The size of an army is too correlated with destruction power.

He was speaking perfectly fine. Come on, this is basic maths.

To put it in terms that maybe you can understand:
A group of units together constitutes an army. Any army has a certain value of combat power.

Let us say 1 sheller = 5 units of combat power. How much combat power do you think 2 shellers have? 10? Wrong.

2 shellers have greater than 10 combat power units. The second sheller adds more value to the army than the first sheller, and this goes on and on and on for each additional sheller you add.

So what happens when we add the 100th sheller? The combat power and deadliness of such a large army is magnitudes greater than just 100 shellers individually placed all over the map. This means that the more shellers players have grouped up in an army, the faster the pace of the battle becomes.

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Even so, I don't think OP's issue is too relevant. If you got beaten by lots of units, then maybe you should build lots of units yourself. Learn new build orders, learn to harass, learn to defend, learn to be efficient. Become a better player than your opponent. The new build has only been out for roughly a month - hardly any time for the metagame to stabilise in this community.

okay. i think i get it now. but thats a sheller you're talking about. whose role is to destroy many units at a time (bots especially) a standard run-of-the-mill unit (tank, dox, etc.) who does NOT have AoE/splash/carpet bomb is quite linear by comparison.

Actually it's the same for nearly everything else to varying degrees.

For example, 3 tanks in a group is way more powerful than 2 tanks in a group. Why? Because it takes 3 shots to one shot another tank. You would think 3 tanks vs 2 tanks would only leave you with 1 tank left, but no you're left with 2.

That's 200% combat efficiency for only 33% more material on the field

Three tanks in a group is more powerful than three tanks spread apart.

The actual issue is:
The same numbers are not only valid when talking 3 tanks vs 2 tanks, but also when talking 30 tanks vs 20 tanks or 300 vs 200 tanks.
In all 3 cases, after the first shot(!) half of the smaller army is instantly gone, and with the second shot the other half is gone too while the first army still only suffered 1/3 in losses.

2 shots are only a few seconds, no matter the size of the army.

Well, actually this does not work for arbitrary numbers. After reaching several thousand units, you eventually reach the point where the units in the back row are simply out of range, and at that point encounters finally last longer!

Well the most used counter to people wanting shields is that they would not add anything to the game, so its only natural that in shield threads tactics are being discussed.

Arguments like this can easily be turned around and I feel that telling people that they want something different than what they just stated they want will lead us anywhere any time soon. What we should do is identify the problem, see if it actually is a problem and then look at all possible solutions with all their up and downsides.

Since I am mostly pro shield allow me to argue how shields would behave if they were intended to fix the problem of bigger armys getting exponentially stronger.

A shield would give the side that has deployed a shield an indirect damage buff, since the units will stay at 100% firepower until the shield is broken. This would then mean that in theory a smaller army could defeat a bigger army. It would however just as well mean that a bigger army can defeat a smaller army even faster, and with even less losses than before.

My conclusion would be that shields are, as Devak already pointed out, not the solution we are looking for here. They would actually make the situation worse I feel.

What should be done is to simply not allow units to shoot through each other. Range would not matter all that much then since when a unit is in front of the unit trying to fire it simply cant because the shot would be blocked.

Precisely. This also allows for entirely new unit roles, e.g. short range grenadiers. Not for creeping defenses from the far, but for fire support from the back row. And yet limited damage stacking capabilities by short range only so they are only of use in proper formations.

okay. a few thing.

1 - i do approve of units not being able to fire through eachother. that makes logical sense, and would go a ways to fix the apparent problem we see here. however;

2 - in the case of the 300 vs 200, of course the 300 will take fewer losses, it has more firepower, and can kill the 200 faster than the other way around. 300 men shooting at 200 targets, some of them are going to be double-teaming.

not sure if people are wanting to go this way or not buuuuut:
the way I usually see games trying to fix this issue of 'whoever has the most army wins' is:
superweapons (not necesarily nukes and asteroids... just anything designed to be very big and very nasty when done)
static defenses (turrets, shields, walls, anything that trades mobility for much more combat effectiveness)
artillery (high damage, very inaccurate. so vs small forces it's next to useless, but against blobs it can't miss)
special abilities (like having a unit that can do some damage then run away without getting killed)

like I said, this is just my observation in general from games that try to fix this issue.
but defenitely agree. 'whoever has the biggest army wins' while usually true... doesn't exactly make for an interesting game. that being said, there are things to help with this already. nukes. asteroids. SSX platforms and anchors. just to name a few.

--edit: just to be clear, not saying this makes blobs obsolote. a bigger blob of army units is always going to be harder to defeat the bigger it is, as it should be. this is just ways that gives the defending player a -chance- however small, to make a comeback.

Or, differently put: Decelerate combat.

If you look at historic battles: Thats not exactly how it works. Open field encounters used to cause significant losses on both sides and also tended to prolong battles. Throwing 300 infantry units into an open battle would have been madness, even more so with larger numbers. You remember a guy called Pyrrhus?

In all cases where one side took significantly less losses (only counting historical battles BEFORE it became a tech race!), this was not achieved by throwing huge armies into an open field battle, but by using either advantages in terrain or by basic flanking.

Because flanking is what enables you to play the "strength in numbers" card when your own units would have hindered each other. It's the only legit way to gain a non-linear benefit over your enemy as it is his very own fault for not using proper formations or avoiding beneficial landmarks like bottlenecks. (Taking position at the exit of such bottleneck basically guarantees benefits from flanking.)



Realistic modern warfare isn't the inspiration for TA style games. Modern warfare is a pure tech/intelligence race where numbers mean almost nothing.

But that isn't the declared goal for PA. The promised goal was massive scale with "epic" armies. In history, such armies where last used in WW1, before the invention of the tank and before infantry was forced to fall back to guerrilla tactics / urban warfare.

So that tech level is basically the baseline for unit roles in PA, directly projected into a science fiction scenario with futuristic tech that is. And even though the units have an appearance which resemble modern unit types, the characteristics and limitations still those of the classic ones.

If your enemy has amassed a large force of tanks, that force of tanks is going to freaking hurt unless you have a response set up within striking distance. Shields are not conducive to gameplay in PA for the same reason ninja squads would be - it adds unnecessary complexity that only hurts new players and burdens experienced ones.

WYSIWYG. 10 tanks is 10 tanks is TEN FREAKING TANKS.

This game is macro themed. I don't even remember if I posted here or not but looks familiar. Anyway, macro themed means thousands of units.

I mean, there are even server mods. If you want, 5x the cost of every unit, 2x the health of everything, and this would be a more classic feeling RTS.

Winning in a straight fight due to having a bigger army is all fine and nobody argues otherwise. The only problem people seem to have around here is the fact that 'bring a bigger army and run it into the other guy's' is the be all end all of tactical decisions.
Since there is no drawback to having a big army - unit killspeed and weapon range are high enough to make it a non-issue - tactical manoeuvers such as flanking, baiting, retreating are an attempt in futility. The moment you initiate them the battle is halfway over anyways.
Even trying to pull off a basic pincher attack is a useless endeavour, due to smaller armies getting torn apart in no time thus negating any benefit better positioning might have conveyed to begin with - if any, that is.

So using artillery and a combined arms army is beaten by a death blob?

Yeah, no, the mountain biome clearly shows that a death blob easily causes it's own death as it clogs up mountain passes.

True, but that's a hard to come by situation, and a smart player will simply not run his deathball through the mountain passes.

Plus, most planets are still rather flat and devoid of distinctive features.

So you have a distinct advantage with them then.

Yes, but how often do people play on the mountain biome?