Just curious how much unit variation we're going to get? Since there won't be abilities to micromanage, will there be unique units? Personally I would love to see stuff like short range Flame Tanks with area of effect damage, laser bots, units with homing missiles that can't miss, etc. Just overall lots of different types of units and different looking projectiles. And yes I used the search function, it just sucks because you can only search once every few minutes.
Yes that kind of stuff is the goal and having a singular unit pool helps make this easier nad more cost effective. Right now it's Alpha so we only have the CORE units for testing purposes, once we get to the point where we get some solid gameplay going(we still don't have Metal Points yet after all) and get most features up and running THEN we can start bulking out the unit roster. You mean once every 15 seconds. You better Optimize your searching use this guide. Mike
Since we have only one faction unit variation has no limit really. Personally I'd love some of these: - Suicide bomber units - Sniper units - stealth units (Radar stealth, though visual, who knows?) - Rail gun units - Flamethrower units - lasers - gun ships - Transport units The only important thing is each unit having a place and a purpose and a counter. We can't have it such that massing one unit type results in victory all the time, and used weapon types as well as unit types to create balance (Snipers countering T2 tanks, rail guns countering large tank spam, flamethrowers for dealing with walls and point defences, etc)
I think Uber made a great decision to employ common pool units instead of factional ones. Makes gameplay balancing with respect to units a good bit easier, not to mention allowing a much greater variety of units to begin with. Now, if Uber found a way to adorn your units with decals or special cosmetic features (like Klingon sashes or camo patterns like forest, tundra, desert) in addition to using simple colors, that would be amazing and really add much to the game from an aesthetics perspective.
Not sure if anyone else caught this but Uber mentioned there will be alittle over 100 different units! Not sure what supcom count was but 100 puts a smile on my face =)
Just off the top of my mind it was higher, but you also got the whole t1 and especially t2 which got useless in mid to late game. Anyway, its not the raw number that counts, but how interesting the final set will be. :mrgreen:
A faction in SupCom was about 100 units, but you need to remember that with 3 Tiers and the Tier balancing means there was a lot of things repeated over all Tiers. This will be the same or similar to an extent in PA, at least for structures, but hopefully this won't be quite the case for Units, but given that we don't have nearly all teh units yet it's hard to say exactly how it'll go yet. Mike
There was about 40 units (no structures in that count)(each race had units of similar roles so this is the count total) & 16 experimentals that were different from each other. Well I hope we get most of the useful stuff that was in supcom plus the orbital layer units are interesting and not just a novax center lol If that 100 count is totally unique units then it looks like PA will have a close amount if not more than Supcom
I agree. The more units, the better. I also hope that Uber will include experimentals in PA (common pool). If not, then I hope there is a balance mod for it.
I would like a great variety of units, weapons, ranges, passive abilities (hover/spider/ocean-crawling/boat-legs/stealth/jamming/cloak/etc), and tactics. I don't want to micromanage or heavily focus on each individual unit, the exception being my commander. This is tangently related but some tactics and mechanics do not scale well. For example kiting and dodging do not work well when you command hundreds of units and multiple bases because they require so much attention. A basic Unit AI could really help increase the variety of tactics and units that scale up. So units balanced around kiting and dodging could remain useful through out the game - or not become OP when a player with high APM/focus uses them.
ZK has an interesting balance philosophy when it comes to units: "Buff Strengths, Nerf Weaknesses" The idea is that you give the unit a clear role (eg. raid enemy base, fast movement, good vs structures, poor vs units). Then if you need to buff the unit, you buff its strength (eg. move faster, more alpha). If you need to nerf, you nerf the weakness (eg. slow dodgeable projectile, short range, tiny AoE damage over time (units will move out of the way, structures take full damage)). And in all cases, do not use special damages. Just change unit mechanics to achieve it. This will give you a unit set with very distinctive behaviours. You will have a set of units all of whom behave completely differently and are useful in different situations.
It's a great approach and emphasizes diversity. You see this in LoL/Dota2 too where heroes aren't directly nerfed but rather their weaknesses accentuated or counters buffed.
