Why don't we start directly in T2?

well, to humor you, that is a point in zero k that pa needs to consider.

if you want to scale access between tiers, consider heavier costs and more limited metal. PA needs balanced like it had no tiers and one would require well established economy to build the stronger things. Right now, factory rushing is all that slows production and barely delays it, while economy allows you to build anything in moments.

besides the tech, the economy should maybe sort of limit how fast you can get something and what you opt not to build to accomplish it. That much zero k is right about. Economy and branch investment should both limit access to builds though, but at the very least economy should.

In Starcraft it's like they first designed the army, giving every unit a unique role and functionality, and only then came up with tech tiers to manage the pacing of the game and create build strategy. (tech being one of the core things you can invest in: economy, army, technology) No unit invalidated another unit in principle.

I think it worked because the scale of a Starcraft game is fixed. Your early game economy is somewhat similar to your late-game economy and the map is quite small. It's easy to create units that can fulfill meaningful roles both early and late-game. I don't know if it would work for PA where sometimes it seems like the economy grows exponentially. We should ask ourselves: if we want every unit to be useful at any given point, what sacrifices do we have to make? (curious to read opinions on this)

Worst case scenario, either a third resource. or simple having all units in tier 1.

I dont see how it could be balanced otherwise. unless they make energy spots as well. that means you really cant just turtle and build stuff fast. Having spots for windmills, for water generators, for geo thermal power.

Problem is also how you can build stuff so much faster by setting more workers. Its not uncommen in RTS games to only have 1 worker being able to build stuff, because again its insanely hard to balance. At least there might wanna be a cap, so you cant just throw 100 workers something.

Maybe having Commander the only unit that can assist buildings. So then you have to make a choice as well, as to what buildings you wanna build faster.

Its just that PA seems to break all the rules you normally use for balancing a game.
Infinite resources & they come in instantly, no mining with workers in any shape or form.
Non mirrored maps & random maps.
As many workers assisting construction as you please.
Infinite units, no unit supply or cap.

There is probably even more im just not thinking off right now.
Its not a wonder its hard to balance, it might not even be possible.

Just take one of these things and change it in a custom game in Starcraft 2 and it breaks the entire balance of the game completely.

A lot of that is untrue, and I'm going to venture and say that it's due to lack of experience in the game.

but the fact of the matter is there was never a point in FA where swarms of t1 were invalidated. you just needed the right numbers. and to take out a commander they were always the fastest way.

I can't agree with your invalidation of the skill it takes to know when to tech, being good at memory tricks and micro now that I can see as uninteresting, but being good at strategical macro choices... isn't that what were here to respect in the first place?

This is a TA/FA successor, not some Starcraft Rip-off.

On a 40km map, it was impossible to get T1 units to the enemy before they had a dozen shields up and an equally numerous blob of T2/T3 units (which would slaughter your T1 blob).

On small maps, the opposite was often true. If you tried to tech-up, you'd be facing a blob of T1 units that could pummel your factories and commander with impunity.

Yea! T2 and T3 defenses (especially shields and walled in turrets) were complete pushovers with T1 units and a Commander's overdrive didn't cut swaths of them down in single-shots. I remember it all so clearly now that you told me the complete opposite of what actually happened.

...

Heyyy... hang on a minute!

Even if it were possible to concede that T2 Eco is a choice rather than a timed mandate (which it isn't), what pray tell, is exciting about choosing to ignore a clearly superior unit set and Eco advantage?

At least FA had it somewhat right in that teching would put you at a significant disadvantage for a short period of time... something PA completely fails at.

Edit: Bullet, you ninja you!

it's true that is does depends. And while I play mostly 20x20 maps you guys really aren't getting in the right mindset when it comes to numbers. the only time I would have serious issues getting past defenses with t1 was when faced with a t3 defense turret. (hehehe, UEF, mi corazón). but even then there was a way of outnumbering them if you went really all-out crazy. and again drops were your friend and you could really move the equivalent of PA's stargate with drops.

It's all a question of experience, I'm currently having fun playing front on setons, which means i specialize in base breakers, and let me tell you the com is a sucker for t1. especially since they're the units that make blocking him off from the water so easy.

as for the shields and walls, they require micro. Walls are indeed very strong, but people neglect them, but if they don't i micro my units to shoot them (often using stationary arty) and as for shields, they are incredibly easy, as loong as you know their weak spot : never stopping your units and microing them underneath and fingering at the generator directly.

trust me I'm not making this up. alot of people assume alot about the gameplay of FA. Well... that's because they don't know it.

and there's a whole lot to it...

obviously it can't be summed up to a single map or situation, it varies tremendously.
but "t1 is invalidated by t2 in FA" and "coms could fatten waves of t1" does remain utterly false.

just careful with the generalizations there, I'm touchy, you'll have to be extremely specific.

If you're single file-ing the units and giving the opposing com 200 kills (happened to me very recently), its your own darn bad.

Which could never land because T2 flak (mobile or stationary) would decimate an entire fleet of t1 dropships.

I don't think you are in the right mindset when it comes to numbers.

I can have lots of T1 units. But in the time it takes me to build them, you can have lots T2 units.

If I scout you, and see your T2 units, I'll stop and build MOAR T1 units. But of course, that takes time, and during that time, you've built more T2 units.

What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.

How will it be restrictive? It's lowering the opportunity cost of the T1 rush strategy. We've had a build for ages now where there was no unit based rush strategy. This build is adding it back into the game.

I'm interested to see whether it invalidates teching as a grand plan. I hypothesise that it won't, because you'll be able to cost effectively defend with "some unit". I'm not even thinking about building defensive structures.

If teching is invalidated, then the game would need to be rebalanced a little.

I think I've come around to the idea that that is better done with mobile units than static-d. Static D should be supplementing, not replacing, mobile units.

Hey friend.

Just seeing a misconception about the economy there.

It is't true to say that PA has infinite resources. Time is a finite resource, so the rate of metal income with respect to time, and the rate of energy income with respect to time, are both finite as well.

Check out this invalid bug: http://pa.lennardf1989.com/Tracker/...1&opened=stormingkiwi&order=history&sort=desc

The way the economy in PA works, you gain a certain amount of metal per second, and you can immediately spend a proportion of that metal you've just earned on something.

In that bug for example, and if you were to set the human commander to 0 income per second, you could build 1000 metal worth of stuff/12000 energy worth of stuff, and then you can't spend any more.

That's the way the economy in PA works.If you were to have 0 metal income, you would only be able to build stuff to the cost of whatever you had in storage.

The way other strategy games work, you gain a given amount of money per day, you put it away in a piggy bank, and one day you break it open to buy some fancy stuff.

In PA, you gain a given amount of money per day, and you immediately put a proportion of it towards some fancy stuff. You put whatever remains in your piggybank.

So in that bug, what happens is you have zero energy income, so you can only spend 20,000 worth of energy. It represents that the economy is definitely not infinite.

A streaming economy is a smarter way to display an economy.

a) It's the way most households work (you earn so much a day, you put money towards the stuff you want, then you put money in savings) as opposed to (earning so much a day, placing money in savings, then putting money towards the stuff you want)
b) There's no point having money in the bank in a strategy game. You save up for expensive projects, but everything you aren't saving should be being put back into developing and protecting your economy.
c) It means you can constantly be allocating resources towards stuff you need and building projects in little chunks, rather than saving up and spending a huge amount at once.



"No mining with workers in any shape or form" - your workers in StarCraft can be mathematically modelled as the derivative of (whatever resource they obtain) with respect to time. Essentially, the are the same system as that in PA, just expressed in a different way.

Sins of a Solar Empire does exactly the same thing. You build metal extractors and crystal extractors on asteroids, they give you fixed income per second. Then you have trade ports, that give you so much credit income per second. The mex and cex do not need ships to operate, but tradeports have ships that fly between them. If you attack the tradeships, it decreases your opponents income.

Sins gives you a way of producing every resource without a logistics chain. And there is also a way to increase the resources gained by using structures. The logistics of this increased income can be attacked to decrease it.

Hope this cleared up things for you a little

This might also explain the ridiculous average unit hitpoints which we currently have.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case - considering the current game performance I'm starting to doubt if PA will ever be able to achieve the promised "massive battles".

What happens if I assist my T2 Power Gens? Gotta try that out later this evening.

Edit: Stupid. Of course Power Gens do not build anything, so that won't work :-/

Let's hypothesize a game of PA where there isn't t2 econ, fabber or unit upgrades. You'd start with a commander that could build all the structures except for advanced factories. Getting better economy would mean you would have to capture more land and build more current t1 generators or solar panels.

Advanced factory would still require current t1 fabbers of the same type to build, but the factories would be around the same price as basic factories and only contain units with specific roles, such as mobile radar, different kinds of bombers, dropships, artillery etc.

More effective units, such as very high range artillery tanks or structures, would still cost a lot, which would mean that using them would still require you to have a strong economy aka more land. If you lost that land, you could no longer sustain these high cost units. Heck you could even start building the nuke with your commander at start, but good luck finishing that in time without a strong economy.

This way the game would escalate from small skirmishes to massive battles of hundreds of units to secure the few last remaining metal spots to get the much needed economy edge over your opponent. This would not diminish the purpose of good strategies, as skillful drops, raids and diversions could decide the outcome of even the whole war.

TL;DR: When to upgrade from t1 to t2 should not be the deciding factor of PA. If you want me to call t2 "advanced" then why do you keep pulling it more towards the strict upgrade/tiered model?

Dat 360p

it's 1080p .. give it time ..And water. Don't expect much though, I recorded it with OBS, didn't have the patience for a high quality upload to youtube, not with the terrible internet I've been getting lately.

What if we doubled the production speed and halved the price of T1 units?

Again?

I suppose that the main issue would still stand. T1 and T2 compete for the same role, so or are they equally balanced, granting little gain in having T2 tanks instead of T1 tanks (for example). Or one tier has to be more cost efficient than the other, therefore invalidating it.

I have some difficulties in understanding why T2 isn't a specialized tier as it was originally supposed to be so by design.

What a waste of time; you're not even trying to have the sides have equal Mass investiture or control.