Howdy, fellow backers! I have an issue with the game so far. I admittedly haven't had as much time to play it as i want, but it's something I've noticed from the games I have played vs AI and some other players. The unit and building health seems *terribly* low. Comparing to say, TA or SupComm, buildings and units seem to die after being sneezed on. I feel this affects the pacing quite a bit - units die so quickly, you have to churn out more constantly and then watch as they get 1 or 2 shot regardless. The much lauded "long" games with 40 or so players might not last quite as long as expected if the HP remains this low - units vanish disappointingly quickly. My question is - does the game need an HP boost? To extend the individual battles even slightly, make it feel like more than just taking a group of units, right clicking, forgetting about them for a few seconds and see if either your army or theirs has vanished. With bigger health pools, one could focus fire on individual units to gain the upper hand - this is admittedly more micromanagement, but at this point, in the battles, I find there is very little there and is mostly a "fire and forget" system. What say you?
Well personally I like the lower health of buildings, it makes turtling harder and more upkeep required, when facing PVP I think it's good as you have to decide how you are going to play from the start, fast hard or off planet, defense and anti nuke or Tech 2, with the AI... well just let the Dev's put in some more time for the pathing and unit building but my advice to you is try and come up with different ways to advance on land Vrs AI, like what I do is I send out a unit to a node and build 5-6 missle batteries first then the metal extractor, then I send another unit out to a different node and do the same, and always upbuilding my missile batteries for massive coverage
This thread is something you should read and post in. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/paper-units.52551/ Mike
I think of it like this. The current units we have are the cheap, massable, expendable basic combat ones. They're not terribly exciting and they die quickly. But you can get a large army of them quickly, and for not much cost. The types of units that are larger, more expensive, and have more HP that are built much less frequently and which are used in much smaller numbers have not been implemented yet.
I like where it's at. I've talked about it before, but I don't like some of the older RTS game balancing (like Command and Conquer) where tanks have lots of health. Like in C&C Red Alert (great game) where two tanks would sit there and shoot each other 5-10 times before blowing up. Or infantry units would stand there and shoot each other half a dozen times before dying. I like how units can destroy each other. It means coordination, flanking, and multi pronged attacks are the most effective way to win. It's more of a focus on strategy, rather than having the bigger/badder units – like in SupCom.
My fuzzy memories of Command and Conquer Red Alert are bitter sweet. Loved that game, but I hated taking large groups of units, moving them towards the opponent, and then they stand there shooting at each other. They stand around, and the larger/more advanced army wins. Or the army that has the unit type that counters the enemy unit. With less health, unit movement and coordination is king – not size or tech. It's more important how you use them than how many you have. It also allows for larger scale combat. In SupCom (1 – didn't play 2) it mostly mattered (in my experience) who had the higher tech. Who had the experimental unit, who had more T3 units. Not sure if I'm conveying my point properly. I guess what I'm trying to say, with increasing health, army size and tech gains more importance. With where things are at currently, coordination, movement, and unit choice are more important. It's also on a personal preference level that I prefer more fragile units. It feels more realistic/relatable that way. It never made sense to me how two foot soldiers would shoot at each other 6 times before dying. Or tanks had to shoot each other 10 times before dying. Even with modern armor, there are advanced projectiles that can blow them up with one shot. It's been that way since WWI, and hasn't changed since. So why would it change in the future?
Well units one shooting each other isn't the most fun in the world, people like to see drawn out battles with cool effects on top of all of the prior tactical and strategic planning. And i'll try to get in before bobwhatshisface jumps the gun and say that in Supcom1 and 2 teching is more important then most things due to how the whole game scaled, and that is kind of a bad thing for keeping low tier units important. What is important to state about the whole tanking thing is that combat in those early RTS games is highly abstracted, and they had no physics engine for projectiles other then hit or miss. (These things happen). Things like coordination (Like flanking do you mean?) were a lot better in the alpha against like the T2 leveller tanks where their turrets were very slow turning making proper attack approaches and thus intelligence highly important. Movement I feel is a lot more important for a projectile physics game then a hit scan one like RA1, as speed allows you to not get hit. And unit choice is up to balance, making sure the appropriate units are good enough to use over a more omni class unit that trys to do everything, so specialist over jacks of all trade. The main reason id like more durable units (Even if the resort is to have units shoot slower rather then a HP buff) is to slow the combat down so players having to manage here there and everywhere have a chance to command a battle that should be lasting more then 5 seconds and units breeze through each other.
People like to see drawn out battles, and people think two units staring at each other for a long time shooting at each other, and watching their big HP bars gradually drop, is boring. Simple solution: battles contain many units, each individual unit dies quickly. The armies take a long time to fight it out, but each individual unit does not. Reinforcements further extend an ongoing battle.
Well yes reinforcements do extend a battle, but as it stands armys just death ball up and cleanse each other within seconds! I am not a machine, I can't play like that!
The units dies very quickly at the moment, but I think the buildings are okay hp wise. I think the wreckage should have at least 5x-10x the number of hp they currently have. They just disappear the instant they arrive. By acting as a shield, that would increase the durability of other units. If that's not enough, then try to give more hp to units. But I think it's important to have the wreckage right before messing up with unit's hp.
