Reversed Tech Tier.

So i was just lurking around the forums and was reading about balance between the T1 and T2 units(T1 units should be useful in late game etc.) and i've heard that if we want to do something amazing, we should think out of the box. This is what i came up with, a wild n crazy idea! I myself have the feeling that this is just way too much obtuse therefore i warn you that don't use too much of your brain. And i even don't know that, will it help with the above mentioned issue. This idea just popped in my mind and i thought that it'll be good to have this idea going.

So this is my idea,
That how about inverting the tech tiers, meaning that we will have access to very specialized units in T1 like, snipers, anti air, fast assault bots, slow meat loafs etc, units that are suited for a single role only. And T2 will consist of more general, versatile units like armored infantry, main battle tanks etc, units that are good at more than one task but excellent at nothing except being rugged. These may be just beefed up versions of the T1 units and the T1 would be nerfed down T2.
If you want an advanced multitasking army you should move to T2, but if the situation needs precision work you'll need T1.

Seriously, this is just how our current technology works, we have very specialized machines in the beginning, only able to work in favorable conditions and we slowly "tech up" to the more versatile all rounder technology which can work in almost all conditions and if we want to do more, out of reach of this tech, we look at the T3 machines which are again specialized. See, for example, mobile phones and computers were *very* limited in usefulness in the starting we can call them T1, but now they can do almost everything, these can be called T2. But if you want even more, you resort to supercomputers which are T3 and specialized at number crunching.

If you look at the world, advanced means things which can handle more situations and can be more general purpose and earlier generations meant things that were/are single minded and you know what you can do with it, what you can't.

Thanks for reading, now i can sleep peacefully.

That would be a pretty awesome way of making sure basic and advanced are viable at all stages of the game.

Until you posted this, I was not very interested in this idea. Now it sounds great! Right now I feel like advanced units tend to be a little too expensive and overpowered compared to basic, instead of just very specialized but roughly equal.

I too think that this is a pretty awesome idea. It would definitely fix the unattractive-T1 issue! We'll see what the new units (which are hopefully coming soon ) will bring.

uhm yea sure, if only on opposite day

I think the biggest thing that would hold this back is how it would effect the early game, it could end up being very unforgiving if your unit composition isn't perfect because you might have over all fewer units and depending on how specialized the units are you could find yourself in serious trouble. In a way it kinda reminds me of StarCraft really.

This would be a very serious change that would have a domino effect across the entire game. This kind of thing should probably be reserved for mods.

Mike

I want one!
What is it?

This is a good idea but its late in the development phase for it.

The whole point of T2 is to have stuff that would break the game at T1. Unofficially they're referred to as "generic" and "specialized" unit tiers. The value of placing generic units at T1, is because generic units don't break easily. I could probably spend a few pages explaining more, but that's pretty much the jist of it.

There's no explicit reason why a specialty unit can't be T1. In fact, I've already found at least a few that would be excellent at T1. Unfortunately most other types wouldn't work well, and it's tricky because they have to be figured out on a case by case basis.

The whole point of this thread is to discuss the idea of changing that.

Keep in mind that we don't really have much in the way of advanced/specialized units. Most of the T2 stuff is bigger versions of T1 stuff.

In a sense we already have a couple of specialized T1 units. The two scout units aren't replicated in the advanced tiers. Unless you count the Advanced Radar Satellite of Omniscience +1.

But what happens when we get to 4 or 5 tiers of stuff in?
Sure, PA at release may not have a metric ton of units.

But let's say this game does really well, don't we want to plan for it to scale waaaay up?
Not to say higher Tier = higher power (or efficiency), just a bigger tech tree to play with would be really fun I think.

I personaly would like a tiersystem that for once allows me to just branch out to different directions instead of just climbing the tecktier ladder as it is in most rtsgames
I feel the same is true for this one

you already do branch out.

not realy much by now

well if they keep going in the same direction as they add units in then yea it'll branch out a bunch.

I am not sure Units are the actual problem (obvious ballancing aside)
to me its more an issue with the structures that gives me the feel of tiering up
I would like the tiersystem to have actualy no "advanced" or basic and T1/T2 at all
question Is how can you make that fit with the progession and pacing of a match

Now obviously I don't expect nor ask uber to change that since they stated they wanted to make a spiritual successor to TA so that kind of was set in stone already and I'm ok with it

honestly I can really see where this idea comes from, but I too would prefer we just stick it too the TA style.

plus I honestly believe the TA tier rabbit whole has yet to be explored and can still unveil countless playstyles and strategies.

Then don't derp around by making 4-5 tiers of stuff?

PA scaling means "MAP SIZE" and "ARMY SIZE". It does not mean 50million metal star destroyers.

Says who?
Asteroids , metalplanets .. while not buildable you still can use those as a single huge unit
So yes "UNIT SIZE" is also a part of PA