POWER UPS !

Ah so. Thanks for the explanation. You've been very helpful.
I'll continue to play, and continue to wish there were power ups.
>:^)

He is suggesting a buff structure or something.

And tell me, what does a scout or radar coverage do to a unit when coupled together? Buff it.

In that reguard, more in the way of that is a good idea.

Structures that provide a universal buff? Probably getting a little carried away. Units that help one another out, or units that have a short team buff, are alright by me.

PA is all about large scale gameplay and "macro" – not "micro."

Adding upgrades and/or veterancy increases micro, which isn't the purpose of PA.

The reasons why armies aren't diverse has absolutely nothing to do with upgrades or level ups. It's entirely due to balance not being complete. Right now there are certain units (Gunships, Vanguards, Gil-es for example) that aren't properly balance, and thus, over powered. It would be stupid not to use them.

The fix to the lack of diversity is to fix the unit balance, which Uber is working on, not to add an unneeded mechanic.

As was mentioned, check out the FAQ and Confirmed Features list.

Wait, did you hear me? I think he was mentioning buff structures, not veterancy.

Like, by powerups, he probably mean a unit, that makes units all around that unit shoot farther than normal, or something. If there was something like that, and was a lengthy unit to build even with a factory, then I wouldn't mind it all the time. It also would be a shame if sniped by gil-e and then just trample the army. So it is a balanceable idea, and functional, as long as it doesn't go crazy with it.

We probably WONT see it until mods. Just clarifying he wasn't discussing unit earned veterancy or even individual unit upgrade, but a unit buff caused by an effect applied from another unit, kind of like how scouts let units shoot farther (because unit range exceeds vision), or like how combat fabbers allow healing of units around it (duh).

I didn't read your post, so no, I didn't "hear" you. :-/

He said:

To me it seems like he's talking about buildings where you research something and your units get better.

Maybe he's talking about both.

But I think he's definitely talking about a research building to improve your units.

that is the way it is implemented in most games, yes. But it isn't the only way to do it


We all know that Neutrino actually said "no menu based research tree". We currently have a research tree in PA.

Commander - Basic Factories - Fabbers - Advanced Factories - Advanced Fabricators.

It's rather lacking in depth. Whichever path you take gets you to the same destination in terms of structures available.

no upgrades, no veterancy, no powerups .... thank you

You've already got the scout, the sunfish, the vanguard, and the fighter, who can all "upgrade" units by performing recon.

I'd be down for units that provide other kinds of buffs to surrounding friendlys.

We have had mobile shield units, and engineers are mobile regenerators.

So what about units that buff other stats? Like units that make surrounding friendlys use different kinds of ammo (Ice, fire, acid, electric) and can modify how player plan their assaults with these like.....field command units?

Could have ones that do really string things, like ones that allow energy weapon units to burst fire, but with decreased accuracy.


T2 could have a nice list of really really weird support units that might make combat even more insane!

How about a units that also debuff enemy units? Like a unit that cancels out nearby enemy's vision and radar, requiring a longer ranged spotter to be fraught?

So many possibility's!

Ideas I've seen done are:

Health regeneration
Damage mitigation
Weapon damage boosting
Weapon accuracy boosting
Weapon refire rate boosting
Weapon range boosting
Movement penalties (against hostile units)
"Defence" penalties (against hostile units)
Targeting penalties (against hostile units)
Fire-rate penalties, special ability cooldown penalties (against hostile units)
Disabling/Stunning (against hostile units)


These are virtually just ideas for secondary effects that various weapons can have. Pretty good system to think about, as it is pretty simple and adds depth to stuff.

It's already partially implemented as well, we have engineers for health regeneration, and recon for range bonuses.

Obviously some ideas would work better than others.

I feel that the effects should be passive or really obvious (active weapon effects). I.e. not necessarily cast due to micro, but actively cast.

Health regen from fabbers can be taken away (by killing the fabbers).

Range bonuses can be taken away too (by killing the recon).

Straight upgrades can't be taken away. There's depth in the ability to counter/remove things your opponents have. That's the big difference.

Ya true.

So as long as it's not universal, but adjacency (without stacking), it's ok.

Referring to the OP, we have fabbers to increase build speed in proximity to a factory. Which are very counterable.

well, if it were a buff unit or structure, it could be destroyed with that structure or unit.

I had a idea for an orbital unit that provided what I believe is called ets to allies directly below it, basically increasing real range of units. They still fire out of vision so to use it you need vision like normal too. This would at least continue to make tank trampling dangerous and increase orbital attack importance to keep enemies from having these.

if they took away the vanguards weapon for this, id be entirely okay with that.

The thing about power ups is that you don't know witch what exacly you are dealing when engaging the enemy.
SupCom 2 had a tech tree enhancing units and I didn't like it at all.

visual queues fix that. Beside, those were inheirent upgrades all units got without any form of utility. I mean, if you could make units do more damage at the cost of 80 metal a second, of course it would be abused and stupid.

They didn't fix anything, or rather, they fix something that should have worked to begin with. I'm still amazed that SupCom2 never officially got those visual queues because the ability to know what your dealing with and plan/play accordingly is so important, not just from a balance perspective but also from a player perspective. It's always really annoying as a player to be blindsided like that, sure sometimes it can be used effectively as a narrative(in terms of story and/or gameplay) tool but to make what is essentially "blind luck" a large part of the gameplay like that is just really bad game design.

Mike

it really is disturbing when two identical looking armies clash, you think yours looks a bit bigger, then their army smashes yours with no losses. Like how in hell does that happen? That's the shortcoming of that, not the only flaw in that mess of a game either.