome. IMO this is what comes to most people's mind first (general public, not hardcore fans) when they see supcom series. balance would be tricky, but if it pulls it'll definetely pay off.

While I also like the idea of large, destructive uber units, the idea of super transporter that was brought in few pages back really caught my eye. The unit alone would be pretty useless, but transporting whole battalion at once to your enemy's backyard would make it pretty valuable, I think. Of course, I'd like to take both the destructive giant and transporting leviathan, but I think there should be something really special about Uber units.

My Pseudonym online had been Nanolathe for 16 years. TA had that much of impact on me

Wheeee off-topic.

Sorry!

And now, back to your original programme.

I am going to throw out a unit concept here as a possible megabot type, and see what sticks:

I personally would love a megabot like that, comments?

I like the stun ability.
The bot himself requires some micro, eh? Pulling damaged units out of the fight, ordering him to repair the demanded units. Setting his ability. Positioning him right to use him effectively.

His repair is pretty strong, isn't it? When one arm is twice as good as a commander, He replaces 4 commanders repairing. Sure, it has an impact in your economy, but because he can also repair water and air units, that's a bit too strong for me.


By the way: I would rather open a new topic with super unit ideas than posting it here. This topics theme (size of an uber unit) is getting a bit out of hands

I would hope that the repair would be automatic.

I would also hope that the repair guns cannot stack onto one target, making the repair speed on battleships to actually be rather slow.

But I do get what you mean.

I could open a suggestion/discussion thread for this kind of thing if you like?

Build 16 FARKs. The AoE stun gun would be pretty neat. It's deserving of a fairly big thing.

Well the idea was to have it all in one unit bob!

And are we even going to have FARK's? :| :?:

Why wouldn't there be FARKs? Field maintenance is a pretty good skill toi have.

I would have thought that engineers would fill that ability.

Slow, fragile, and expensive, on the front lines? Ehh. There's always room for a faster, cheaper, tougher specialist.

I think the megabot is a great idea. The size that is depicted is good because it isn't completely towering over everything, but it is identifiable as a super unit. One question I have though is, will it be able to be transported with the robot shooter that you have already made?

I would say no bigger than shown, I'm kinda done with super units that are so big they become less tactically viable. I super unit should be versatile and powerful, but it doesn't NEED to big; other than to hold more missile arrays.

Agreed, as in sup com where transport of experimentals was really slow and annoying. It gets to a stage, where, sure they look cool but they are useless from a tactical perspective.

I disagree with your statement here in it's entirety. The visual appearance of a unit does not need to be directly tied to its combat efficiency, cost, or other design factors. In fact, I would argue that appearance could be manipulated simply based on having a positive impact on the visual appeal/enjoyment of a game.

Much in the same way that fancy particle physics add nothing to a game, but make everything much more enjoyable to watch. The same could be said about this "mega"-unit; that it doesn't necessarily need to be equivalent to a small army to justify its appearance, but could look that way for the simple enjoyment that comes from watching a massive robot wade into a raging battle.

To that end I do very much support having a few units that are massive in comparison to the standard army units.

The Krogoth is actually not that bad. Don't think of it as a mega assault bot. It is more like a walking nuke with some guns. It's a pretty clever way of sneaking under TA's missile defense, even if it was crazy expensive.

In PA, a nuclear assault bot would be very useful for cutting through base defenses and planetary defenses. Compared to asteroids it might be a bit more precise, minimizing planetary damage while maximizing unit destruction (to ALL sides).