Complex Units & Combat

Okay, that's a bit fair, but it still kinda brings up my other point in how some roles he lists are defined by weapon and other by other means, like to me the H&R and FA units you describe to me are fundamentally similar aside from the weapon. Also as a side note that the H&R unit you described I get a bad feeling about it needing micro in order to not be worth less and I don't like that from a design or player perspective.

I guess it just kinda comes down to how you define Roles.

Mike

I thought mentioning support roles is allowed, cause you mentioned mobile shields.
I guess a micro AI for hit and run won't be too hard.

You should make poll about this.

I hate your idea!!! it is just awful. Simple things are beautiful. The more complex things you have the more things can break and go wrong. Complexity = micromanagement. That's why SupCom was great. It was macro game, and micro-was set to almost minimum there. Where to build building and give move and attack command is enough micromanagement for me. I don't need complexity about how weapon should be fired. Even if there is such complexity it should be managed by AI even if it is my unit. It should make the best decision on its own (that's what technologic progress is about. It's about "fly-by-wire"). That's why automatic shift is better than manual etc. As long as complexity is managed optimally by AI as long it is OK. If I have to do corrections to what AI does with complex stuff then it is too much and unnecessary management. Managing bases on 3 planets and 7 moons is complex enough and I don't need to be involved into selecting incline and muzzle velocity of the projectille. AI should do it especially inthe situation where weapon is complicated.

Simple = beautiful = nice.

Now I'm honestly convinced you're a troll. Nobody becomes that much of a self-parody by accident.

I... I don't know.

I kind of agree with him on this one

Edit: Wait, do I? Not sure if his post was fully relevant to the thread...

To clarify I think the AI should pick up a lot of the micro in this game and do a good approximation of manual micro. Fast units should avoid slow projectiles, units that are damaged should retreat to the back of a unit crowd (and units should preferentially target damaged enemies), squads should spread out when facing AOE weapons, long ranged units should kite short ranged units, deploying units should auto deploy in sensible places, roles such as hit and run should be catered for, and engineers assigned to armies should travel with the army and repair other units as they become damaged.

Also ideally mixed armies would be aware of each other's roles (although this behaviour might naturally emerge from a good enough role specific AI even without context awareness).

ZK actually has a minimal version of this already that does the job for quite a few unit roles, so it can be achieved.

Can't help but agree. All this discussions about introducing complexed aspects to the game for players to manage, from galactic economy to single unit weapon micro management.

Well it's all just getting a bit out of hand.

All I really want out of 'unit complexity' is that there will be enough variety of ground units at each tier available to where I might not use the same composition as my opponent. Additionally, I want the ability to micro my units to have a meager effect on the battlefield, not something that would be game breaking but something where micro will beat out non-micro like 5% better. (Basically where skill can mean the difference between 50v50 of the same unit ending with 1 player getting 3 units through)

ZK is extremely minimal in this. Honestly, I 'F' moved a few times this weekend and didn't even see a noticeable AI response or didn't like how the AI was handling the units. I honestly do not expect anything of this scale in the AI department in the next year of PA development. With that said you paint a pretty picture. Do not be discouraged. It's a goal I wholely support.

I believe that units provided will be cool and if there is some forms of micro people might be surprised by their own enjoyment. We are going for awesome. We should feel like epic directors of an opus of battle. I beleive there is a lot of 'micro' that can be done right within the director theme. It needs to be easy and have that anyone can do it feel. There shouldn't be snags and it shouldn't require very special actions to get it right or sorted out. It should be intuitive, responsive and fun.

Example: I like how the super spiders in ZK armor up when not moving. This is a simple mechanic that doesn't stop the flow of actions or decision, but provides a siege mode for this unit.

Example: I like how reapers can hop up cliff sides in Star Craft.

Example: I like how unit cannons, jump jets and teleport works in SC2.

Example: I like how positioning is important to the death explosion of the Loyalists in FA.

Should you have to play each instrument or feel like your energies on one specific solo is hurting the rest of the performance? No way. A lot of this goes into planning how these 'extra features' are implemented all the way through the unit interface system.

To add to the unit AI, what about economic AI? What I mean is, what if you could turn on an AI that helped with your construction priorities based on your available income. A simple example: if you can build a mex in a minute and only have enough mass for one mex in the next minute but you start building 3 mexes the AI could set priority to whichever mex was started first. Obviously, this could get complex, but I think if done correctly would be worth a little effort.

This is a nice post.

5% percent is very, very, very little. Random dodges and misses would propably make up for this. Also what do you consider micro?
If you send units 1 and 1 against my horde of 50 units I will be able to focus fire and put damaged units behind healthy therefore losing none of my units. I call that micro.

I doubt this is enough unit types for a diverse land based game. It looks like main attack unit spam + support depending on the other domains of combat. For example there could be a unit to beat fast attackers, a main attack unit which dies to fast attackers and a unit which beats main attackers but dies to fast attackers.

This goes back to the question "what is the point of this game?". As in for some game design it is good to have a single spammable tank which beats all tanks but is not good against anything else. The tank factory would then have a unit in it to beat units from each other factory or type of unit (eg defences). This can probably work too.

Googlefrog, I was under the impression that PA's T1 would be fairly generic, while T2 would be far more specialized with multiple units per role but each fulfilling that roll in a different fashion, like I describe in the rest of the post you quoted that from.

Mike

Ok although the second part didn't imply that the interactions within the unit type would be fleshed out by T2. I also don't think T1 should be that generic.

I really don't want generic T1.

That's a glaring SupCom flaw next to TA's successes and I hope that it is wholeheartedly rescinded for PA.

And TA's T1 wasn't generic? Being full of redundancy doesn't mean it's not generic.

Ok, that's a glaring SupCom flaw next to ZK's successes.

I barely remember TA gameplay being entirely honest.

One problem here is that I think you're looking at 2 different factories having units in similar roles as redundancy. It's not, because unless you have both factories, which you won't always especially at the early, T1 centric stages of a game, you can't build both units.

I don't see T1 being redundant frankly, I don't want T2 to make T1 obsolete.

Think of this simplified scenario;

Player A VS Player B, Player A goes all-in on Air, making lots and lots of T1 Air units. Player B needs to build lots of T1 AA to stay alive. Lets say Player B needs 90-95% of his economy to hold off the Air Assault, he uses his last 5-10% to get a T2 Fac and starts producing the Flak AA, which is great against groups of Air units due to it's AOE. Player B needs fewer of the Flak AA then the T1 AA to protect himself, lets say it's 60% of his eco, he can now use the remaining 40% to build a ground army and stomp Player A.

It's not that the Flak is flat out better than the T1 AA, it was only because there was lots of air units that it's AOE led it to be better.

Mike