A Poor Tactical Level (for the moment)

After some games, i get a little bit bored by the battles. Since you just need to have the biggest army to win, and when i said army i meant a pack of Ants/Levelers.

Even at this early stage of the game development, where they are few different types of units, some of them are already useless. From my small experience the useful units are Ants, Levelers, T2 bombers (and fighters to be protected from bombers).

This leads to a loss of tactical choice. I hope that Uber will not neglect this point.


from other RTS i appreciated that a unit is good against an other, but weak against an other one.for example:
A defeat B
B defeat C
C defeat A

This rewards players who scout and use intel. Because they can defeat a more expensive army if they use the right units.

Why do you think that at the early stage of development, the units should be balanced?
It's quite the contrary, units gets balanced once all the pieces are put together.

Just as an example:
I've got Tank(A), Plane(B) and Orbital(C)
A defeat B
B defeat C
C defeat A

As orbital is not implemented yet, the game feel unbalanced. But it's because it's at the early stage of development.

Second reason to not balance the game right now: imagine you take time to balance tank.
They become quite balanced but then you improve dramatically the path finding.
Now they are OP and you have to redo all your balancing work.

Except that, I agree that the game now is just a eco/tank spam fest

I'm sorry, you're complaining about imbalance and then saying we can't use the alpha argument that nothing is freaking balanced yet because its an alpha? Were you hoping by including that statement you'd get a more logical conversation? it failed. Miserably. Some units ARE useless at the moment. That doesn't mean they will be useless in the future.

Everything is imbalanced, everything should be fixed. Uber will not neglect balancing units, otherwise people will not enjoy this game as much as they could of, as you state. Have patience. Uber will get round to it, at the very latest in Beta.

BTW: Etymology

You do understand that discussions don't work that way right? You can't make a pointless thread then expect people to pretend it's not pointless, because you don't like people pointing out that it's pointless.

Jon Mavor has stated that the final unit count will be hopefully be around 100 units. This, coupled with the diverse options available across four different theatres of warfare, will most likely add an inestimable amount of strategic choice to the game, compared with what we have now. I expect these things will get fleshed out a lot more when the key features are reliably implemented, and we will start seeing "new units added:" posts in the change-logs.

Be patient.

I thought it was funny :?
Anyway i m just saying that i know the game is in alpha, so it is pointless to tell me that the game is in alpha.

Amen.

That is why i don't like the "alpha argument". If someone is complaining, you just have to say, "this is an alpha the game will be awesome, so stop complaining"

I agree with you on the point that the game is not balanced, but there is a difference between balancing units and finding an utility for a specific unit. The problem here is not that the tank are OP, the problem is there is no place for others units (it is slightly different).

Amount of units doesn't necessary bring amount of tactical choices. You can have 50 different light tanks, it still remains that they are light tanks.
And Uber has been clear on that point, they will not create duplications. One unit will fill one role, we will not have several unit for a on role.
That is why i am concerned "even at this early stage" because they are very few different type of unit in the game, so their role should not overlap each other, and each role should easily find an utility. But it is not the case, one role takes all the room.
I'm saying that PA should worry about that.

I think you misunderstand what i meant. And your example doesn't have sense, since orbital is likely to be a medium or end game feature, and the tanks will not shoot at the space...

let s take an example inspired by ZK (it s an RTS).

Swarm units are cheap and weak.
Riot units are affordable, medium DPS, medium HP, with high rate of fire.
Sniper units are a bit expensive, high damage, high HP, very low rate of fire.

For the same cost:
The Riots beat the Swarms, because the swarm die to quickly to damage the riot
The Snipers beat the Riots, because they are deadly and resistant.
The Swarms beat the Snipers, because the Snipers rate of fire is too slow and they overkill the Swarm units (not efficient), quick they are overwhelmed.

And you can build these 3 units at the beginning of the game.

While a alpha is a work in progress (and this is realy alpha), you would think that the few units currently ingame should make it easier to balance (since there arent a huge amount of units yet).

It might even be a good idea to hard balance the few "basic" units now and then balance the rest of the game from the basic units (if thats in anyway possible), since the balance of the basic units is the most important part of a RTS's balance (in my humble opinion).

Well i havent much personal experience in balancing a game (aside from a few mods) so i admit that i may be wrong/naive/dumb.

I'm not sure I grant the premise of the OP. Carefully kiting artillery while using some cannon fodder to hold off ground forces can effectively win over larger all tank forces. Drawing out armis to hit with bombs works, as does using the speed of k-bots to run around tanks.

Eventually army blobs reach sufficient size that tactics become irrelevant but that's in large part because the end game hasn't really been developed yet.

I totally understood what you where saying. Let me rewrite my example ( or illustration ):

I've got Rock(A), Paper(B) and Scissors(C)
A defeat B
B defeat C
C defeat A
As Scissors are not implemented yet, the game feel unbalanced. But it's because it's at the early stage of development.

Will you argue that there is no way paper could beat a rock, and that you have paper and scissors in your drawer and they live quite happily together?

1. The game is in alpha.

2. I do not care that you don't care about the argument that the game is in alpha.

3. Gameplay is unfinished, because the game is in alpha.

I'm sorry that the lack of tactical depth (to you) is diminishing your enjoyment of the game. However, that is to be expected at the current level of development and I'm sure will be rectified by the developers in the future.

I don't know how people don't get this. Right now they are focusing on adding in features and mechanics, after all of that is in then they will worry about balance. Right now it is pointless.

How can you possibly balance stuff when the code doesn't actually do the right thing yet? Asking for balance now isn't really realistic.

Expecting there to be balance now seems unrealistic, but suggesting and discussing ways that the current feature set could work better, (balance included) would seem to be half the point and fun of a forum like this (for the participants rather than the devs).

People demand change and expect to be listened to because they're people, doesn't mean they have to be taken seriously.

Now about those L1 mexes.....

Sure, I'm just pointing out that some of it will be moot because it relies on unfinished stuff. For example the pathfinding has a ton of obvious work left to do so anything relying on that is just... not working well at the moment

The fact that some people think certain units are useless makes those units even more fun to use.

Did you know that 5 T2 Attack Bots can kill a Commander in under 10 seconds? <3

Did you know T1 Bombers can one-hit Pelters?

Did you know Fireflies are immune to AA when landed?

Did you know that T1 Bots can dodge everything but Catapult missiles when moving laterally to the firing source?

Did you know Lobbers, when placed behind mountains, fire over the mountains, while Catapults fire into mountains.

Themoreyouknow.jpg

Alpha is to put the game together, Beta is to mention balance problems and retail is to bitch about how the developer fixed those balance problems.

And you can quote me on that.

-Mr_J90K

Everything does have its role, what are you on about? I don't even have the alpha (just been watching dozens of vids and streams) and I can see everything has its role (barring Naval, as I've only ever seen Leviathans used, apart from one or two smaller ships that were just put next to a base to harass).

Bots are cheaper, faster. Useful for early game and to spam out - there's your horde unit, also great for scouting early if you want to take some force with you. Tanks are your riot control, currently more effective than anything because there's no land sniper unit implemented yet (unless you count levellers). We need more land units to fill the other roles - C hasn't been implemented yet.

Air, you have fighters and bombers. Fighters beat bombers, bombers beat ground units, AA beats fighters because fighters can't hit ground. Currently, most ground units can hit air units, which may and I hope will be changed in the future so that flying over a blob of just tanks doesn't mean insta-death for the flying unit.

Navy, as far as I'm aware, are expensive, weak, moving bombardment harass. The T2 just giving them greater range (haven't seen it used awfully much).

"Tactics: The military science that deals with securing objectives set by strategy, especially the technique of deploying and directing troops, ships, and aircraft in effective maneuvers against an enemy."

How exactly is that missing from Planetary Annihilation Alpha?

http://youtu.be/zLbV-Z6BYxo
The above video is an example of tactics. My opponent had me vastly out numbered and out built. If anyone had simply glanced at the map they would have easily called the game in my opponents favor. Thankfully I was able to employ some good tactics that took advantage of a well balanced group of units, the terrain, and my opponents lack of foresight that left him open and gave me access to his commander for the win.

There is plenty of room for tactics. It seems some people feel that their tactics should be defined by the units they are commanding not the actual use of those units.

I very much agree, but they'll probably want to address most of the balancing issues during the Beta. Right now, I want to see them focusing on things like debugging the pathfinding, getting all of the buttons to actually work, getting the units to do as they're told (I'm looking at you, lobber) and implementing interplanetary travel.

your abc theory is technically correct minus t2 tanks as they are like the ultimate anti air weapon

and as to the topics name it should be strategical not tactical