reviving the Megabot discussion in light of recent events

Thanks for taking interest! Yes that sounds even better! It would make just spamming builders right away after landing more risky, control would have to be worked for on both fronts, even before others land.

MadSci has come to save the day, with doves flying as ideas flow free.

Metal Planets having military obstacles would indeed be interesting. Not just metal golems, but a little of everything. Another good one would be if you had to assault a fortress to get to the control center.

Wow, that's actually quite a good idea in retrospect. Krogoth Encounter anyone?

While I love the Krogoth and Experimentals, even after the 104th usage, I'm well in agreement that Uber shouldn't spend the budget on megabots unless they can provide something new.

Perhaps these could provide additional abilities not seen in other units, some ideas:

- Personal shield, which essentially boils down to healing the upper X percentile of HP. Would draw power.

- Mobile factory

- Damage sponge, but slow, fairly harmless.

- Mobile fabricator, can heal multiple targets at the same time, whilst moving.

None of these ideas are currently accounted for and would provide additional/alternative strategies rather that the current death-ball-in-a-unit concept for megabots.

Although the idea is awesome and i just mentally inserted it in my file of "mega units that make sense", it's also a case III:

Uber is investing a ton of resources (again: making a megabot is as Neutrino said a much bigger deal than a normal unit) into a unit that you only see on metal planets as an enemy.


It's too limited of use.

It simply does not make sense to include megabots because of the problems of cost balance, power balance and use balance. If they could throw even more money at this project it might eventually come to a point where it's feasible, but that's certainly not now.

Thankfully, it is but a general guideline and not an absolute rule of etiquette. Maybe if I didn't see threads dragged sidewards by the same people every darned time I wouldn't need to comment, though. It just gets to me, so sincere thanks for expanding upon your thoughts on the subject.

I'm honestly on the fence as well, as such a discussion on how they could (or could not, emphasis on argument instead of absolute decree) work in PA is something I'm very interested in. In selfish terms, I didn't want to bother investing in the thread if it was going to be dragged down in the usual manner. Hence my earlier comments.

Neutral "megabots" would be a really interesting concept, and set the metal planets apart from the rest in tangible terms (as supposed to a resource point as you were saying). I definitely think it's an idea worth pursuing (conceptually). The similarities with Cybertron and recent PC games (which I enjoyed greatly) also help the parallel for me, hah

Conversely, expanding upon this idea. Metal planets/biomes could therefore have a secondary defensive stage that involves constructing friendly megabots that patrol around the aforementioned control structures/point - constructed from the control point in question. To counterbalance this evidently strong (to a point) defensive mechanism you could balance conventional defenses (turrets, etc) in different ways on metal planets.

I no jokingly like this idea but can't help but muse. Should we call this unit "combat girl"?

There's absolutely zero reason that would necessitate such units being huge, even if you want a bullet sponge. The Can from TA was substantially tougher that almost any other unit in its class, and (for cost) was one of the toughest units in the whole of TA's roster, if not the toughest... yet it was scarcely bigger than any other equivalent Adv.Unit. Same goes for the Brick in SupCom.

Or you could call it FARK 2.0
The FARK was an Advanced and very mobile Fab that (iirc) could only repair and assist... yet it was smaller than some of the earliest bots you could construct. There's no reason that FARK 2.0 would need to be very much larger than the original FARK as there is no precedent that indicates that Lathe capabilities require a large chassis housing.

Personal shields are just damage sponges that regenerate, and that's hardly a ground-breaking mechanic, nor an actual role for a unit to occupy. Furthermore SupCom had personal shields on units that were not huge and even mobile dome-shield generators that were by-and-large smaller than all other T2 units. Again, there's no reason, nor precedent for such a bot to be required to be 'Mega' in scale.

The only exception is the mobile factory, whose size is dictated by the units it must contain while lathing. Something that is just a mobile factory hardly seems worthy of a whole new class of unit however. Building factories on the front line was never an issue in TA; in fact it was encouraged due to the substantial amounts of hit-points per Metal/Energy cost. They were a substantial bulwark against raids, effectively being a wall and unit production facility in one.

The same seems to hold true for PA, with Standard factories having many times the hitpoints of the units they produce, yet being relatively cheap, and therefore also quick to build.

Why would you need a mobile factory when you could just build more 'normal' factories?

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There is only one reason to increase the size of a unit to 'Mega' proportions: Necessity.
If a particular weapon or defence system or production capability or whatever is 'too powerful' to put on a smaller unit (ie the power demands would be too great or the housing chassis would be too large to mount on a small unit) then you put it on a large enough unit to make it mobile. Large robots are only large because they are required to be

To say that in a less wordy way; A 'Mega-Bot' and its abilities are too powerful to put on standard units by necessity. They are intentionally 'overpowered'.

If a Mega-Bot is powerful, potentially overly so, it represents a large concern for balance and gameplay purposes.
If you are not willing to include said balance and gameplay problems in the discussion of Mega-Bots then you really have nothing to discuss other than your giant robot fetish.

Still just going to keep on talking anyway...

So, to answer the main post, if Uber had an idea for a huge slow multitargetting bot built at the nuke level, not only do i believe it can be balanced, but i believe it would not hurt for tests sake, as this game isn't even released yet. Two updates back, there were nuke on commander blueprints. Argue that careful balance of unit power...

But to discuss balanced, it would be nice if it had the single damage not exceeding existing units, could maybe attack multiple units at once, and had some meaty qualities.

There are many units that as nano observed doesn't require size but might be neat army supplements featured at the nuke level

Apparently the 'Multi-targeting' thing was a hell of a headache to code (I think it was Garat who said so), especially since it was only for a handful of units. Again, you're wasting a lot of developer time and money for very little bang...

Do you also know what's big, slow and can target independent units? That's right, a group of Bots, or Tanks, or Planes or Ships. You're not actually doing anything new by making a Mega-bot with the ability to 'multi-target'; you're just condensing the power of an army into one unit...

Unless you're using the functionality across the board for multiple classes of units there is not really a case for such code to be included, it's too niche and isn't the focus of the game like Experimentals were in SupCom. But if you're using that functionality across the board you've just taken away what you're proposing to make Mega-Bot's unique.

Catch 22. You want Maga-Bots to be unique. As we've seen from the Alpha Commander's example and his sharing (and apparently a whole quarter of the total number of commanders) of the same Rig and Animations as the Delta, making multiple complex units within the same class of unit just isn't on the cards.

Unique is not on the cards. If it were I'd much rather the time and effort go into making Commanders more unique than just a skin-swap.

Basically you're s**t-outta-luck. Mega-Bots necessitate time and money spent on their development that Uber just don't have at the moment. They're already cutting corners as it is.

I'm sorry it sounds like you'd rather play MS Excel rather than an actually game with graphics and design and variety. Not everything needs to fill a specific exact role, and there's nothing wrong with making something visually larger if the unit is designed to stick around a bit longer for a different style of play.

Perhaps we should do away with Air/Water/Orbital and all have just commanders vs commanders. A "need" in this game like any other is a need that we create. Every unit is a niche until other units are created to counter it until you end up with something that's much more significant than the unit that started it all, and no longer the game could live without.

You say the personal shield is just a damage sponge that can regenerate. Yes, you've just described the concept perfectly, I'm glad we're on the same page. I don't understand why personal shields can't be a way to another level of warfare. We could introduce another sprinkling of units to flesh the concept out:

- Damage sponge megabots
- Regular tanks with heavy shields but light armor
- Energy Towers with high shield damage
- EMP Tanks which can heavily damage shields as well disable units ability to fire (Spiders from TA)
- EMP bombers which can create persistent distortions bubbles through which shields will drain and other units will become slowed.

Look! I've just created an entire new avenue of tactics with counters, most of which also have other niche uses which make them useful in other scenarios. Whether you like them or not is a matter of opinion of course, but I wish you'd stop focusing so much on what the game needs. Other things we really didn't need are sea planes and hovercraft in TA, but they filled a niche and I for one had fun with them, they added a nice twist, although I do feel like they could have been fleshed out a bit further . The final implementation felt a bit rushed but I applaud the decision to try and shake things up a bit.

I think some of my concepts are well within the range of T3 admittedly, but I still think the key to Megabot's is having a very specific purpose with a very obvious Achilles heel. Despite fond memories of the Krogoth, I'm not in favor of its all-in-one nature. I understand the point of the unit was partially driven by story, and the concept of having a "horror" unit on the horizon stomping relentlessly towards your base was very cool, and something I continued to experience well into Sup Com.

My personal view of The Can/Sumo from TA was that they really should have been larger, given the amount of crap they could take. The Brick was pretty chunky, obviously nothing quite like experimentals, but Sup Com did have a nice sense of scale between T1,2,3 I think.

I agree on the point of Uber needing to be conservative, so if this sort of thing needs to wait for DLC / expansion, I have no problem with that either.

I do look forward to the day you're able to make a single suggestion which actually contributes something positive. You clearly have a million-and-one ideas about what's wrong, surely you must have some inspiration for how to make things right as well.

Not everyone has to have their head in the clouds.

So, to counterpoint your arguments; In PA, everything does have to have a specific role. Redundancy is a waste of developer resources, Jon has said as much in both the live streams and here on the forums. Uber does not have money to burn.

As I pointed out with the Can and the Brick, you don't need something to be large to make it look like it has a lot of armour/HP. Your personal opinion on the matter is just that, an opinion. There is a precedent. Cans and Bricks were not the size of an experimental yet they had a lot of health that was reinforced by their blocky, heavily armoured look and their speed being pretty abysmal. You might be able to make a case to increase their size slightly, but certainly not to 'Mega-bot' levels.

Using the slippery slope argument to say we should remove Air, Naval and Orbital because they are not 'needed' is foolish. It's the exact same argument as saying everything should be nano-bot-goo-balls. It's not good for gameplay to remove Air, Naval and (potentially) Orbital. It also is not key to their marketing strategy (more on this later) Experimental-like units however don't add very much to gameplay for the investment that it takes to create them, both within the game and from a game designers point of view.

Most damning of all; you have still failed to produce any points that indicate a 'need' for Mega-Bots, other than your own 'feelings'.

Shields, in the way you have described, are akin to an 'armour' system, where units have arbitrary bonuses and weaknesses to certain other units that is not due to their base statline. You're advocating more 'micro' based decisions that would make the player counter a specific threat in a very specific way. You have not increased the tactical nor strategic depth by introducing arbitrary rules over what unit can damage another effectively. It's not an emergent strength or weakness based on the units raw statline, it's a battle between hard-counters.
EMP = win vs Shields and High value bots as you disable them.
Shields = Win vs someone without EMP.
You have cheapened the emergent depth at play, not increased it. Rock-Paper-Scissors is not a 'deep' game.

Total Annihilation is a deep game precisely because it lacks such gimmicky arbitration.

And finally there is a reason I am able to conceptualise a million-and-one ideas about what's wrong with an idea, especially when it comes to Mega-Bots. You are under the assumption that there is a 'right' way to do Mega-bots.

I contend that, in service of a balanced game that seeks to make the vast majority of the Standard units viable into the late game, that Mega-Bots which are upgrades to existing units, are an anathema to that goal; that there is no 'right' way that they could be implemented.

SupCom 'needed' experimentals. Its entire marketing strategy hinged on that core principle.
Planetary Annihilation 'needs' robots attacking each other on a variety of 3D Planets and Asteroids with engines on them. Its entire marketing strategy is hinging on that core principle... not on Mega-Bots.

If Mega-Bots are not the 'core' experience of Planetary Annihilation, they are not 'needed'. Since it is blindingly obvious that they are not the core experience on offer for PA, Mega-Bots and their ilk are nothing more than superfluous fanservice.
Simple as that.

Also it'd look a bit ridiculous if Megabots were put in because their mass would be enough to change the orbit of a planet just by standing on it.

Stick a fork in it; it's done. Again.

I can understand how people can get pissed off at Nanolathe, but he'd make the damnedest sea captain alive. He would be known as Stalwart Storm-Steady! You're of a Roger Ebert level, you know that, Nanolathe?

But enough praise. The thing is, peeps, is that Nanolathe can obviously be wrong or off sometimes about some things; he's only human after all. But it should be obvious that he is NOT just trolling around (seriously, whoever thinks that just doesn't get anything). This man knows his stuff when it comes to good game design. Don't ever doubt that, but DO be careful if he errs in some way beyond that.

Fun fact, it's easier to sound smart when we've already had this ENTIRE topic covered in Depth before. With Dev Input no less. ;p

Mike

There's that glaringly obvious fact too. Sorry I fanboy'd on Nanolathe; despite my very passerby-like style of talking when I DO post, I am very objective when I'm just hanging in the shadows, watching everyone else argue.

My two cents: I honestly hope the Uber team does not excommunicate themselves from us. As entitled as we can be sometimes, we can give genuinely useful input in regards to this intensely promising game.

I just want my giant killer robots. Is that really too much to ask?

Just a couple of notes for completion's sake:

1: Not just TA. I find that most games of old i really enjoy are also fairly simple and lack all of these "deep" and "complex" systems: they're designed around their strengths and weaknesses are polished away as much as possible.

2: I do believe that Megabots CAN be done right. I just believe that we're several normal units' worth of development time and money further before it's done right. Considering people think it's a good idea to put them only on metal planets (reducing their role further), you end up with a highly specialized unit that either everyone spams or nobody makes (or ever sees).


If we really can do some of the orbital stuff Uber wants, there's a 99 out of 100 chance that all you'll see of a Megabot on a metal planet, is their dead hull after a couple of nukes were dropped on it from orbit.

because nuking from orbit is the only way to be sure.

Hey! Michael! Snark is my job.

:

I like this idea for a few additional reasons:
* it bypasses the need to balance them for now (saving devs lots of $)
* it gives great depth to the story especially if they plan on adding it in an expansion
* its very reminiscent of Master of Orion 2