After playing this game a few times I've found myself wishing it was even closer to the experience of playing TA back in the old days. One of the ways in which this could be done I think is to increase the resilience of the units and structures. Does anyone else feel that what we create on the map is made of glass? I liked the feeling whilst playing TA of creating that 'wall' of units and structures in front of my Commander and then the feeling of being bunkered down when all hell breaks loose. Moreover you knew that if you created a group of Goliath tanks or Sumo's they weren't going to be pushed around easily! If a simple change to the health/resilience of units and structures was made I reckon it would bring back the old feeling of really having to work to break through each others armies and also the feeling that what you were creating was worthwhile and had a 'solid' feeling or hardy value behind it. When creating a group of Levellers now it just seems that they are too soft for instance/things just die too quickly and it kinda removes the 'value' of what we are creating. It might make games a bit slower but it would help bring back the feeling of '**** is gonna hit the fan for a long time' kinda feeling as everyone is slinging vast armies at each other with lots of artillery. In addition the game feels more like StarCraft in the sense that it is more about quick reactions rather than the joy of watching robots blow each other to bits.... poetically!
I agree with your premise, in that I would like units to be fairly durable and require time to destroy. However, since this is alpha, I wouldn't worry about it very much unless uber has said anything to indicate that they plan to have weak units.
I actually agree; everything feels very fragile right now. Especially the way navy and heavy (i.e. T2) tanks, both of which are archetypally very tough, die in only one or two hits from nearly anything short of an AA turret. T1 units might as well not even have health for how quickly they die. I very rarely units with partial damage.
+1 It is to early to worry about balance. Right now the focus is on features and those working properly.
for sure, this has been discussed a few other times as well viewtopic.php?f=61&t=44859 viewtopic.php?f=61&t=45608
I agree, but I disagree on the implementation, I think it would be more interesting if instead of giving the units more HP, that the accuracy of weapons should receive a significant downgrade at longer ranges, the bots should only be able to hit well up close, but prefer to engage farther out. As it stands simulating all trajectories with combatants that will almost always hit their target is not much removed from not simulating them at all. Lowering the hitrate between units is a more interesting use. Also, you might want to take a page from EVE Online and make larger weapons less accurate and with slower tracking. Lowering the rate of fire across the board for all units is also an effective way to lower board DPS vs Tank.
This isn't desireable because a) it's randomness, and that's not really fun to play with, and b) it's even more applicable to "may as well not be simulated" (without randomness, shots can be dodged or avoided easier, making the simulation worthwhile). As it currently stands, the DPS to HP ratios are way off. But meh, I'm not fussed at this point, as they aren't doing any serious balance work yet.
A little bit of randomness is good, it makes things interesting when you have forces of equal strength, you just need to make sure that the randomness does not cause disruption to the gameplay.
Randomness on a large scale mitigates the effects of randomness. I.E. you don't care that an individual shot has a random 40% hit rate when in a battle shooting 4 of those shots per second per unit for 25 units.
I agree that currently everything feels like made out of paper. All the units shoot too fast and aim too fast for my taste. Reducing projectile speed across the board would definitely increase time to kill and add some projectiles missing the enemy. Also it would give the game more TA feel
Units should be less accurate at a distance. In fact I thought that was planned. I'd be interested in hearing how accuracy technically works. Regardless we still need sturdy units for normal engagements. Sort of, it depends how fast of projectiles are. I'd like agile units dodging slow projectiles (and therefore spring style autojinx) to be a legitimate balance mechanic. You can sort of see that now when fast units dodge sheller fire.
I think part of what makes TA so great though is the finely realised balance between speed, hardiness, utility and gameplay of the different units and structures so that robotic destruction became the most fun thing about it. It was somehow more about individual units having a big presence (even the weakest ones) with lots of bangs and not lots of weak, throwaway units dying at a feathers touch. Even though it's only Alpha I'd say that the combat in TA is still better than PA's in that units didn't always hit all the time and when units did die they would explode with lots of little bits flying everywhere. There's just something more satisfying about the gameplay in TA. Yes everything is supposed to do damage but it savoured the role and instead of rushing combat like PA and StarCraft does to focus more on strategy it was more about the operatic quality of destruction for its own sake. I know it's Alpha but I hope the combat will be more fully fleshed out so that it is the main focus of the game just as in TA. It will make trying to capture planets more fun in the long run!
T2 tanks destroy T1 anything in one hit, buildings in two. I expect a large increase of HP to dmg ratio, at least for higher tier units and for fights between lower tier ones.
