Balancing Bots vs Vehicles - Two example models

We all know the axiom: Two units can't fulfill the same function, or one will be underpowered/useless/never see the light of day except by noobs who don't know any better.

With that in mind, I'd like to try and make sure bots and tanks are sufficiently different such that they don't run the danger of making each other obscelete/useless. There are a variety of ways to do this, two come to mind:

1. Differentiation based on performance characteristics:
I mentioned this one a few times before: Essentially, vehicles would have higher top speeds, but lower turn speeds, acceleration, and handling characteristics. Robots would have lower top speeds, but better acceleration, turning, etc. Vehicle-mounted weapons would also have better accuracy/range than bots when stationary, but have greatly reduced accuracy when moving. Bots would be consistent, stationary or moving. Lastly, different terrain types could impact bot/vehicle movement differently, ie sand slowing bots and rocks slowing vehicles.

2. Differentiation based on scale:
This one is harder to describe, but I've been giving it a lot of thought; Bots could be more like infantry and vehicles more like heavier tanks. Consider the example of Advance Wars, a turn-based strategy game for Game Boy Advance. This game had both infantry and vehicles. Infantry were far cheaper (1000 for basic, 3000 for mechanized vs 7000 and 16000 for light and medium tanks) but also far slower (3 and 2 movement speed vs 7 and 6). With this balance, bots would be great in any situation where they didn't have to move much, such as on defense, whereas vehicles would be better on offense. Further, tactical movements can leverage bots in tank-vs-tank battles, using cheap bots to absorb the fire-power of expensive vehicles while other vehicles fire upon them. Also, infantry could be transported rapidly via the air, and this could be another point of differentiation: Bots would be easy to transport (tech 1 air transport, or group transport) and vehicles would be more difficult to transports (tech 2 air transport, or one-at-a-time transport).

Just some options to consider when determining initial balance.

Hi Funkoff!

Ive been lurking around here for a while, and since I am a huge fan of Advance Wars, I endorse both options in your post completely. Another option that could be considered would be in terrain: Perhaps bots could be more versatile in the sense that they will have much less trouble moving through forests or mountains, since theyre bipedal...

I'm fine with the old TA balance.
Bots are cheaper but have a greater power to cost ratio, meaning you can build up a greater amount of firepower in a shorter time. They are also more maneuverable, so they make better raiders and are great at flanking.
However, vehicles have a much greater survivability, so they would consist of the meat of an attack.
It's really a balance between force and flexibility. Vehicles tend to be your projection of force, while bots allow you some leeway with how you maneuver. Need to pull back those tanks? They're slow and not as maneuverable, but you can cover their retreat with bots, who can temporarily provide equivalent firepower, but sustain smaller losses.

I felt bots in TA were poorly balanced vs vehicles: Vehicles were almost uniformly better. The flash was a straight upgrade against the pee-wee and the samson was nearly straight upgrade against the jethro. Oddly, I recall Tech 2 being dominated by the bots, with Zues be far better in small numbers up close, and fidos being far better in large numbers at a distance. The tech 2 vehicles were largely inferior.

But yeah, I hope PA has better balance than TA.

I think your models looks good FunkOff.
On a similar note:
Tiny Infantry Mechs
Personally I would like to see the inclusion of infantry/bot carrier as explained in this post by ledarsi:http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=43786&p=674143#p674143

I'll also chime in with a +1 - TA definitely made vehicles/kbot very very similar in role (and Zero-K went even farther down this route). I would much prefer to have units that fill different roles instead of just 'more units' that look different.

Another point that could differentiate bots and tanks is the vision.
Bots could see further. It could really complements your idea with tanks having a longer firing range.
Bots would be a bit more independent and tanks would need support to be used at their 100% fire power.

I guess my experience is a bit skewed then. Probably because I play TA:Twilight more regularly than OTA, and in that mod, kbots are just as useful as vehicles. (If not more so, due to their early game utility.)

Some Tune-Ups would be nice from TA but the idea is there

My memory of Advance Wars was that it was usually easily dominated by indirect fire units.

Rubbish, FunkOff.

Play Balanced Annihilation. You will find kbots and vehicles in seemingly duplicate roles have to be used very differently.

Maybe in original Total Annihilation, redundancy is the case. But much rebalancing has been done by mods since then, showing the units' true potential.

Just the inherent properties of each locomotion archetype are worthy of roles on their own. Roles aren't exclusive to the weapons units mount.

Their behaviour rules were simple and intuitive. Extra rules like artificial terrain modiers(why flag an area as rocky? Why not make the actual terrain geometry rough and have vehicles' inherent difficulty moving over grades be represented instead?) and tier based transportation restrictions are just excessive.

A flag clearly only affects movement, and can be represented without an obscene number of polygons.

A rocky hellscape affects movement, shooting, pathing, AND system performance. It's not so easy to do.

I agree. I started a topic on this you can find in the backers lounge entitled 'What are bots good at?' viewtopic.php?f=64&t=44635

Flash were rather superior to Peewees because they were tougher and faster making them superior vs. stationary targets. They could more easily get in range before taking losses to leverage their short ranged fire power.

I think making sure tech 1 fights are as interesting as possible is very important indeed for the feel of the game and the balance of Instigators (Flash) and AKs (Peewee) will probably play the most pivotal role in this balance.

I am pretty sure Uber has this under control with their own ideas. That being said, certainly a differentiation between either special ability: special terrain movement, etc, or between the scale of power and destructiveness vs speed and agility would be fun. Or both.

Dude, most 3d RTS game maps are rendered with a heightfield. They have the same amount of polygons whether the terrain is flat or not. With planets, you'd still have to render their curvature.

Doesn't all terrain do just change the values of the cost field? Units have to find the cheapest path, regardless. And how is affecting shooting a bad thing?

Most 3d RTS games are nothing like TA. The visual appeal of a map has nothing to do with how other games played, but those same features are an integral part of how a simulated environment works. It's quite simply a lot more stuff to deal with.

It's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. It can end up badly, as was the case with the Cybran Cerberus defense. It could also end up excellent, if it creates good interactions between units. It really depends.

First, you can't really blame me for not playing a specific TA mod that you liked. Second, you admit that TA's balance was poor and a mod was required to fix it. Given that, why call the examples I gave rubbish?

No matter how they end up implementing it in the final build, one of the very first mods will probably be re-balancing units. People have different opinions on how it should be done and it's great that it can be modded to suit.

This all mostly sounds pretty good, though I wouldn't go with making vehicles inaccurate when moving, as I feel this would encourage micro.

I like the idea of bots being flatout worse but cheap enough you can just throw them at defences whereas with tanks you can't because they cost way too much to waste

For example, an all-tank army would chew up an all-bot army, but the all-bot army is cheap enough and has a large enough unit cap that it can also bitch slap the warfront.