reviving the Megabot discussion in light of recent events

After witnessing the discussion around Orbital I think I have a better understanding of what happened to the Megabot (shelved indefinitely ala

). Clearly the megabot was in the original vision Neutrino had for this game, as evidenced by the fact they they went so far as to build a model for them in the game engine. After some heated discussion Mavor decided he'd rather not see them in game then make the tough choices he was presented with by the mob.

In this thread I want to foster a constructive conversation about how specifically these units will fit into the game. For those of you already on board with the concept, great! Comment here on how you imagine it will interact with the other units and environments it might encounter. What types of weapons it should have, what situations you should build it in and what it's strengths and weaknesses might be.

For those of you who see some sort of issue with this type of unit, please leave a short but detailed decription of your concerns. Assume for a moment that Mavor has decided he will add them no matter what. What reservations do you have with the megabot at that point? What are your primary concerns and what would you like to see from these units in the way of inter-unit interaction? Keep an open mind, an allow the other users in the thread to address your concerns and see if they can come up with a solution to your issue with the megabot idea that makes you satisfied it is a solid addition to the game and a 1st class citizen.

No matter what though, keep the conversation civil, on topic and above all else forget about balance for now. Balance was the #1 issue I remember people coming up with against the megabot and it just doesn't make sense. Balance is fluid. Anything can be balanced. From changing damage values, costs, build times etc Ad infinitum. Alpha is the phase for implementing new units and fitting them into the design of the game, beta is for making them all work together so for now please keep any balance opinions to yourself. This is simply a discussion about megabots and their place within PA. Cheers!

There's not a lot to discuss when you leave out balance.

Well, first off: the original Megabot discussion was exclusive to the backer forum, so having this in general discussion might not be the best idea. Also as the only question regarding the megabot (besides will they ever have time to put it in there) is how to balance it, so specifically excluding balance discussion leaves nothing to discuss...

Basically, the consensus from the first thread was (correct me if i'm wrong, i'm citing from memory), that neutrino said there will eventually test the viability of a megabot, just not for the release version of PA....

And then suddenly

worms

ENTIRE CANS OF WORMS

FELL FROM THE SKY.

But no really, I don't see the point in discussing this. Here are some highlights from last time:
-Community is torn between "want", "don't care" and "don't want", and there is no solving that
-Uber is withholding their opinion probably on the grounds that "we don't know," the most official statement we have from them is that "they might maybe possibly be in DLC later on, they weren't in the original vision." That was a paraphrase.
-Most TA people don't want superunits
-Most SupCom people do want superunits
-It doesn't actually matter when you look at facts and balance. If Uber does balance right between regular units, a superunit is just as effective as an equivalent number of regular units that fill the same role as it. And considering that any superunits would probably SupCom styled, it will fill the same role as another unit.

I could go into exhaustive detail over why superunits are redundant and way too much work for what they're worth, but I've done that a billion times before and so will shovel all the work over to Mike and Nanolathe.

Balance is the biggest issue if we are talking about implementing experimentals, despite the opinion of some, you can't balance everything, somethings just break the f***ing scales.

no kidding, especially when you take blowing up the playable field into account.

Next on the list of things NOT to bring up: Shields!

moved to the backers forums, as this is a topic that was never talked about in public forums

The big thing about superunits is, as Mushroomars mentioned, they're basically the same as a bunch of little units. The only difference is that they're giant robots. I won't deny it, giant robots are cooler than little robots.

One issue I see is this: would they have them be stronger or weaker than the economic equivalent in an army. That is, if you made a bunch of tanks instead, would they collectively be weaker or stronger than the megabot? If they're the same or weaker, of course you'd want to make the tanks from a strategic point of view. I mean, the tanks can split up, form around obstacles, avoid defenses, etc. If you wanted a "megabot" then you would just deathball the tanks together and push on a single point at the enemy. Thus, the weaker/equivalent megabot would be obsolete, and never used by any skilled player.

Alternatively, if the megabot was stronger than the little bots, then wouldn't that make the little bots obsolete? We see that that's what happened with Supreme Commander near the end game, after all.

Thus, the "balance" is very difficult. You would have to put the megabots JUST in-between the two sides of the spectrum, and if it's ever-so-slightly one way or the other, then you would run the risk of alienating an entire playstyle.

edit: also, even if you DO balance it perfectly, then what's the difference? As in, why did you put it in? It doesn't change the flow of battle, it's simply a matter of preference as to who built the megabot and who built the army. Thus, why put the choice in, if they fill the same gameplay niche?

The only real excuse to add megabots is to stick artillery guns on them, and artillery guns should almost always be naval-specific or rooted in place, because of how ridiculously powerful they tend to be.

One thing I think is worth mentioning about the comparison of a megabot to a large number of smaller units. The advantage of a single large unit vs a mob of smaller ones us that damage output won't decrease as damage is taken. In that same way, firepower is far more concentrated, no worry making sure every tank is in range too fire.

So even if it gas the same economical value, firepower, hitpoints and construction time as 100 teir 2 tanks, it still fills a different tactical role. Even though it can't flank and divide its damage between two different points on the map, it can hurt things hard up to the point of its destruction.

This is Patently false.

Mike

Yea, that's a completely baseless leap of, what I'd disparagingly call 'logic'.

Megabots may or may not have been part of Jon's vision, but they weren't included in the stretch goals. Many of us are eternally grateful for that.

The Mega Bot experiment was a complete fiasco, so let's please just leave it dead... at least until it's actually proposed by the developers as more than "something we slapped together in half a day"

If this is a discussion about Megabot's place in PA, I'd like you to actually provide so compelling evidence as to why they need to be included.

I highly doubt that megabot took half a day. If I were one of the developers, I would not want to waste half of my day on a frivolous topic brought up by an overwhelming number of clamoring fans.

I could understand wasting half my day if it was an original, unique, FRESH idea. But not THAT.

To be fair, Traveling between planets and mixing and space gameplay has always been at the forefront of this games design. This has been true since the original KickStarter. SupCom like Experimentals on the other hand landed in the Category of (Man this would be sweet). Also remember why SupCom included experimental, They were a way to emphasize the scale of the game and how much greater its scale was in comparison to the other Strategy games at the time. This is not what Planetary Annihilation is trying to accomplish. or at least not how they want to accomplish it.

For example, if you were to compare the Supreme Commander E3 trailer to the Planetary annihilation KickStarter Trailer. Every conflict in the SupCom that trailer started by showing small unit(Fighter, tank) and then proceeded to show larger an larger units wrecking things. The Naval conflict started by showing air superiority Fighters and escalated to an Atlantis. The land conflict escalated from t2 tanks to Monkylords. The Planetary annihilation concept started similarly to the Supreme Commander one but its largest unit was a tank. In fact it actually spends a lot more time on Base Building(Proportionally it is a shorter 2 min trailer verses 4 min) and it also spends a lot more time zoomed out. but the biggest difference is how it escalates. It does not escalate by showing larger and larger units it escalates by showing more and more extravagant attacks. it starts from attack from land -> attack from Moon(ODST style) to attack from/bye asteroid.

Now I know these are both 100% marketing and some of these differences have more to due with a difference in time and resources to put to a trailer and the game at the time(zoomed levels, unit Diversity, general Detail). but both these trailers show the selling points of both games. and my point is that the selling points for Supreme Commander the brought on Experimental are not as prevalent in Planetary annihilation and for this reason I Doubt Experimental will ever receive the attention that orbital units will.

Now I am not saying that this is a good or bad thing. I am just saying this is the game Uber is building.

Also I think we should go back to the origin of this topic, The MegaBot Experiment thread. The very first post is quite telling;

It was never something they have planned but were then bullied out of.

Mike

I don't think it's black and white like that. I'm personally a fan of both and I don't think your gonna hear too many bad things about Krogoths around here.

Diversity of options to do similar things? I'll just answer this with another quote...

Just like we have many ways to nuke someone (ie ground structure, orbital satalite etc) this is the method some might prefer to structure their ground presence around. There are inherent advantages and disadvantages like what carpetmat outlined:

+1 on that man. Great way to illustrate it.

The Orbital thread was a fiasco.
The theoritical goal of the discussion was to find the best way to implement Orbital with the help of the community. Or at least get some new/other ideas on what/how can it be done (that's my understanding on what Neutrino wanted when posting).
The first 22/24 pages are worth a look, lot of comments, some good ideas, some not so good.
Then the Boss got angry because :
- he wanted some though, pros&cons, improuvements on the 2 lines he proposed, but ended up having tons of implementation propositions instead, completly out of the range of wat can/must be done
- observed that you can't please everybody
- that some people do not hesitate to throw the truth at your face (in numerous ways, from pragmatic observations to past citations)
And finally he wrote some harsh words and closed the discution from his side.
=> this is what I a call a fiasco : you start at a point, and in the end you're not more advanced, but even went down in the process, loosing a lot of precious time&money in bonus)

The MegaBot thread, on the other hand, was more a popularity check. Was also pretty interesting for the 20ich first pages.
Then got completly rotten. Especially with the help of some very vocal members of the communty, very agressively opposed to the concept.

But i learned a few things thanks to this topic (especially from the opponents to the poor MegaBot, who were right about a lot of things) :
- mega super powerful units must be included from the start in the game's design to allow their presence in a smooth way
- Balance (with a big B) is godly important when thinking about them
- it's better to have them do things that other units can't
- they must be carefully implemented, otherwise it's just a race to "Who got the more Megabot" (but i'm still not convinced about this one, as there will always be a better-than-the-others unit that players will try to spam ASAP)

And i hope the Uber Team learned from those two topics that important game design points should never be discussed with the community !
(community is good for popularity of ideas, critiscism, balance and battling around some meaningless details like the size of a cannon or the shape of a tree)(yes, that's insulting, but true for 99% of the cases. I know what i'm talking about, i'm pretty good for the two first mentionned fields and very probably completly incompetent in game design...)

Good try iron420, but sadly this topic will be steril before the end of the first page.
(but God how i would enjoy a Megabot...)

Edit : typos 4 ever.

The greatest problem of having experimental units for me is that they replace a lot of tanks with a single unit. And, in the end, I find it more fun to be playing with a bunch of tanks than with a single unit.

If we had these bigger Robots, there should almost be a third rare resource in the game, like i dont know Crystal / Gem something, so that it would be really valuable to fight over.

I always like the idea of big units, Universe at war, not the best game, but that wasnt the fault of the big units, freaking LOVED those big, HUGE units.

The big units in that game was basically walking factories, meaning that they made smaller units that would be nice in PA ey, as the huge mega factory robot walks, you resupply with tier 1 from that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=N5-j5LNOJxU#t=47

even if you were limited to say 1 or 3 or something it would be awesome. with a huge towering unit walking in the middle of the little guys.