TA Units vs. PA Units

If I remember correctly, bulldogs did much more damage per shot, and had two barrels, while Stumpies only had one. While Stumpies could have a better DPM, a bulldog would have a much more powerful alpha strike, which was the reason they excelled at destroying fortified areas in large groups instead of only facetanking them.

This, still, concludes exactly what you've stated. TA had advanced units that were better than basic, but didn't do the same thing that basic units did, so advanced units were used in conjunction with basics. I'm assuming we'll eventually see more of this as PA progresses, and I'll stand right by you until we do.

Maybe we should take some time and brainstorm some actual real-world differences between unit types and see if we can extrapolate some fundamental gameplay differences? If any community is capable of doing that intelligently it's us.

Bringing the real world into this could get messy. The primary difference between IRL "units" is technological advancement, not really variety.

Most squads of soldiers are equipped to handle every situation. Fragmentation grenades to flush out buildings, rifles for long-range combat, at least one Recoilless Rifle to deal with armor, a laser designator for high-value buildings, large vehicles and bunkers... Sometimes explosives if the mission necessitates it.

Aside from that the primary difference is engagement ranges. For example, most main battle tanks can engage from 2-4 Kilometers out, and accurately strike targets, but they are too large and bulky to excel in urban warfare.

But we hardly even use tanks anymore. Weapon ranges are long enough that offshore bombardment and air strikes are sufficient to neutralize a threat; and usually beget nuclear retaliation.

So, putting aside real life, let's look at some games with good unit variety. Command and Conquer, Starcraft, Dawn of War and Total Annihilation all have excellent unit design, but horrible unit balance. Now that I think about it, the only two games I can name off the top of my head where everything is balanced are DOTA2 and Magicka, both of which are balanced by the idea that "everything is overpowered, and therefore everything is balanced."

The trick will be to combine good unit design with good unit balance. Personally I would rather have good unit design over good unit balance; Total Annihilation did this, and it worked pretty well. Flash tanks were overpowered, by they were utterly destroyed by Levelers and Pu- Pul- The Plasma Towers that were introduced in Core Contingency for CORE to deal with PeeWees and Flashes. This was almost a complete eschewing of unit balance for unit design, and it worked pretty well.

is TA really a model to build on for competitive multiplayer in this regard? granted i did not play much vanilla TA back in the day, but i do remember that it was all about tier 1 units (flash rushes for example) because everything else wasn't worth it, so i am not really sure what the point in this comparison is.

The interactions are even better with Goliaths from TA. They deal even less damage than Bulldogs, but have a ballistic arc to go over wreckage and a huge aoe. They also have substantially more health. All combined they made short work of clustered bots and such, and they were moderately effective against Flashes since their aoes would destroy the Flash wreckage that one typically used to lock down a tank column. The original Reaper was essentially a straight upgrade to the Raider, but it wasn't good enough to be worth using because of its large unit footprint and relatively low damage.

The other thing I really want to see come back is the climbing differences. Artillery kbots were terrible compared to rocket kbots for dps/mass, but Thuds and Morties had a ludicrous climbing angle so they could go straight over hills impassable for anything else but a Spider.

EDIT: OTA wasn't too balanced, but there were a number of mods that changed very little of the core gameplay and mainly just buffed units that were terrible. I mostly played Uberhack myself.

Hmm.. Maybe something like making bots more difficult for tanks to target? Or maybe drastically reducing a tank's field of fire while allowing bots a shorter range but almost 360 degree field of fire? This is just me throwing down some half-assed ideas before rushing off to work, but there's definitely room for differentiation.

Actually T2 in TA was really worth it. The factories could have been a bit less expensive, but if you knew which units to use, you could really destroy an enemy rushing T2. Morties absolutely DEVESTATED T1 Blobs, and they could hide behind walls of Cans and Storms.

On the flipside, you had Fidos for ARM, which could hide behind walls of flashes.

I enjoy TA multiplayer, I still play it quite a bit. Actually, now that I think about it, I play TA MP more than I play PA.

Why would we want competitive multiplayer? Having a fun playable multiplayer is much better and is infact very much completely the opposite. For a perfect competitive multiplayer you would have to design a game similar to chess.

Oh so you think having Imbalances all over the place will make for a better game? Things like having a good solid Balance is good for everyone, casuals and people who play ranked matches.

Mike

Balance is good in general, but not if it sacrifices all the other elements that makes a good game. For ultimate balance there cannot be different factions or much imagination for units or their function. War is usually quite imbalanced affair in reality unlike sports which are very balanced and very simple in comparison.

TA was great because of all the variety there was, all the imagination and the scale of a huge war. The huge amount of options and strategies that could be used.

Balance is of course a good thing. However ultimate competitive game with perfect balance does not need (and would be better off without) factions, imagination, lore or any of that. Therefore balance should not be the only priority.

We are still talking about PA, a game without Factions but still having the potential for a wide range of unit variety right?

PA as a game makes it essentially a sport, it's not actual war in any way. And sports are fun for all skill(and/or Age) levels.

Mike

I played TA on-line for years, and more recently spring. As much as allot of people on here seams to disagree- I actually think the BA mod for spring is quite delicately balanced. There have been many versions and some have really created a very overpowered unit but these changes have all been amended.

Currently games of BA utilise a big mix of units (situation dependant) and there are allot of viable strategies. I sometimes think that people scream 'bad balance' when a particular unit is very good in a certain situation- but this makes sense to me. Large flat areas suit tanks which are fast with good health and damage. They are a no go on rougher terrain so kbots come into their own. It isn't unbalanced that kbots beat tanks on rough terrain and tanks are stronger on flat- its a good mechanic and means both get used.

T1 air could be considered over powered if you make no anti air defences but again- you have a counters in the form of static aa, mobile aa units and fighters.

To my mind a 'balanced' game is one where all units are useful, albeit not all the time. OTA had some poor balance issues regarding aa constructors (which could be stacked for mass production but land constructors couldn't) and T2 fighters being too useful (it was very easy to sniper a commander with mass hawks). The land battle elements to OTA weren't too bad although I maintain that BA is better and if you spec a few games you see a myriad of different unit mixes at different stages in the game.

One area that PA seams to lack at the moment- there doesn't seam to be much point to bots. In OTA and more so in BA, they are tuned to have much higher gradient tolerance than tanks to counter very rough terrain. The problem with PA is that you simply don't get that type of terrain on the planets. I'm hoping as development goes forward we can get more hills and rough patches to the terrain as at the moment they are predominantly smooth. An alternative would be to enable bots to cross things like craters that tanks have to go around. My point is that the 'balance' should come from differentiated rolls that promote you to use a unit in a given situation. Making bots 'equal' to tanks doesn't really help anything it just repackages the same unit.

Game and a sports game are two different things. If it would be a sports game it would make no sense to have a wide range on unit variety. That would complicate the rules and add elements that are more based on luck than skill.

You can compare this to competitive board games like Chess or Go. They are very simple and have very strict rules. On the other hand there are board games like monopoly which is not very good as a competitive sport but very fun to play. If you want you can play monopoly competitively but it is not originally designed from that point of view. It is not perfectly balanced but it is balanced enough to be interesting. And if you were to make no-compromise competitive monopoly game that would take away most of the interesting stuff away because they would be impossible to balance perfectly.

I think this is more about making so much complexity that it is impossible to find the best ultimate strategy even if it exists. But I don't think that's a good quality for a competitive game. It is a good quality for a fun and interesting game though

But every human is different and every team is different because of it, Imagine Cybran VS UEF in SupCom:FA, they have almost identical unit roles, but the exact specifics of how they achieve those differs.

PA is doing something very similar where instead of assigning things into specific factions/teams they give you all the units and let you mix and match to your content, somewhat akin to a fantasy football league maybe(I know nothing about fantasy football leagues).

Yes it's not a perfect 1:1 comparison, but it's far from a bad one.

Mike

But UEF IS better than Cybran . Not much, but by a small margin it is. So for maximum sportiness and competitiveness it would make sense to delete one of those factions to improve balance. But for a game it is much more interesting to have those two factions and their differences. The thing I am saying is that I don't think many people would be hoping a game that is designed just from the competitiveness perspective at the expense of all the other stuff which makes fun and interesting games.

It should rather be a compromise between competitiveness and fun.

Then there's the Goliath, I loved that tank and was very envious as I was almost exclusively Arm.