The needed dichotomy of bots and tanks

I think there needs to be a functional dichotomy between how bots and tanks operate. Right now bot's only advantage is speed, but the usefulness of speed in PA for ground units isn't really all that great.

Bots aren't really fast enough to justify building them over tanks. But to make bots useful, I don't think simply making them tougher, deal more damage or faster will offer a solution. They can never be tougher or deal more damage then tanks, and making them faster would be ridiculous, but even then, bombers and air units are going to be faster still and better at raiding.

It is cheaper to defend vs bot raids then air units, because defending vs bots with superior units like tanks is cost effective, always, and building interceptors is never not good, you lose nothing by building air factories.

Building bot factories isn't effective unless you can raid and do damage, but an equal number of tanks will always win, and those vehicle factories will then be useful to the defending player for attacking, where as bots are woeful in direct confrontation.

So a solution? Utility.

Bots need to have utility that tanks do not, to preform functions that can consist of raiding, certainly but of front line support as well.

Remember bots make up 1/4 of all units in the game (tanks/bots/air/naval) and as land units will be more prevalent then air or naval, they need a role similar to air or naval units.

How then to achieve this utility? Weapon types. Bots need to have units that perform fundamentally differently then tanks.

So then for unit types for bots.

A sniper bot (long range, high damage unit, long reload time, needs to be stationary for a few seconds to fire)

Raiding units (faster, high damage to buildings and defenses, short range)

Terrain-able bots (can traverse up mountains, over cracks, underwater, making use of (4?) legs, the fundamental difference between bots and tanks, medium health, damage and speed)

Spam bot (cheap, medium health, low damage, slow speed, fast to build)

Suicide bot (faster, cheap, explodes to do damage)

Repair bots (repairs other units mid-battle, can also reclaim)

And for tank unit types.

Generic tank (high health, slow speed, high damage, medium range, cost and build time)

Mobile artty (High health, slowest speed, long range (firing arc, can shoot over units and terrain unlike the sniper) medium build cost and time)

Mobile Missile launcher (medium health, slow speed, longest range, slow projectile, good vs static targets, bad vs units (unlike artty would should target-lead and has faster shells)

Multi-target tank (has 2(?) turrets/aoe (flamethrower? plasma?), high health, low damage, medium speed, build time and cost, designed to counter high-unit number spamming)

So there ends my post, thoughts are welcome, discussion is encouraged, but "its too early to talk about combat" posts aren't welcome, fundamental combat philosophy does not take focus away from planet architecture development and is something that is done in alpha, not beta, and is more vital to an RTS then all other aspects combined x2 and requires as much thought and discussion.

Thanks.

Well traditionally speaking (by tradition I mean TA and SupCom) bots were both significantly faster and dealt more damage than tanks. By contrast, tanks were more durable. Currently though there is no real balancing so these traits are not obvious/existant.

The primary ideology behind this in TA (which was improved upon in balance mods such as Uberhack/Absolute Annihilation/Twilight) is that bots provide a better ratio of cost to firepower. In other words, when comparing a bot and a tank with an equivalent weapon (same firepower, delivery method, etc), the bot will generally cost less resources to construct. However, the bot will also have a lower survivability, usually through a worse cost to health ratio. Bots would have other advantages, such as better maneuverability and acceleration, to further give them utility. Likewise, despite their cost to firepower disadvantage, vehicles would provide greater destructive power per unit, whether it be stronger weapons or wider aoe.

What this does is it encourages different types of high strategic level play, and spreads the usefulness of bots throughout the entire game. (As opposed to making them primarily useful early game.)

Because bots tend to cost less, in the early game they would often be the choice of unit to build, giving a greater firepower for defense and raiding. As the late game approaches, vehicles would gradually become the preferred backbone of the army, as they have better survivability and have greater impact in attacks. But they are also more precious units, due to their higher cost. A lost group of bots only requires a short time to replace, at less resources, while a lost group of vehicles can be a major turning point in the game. This means a player would have to use their units intelligently to achieve the maximum effect.

For example, if attacking an enemy base, the vehicles would be preferred for the frontal assault, as they would be able to survive the damage from the base defenses long enough to kill them. (Especially since crowd-control defenses can eat masses of bots in a short period of time.) A few bots could be used as forward scouts and cannon fodder, but the real purpose of the bots comes into play once the defenses are down. They have the maneuverability to surge into the opened defenses and do major damage quicker than vehicles could. And if the enemy is able to counter with a defensive army, the bots would be able to stay in and hold them off long enough for the vehicles to pull back safely. Then the bots can escape with their maneuverability advantage. Larger quantities of bots will be destroyed, but since they have a lower cost, they aren't a big loss.

Bots can also provide flanking protection when moving out an army of vehicles, be the power thrust behind a divide-and-conquer movement, etc.

The key to this solution is that it doesn't require as much micro, as all of the results you get work on more strategic and tactical levels. I do agree with turroflux that having some utilities available to bots that vehicles don't have would provide additional incentive to build bots. Likewise, while vehicles may not have as much variety, they should have corresponding firepower to make them worth building. (Although any vehicle force would easily be defeated by a bot attack of equivalent cost. The reason for this is that while bots may fall fast, the decrease in their total firepower is a lot less than when a vehicle is lost.)

Nerf tank turret tracking speed. Nerf tank acceleration.

Problem solved, and you don't need hurf-derf-snipah bot as an official role.

How about a bit of both? Nerf tank acceleration and turret tracking, but also give an increased variety of units, sniper tanks AND Sniperbots. Missile artillery tanks, shotgun bots, booby trapping tanks, mine-throwing bots. Both are good things to do.

I have never really liked the idea of a shotgun tank when tanks still kinda struggle to kill each other.

Why not a tank hunter who has poor HP but great attack to both counter and be countered by enemy tanks?

My point is that we need more unit diversity AND we need bots to have a bigger upper hand.

Nice summation sylvesterink.

Nerfing tanks solves the pointlessness of bots? wut

Thats the wrong way to look at it.

Think of it this way, To make bots better at flanking you can either improve thier speed such that they can out maneuver a turret tracking them, or you slow down the turret.

Both achieve the same goal, making the Bots better/good at flanking, but the specific context can make one option 'better' than the other.

Mike

Personally, I don't think the best way to make tanks and bots useful is to apply cost effectiveness or bang for buck.

I'd much prefer a situation where moving bots can flank tanks and avoid fire by just being too nimble to get hit. Without buffing bots to silly levels, the best way to do that is by bringing tanks down a notch or two.

If tanks struggle to hit moving things, but bots can do it with ease; then bots aren't pointless!

Tanks are currently omni units with the whole shooting down bombers thing.

I think that line of design is fundamentally flawed. Either tanks or bots, as it currently is, are going to be superior and used 90% of the time. They need an overhaul in purpose, not a band-aid fix.

I doubt tanks will be able to shoot at air units at all, they just do atm cause alpha.

You'd be surprised how many people want that to be a thing, given as that is how it was in TA.

Mike

I don't have a problem with tanks taking pot shots if they can, after all the difference between AA and not AA has always been rather arbitrary at best in most RTS games.

But considering the speed at which a group of tanks turn to shoot down a flight of bombers is a little obtuse in my opinion.

Laser weapons often make very handy anti-gunship devices in a pinch.

TA wasn't the pinnacle of RTS design people claim it to be, rose tinted glasses and all. Also whats the point of interceptors, AA turrets, AA units if tanks do a better job, due to blanketing the sky in shells.

Some people would have this game as ant-spam simulator 2013 though.

But if tanks' tracking speeds are low, then they won't be able blanket the sky in shells.

Gun-ships have yet to be confirmed, as neutrino has his reservations about them I think. I didn't like them in SupCom, but balancing them isn't that hard, assuming tanks can shoot them (but obviously not bombers and interceptors). Makes sense to me anyway. Tanks can't shoot bombers irl, but they could take shots at a helicopter.

well you should be able to take a shot at pretty much anything, hitting what you shoot at is a different matter.

Hell I have even had my own aircraft sit above an enemy nuke silo to be deliberately hit once it tried to launch.