More T2 Unit Variety

So I recently started playing PA again after a couple months and I have noticed that even though Uber doesn't want T2 to be a straight upgrade to T1, it still is. The Leveler is a better in every way compared to the Ant. Same with the Vanguard and the Inferno, the Bumblebee and the Hornet and the Hummingbird and the Peregrine. The T2 counterparts have better stats and perform the same task, but cost more. I can understand this with a few cases, such as artillery, turrets and engineers, but I personally want to see some more variety in T2. One idea I had was included some kind of amphibious tank that can hover over water or a bot with a jetpack that can jump and glide over obstacles.

Anyone have any other ideas to spice up T2?

P.S. Yes, I do know that the game isn't finished yet, but the fact that we are rather close to launch and one of the core ideas of the game is being fulfilled worries me a bit.

TL;DR : T2 is a straight upgrade from T1 in some cases and needs some work.

The first step I think that needs to happen is the removal of the vanguard.
It's already silly amounts of strong for a T1 unit, and overall fits better as a specialized T2 unit.

Which goes into what I think step 2 should be, T1 units should be general fighters, T2 should be specialized, like the Gil-E, Sheller and gunship.

gotta typo in your post.

I am inclined to agree on this point. There are a few T2 units that feel like special unique units that supplement t1.

Good:
(Sniper bot/ Transport/ gunships/ Sheller)

Bad:
(Leveller/Vanguard/slammer/combat fabber v.2/peregrine/hornet/adv Satellite)

I could really use some cross platformer units.

like

(Amphibious tank/ all terrain bot/ Torpedo planes/orbital one shot bomber etc.)

I can use some of those in the T2 building. I don't want upgrades to my roster, but options.

Even the Leveller/Slammer had the capability to be anti-structure units (i.e. they were good at killing single hard targets, but terrible at killing multiple weaker targets)

And when the ratio of Leveller:t1 tanks was 1:6, the only reason that wasn't achieved was because Levellers have 20 more range.

I've actually never really got how the hornet is a straight upgrade.
The bumblebee is a unit capable of surgical strikes, which is useful for taking out key targets like infernos/defense structures, though it'd be nice to see it get a buff.

The hornet is more of a carpet bomber, capable of taking out large groups of structures and entire attacking armies in 1 or 2 flybys.

The Bumblebee needs to be stronger against structures and the Hornet should be good at taking out large amounts of units. Right now the Hornet can do both.

Yes, but the hornet can't take out singular structures, or rather, can't easily, since it starts dropping bombs a bit before it goes over the main target.
That's why the bumblebee is better for defenses, whereas the hornet is better for eco.

Doing T2 primarily as straight upgrades has some awkward consequences, compounded by other facets of PA's design. I think doing T2 as a Straight Upgrade tier is workable, not great but not terrible if done right that is.

Because T2 Factories are built rather than upgraded, to make it worthwhile to "switch" to T2 you need to make it powerful, but too powerful and it easily slips into players NEEDING to switch instead of it being any level of choice.

If Factories were upgraded you could go the route where T2 units are say 10-20% stronger but the factory upgrade is expensive, meaning you need to balance the of reducing your unit output for a time in order to acquire a small upgrade. It's a much more gradual thing.

I feel the problem is that right now PA is in this weird state where they're trying to mix and max and the different philosophies are conflicting. The T2 "Upgrades" are quite powerful, but they also have specialized units available only in T2 Factories, so even if the Upgrades were balanced/priced properly the fact that some unit types/roles are only available in T2 AND are balanced/priced using the upgrades as a baseline you are having teh idea that you NEED to advance to T2 in order to have all the tools.

Honestly like I said, either path is functional, but trying to mix it like this just isn't working IMO.

Mike

Make the t1 bomber a DOT Bomber (napalm) and keep the t2 bomber the same, ill explain;

At the end of the t1 bombers DOT life time would equal the same damage as a t2 bomber( they both do the same damage) armor of t1 bomber stays the same. T1 remains faster.

T2 bomber damage would be instant instead of over time, t2 armor stays the same.

Now the ant and the leveler, i think its fine just needs a balance tweek. The ant has faster- (turret turn, cycle rate, and unit speed). Just a thought though.

I have tried many times to see where the developers stand on this issue, but they always ignore it. I think they are still trying to figure out which direction they are going to take. I sincerely hope they go with their original plan, but it would take a ton of redesigning since it is really set up to be an upgrade system now.

Doesn't really count, it's an advanced structure and is kinda necessary for late-game. Both radar satellites have their uses IMO, and they don't encroach each-other's utility too much.

The bumblebee and the hornet have different mechanics as tehtrekd mentioned, and I think they both have their place because of that. Honestly, I think the surgical-strike type bomber might actually be better suited as an advanced unit than a carper bomber (obviously with different stats). I wonder how a role-reversal would do here, but I guess they work fairly well as it stands, so no real need for that.

Buffing a unit's HP and DPS and raising its cost accordingly only changes its role if the buffs are not proportional, if some other aspect like range is also changed, or if they overkill certain units, which makes them worse at fighting hordes of those unit types. These changes can definitely change the role of a unit like the slammer vs. dox, but right now that isn't happening because there's a bigger problem with how these are balanced right now.

A slammer costs 2x what a dox costs, has 5x the health, deals 7.5x the dps of a dox and has 25% more range (same vision however). In a match-up with dox of the same metal value a slammer will exchange 15% of its HP with them, assuming the dox are even within range at the same time as the slammer. With hordes of different numbers this will certainly change, but will never be even close to cost effective for the dox, and dox are pretty much the best unit there is in terms of overkill needed (2 shots = 150 dammage versus a unit with 80 hp), so obviously its downsides don't compensate for the ridiculous upsides.

Basically, I don't want T2 to be 5 times more effective than T1 for the same cost of metal. There is almost no reason to build dox after you have built a T2 bot factory, they become hilariously obsolete because they cannot perform any role nearly as well as slammers for the same cost.

I think this ties in to the whole discussion about towers being OP against T1 units as well, since towers also need to be balanced against T2. I'm not sure if towers and many T2 units need to be nerfed, or if many T1 units need to be buffed though. Probably some combination of the two.

Remember, the game isn't finished. We don't have the full unit roster.

Some of the units will be direct upgraded from the basic versions. Uber has stated this.

But other units will be specialty units. We'll see what they are.

Honestly Brian this isn't really applicable here, The units that are causing this issue are already present, and honestly I don't think adding MORE specialized units is going to fix things unless you also do a completely new balance pass on everything Advanced to not make it X number of times more powerful than Basic options.

Mike

And they have also said that they want every unit to be viable throughout at any point in the game. This literally contradicts that. Straight upgrade = unit obsolescence at some point in the game. I would be really upset if they stick with this.

If a T2 unit can perform all the same roles as a T1 unit better for the same metal cost, it makes the T1 unit redundant as soon as T2 has been reached. You can have some kind of upgraded unit with similar cost-effectiveness as long as it is worse at performing some role than the T1 analog, but right now that's definitely not the case.

*sigh*

Guess what guys.

The game isn't finished.

Units are being constantly tweaked and unit stats are a low priority for the devs. They're more concerned with getting the game to function rather than what health or rate of fire a unit has.

We just have to see.

Correct, aside from Scathis' whose job it is to balance the game. I'm pretty sure the balance between Basic and Advanced falls under that.

Mike

I think there has been an awful lot of philosophy read into a few statements.

First off the game is going to continue to change forever as we add more stuff. There is no "end game" so to speak, we see it as something that's going to constantly evolve.

Secondly the primary reason why I've always said a straight upgrade is lame is because I don't want the T1 units to become useless later in the game. That's the driver. This was mostly in response to previous games with their t1->t2->t3 upgrade path stuff that made t1 units useless. If they are useless then why have them?

Right now we are focused on having a nice mix of units for gameplay that we can spend some time polishing as we move to a 1.0 release. Any big statements of philosophy about this stuff don't have much relevance in terms of how we approach these issues on a daily basis.

The following is a writeup I had prepared as a thread but omitted posting because it is rather negative. However, maybe it does need to be said because I am concerned about what I'm seeing and I'm clearly not alone in this. Is PA 'close to launch'? I don't hope so. The game can potentially be epic like nothing ever seen before but whether that is realized depends on Uber's ambitions.

***

I realize many of the points I'm about to raise have already been addressed in various threads. This is simply to sum up my perspective.

With that said, I'm pretty concerned about the direction PA is shaping up so far. I really don't like the units, they simply aren't very interesting:

- Turrets are nuts. They are way too powerful, able to completely deny any amount of t1 ground units. Moreover, they are supremely boring - they come in a variety of exactly 1 laser, 2 lasers and 3 lasers, respectively. They feel like placeholders(?) to me. Much more interesting turrets with more personality in SupCom and TA. Ground warfare at the t1 level is effectively dead because turrets cost-effectively just slaughter anything and everything, and not in a very interesting manner.

- Not a fan of Inferno/Vanguard units - extremely clunky, hard-to-micro units that stroll up to structures and insta-pop them by just sneezing on them. Cheesy. A flamethrower unit is cool but they can't be this deadly - give them more speed or something else in return for a damage nerf so they at least have to show the firing animation for half a second before the target just drops.

- Overall, units are cookie-cutter and unoriginal. T2 units are in most cases simply straight upgrades to t1 (See: Vanguard, Leveler, Slammer, all aircraft, etc). There simply are no units that stand out as being something new, only this time the unit roster is considerably smaller compared to SupCom and TA (and no factions, argh!). Where are recognizable classics like the CORE 'The Can' and 'Sumo', or the ARM 'Annihilator' laser turret? Even in the huge SupCom arsenal of units each individual unit is more unique and recognizable - including the experimentals, units just oozing personality (PA's got nothing on the Monkeylord so far!).

Hopefully, these are all just still-in-development symptoms. However, I think these things matter a great deal and so it is disquieting to see that the framework represented by the current build is the way it is. IMO, PA currently offers massive scale but uninteresting units - that means half of the equation needed for a truly great game is missing. I really hope effort goes into creating more interesting units, and I would really like to see the return of both factions and experimentals.

***

As one example of how I think T2 could be redesigned, I made a proposal here (https://forums.uberent.com/threads/air-to-air-rebalance-proposal) including rebalancing the Peregrine as a slow, very durable air-to-air brawler - so that it would be good for late-game tasks like providing air cover for base assaults, but bad at chasing down units.

That leads into what I think would be a useful way to redesign many of the T2 units: think about which tasks are currently too hard in the lategame, and specialize T2 units for those tasks. For instance, covering long distances with ground forces is a challenge, so maybe make the Slammer trade some of its DPS for speed? The goal would be to make T2 something you want to focus on when the issues it is useful at addressing start to become a problem for your gameplan - injecting some variability into when its optimal to do a major T2 switch.