For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

i believe the design is spot on and as i was reading in another thread it should totally serve as an exosuit for the commander... as far as scale its on par with the battleship and unit cannon, with all those guns its like a ''land based battleship'' equivalent... a device that gives you more of a reason to drop an asteroid on it

''My third thought was "Can I strap rockets to it and throw it at bases? WHILE IT SHOOTS AT THE BASES?!?" But to focus on my second thought, if we're going super unit, it should be super-de-duper unit. You guys are working on a game with a scale only rivaled by Sins of a Solar Empire, and maybe Master of Orion, which are strictly spess games. Why not make the pimp of all land units as pimpy as he can be?'' -i like this idea

-it should not be able to be moved from planet to planet on its own but rather once built its stuck were it is { unless you strap rockets to it and throw it at bases and IT SHOOTS AT THE BASES WHILE IT CRASHES TOWARDS THE BASE }
-is an exosuit for commander thus is totally immoblie until the commander get inside
-arm cannon should be massive slow firing d-gun than cause small to medium yield nuclear explosions
-should consist of direct-fire and indirect-fire capabilities (shoulder rocket pods indirect/ shoulder ''quad guns'' should be indirect artillery guns/ left arm is uber d-gun direct fire/ right arm should be direct fire shotgun like plasma thing/ hip guns could be some kind of pulse weapon the pushes smaller units and vaporizes them/ limited anti air capabilities (restricted to is shoulder rocket pods)

its purpose shouldnt be a game ending weapon but rather a thing to distract enemy armies... drawing their attention with intimidating but not completely devastating fire and also to serve as a shield for your commander

The size looks great

Four words: NO STUPID UBER BOTZ!

Seeing as how you justified your opinion so well, I don't see how anyone could possible not take you seriously. :roll:

Looks good. But a bit to big for just a tier 2 unit size.

They look like the kind of thing that makes your enemy invest in special Anti-Weapons just to make sure they can kill it. Just like the Nuke did.

Weel i like the idea but only if it's not a overpowered unit more of a support unit you could say.
I like the idea to have a number of them in a massive army but that alone they can do nothing maybe some kind of restriction like need to be near a commender or go in deep slumber/berserk i don't know but as long as they don't break the balance of the game i'm okay with it.

After watching some Supcom i am OK with ONE of these units, but would prefer not to have one.

Personally, I love super units and whatnot. I think they add to the feeling of "WE'VE GOT TO GO BIGGER AND BETTER!" that you get in a battle or war. Even if you're doing a little skirmish, it's fun to have the option of making this giant behemoth to go forth and crush your opponent, at least for me.

Ultimately, I think there's no reason to NOT put super units in the game. It's a new unit to play around with and make new strategies with. If people find them so abhorrent, make a feature to disable them in matches, just like SupCom did. As far as I can tell, that's the easiest solution to the whole problem, and everybody's happy. If you don't like the toy, you don't have to play with it. That doesn't mean NOBODY gets to play with it, though.

Looks awesome! Personally as long as it doesn't look strange and asymmetrical, like the really old EVE ships for example, I'm fine with just about anything art-wise.

As for balance, well, thinking back to supcom, I always felt like the Monkeylord was the most reasonable experimental unit. Powerful, but not a victory just because you built it. Fatboy too, actually. After that things quickly descended into cheese territory (Looking at you, Seraphim experimental bomber/Megalith)

Alternatively make them like the Titans in Sins of a Solar Empire. Only a few were uber cheese (looking at you, Advent Rebels), but they all had support abilities of some kind that boosted their armies. For example, one titan drained armor and health from the other fleet, and healed its own fleet. Another could choose to do next to do damage in exchange for having a chance to convert units to your side when it hit them.

If they exist they must be balanced for. They CHANGE the focus of the game... they Change the way that other units are balanced against them.

Super Units are not a 'modular' attachment to the game. If included they are an intrinsic part of the game and have an impact on it beyond their simple presence or non-presence.

Every unit is interconnected and to think removing one will not have knock-on effects is simply short sighted.

It's like taking your hand and removing a finger... Your hand has evolved to functionally rely on that finger... Just "removing" it doesn't mean the rest of the hand continues to function at 100% efficiency. Your hand is worse than it was before, you have lost a finger. If your hand were designed with only 4 fingers then it would be functionally superior to a 5 fingered hand that has a digit missing.

Do you understand?

If you have a game that is designed with a series of different toys then you must account for EVERY toy's inclusion. Taking out one of those toys disrupts the game because now you have rules that relate to that toy that no longer apply.
All the toys rely on each other to form a cohesive game.
Start taking out toys willy-nilly and you upset the goal, the focus and the balance of the game.

I think I get what you're saying. Since the game is being designed WITHOUT supers, it would be impossible/difficult to just tack supers on without having to totally rebalance every other unit in the game. Is that what you're trying to say?

See, I've never been huge into RTS games, but I did enjoy the SupCom games (yes, both of them, I know I'm horrible scum XD). I think I based my post off of the SupCom background that super units were just a part of the game base, or perhaps that they SHOULD be a default part of the game.

Anywho, did I interpret what you were saying correctly? If not, please let me know.

Yes, you got it in one. You can't just tack on Super Units without fundamental gameplay changes. By doing so you are compromising the core of the main game.

But only if the game wasn't designed to feature supers. Yeah, I can totally agree with that, and honestly, despite loving super units, I think that that is a strong enough argument to leave them out of this game.

Would be nice to see a mod that tackles them more appropriately however.

Also agreed on that.

Well i think its agreed. modders will handle the supers, and rebalence units in the game for them in their mod instead of the developers wasting their time.

Unfortunately it's far from agreed. However I personally believe it to be best for the game as a whole.

If a person looks at the game; sees Water Worlds, Lava Hell-Scapes, Verdant Jungle Planets, Asteroid Strikes and Death Star Lasers, Orbital Satellites, Mass Battles with Thousands of units fighting across multiple biomes, entire Planets and Whole Planetary Systems...

... but refuses to buy the game because "Where are teh giant RowButs?!", then I think the game as a whole, is better off without that person.

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I'm not saying that if you want to put Giant Robots above everything else, it makes you a bad person...
I just hate everything about that viewpoint when it comes to Planetary Annihilation.

Indeed, I am a man of tank battles, not titan battles.....unless disembodiment is involved.

I think its a bit too large. If it were scaled to...say total vertical height where the head is now (the little box between the flak guns/tomahawk launchers/whatever those clusters of 4 thingies are), and the same aspect ratio, that'd be about right scale-wise. They should come off as impressive looking, but not so large that it'd look silly walking around on a smaller planet (which may not be an issue, I don't have a good sense of scale of a planet vs the scale of units), or so large that it could crush T1 units underfoot (or undertread. or undertentacle. or whatever else you can come up with).

On a side note, I don't understand the trepidation about a (direct fire) unit like this being a be-all, end-all unit. There are still the Death Star-esque metal planets that fill that niche.

Another side note: Love the new T2 tank design!

It's actually not T2, it's built from a T1 factory and is called "Tank Heavy Artillery" (see latest livestream)
This could change though.