For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

Mavor said it at 9:12. He said they will end up with some big units eventually when they have time and manpower for them.

I would like Sumo or Can like unit. Slow and though with slow firing laser of doom. It could be countered with lots of t1 units or air.

Exactly, a unit with the capability as some people are suggesting are clearly not backed up with enough vulnerability's and weaknesses to ever make it a balanced unit.

Ta's Sumo is a great example.

We have to keep in mind the difference between "large units" and "SuperMegaExperimetnals". A unit that does something reasonable without overlap on other units and needs to be large to do what it does is not the same thing as a bot or Tank thats just a bigger Leveler of Slammer.

Mike

I agree. There is a difference. Unit roster is quite rounded already and overlaps are hard to avoid. To my mind closest overlap would be Vanquard. But "Sumo" would have larger range and much slower instagib weapon. It would excel at siege and meatshield situations. To my mind Vanquard and inferno are/should be more like assault and crowdcontroll units.

I was going to suggest that the unit would have an anti nuke launcher on its back. We need mobile anti nukes to move late game armies or crack heavily defended planet when we cannot smash asteroid to it. But anti nuke on though unit could be too hard to take out when supported.

Brain tends to talk as if he wields some authority. Like Mavor said, take everything you hear from a non-dev with a huge grain of road salt. I, for 1, welcome the coming age of game enders and I do not discriminate. It's the name of the game after all...

One thought.

If the main goal of the actual experimental re-balance is to reduce the amount of units in play at a given moment, given the surplus of resources players have at some point in the game, perhaps a more fun way to avoid the drop in performance would be to finally introduce some kind of super units. Not necessarily able to inflict damage, but expensive enough to intake into the eco.

Or, you know, not add game breaking units and just make bigger types of standard units.

i generally have two rough suggestions for big units both generaly requiring loads of energy to even get there weapon used
one being a midrange monkeylordtypeunit with a big laser the other being a sort of vanguard-ish shortrange combatreclamationbot ... i think i brought this two up somewhere else before just forgot where

I think having a simple homage to the Krogoth would be sufficient enough, perhaps giving him the option to slowly launch from the ground with massive thruster feet to go from one planet to another with a astreus travel time (or a little slower) would be pretty cool. be a good way to break into fortress worlds instead of planet smashing (either way is cool)

Yes, yes and yes. Oh one more thing, YEES! Oh i think i forgot, YEESS!!!!
It`s over 1 year ago but whatever, YEESS! <3

I think I've posted something like this before on another thing on this topic but its worth reiterating if for no other reason than to allow me to clarify my thoughts.

As far as I understand it, megabots; being Krogoth/monkeylord etc are considered not that great overall, particularly when the game is about planet smashing. Also T3 is replaced by orbital, rather going for a tank with 3 guns instead of 2 or 1, we have a completely different layer and dynamic of technology. Halleys may need making more expensive, but they might require it anyway when it gets to playing with a solar system rather than 3-4 planets.

For starters, I think to impliment them correctly, they need to be cheaper than a set of halleys, but more expensive than 2 nukes given the current damage and aoe of nukes. Also, keeping in mind the clear adversity against making other units redundant. Id much rather something like the krogoth or monkeylord. Short-med range land army-in-1. Being able to target many land units, but no aa and no torpedos. Thisll give some measure of relying on more than just one unit and only 1 unit. I'd like to say orbital and planet smashing replaces megabots: but big radious 2000+ maps; and theres no getting around computer costs managing 500,000,000 doxes vs 100 krogoths.

The other thing that has already probably been said is to make the megabot so damn powerful and do whatever you want. But make it an upgrade or suit or something for commander. So that you can only ever have 1 megabot in your army. And he cant leave the planet without abandoning it, wont transport and wont fit in teleport.

If anyones seen a mech warrior type animation, or somthing similar to sup com commander. Where you have the body, arms and then the pilot gets in at the bottom and sits in a cockpit that lifts up, or like iron man where everything is built and then you walk the commander into the factory and comes out bigger and badass war machine. Im picturing that.

Yeah we've discussed that as well over here;

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/super-units-as-exo-suit.44581/

Involving the commander like that brings in a whole new slew of issues that need to be dealt with.

Mike

Thanks KNight, I knew I'd seen it before. But I'm not sure what you mean by slew of issues.
The only scary thing I can think of is that your commander becomes a target by everyone you're fighting.
Almost as if to say, he wasn't a target before he got super suited, or perhaps being on the front line with the army makes him more vulnerable at home with his factories and resource generation buildings around him?

If you're referring to game engine issues with animation, I could understand, except I can't think of them as being hugely complex beyond the initial "insert commander into super-suit". The engine easily allows for things "in front" to get hurt before things "behind". I'm looking at the metal extractor with advanced metal extractor (very neat and clever piece of thinking, and a solution to all the problems I had in sup com with the metal generation and income upgrading).

I could list off everything I think of, but since I have already answered to those issues I'd come off as pretentious.
What kind of issues are you seeing with using the commander as the only megabot?

Matt

Okay so I haven't fully read through all 48 pages, or whatever its at right now. But to comment on the Original Post, I have to say that the unit looks a bit too large in my opinion, compared to all the other land units, but looks like the right scale compared to the naval units.

I say if its possible to bring the land unit size up just a tad bit more, or if possible bring the Mega Unit's size down a tad, along with the naval it would look perfect.

I do like the idea of having it as an exo-suit for the commander, but also like it as just a mega-bot, that can be built at a bot fac. The purpose for the unit could be a "tank". it could tank a lot of damage, and would be able to dish out a lot of damage, but only to a small number of units. It can only engage 10 or so units at a time. And that means 10 air, or 10 land, or 10 naval, or a mix of all of them. That way it wouldn't be too over powered where if you zergged a lot of t1 units at it, it could possibly go down if you mix land and air or air and naval.

Another idea would be that it costs to use this thing. You have to pay energy for its energy weapons because they are so massive. or pay metal for the actual shells it uses or rockets. Or you could have it so that its like a mechwarrior where it has a heat threshold and it if surpasses that threshold it would shutdown for a minute, unless you had maybe battle engineers on it or something. That way its only for strategic purposes.

The only thing i hate about large units is when they become game enders. It's not that fun to see one mega huge unit stomping through a huge base with tons of units only to go straight for the commander and take it out, what i would rather see is 1 or 2 large *** units, with the army behind it/them as they tank damage. and the smaller units come in and start to wipe everything out. Thats when it looks and gets exciting.

Hi NEDMInsane, I'd have to say I like your idea on making units cost resources. Although I've always liked that idea, somehow it never seemed to come up anywhere I looked. The commanders' ubercannon is the only thing I noted which consumed energy to use. I'd like to see the buzzsaw/vulcan cannon back, but that's for a different post.

However to challenge you, and to put off other people constantly repeating the same thing: The goal as I understood it is to prevent the megabot being the next thing that we spam. So we don't want to get to the stage where everyone's just racing to build "megabot x" till they win, because "megabot x" can attack land sea air, can survive nukes, and can take on an army by itself and there's no need or reason to build anything else ever once you can build them.
If noone decides to correct me, then I'll assume I've summarised the problem; with megabots, the next big megabot, to be superceded by the next next big megabot after people start modding them in, and then the next next next big megabot. Till you have mobile antinuke megabots that can travel between planets and can self replicate and generate their own resources and this and that and I'm giving myself a headache imagining how epic and stupid it gets very quickly, and it all starts with "it can do..."

Sorry, I rant. I'll edit or delete the post if mods don't like it, or they can do it themselves. I'm going back to fun uni work that I wasn't avoiding doing at all.

no see the way you could balance it, would be to make it a tanking role. it can take direct fire for quite a while, but can only attack one thing at a time. So if you swarm it with like an army of t1 and t2, and its alone, good bye. But if you have it be like the tip of the iceberg and soak of damage for other units you could have it lead the charge and have your armies behind it. kinda like a mobile wall with a turret that is slower firing, cost resources to use, and is not all to great alone.

It would also be nice to see like a cooldown or something for it? That way you dont get swarms of mega bots? I dont know how you would be able to do that, besides maybe make it cost a good bit. It could also depend on the persons eco. because if it does use resources to stay powered up or to reload, then you would only beable to have 1 or 2 before your eco is nonexistent. or to the point where they cannot power back up.

counter with T2 air Nukes, Missiles, Artillery, and Planet Smashing

Or that. lol

What about if the megabots behaved EXACTLY as they did in Metal Fatigue?

I like superunits, but pls don't make them bipedal robots. I'd rather see walkers with 4-6 legs, adding tank tracks or even hoovering superunits. I'd be cool if you could launch one to another planet somehow.
(just another random idea, make them T3 to their respective classes, building a factory only capable of building that unit, capping the total amount of superunits to 1, but you can choose between vehicule, air and bot (and even orbital?).)

PS: I haven't read all 839 posts so forgive me if these ideas already exist just giving my opinion on the matter here