Complex Units & Combat

You don't even need multiple weapons to get the near-far effect. ZK has a heatray which deals damage that drops off with distance (does basically nothing at max range); which has the exact same effect as the dual weapon idea.

Units having multiple weapons is awesome. Take the mongoose the uef t2 assault bot, it primarily uses a long range machine gun, but it's awesome when one throws a grenade. Down with your logic, long live the awesome. And mister blackops almost all the units in black ops have multiple weapons explain why you did that?

You mean aside from the;

• Avenger
  Inferno(technically it's 2 turrets, but the same weapon)
  Cougar
  Hydra(it's complicated*)
  Hailfire
  Bouncer
  Requiem
  Zealot
  Redeemer
  Ilhaas(Meatshield Bot)
  Zthuzene(Bombardment Ship) (Techncially 3 turrets, same Weapon)
  Ilthysathuum(Lambda Bot)
  Uyanah(Mobile Anti-air)

All those units had only 1 weapon with the exceptions listed in the case of there being multiple turrets with the same weapon.

*Every Hydra built would have 1 random weapon selected from a list, so each individual Hydra would only have 1 weapon** while a group of Hydras would have a mix of weapons.
**Except in the case of a weird transport bug that would enable all the different weapon options. this is one of the reasons we plan to replace the Hydra with a new Land/Sea Amphib unit.

For clarity here are the units with Multiple weapons and how they rank up in relation to each other, I will be leaving out the Experimentals and Naval units because they are the reverse, it's rare for a Naval or T4 to have only 1 weapon system:

• 
  Juggernaut MKIII
  -Railgun(Main)
  -Dual Plasma Gattling Turret(Seconday Main)
  - 2x6 VLS Missile Cells
  -Defense Beam Sponson X2 (Secondary)
  Rapier
  -Dual Napalm Artillery Cannons (Main)
  -Dual Light Cannons(Secondary, only worked withing the Artillery's Minimum Range)
  Scorpion
  -Pulse Laser (Main)
  -EMP Tail Cannon(Secondary AOE EMP)
  Wraith
  -Wraith Cannon(Main)
  -2 Light Quantum Cannons(Secondary)
  Vulthatha-Ioz(Gunship)
  -Missiles
  -Shield Disruptors(Secondary, extra damage to shields)

You'll note the single weapon list is larger, even is you discount the borderline cases.

Frankly I don't even think you understood my post and it's context to the OP:

I didn't say it was all bad all the time, in simpler terms I said that adding weapons for the sake of adding weapons isn't ideal, especially when there are other options available but that it is a valid option if done correctly.

A more elegant solution than having multiple weapons on a unit, if you just want to have it gain effectiveness at close range, is to give a formula that makes the dps lower the farther the target. For example, at max range you do 0,5x damage of the point blank damage and it's linear between the two. For clarity apply this always to the same weapon type, for example all lasers get varying dps like this but a cannon is always fixed - though cannon has bigger chance to miss the farther the target.



And I don't get you guys who argue against having complex micro in the game. There should always be potential to use cool tactics to overcome equal or superior forces, thing is just that when you've got big armies then it gradually becomes pointless to waste player time on the lowest level actions outside rare occurences. As long as the main focus is on the macro level, having the potential to micro is purely positive.

I think the issue revolves more around how this micro is created as opposed to the micro itself. I do agree there should be options for micro, and as the scale expands the type of micro changes. so when you have 10 tanks you can do some individual micro and what not but when you have a 100 tanks it would me better to focus on things like organizing them so they concave the enemy force or attack from a flank.

Mike

Bringing together some ideas and information we know that we want the possibility to micro without it being essential, we also don't want things to be overly complex such as T1 bots having 3 weapon load outs. Additionally as was mentioned there 'will be no factions' so T1 unit differences between factions would need to be solved in some other way to allow for player uniqueness. I believe that the naval units from say SupCom give a good indication for how this could work out. Low Teir units have simple weapons that don't require micro except for their movement to beat larger foes such as a cruiser outrunning a battleships cannon blasts, while the battleship because it is more expensive and will be a more important resource will have more complexity in either its weapon load outs or other options.

What I'm thinking is that while macro should be the most important in this type of game that micro can also be important in the way that T1 bots can be maneuvered during the early game to help avoid enemy projectiles and flank, and as higher teir units are created their complexity, along with the more numerous amounts of the lower teir units changes the micro to handling the larger higher teir units.

And I don't think moving should be the only consideration for micro at T1, unit composition should also be important, because there might not be factions that means that the T1 complexity found in SupCom will need to be found in an expanded T1 unit selection so instead of 4 or 5 different ground bots have say 9 or 10 each with its own unique strengths and weaknesses which while important and can be micro-ed to take advantage of are also similar enough to each other to cause little difference without micro in larger macro high tier battles.

Also little things like adding the ability for a T1 unit to cloak (like the Seraphim T1 scout in FA) really made the unit feel unique and fun.

This of course goes into another topic of ways you could make T1 units more helpfull in T2 battles. While Uber said they would make T1 units still usefull there are ways to add utility that could be used to fill the gap between a low T1 unit and T2 such as adding an option that uses energy or mass per second to a T1 assault bot per say that would not be generally affordable early in a game but at T2 would make up for lacking DPS or health, etc.

When I read these posts it usually makes me think about the previous games and that's generally where I draw my inspiration.

I am a big fan of dedicated units for specific jobs. I think it might have been mentioned that the key to success is the units you build and in what ratios. That is how the previous games have all got the job done.

The reason for this is that at their core these games operate on a rock-paper-scissors style mechanic. An example would be: Gunship beats tank. Anti air beats gunship. Tank beats anti air.

For this reason, multiple weapons and capabilities for a single unit do not fit in with the recipe. Just look at how different sup com 2 was to it's predecessors. It's units became much more valuable and there was more micro involved. This I feel was in part to keep the unit cap down but it also had the effect of making it a distant relative to it's lineage.

In order for the game to be the things that Uber have talked about, these core mechanics must remain. Particularly because having only one faction in the game will mean that in order to keep the game diverse and dynamic there have to be a lot of units for the player to choose from. And they are also talking about encouraging players to specialise. By doing so, players must work together to build success. That is why IMO the two concepts are not compatible and complex units have no place in this game.

In fact, my main worry is that with the budget for the game being so small that there will not be enough units to make it diverse and dynamic.

I'm sure OrangeKnight would mod in new units to fix this if it ever happened which I hope it won't.

The raw amount of different units doesn't matter too much in the end. What matters is that the ones you have are interesting and varied enough to make it good.

Actually the less units you have the easier it is to make them truly different from each other. The more units you have the more samey you have to make them, or balancing the game pleasurably will be a horribly difficult (even if not impossible) task.

You don't need multiple weapons to do this. Imagine a gun that fired a spray of shots out in a fan. The further away you are the fewer shots hit you. So as that unit closes the DPS on a target increases but the number of target it can hit decreases.

You get neat unit behaviour without doing something disjointed like having a different weapon at point blank range.

I definitely prefer to have shots accuracy or effectiveness vary with range. Rather than giving them a bunch of different weapons which would be tricky to use properly.

//edit - didn't read everything. Seems everyone made the same suggestion I just made.

I was talking more along the lines of sup com factions compared to cup com 2 factions, but I take your point.

What I was getting at was in sup com 2 the units have multiple functions and sometimes multiple weapons. This increases the value of the unit and often combines multiple units in to one. For example the cybren adaptor mobile shield, anti air and anti misslie. This unit type combined 3 units in to one. It has several drawbacks as well as advantages. The advantages being that it cost less because it was 3 in 1 and also the build time was faster than building 3 separate units. However, it wasn't as effective as specialised units and it could only do one thing at a time. Not to mention the shield was absolutely pointless. Also if that unit is destroyed I lose the 3 capabilities that it supplied.

It moves away from the TA rock paper scissors game mechanic. This is fine in sup com 2 because it was a completely different game and if you don't like that idea then you could just be UEF or Aeon. But in this game there is only one faction. Sup com 2 was the only game in the franchise to employ this idea for basic units and it worked because of the whole research system that was used in that game to continuously improve the units.

Basically there was only mech infantry, tanks, artillery, missile launchers, anti missile, anti air and mobile shield in each faction. That's a maximum of 7 basic land unit types per faction (assuming no types are combined). If that was all that was in this game it would be dire.

Also to mention that in SupCom2 if you wanted to get to the end oh any particular research tree 1 or 2 units usually ended up being way better than the rest(Rockhead being a prime example) to the point where you might as well just spam that one unit cause its powerful but not costing any more than at the start of the game, in-fact with Factory Vet it actually costs LESS over time per factory.

But I don't think we need to worry too much about how many units there will be, there is Land, Air, Naval and Orbital layers, that's a lot of different interactions, thought not all will directly interact. I think for PA's T1 we can expect a line up similar to FA's T2 units(plus a scout) so we'd have;

• Scout
  Engineer(maybe)
  Main Attack Unit 1 (Tank?)
  Fast Attack Unit 2 (Bot?)
  AA Unit
  Longer ranged Missile/Artillery Unit
  Support Unit(in FA it was a Shield Gen, but not sure if such would be in PA)

This gives you pretty much every attack option you'd need in general, you can add more attack units as needed so long as they are fairly general purpose and not too specialized as that's what T2 is for, and speaking of T2, that's where you'd have more units available, but they'd be specialized to the point where you wouldn't need to work them all into your composition, so like there could be 2 AA units, one with flak(AOE) and one with a Missile(tracking, front-loaded), you would only use them when the situation calls for them, so if there is a lot of air units flying around or attacking in groups the Flak might be more suited then the T1 AA or the missile.

Then just expand that theory across the rest of the unit types, I think we could be looking at 15-20-ish units for land, depending how far they take specialization and how many roles they implement. the other Layers are a bit trickier to figure out as there are unique things that come into play, like how it's tough(or was in FA) to add more Air units because the stock ones were already to focused/specialized to begin with on top of the air mechanics just not quite being open enough to introduce new roles(IMO) And Naval......well it's Naval, people have been saying it's 'Like land but Not' but I think it can be drastically different to the point where the basic roles for land units aren't directly applicable to naval, but it depends on how they tackle it.

Mike

There are many possible unit roles for land units, for examples:
engineer
combat-engineer
rezzer(like Necro in OTA)
mobile radar
mobile radar jammer
mobile teleport gate
mobile blocker(like dirtbag in zero-K)
fast-reclaimer(like puppy in zero-K)
mobile deployable turret
minelayer
paralyzer
capturer
suicide bomb
scout
advanced scout(like the spy bots OTA)
light/medium/heavy/ultra heavy main attack Unit
fast attack unit
slow attack unit(like the can in OTA)
stealth attack unit
hit and run unit, with fast speed and long reload time
anti-swarm unit
direct-fire ranged unit
curving-fire ranged unit
missile launcher
anti-missile unit(maybe able to intercept anti-air missiles too)
artillery
sniper
high damage long reload time AA
high aoe AA
long range low damage AA
anti-orbit unit
etc

For when you need long lists of objects in a certain set with no analysis or comment, who do you call? Listman! Actually you don't since he seems to provide said lists without any provocation.

Not to mention there is a lot of odd overlap, like whats supposed to be the difference between Hit and Run VS Fast Attack unit? On top of that there are some that he lists that are weapon dependent and some that aren't weapon dependent.

Mike

Well, fast attack units might be for something like rushing through breaches in defense, while hit and run units might only be good at destory important enemy defense structures then withdraw quicklly.

I actually know what you mean here. I'm with listman on this one.

Also consider variables such as acceleration, speed, turning circle, turret tracking time, projectile speed, projectile trajectory, projectile AOE, fire rate and accuracy as factors that can affect how well one unit might be able to deal with another.

For example a small, agile scout, with a good AI, might be quite good at taking on a medium tank with a slow fire rate and slow turret tracking in small groups, but not in large armies (when there are too many tank projectiles to dodge).

But any unit can go through a hole in enemy defenses, that's why you call it a hole ;p Fast units(like a hit and run unit) can just do it faster.

Mike

To elucidate (I know what he's talking about because these examples look like they're drawn from ZK mechanics):

Hit and run units have high alpha but low fire rates. They briefly engage enemies at their maximum range then run away to reload. An example from ZK is the heavy vehicle napalm tank, which fires a napalm grenade then scarpers, with around a 5 second reload on each shot. That tank also has enhanced HP regeneration which suits its role.

Fast attack units are more likely to have some kind of continuous fire weapon and typically have good DPS and low HP. They're something that you charge through a temporary hole in defense to take out as much eco as possible, or raid poorly defended outposts with. An example from ZK is probably the scorcher from the light vehicle factory, a fast armoured car type thing with a heat ray that deals high DPS up close with less damage at increasing range.