Sorry about the length of this post, it contains at least four different ideas that are sort of built on each other and I didn't think they would be as strong separately as they are together. I'll put a TL;DR at the end. I haven't heard of these things being done before in other games so I don't have a reference to existing terminology, but I assume they're not entirely original (nothing ever is). I have done some forum searches, but would prefer on this occasion to talk about my own ideas in their total scope rather than just where they intersect with other peoples (besides, this is too big to just be a reply). Feel free to list any examples of these ideas previously being implemented to good or bad effect before, though I don't think past success or failure necessary translates to future success or failure. I would like to hear other peoples thoughts on this. I've also added a pole so people can be clear of what they like and don't like, but you will need to reply to tell us why. Firstly, I have a suggestion for a different approach to unit Tech trees which I think could best be described as a Unit Tech Matrix. It would work by dividing the construction requirements for units between two factories, a Chassis Factory and a Weapon Factory, each of which could come in many varieties. Every time a new factory of a type not previously made is built new unit construction options would become available. Additionally there could be Non-Chassis and Non-Weapon options of Emplacement towers and unarmed Support units (multi-purpose scout, engineer, carrier) respectively that would not require factories, meaning that after just one factory there would be constructible options available. This would lead to a gradual scaling up of Tech options, and while there would be more factories required this could be balanced by making them mostly smaller and cheaper. As it is there are 8 different factories that need to be made to get the full range of units (the final game might have more once additional units types like orbital are added) , but a simple selection of 4 Chassis Factories (spread over surface, air, naval, orbital, and the extra emplacement type) and 4 Weapon Factories (weapons would be primarily designed as overlapping anti-chassis types, so anti-surface, anti-air, anti-naval, anti-orbital, and the extra support type) would provide 20 different unit options and 5 different emplacement options. I have tried to think of what these factories could be and I have used synonyms which do not have the same first initial so they could potentially be used as keyboard shortcuts and abbreviations. As an example here is a list of 11 different Weapon Factories and Chassis Factories which could be combined to make a maximum of 132 different unit types and 12 different emplacement types: Weapon Factories Artillery (Anti-Groups) Ballistic (Anti-Orbital) Cannon (Anti-Structure) Electronic (Anti-AI) Flak (Anti-Air) Incendiary (Anti-Surface) Laser (Anti-Projectiles) Missile (Anti-Velocity) Neutronium (Anti-Terrain) Railgun (Anti-Armor) Support (Unarmed) Torpedo (Anti-Naval) Chassis Factories Emplacement (Tower) Grinder (Subterranean) Hovercraft (Amphibious) Ionocraft (Helicopter/Bomber) Jet (Plane) Mech (Walker Bot) Orbiter (Lift/ Decent Rocket) Quad-mech (Spider Bot) Roller (Wheeled) Ship (Boat) Tank (Tracked) U-boat (Submarine) Secondly, I also suggest that unit sizes not be restricted by the Tech level of the factories and that Tech levels be done away with in favour of Classes. Different unit Classes could be available from the start but each would have advantages and disadvantages. The typical unit could be a General unit type (equal to the current T2 units), which would require an equal ratio of metal to energy production for construction and upkeep. There could also be a Dwarf unit type which, while using less resources and being more offensively capable as a group, would require more energy in their resource distribution ratio. Additionally there could be a Super unit type which would be overall more powerful while requiring more metal in its resource distribution ratio and use more resources individually, but they would also be more defensively capable individually for their cost. There could also be a fourth unit Class for Unique units. Unlike other classes Unique units would not be constructible by the players but would instead be found as deactivated units or unassembled unit sized parts, the remnants of forgotten ancient wars. The stats of Unique units could be partly randomised to make the estimated effort and risk to obtain them lead to an unknown reward thus adding risk. The differences between Classes could be balance by using squaring and cubing laws as well as some consistent, but arbitrary, scaling factors something like this example: Class : Dwarf ___Size x Small _______Metal x 0.125 _Energy x 0.5 _Weapons x 0.25 _Armor x 0.0625 _Speed x 0.8 _____Range x 0.4 ____Support Unit Carry x 1xSmall Class : General __Size x Medium ____Metal x 1 _____Energy x 1 ___Weapons x 1 ___Armor x 1 ______Speed x 1 _______Range x 1 _____Support Unit Carry x 2xSmall or 1xMedium Class : Super ___Size x Large _______Metal x 8 ____Energy x 2 ___Weapons x 4 ___Armor x 16 _____Speed x 1.25 _____Range x 2.5 ___Support Unit Carry x 8xSmall or 2xMedium or 1xLarge Class : Unique __Size x Small-Massive _Metal x 1-64 _Energy x 1-4 _Weapons x 1-16 _Armor x 1-256 __Speed x 1-1.5625 _Range x 1-6.25 _Support Unit Carry x ≤64xSmall or ≤8xMedium or ≤2xLarge or ≤1xMassive The first three Class types combined with a Unit Tech Matrix with 11 different Weapon Factories and Chassis Factories could construct 396 different unit types and 36 different emplacement types (this excludes Unique units as they would be truly individual). While this may seem like an intimidating number a representative testing sample of each Chassis in all the Classes and each Weapon in all the Classes could be made with just 36 different unit types and 36 different emplacement types or fewer, everything else would just be a different Weapon to Chassis mix. Thirdly, something I see as a good side effect of this scheme would be the ease it could adopt procedural naming of units. This would also be practically a requirement as trying to name every combination some individual name would be tiresome and impossible for players to remember. It could just be that I'm getting older and tired of learning new unit names for every game but I actually think that the unit names currently used in PA are not really appropriate, It hardly seems like the work of a cold hard war machine to name units things like "Scamper" and "Bumblebee" (unless they were made by Hasbro), nor does it really convey what the differences are between units. As an example here are the current PA Alpha units and a similar set off units named using a procedural naming scheme: Fabrication Vehicle - Dwarf Support Tank - DST Skitter - Dwarf Railgun Roller - DRR Spinner (Vehicle) - Dwarf Missile Roller - DMR Ant - Dwarf Cannon Tank - DCT Advance Fabrication Vehicle - General Support Roller - GSR Sheller - General Artillery Tank - GAT Leveler - General Cannon Tank - GCT Fabrication Bot - Dwarf Support Mech - DSM Spinner (Bot) - Dwarf Missile Mech - DMM Scamper - Dwarf Railgun Mech - DRM Advance Fabrication Bot - General Support Quad-mech - GSQ Stomper - General Artillery Mech - GAM Slammer - General Railgun Mech - GRM Fabrication Aircraft - Dwarf Support Ionocraft - DSI Firefly - Dwarf Incendiary Jet - DIJ Hummingbird - Dwarf Missile Ionocraft - DMI Bumblebee - Dwarf Torpedo Ionocraft - DTI Advance Fab Aircraft - General Support Ionocraft - DSI Peregrine - General Missile Ionocraft - DMI Hornet - General Torpedo Ionocraft - GTI Fabrication Ship - Dwarf Support Ship - DSS Fabrication Sub - Dwarf Support U-boat - DSU Sun Fish - Dwarf Railgun Ship - DRS Narwhal - General Missile Ship - GMS Bluebottle - General Cannon Ship - GCS Dolphin - Dwarf Torpedo U-boat - DTU Advance Fabrication Ship - General Support Ship - GSS Barracuda - General Ballistic U-boat - GBU Leviathan - Super Cannon Ship - SCS Stingray - Super Ballistic Ship - SBS Lastly, the same procedural system that would make the units and their names could also be used to make different Radar Icons that could easily be read. At the moment I don't think the Radar Icons can be read with ease nor do they convey much beyond what army a unit is part of (by colour) and what type of unit it is (though that needs to be learnt because the unit icons are not obvious). What could be done to help with this is to make the Radar Icon pictographic of the units Chassis and Weapon as seen from a plan view. This way each Chassis type and Weapon type could be given a different recognisable top down silhouette that could be oriented to match the units direction of travel and firing vectors to convey additional information. To further reinforce the link between the Radar Icons and the units they represent they could be reused within the UI for the unit build selection rather than a little picture of the unit and also used as the outline of the base bounding box for selected units (rather than a generic square although I realise this is probably just a placeholder). TL;DR . Unit Tech Matrix - Units are made as a combination of a Chassis and a Weapon, each of which requires a different factory to allow the build option. There would also be a non-Chassis (emplacement) and non-Weapon (support) unit types. . Unit Classes - All unit sizes are available but restricted by power to metal ratio economics, not Tech levels. General units are optimal, but Dwarf and Super units suit some roles better. Unique units would be found with randomised stats. . Unit Naming - Possibly hundreds of unit combinations could be reduced to a three word combination optimised for making initialisms that could be used as easy to remember three letter keyboard shortcuts. . Unit Radar Icons - Icons that are based on the Class, Weapon, and Chassis of a unit could also indicate the travel and firing direction of units. The same symbols could be used throughout the UI to help players learn their meaning.
Re: Suggestion - Unit Tech Matrix, Classes, Naming & Radar I this is an ultra-logical person's wet dream. i liked it, it's probably too late for uber to go in this direction some minutiae you maybe missed are amphibious sea floor units, amphibious boats, jump jets, counter intelligence (stealth, jamming, cloak, fog creator), and here's a list of Zero-K weapon categories.
Re: Suggestion - Unit Tech Matrix, Classes, Naming & Radar I RCIX and I are actually making a custom faction, which looks eerily similar to what you posted. We have modular chassis, deployable walkers and are going for a 'versatility and agility in trade for complication and raw firepower+efficiency'. I mean seriously, have you been spying on our chat messages or something?
Re: Suggestion - Unit Tech Matrix, Classes, Naming & Radar I Honestly, I'll take that as a complement. Yeah, they're all good, but I'm not trying to demand any particular Weapon or Chassis types, or even the names that I gave to the different classes, I was just trying give some examples so people could visualise how it might work... That being said I actually thought about the chassis type examples I gave as very overlapping in their capabilities. That way even if a player chooses only a hand full of chassis types that all favour one environment they would still each be able to fill roles in some other environments to some extent. For example when it comes to Naval environments all units would submerge, float, or fly but it would slow them down if they were a land unit (so among the unit types I've listed there are amphibious sea floor units). Its the same with weapons, specialisation is only an advantage, not a necessity. The Unit Tech Matrix would also benefit from being very expandable through updates as any additional Chassis or Weapons could easily be added. Therefore a very restricted version of it could be tried, and if its liked it could then be expanded further. No, but you know what they say about great minds. ... Feel free to use any of my ideas, I'm not using them.
Re: Suggestion - Unit Tech Matrix, Classes, Naming & Radar I What you're describing is basically a unit designer. Something similar existed in Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri. However, it demands time that does not exist in an RTS.
Re: Suggestion - Unit Tech Matrix, Classes, Naming & Radar I This would be a good mod idea. You should try to play Warzone 2100. There's an open source version out there that's quite decent.
Re: Suggestion - Unit Tech Matrix, Classes, Naming & Radar I I've just had a look into Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri unit designer. I see the similarity but its not really like what I was thinking. Basically its super complex compared to the unit system I'm suggesting. In Alpha Centauri there seems to be 5 different variables to each unit and a complex set of other rules regarding research and prototypes. All that just serves to make it more complex, and not easier to remember... In the system I'm suggesting a player would in real-time select one of three Classes and then click on a grid like pallet with the X and Y being Weapons and Chassis. Since the grid would just be an array of procedural unit icons a full preview with description could be given of units as the pointer moves over them. Clicking different units could easily queue them just like normal (ideally you wouldn't need to select specific factories) and there might even be and option to sweep add/subtract select in queue and then randomise the build order. There would be no research (in the PA universe all possible weapons research has already been done), there would just be a requirement to build a specific specialised factory which can be built without any prerequisites itself. Unit cost would also be very predictable since it would just be Class x (Weapon + Chassis). Thanks, but I would still like to see this in the regular game as I feel that it should use some different systems and people can make mods of old systems when they are nostalgic. The three step process for this game seems closer to what I was thinking, but technically even this is more complex since I've limited one of the three steps in my suggestion to just 3 options (Class). Compared to Warzone 2100 it's as if my suggestion has combined the body and propulsion systems into being just the Chassis.
Re: Suggestion - Unit Tech Matrix, Classes, Naming & Radar I Well, this clearly isn't happening in vanilla PA, but this is exactly what suggestion forums are for. People developing their own game design ideas.
