Modular Units

Hi guys!

I just played the last days a little Warzone 2100 and Earth 2160 and I suddenly got an idea for PA.

I know we will get a lot of units, but what if we could make our own units!

Example:

Each unit consists of 3 modules (inspired by those games above)

1# Armor
Light armor - high speed with weak protection
Medium armor- balance between speed and protection
Heavy armor - low speed with high protection

2# Movement
Now lets choose our movement type those would be for example wheels, tracks, walker, ship, VTOL etc.

3# Weapon
Now after that, we choose our weapon. We can have a lot of diversity here.

If you don't understand what I am meaning look for the game Warzone 2100. I think that this could make the game even better. Most RTS nowadys don't have features like those old gems. It would be a nice unique feature to provide this in PA. Also I suggest Uber to look at the sensor system of Warzone 2100 - those are totally great! You can assign aircraft/artillery to sensors - those will guide the units. Also the commander system is very cool - in combination with the advanced unit behaivor settings for such an old game.

Warzone 2100 example


Earth 2160


What do you guys think about this idea?

Why not? At least I would like to hear your opinion instead a gif :/

He he sorry, this kind of RTS would not really benifit form this kind of system, as any RTS that does has to be built ground up to support the idea of it.


Games like supcom, TA and PA are all about putting factory's on repeat and mobilising large groups of cannon fodder units to engage in an all out brawl of attrition, there are tools for every job, leading to huge unit lists of specialists that require the players to create the right amounts of the right units, unit composition.

Games like warzone, while big in scale really include more micromanagement of unit designs and templates to build the right tool for the situation and job, giving player the flexibility to change the stats of their units on the fly to fit the situation and the relative technology that are at in the game.

PA starts with a full tech tree unlocked, Warzone has players custom design units to the players strengths.

So a tool belt (PA) vs a omni-tool (Warzone).

Hmm yeah I thought about the techtree problem in PA too - as in Warzone you would need about 3h+ to research all tech xD and in PA you just build the needed factories.

Maybe it's just me who really is missing this kind of feature in a modern RTS at least I have my lovely Warzone and Earth series

Well all it takes is a Indie developer to prove that it can make money to get all the AAA company's doing the same.

Yeah lets hope PA gives a big message. RTS is still not dead. To be honest I am quite happy that EA cancelled F2P C&C because it was a real mess - hopefully they do now a proper C&C Generals 2 like intended and not this F2P crap -_-

Well you got asteroids. They are basically modular superunits.

I think that a game with a flexible modular units system will end up with only a handful of best units. Most module combinations will turn out to not be useful. So we will probably end up with less unique, well balanced, units and balancing the units will be harder because instead of directly changing the units they will have to change the modules which result in these best units.

Basically, if you try to balance a modular units system just by balancing the modules then you're effectively assuming that there is a reasonably simple formula which takes in the attributes of a unit and spits out how much it should cost in order for it to be balanced. If there is such a formula for your range of parameters then the units are probably not differentiated enough to be interesting. For interesting units I think it is clear that there is no easy way to tell if they are balanced. By 'interesting' I mean that the unit set contains extreme parameters, some units may be extremely fast, some may have effectively no health or be very tanky, there could be long ranged units or units with basically melee range.

There are a lot of non-linear threasholds in unit balance. If unit A is slightly faster and has slightly more range than unit B then it doesn't really matter how much health or damage unit A has because it will always be able to kite unit B. There is a big difference between 1-shotting and 2-shotting a unit. Slow projectiles and maneuverability have quite a complex relationship.

Keen as I am for games like this, it's been suggested before multiple times.

Modular units is outside the scope of this game. It's something you decide to include and design around from the beginning or not at all, because it requires the development of many extra systems to support such a unit type. You really have to have all of the units be modular or none of them (which I believe is mostly the case for the games you listed).

Nice idea.

OP, get in touch with @MushrooMars - I believe this is a mod he is interested in making.

I recall having a very long discussion with him about modular units some time back, and the Earth and Warzone examples were precisely what we chatted about.

If we could get this work as a mod - that would be awesome

I agree that this would be a fun MOD to play with. I was actually considering this kind of system for that spore mod idea I posted a while back.(btw I pretty much scratched it in a way but still would love to at least make a mod similar in some ways. I just need help in the form of coders and others to make it a reality.)

Mod material.

Actually, I was considering making a mod for this kind of idea.

Basically, t1 units have 1 spot for a modular, and t2 units have 2 spots for modulars, and there would be higher damage single shot weapons, low damage rapid fire weapons, different kinds of damage soaking armor, different area effects and such.

Alas, so far I have Viaknar's problem.

Overall, I give you a brofist for good taste in ideas.

The issue is that while it says "You can create custom units", in reality you create units which make sense.

I come from Earth 2150, not Earth 2160.

I found you didn't really create custom units. You just throw all your weapon types onto the first chassis, then all your weapon types onto the second chassis, etc.

Earth 2150 was a lot simpler - you just had chassis and weapon. You upgraded the chassis as a tech upgrade. Chassis had an associated cost, weapon had a cost.

I would like it for the customisation options - e.g. you make Doxes appear to fire rockets or grenades instead of balls of fire, etc..

I do feel that the way they are currently going about developing PA is pretty much spot on, and so I wouldn't really like such a feature other than for personal customisation.

I think this would be pretty kool, its something I've been pushing for RTS's for some time now but it doesn't really bother me if it doesn't though, and I dont think PA will ever have modular units, its just not really built for that sort of unit system.

Long-time Earth 2150 player here too - I'm not sure what you mean exactly by 'not creating custom units'. There were certainly a few builds that were much more common than others, particularly early-game, but there were vehicles, for example the ED Ural, where you could put anything from two ballistic missile launchers, to those massive laser-arrays you could get late game, some cannons, whatever. The late-game unit variety was fantastic.