For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

I edited my previous post a bit..

Yeah I understand you, but you went to deep for me with the cannons and stuff. That was like the point I realized the whole discussion might went to deep (for sure I can be wrong here, correct me then ). Before we waste to much on this topic :lol:

Assuming they have weapons

So why does the Mega-Bot have bigger guns? Bigger guns are more powerful (not factual, but that's a visual que we all know when playing games or watching movies, etc. Men In Black even made fun of this trope with the "Noisy Cricket".)

Also, I don't mind going in depth. I have a lot of thoughts on Mega-Bots, and art style and design is part of that too.

Even if this is rough... even if I don't know what those guns are... I know they MUST be powerful or they wouldn't be so big. If they are that big... how is a unit half the size of the battleship generating the power for those guns?

Just stuff my head thinks about when I look at art. If it's not believable on 3 separate levels... something is wrong with the design. :lol:

That......doesn't conclude anything, Nanolathe's point was that they are VISUALLY mismatched in terms of the density of the armaments from a Logic/common sense standpoint, and he's right.

I'll make some supporting images.

Mike

Oh Mike, I think I love you.
Anyone willing to dedicate time to prove me right is Ok in my books :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I'm curious and interested.

Look at those units, on the Left, You see my T4 Ultra Heavy Assault Bot, the Basilisk MKII, and on the Right, you see the Stock UEF T2 Gatling Bot, the Mongoose. For our purposes I have scale them in such a way as to be mostly equal in size, I have also outlined all the weapons on each in Green.

Note that regardless of the Actual Size of the Basilisk MKII note that it's weapons, despite being more numerous, do not significantly take up more room on the unit when compared to a similarly sized Mongoose.

And for those in the Know, this still carries over onto the Basilisk's Artillery Mode because although the Main Cannons Get bigger(they split and lengthen) the Side guns also fold up and pack away, maintaining a respectable Weapon Density considering it's new role as a Long range, but slow Platform.

This was the core of the point Nanolathe was trying to make, not so much the Size of Specific weapons, or the number of weapons, but rather the overall ratio of Weapon-to-The rest of the unit.

Mike

If I was to take a rough guess, we're talking about 20-25% for both Bots there when it comes to Weapon/Chassis ratio.

I would agree with that as well, thought it's not so much the EXACT ratio that matters, so long as there aren't large variances between different units correct?

Mike

Exactly. Compared to the Battleship and Mega-Bot in the Whitebox... which have 10% and 50% ratios respectively.

The Commander has a Big Gun, almost the size of a small tree!

but it's still only a small percentage of his total volume... about 10-15%

The Mega-Bot is 50... 50% guns!

How does that work!?

Smartarse :lol:

In honesty, if that were in the OP I wouldn't have much to say though. I would have no "thoughts", only a monosylabic response of maybe 2 words tops.

Is that a decent discussion? no, it'd be a poll, with no need to talk or think... just a popularity contest between those who say the cube is "too big", and those that say "too small".

Not exactly thought provoking.

I spent over 20 mins on my long post a few pages back. Now that was fun to write!

Gotta state:
I dont like the new super unit it is messing with the mesh. -.-"

Thank you knight for explaining this for us with these images. Now I get the problem you guys have.

But still: I don't really know what parts of this robot are weapons and which not. For example: The right arm doesn't look like a weapon to me (Excluding the Bot uses it to smash it into my face ) .

And that's why I wouldn't go to deep into this special topic until we have more clarification what are weapons and what is decoration.

But: When everything there, which looks like a missile launchpad, actually is a missile launchpad, then I would share your concerns.

Given the context of the rest of the bot, chances are it's just a big weapon Akin to teh SupCom2 UEF ACU's arm weapon.

Mike

I don't care how big it is, and nobody should bother worrying about how "big" a unit has to be. a unit the size of a mountain could have so few hitpoints it would fall over from the wind looking at it in an angry manner, while a tiiiiiny robot the size of a pinky could have more hitpoints then the planets who survive asteroid impacts. It's the numbers that are important.

Having said that, large units that break up the army, making it look threatening with their massive size and swarms of smaller units flowing past while they dish out fire and brimstone, that is an exciting image. While size is not important from a design perspective, it is important to keep people satisfied in their need for visceral combat, explosions and huge robots clashing against one another. There are many ways to make "experimental class" units work. They can be pointlessly expensive, ensuring that they're only useful when your economy is so horribly huge that you can mass-produce them on a grand scale. They can be pathetically weak, barely stronger then their low-tier counterparts. There's lots of ways. One idea I got while thinking "huge death robots looming in the distance" is: The larger a target is, the easier it is to hit, so why not give smaller units a range bonus against experimental units, so they can shoot at it from a greater distance? That might be hard to implement though.

Anyways: I want to see experimental units in some form, it would be awesome. Their size is only important in the sense that it would look cool. The most important factor would be to not make them so ridiculously overpowered that once it is possible to produce them, they are the only things you will produce. Please don't do that. It's a tough, hard balancing act but I'm sure you can handle it. If you can handle that right, then make them ridiculously huge so that they loom over the battlefield, crushing smaller units beneath them. Because size isn't important to balancing, at all. It's just numbers.

THIS!

There is way too much talk about what people do or dislike about how this megabot looks when the OP clearly stated the model was purely meant to show scale. Commenting on proportions or how many weapons it has and where is utterly pointless since no design went actually into the thing.

I think it would've been a lot more productive for this thread if it only showed a cube from the beginning..

That said I think this scale works great. It's about the same size as most of the supcom2 experimentals and even though the game in general is inferior to supcom1 imho, experimentals were handled better in 2

Actually, it's rubbish to suggest that when we are given a rough design, that we ignore the design and just comment on a box.

We are talking about the SCALE. Scale of the unit in relation to other things, scale of the PARTS of the unit in relation to other things too!

Nanolathe has some excellent points (I enjoyed reading that post - criticism doesn't mean you're being snarky!)

When you try and relate criticism in a humorous way people often think it's snark

I'm sorry, but allowing the existence of this fictional universe requires so much suspension of disbelief it's not even funny. You're picking at the megabot because you don't like it =/

The unit is literally a whitebox, stuck with more guns than you'd believe just to get the point across. It's a big bot with a comparative lot of weaponry over regular ones. The actual design would likely be closer to a Galactic or Universal Colossus:

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/7278 ... 201012.jpg

(left or middle) in terms of armament, perhaps with some sort of back mounted weapon. In conclusion, you are the exact reason Neutrino hesitates to show anything early =/ (because people will pick it apart assuming it's final content when it is anything but and would be subject to massive changes)

Yes, we get it, the number of guns don't make sense. Too bad this isn't representative of what an actual unit would be.

I think what would make this game (and other games) more visually interesting is massive scale differences.

I know Tech levels aren't necessarily power levels.
But for the sake of making an example, let's take SupCom as a starting point.
Everything in SupCom scaled exponentially as Tech Levels increased:
- Firepower
- HP
- Mass Productions
- Energy Production

The only thing that didn't go out of control was unit size.
I think it would be more inspiring to see "powerful units on the field" if all tech 1 was like "mech marine-sized" and more t3 were "monkeylord-sized".


Then it really gives the player a sense of power and how fearsome a unit is on the battlefield.


I think it would really help to differentiate "when to tech up".


But Yes, again, I know, PA isn't having tech levels like that...