Poll: Doxen - Direct Fire and Grenadiers.

No please. A tank is a tank and it's needed in the T1 tier. As well as a flanking/raiding unit as the Dox. T1 should be the fundamental of the Army, specialized units in T2.

T1 tanks should be tank busters. T2 tanks may be demolishers, more effective against buildings.

In fact, if T1 would be more effective against units, and T2 against static structures, we may be able to solve many issues.

Idk, my only problem with that is that the game is macro and you produce 20 or 50 or more units. So, they need to die at roughly the speed they are produced, otherwise they will start to pile up, growing in number even as they are in active combat.

A small hp buff, maybe, but they don't need to be Red Alert 3 tanks.

Also, realism sucks, but them dying fast is more realistic than reality. Because damage has always out-tech'd armor. They stopped wearing knight armor when crossbow bolts and bullets started piercing the plate you can't even walk around in. In PA, the units are canonically weak because they are produced with quantity over armor-quality and armor quality is a difficult expensive thing to achieve considering the futuristic weapons can penetrate all kinds of thick armor for a cheap cost of fire. The cheap lasers and shells, penetrate the most advanced armor at a better cost quality, so the units are instead made cheap because you can't shoot 2 at once and at the 1 unit was cheaper than the armor to keep a unit alive 3-4 shots.

I think if people have units then they won't pile up, they'll be sent to fight. You'll just be getting more bang for your buck.
Yes I agree they need to die quicker than they're produced if both sides have equal production.
I think realism is useful for immersion, but obviously needs to be limited for fun. It's about striking a balance.

Total Annihilation had more durable units and (at least in single player) units didn't tend to pile up because once you felt you had enough to do some reasonable damage, you'd send them in. You didn't have to mass an army of hundreds of bots before you could even approach a Tower.

I'm not saying PA should have the level of micro TA did, but scaling up with more durable units doesn't mean that we're going to have a load of immortal units hanging around. If anything it'll reduce unit numbers, because we'll be able to commit to attacks earlier.
It just means that a group of a dozen Doxen can survive longer than a few seconds in combat.

3-4 times the HP would ensure this. I don't see why we should have to have such short action - that's where the pretty explosions and fun lies. If we can lengthen that, why shouldn't we?

In TA units could survive walking into each others' formations, and would blast each other apart, fighting over the bodies of their fallen bot brethren. That looked and felt awesome to play.

I'm sick of seeing two blobs of units not even get close to each other. It encourages micro, darting back and forth, in and out of range to let Sniper bots do the work. It's frustrating when you can't even see what you're shooting at, or what's exploding.

I would prefer to build light infantry and archers, light cavalry and horse archers, rather than light infantry (Ants) and horse archers (Doxen)

A little bit of health more might be fine. I am just saying, this isn't like TA, but you can't quote TA on this one, TA did this micro scale and copying TA removes macro scale and mirrors micro scale instead. Otherwise TA is the way to go, but a unit costed more per whole economy, you couldn't mass produce off multiple factories, it wasn't as macro. If you have more units, and produce them faster, then you need them to die faster.

I am saying they will pile up, because if they have Red Alert 3 health, you would build 4 and they would walk to battle from the factory, before the previous units even died. You would gain more units than died even during a battle. I am not saying don't even increase their health a little, but don't make their health real big so they last longer than 4 factories pump them out.

Also, balance result: overkill type units would gain dps, since less their damage goes into overkill and more goes into securing a kill, so they would out-dps basic units more and require even more of a nerf than they need currently. Gil-e already 1 hit kill, yet with more health battles last longer against basic units but still not gil-e, and gil-e need a nerf but it will need more drastic of one if it killed things at an even faster ratio-of-time than it did.

I agree... So long as they die quicker than they can be produced and you don't end up with two static lines of units facing and firing at each other then I'm cool. Just wish combat lasted longer than it currently does... and projectiles missed... and stuff...

Tank projectiles being binary to other tanks is a pretty big balance thing. Under ideal circumstances, tanks shouldn't miss by luck too much. Shellers selectively fire real fickle atm, and that is a huge balance issue because one person's shellers being more effective than another really decides whole games. Stuart lost to Zaphod recently because his larger army of shellers all died to a smaller one, they both had vision and Zaphod's was flickering more, but his units fired in full salvos across multiple units while stuarts hesitated and fired clumpy.

The things that do miss right now, tanks to bots, artillery, ect, are very good for variety.

Kewl. I agree for things like stationary and slow moving tanks, missing shouldn't be a common factor.
Really it shouldn't be only a random luck though - it should be based on movement. If I send my Doxen scampering about, they should be able to avoid getting zapped by that great big tower.

I think it should be a command option (like where energy would be in bot commands) where bots either "direct" or "evasive" and evasive at least attempted to include micro while bots went to a point.

Difficult to program, but they should ultimately end up at their end destination but the game should simulate small frequent diagonal clicks throughout the unit's transition. I think the AI currently micros so it is feasible at least. Human micro will always be better but some people can't do it, think it's bullcrap, and/or can't do it 7 places at once. Making it a feature at least establishes it as "not bullcrap".

I think intensively managing a group of troops (as happens even now) should be possible. After all, focussing your attention on one battle may cause you to win that battle, but lose the war.

I suggest giving the dox the exact same range as a turret. Arond half the damage of the current dox and a decent aoe (for a t1 unit). Also hand it the stomper model. Then bring back the straight firing scamper (I see you smiling Zaphod )

What you're suggesting is possible, but would require a massive hit to factory (and fabricator) build rates. Otherwise, as pointed out, production speed would outpace destruction capability. Either that, or a pretty major decrease in economic power.

The removal of "Build Time" as a balance lever has had some rather major side effects, meaning that combat like the days of TA is really hard to replicate.

as far as troop health goes I kinda like the current setup, a few tanky units can take a few shots but on the whole its a what you see moment is what you get. When I see 100 tanks poring through a portal I know I'm in trouble, and it looks epic. higher health would on the whole give smaller battles and would make it harder to give planets that full feeling I currently love.

regarding the OP, I personally prefer the single grenadier it gives them a different use in wreck filled battle grounds and around trees (in that they can hit things without hitting wrecks).
Maybe a speed and aim boost for them, otherwise its a nice balance with the specialization we have been complaining about for however many months.

edit: as an after thought, I had the AI use grenadiers used quite nicely against me the other day, attacking over a hill I'd build against

Well I personally feel metal is far too available at T2. Expansion isn't a necessity mid-game, and if you do expand, you have so much metal that only something like a nuke is a large enough sink for all that Metal. Obviously expansion rightly rewards the player with economic advantages. But even a player with a dozen or so T2 Metal spots can rush out almost anything on the roster.

That said, I think units are currently sufficiently weak that a doubling or tripling of HP may not necessarily lead to a build up of troops. I mean take a Doxen ball - they die near-instantly. Drawing that out to a few more seconds may not necessarily lead to build-up, particularly when seconds can be balanced with Factory roll-off time.
I think it'd be worth Uber experimenting