For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

While I'm personally fine with having bigger units, I think we need to reinforce the commander a little.

Perhaps not buff it directly, but add in late-game options to upgrade it, like mecha-suits, transforming servos to allow it to fly, ion engines to allow it to travel in orbit without an astraeus & maintain access to its weaponry and the uber cannon, etc.

Vanguards are a prime example. They cost a hell of a lot of metal, but can still be made en mass if your economy can support it. Out of every unit in the game, they have health comparable to that of a commander, and far more damage than one.

It just feels wrong to be tossing around units, while our commanders stay the same throughout the entire game. It also makes it a lot easier to snipe; the only things we can do to protect our commanders late-game are advanced lasers/holkins/flak/advanced torpedoes, umbrellas, anchors, and anti-nukes. Even then, SXX can kill a commander before any defensive structures get time to react, and having more nukes than your opponent completely negates the benefit of any anti-nukes they have.

Maybe it would upset the balance a bit by giving the player that's ahead a bigger snowball, but it still seems a bit silly that we're getting units that far outclass the most important unit in the game: the commander.

oh I'm sorry, I thought we were talking about a strategy game here. I didn't realize the way we all -wanted- to play is be forced to rush units. every. single. game.
I think that was his point... you would win every single time because rushing is the only way to play right now.
1 way to play does not make for a good strategy game.
this also why the only thing going for PA -right now- is the orbital layer. forced on single planet... it's meh.

this is where supcom DID have it right. if you tried to rush, but didn't do it well enough to where someone techrushing did get his experimental up, the table very rapidly turned in his favor. in this game, there is no option like that, anywhere. the most you can hope for is an asteroid smash.

No need to blow this out of proportion.

Being aggressive is how you win real wars too, its just better strategy and produces better results.

yes, my point is though it's not the -only- thing. in any long war, advancing technology was just as important. I was actually going over some of the earlier posts (I've been trying to find where uber said no megabots, as someone else stated) and to put it simply, I saw someone saying pretty much he did not want megabots, in any way, no matter what. this attitude is what is driving me crazy over megabots and shields (but not getting into that here)

it's this attitude that has been shutting down great ideas, simply because there considered something.

and to top it all off, they keep on referring back to how they 'ruined supreme commander' which, as someone who played supreme commander extensively... just goes to prove they just never learned how to actually play the game.

and then on top of THAT, some of the reasons there giving for not wanting megabots... is in PA already. 'megabots would make other units useless' what? what about t1? you could throw 1000 t1 units at someone else, but if they are already at t2, your army is going to be crushed immediately. I see it happen all the time. and experimentals did not make all other units useless in supreme commander either. you could have 100 experimentals in that game, but if I had the equivalent resources in t3 units, you would -never- win. so actually no, they did not ever make 'everything else obsolete'

sorry for vent... just watching forums the last couple days has really made me upset at just how badly misinformed people are trying to be.

--edit:
I found this in another thread, still searching for said response... but this pretty much sums up quite nicely the problem I have when people keep trying to say 'omg megabots overpowered, can't have that!'

and if you go to said thread, you will notice aside from a single response afterwards... no one even tried to argue or anything. thread just stopped there immediately. maybe because you knew I was right?

If someone simply doesn't want something, they they don't want it, no matter your reasoning.

FAF's balance dramatically changed FA's balance, and as many people are more familiar to FA's gameplay, they know what they saw and experienced it and are using it to base their opinions.

But overall, I don't want either bubble shields or experimental's in vanilla PA, and considering how people have been talking about how the game need them and that they can always be balanced, I say, that the game can just as easily be balanced without them too.

Shields don't introduce enough new strategy to be worth the problems they introduce, better if people want the strategy's to introduce different methods of including them, and experimental's didn't even make sense in SupCom, let alone in the theme of PA.

I want to command army's, not Jaegers.

And Im not going to be changing my mind on this any more, as are many members of the community, because we have already beat this topic to death, and affermed our oppinions on the matter, hashing out every argument for an against.



This hasn't been the community bashing and destroying any new suggestions, nor is this a case of the community being so badly and as you insinuate purposely misinformed.

These are our opinions on the matter now, and we are unlikely to change now, no matter how much some of the newer forum members huff and puff, call us stupid and dumb, berate us about how we are destroying this game and about how your ideas are will what will save this game.

Hell most of these supposedly new suggestions were all suggested 6 months ago, when we were asked form them initially.

actually, I never even played FAF, I mostly played the vanilla forged alliance. though it sounds like I really do need to look that up...

anyway, really, I just wanted to set the record straight that the problem with megabots was not that they would be overpowered, as people keep trying to claim. I've made my point, so I'm done.

The commander doesn't need to be able to turn into an uber unit. Lore wise he is commanding all of those units directly, so the commander is becoming more powerful, by building more powerful units as an extension of himself.

The commander is a chess piece, and he is a king, not a queen.

I told you long time ago, right on the beginning that this game needs super units. I like the idea. In my opinion super units should have not too strong armor (75 T2 units should be able to kill it in 1s, unless they have energy shield), but they should have incredibly strong firepower and be able to kill plenty of land and air units quickly and efficiently (for example 20 T2 units in 1s, from large distance). Such super units should be very good against everything (including other super units).

That sounds like a great way to destroy strategy.

Wartime strategy is not based around getting advanced technology and using that to defeat your opponent in the nick of time. It's based around using the forces you have (Army, Navy, Air Force) to complete a set mission with a minimum loss of life on both sides. That's why we use precision smart weapons and not nukes. The United States alone has the firepower to set an entire continent ablaze at will. We could have done that in Iraq or Afghanistan and our problems would have been solved easily - but we didn't. Because it's wrong. It's inhumane.

Against robots in PA, however, we have no such limitation. The real world is about units that complete a specific mission. PA is about a metric frack ton of units that complete any mission with the word "ANNIHILATE" in front of it. It's not about rushing units - it's about having a lot of them and being able to throw them around in a strategic manner. It's not about having a big unit that kills everything instantly, or steamrolls straight through defenses to the enemy comm; it's about having a blob of units that exploit the weakness in your opponent's strategy or defense.

It's not a tech race to the big bad unit that dominates. It's a foot race to kill the King. Just like in chess.
Chess is about timing your moves and attacks. PA is (partly) but should be (mostly) about timing your attacks and movements. Chess is centered around using lures, counter-lures, and hemming tactics to take down the most valuable pieces on the board. PA is also about using tactics (misdirection is very effective) to take down High Value Targets, such as energy fields, or orbital factories.

Zerging is, right now, the dominant strategy. It's easy to do, easy to be good at it, but difficult to stop effectively without zerging yourself. Many players I meet who are good at swarming the enemy early on are just awful at the rest of the game (orbital, T2 usage, expansion). This doesn't mean we need to swing to the complete opposite side of the spectrum with megabots to balance/make even.

Megabots bring back memories of the 10p FFAs I played in beta. I'd be fortunate enough to defeat all but 2-3 of my opponents, only to discover that one of these gentlemen turtled in their base all game, grabbed T2 early, and now has five nuclear launchers with loaded nukes inside. My defense was a tank army large enough to cover a significant portion of the planet. Unfortunately, tanks cannot shoot at nukes. That turtle won.

I did not like how that boded for super weapons. Yes, sometimes you need to break a turtle. SOMETIMES. If you play well, you hardly need them at all. PA was sold as a "MORE UNITS, MORE 'SPLOSIONS, MORE AWESOME" game. Megabots only fulfill one of those criteria.

That guy you replied to clearly has no sence of balance. I like to believe that people wanting a unit that powerfull as he describes is the minority in the 'pro-superunit' camp. How about a moderately powered NOT-cost efficient unit that is just big and serves a supporting role. He will give off a nice lightshow with missiles firing from it's butt and stuff, but no excessive damage. He'll be the vanguard (not refering to the unit) of your army, a bulletsponge for helping you turn the battle and break fortified positions.

More units: less on the field, but more diversity.
More 'splosions: 100 tanks will give a lot of small lights, but large lights are the things I look forward too.
More awesome: tons of tiny bots firing at this massive thing while being killed with the dozens is awesome for sure.

We already have Vanguards - who's role I disagree with - we don't need another big unit to soak up bullets.

PA is a strategic game. It is not a game about teching to the biggest units.

NO MEGABOTS.

Teching is nice, if balanced correctly. Megabots are awesome, IF balanced correctly.
Megabots shouldn't be insta-win. They would be a strategic choice, ADDING to the strategic value of the game.

I understand if you don't like super cool large robots, but balance reasons or tech racing are bad arguments as these are factors the devs should take care of when implementing the feature.

PS: I don't like the current Vanguard and think their concept is faulty.

Teching is a way to add meaningful depth and complexity to a strategy game. It keeps the game from becoming a pure spam farm. You have to balance eco as well as production. The only way strategy is added via teching is the PRECISE TIMING of an attack by a high-tech unit that your enemy was previously unaware of. And that is less strategy and moreso practice.

I totally dig the idea of having "megabots." That's one of the things I loved about Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander. The size seems just about right too in those two images. Please go through with this!

Love the idea of non-cost-effective megabots. If your economy is so much better than your opponent that you can pull off a megabot, then you've pretty much won. Megabots just accelerate the process. PA needs more game enders anyways.

There's precedence: asteroid smashing serves the same purpose.

This would be sweet, sort of like a T3 but maybe instead, the constructors set up a large scaffold type structure and begin building them. Either way cool concept, would like to see it implemented.

Adding mega units can be good start to distinguish races from each other. Since they all the same except commander model.

Legonis Machina: Some sort of big heavy slow moving tank with medium range, but powerful cannons.
The Foundation: Long range, slow firing bot with medium armor.
Synchronous: Something with a lot of AoE cannons - flamethrowers, bombs. Medium range and medium armor.
Revenant: Jack of all trades. Bot with AA, torpedoes, lasers. Maybe faster moving then other megabots, but lower damage and armor.

(all somewhat based on lore)

All should be built at special factories and be not metal-effective. But must heavily affect the game if built.

I like both the scale and the idea of a Megabot. However, it's either a game ender, or a last ditch effort to tip the scales back. I've noticed that at endgame there is a lack of options, aside from the semi anti-climatic throwing a moon into your enemy.

However, using something like this as say, some sort of thing you use as for an opening during an invasion (especially a heavily fortified planet) that cleared the way, that would be kind of cool. I'd think of it as a more combat capable commander, but instead of building power it was firepower.

I still think you should only be able to build one-per-planet so this limits to spawning a ton of these things and its not over-powered because you'll have to time it when you either build it or use it as using it will largely depend on whats going on around the planet and what the enemy army is doing, if their building one, if their rushing, ect... Always wanted this Megabot to be in the game since they first did this thread, its a real shame ppl from SupCom have ruined this idea for most people because of what happened with that series in online games. PA could quite easily fix the so called game ender but literately just limiting 1 per planet and its too big to fix through any teleporters and too heavy to pick with with an orbital unit. So you cant cheat and build one from a moon and fly or beam it over to the main planet to make tons of them. Noticed I said 1 per planet, not only build 1 and thats it, if it gets destroyed and you have the resources, you can rebuild it.

As far as lore could go, you could call it a master brain Megabot which having more then 1 on any planet confuses to their own intelligence and orders get misplaced and ms-interpreted so only 1 can ever be in your army on the planet.

People have mentioned that someone will mod bigger units into the game, but I would rather just have a simple option in the lobby settings somewhere to enable/disable the bigger units instead of having to mod the game and screw around with files to get them in the game. In my opinion the game would benefit so much from having experimental units like Megabot in the game, I feel like its a missed opportunity if their not really. Always thought in the supcom games there was never enough variations of the experimentals, I think Uber could some up with some breathe takingly awesome bigger units, just look at what they've been able to do with the commanders? awesome! and apply that to experimentals, wow! I can only imagine how awesome some of those units would look like and be.

Guy above me posted that in the end game there is a lack of options, and i agree, think this would absolutely another layer of variety in the late game scenarios....