Do we need tech levels?

It seems 99% of people want 2 tech levels which is a shame. I dunno if its cus TA had two or because the devs said two would be good.
Either way its a simplification i dont want and i bet a lot of people would be disappointed with when they finally hear about it.
T3 can really stop that constant spam of T1 which after a while gets boring for every1. I can think of loads of other points but it seems i am just wasting my time.

Get the game u guys want guys. Will most probably be supcom2.1. While ur at it get rid of T2 and T3 power plants, i mean who needs them oh and dont forget the radar, chuck that right out the window.

Also one faction is also a crap idea. The devs said its just a money saving issue, nothing to do with balance. You guys have 2 million now =( Dam we should just have 1 unit type, anything else is too much to think about.

TA had 3 tiers. The third tier was basically the gantry and krogoth, although there is argument for including the crazy expensive vulcan/buzzsaw.

Oh please, quit your damn bitching (not you Bobucles, <3).

You're not going to get things your way. Accept that and move on.

pureriffs you would spend your time better if you learnt grammar and how to make arguments which make any kind of sense. You're just assuming that PA has FA with a base and some changes (eg 'removed' T3).

I hear the argument "2 tiers results in T1 spam, we need 3 Tiers so that people most to T3" quite a lot. The problem with it is that in both situations is that the core problem is still there and you are only dealing with the symptoms. The problem being of course that T2 is under-utilised in current TA style games (at least by the people fighting these whiners).

Seems to me like the number of tiers means nothing and that usefulness should come first.

I suppose that's where power draining defenses come in?

Defense that can stop a kind of fire an forget spam, but with its own economic weakness to prevent them from becoming dominant.

A sentinal/GAAT gun tower in TA could butcher hundreds of T1 units if the attacker couldn't get massed up enough to deal with them.

Throwing a massive army against some smartly placed towers could work, but T2 was the best solution to prevent mass casualty's, units that could out range the tower or simply tank the damage.

Games would slow down once there are in place of course, but not to the point where T2 is the only answer.

Three tiers will not stop T1 spam. To stop T1 spam you need sufficient defenders advantage and a good transition so that T1 + T2 is stronger than a larger T1 army. In SC2 you get synergy with the units. Medivacs make marines stronger. Infestors boost the utility of lings and banes.

So there basically has to be a good reason to go T2 and the ability not to die getting there. Having T3 does nothing to stop T1 spam if it is impossible to defend during the transition and come out ahead.

The viability of units is always tied to transitions. Having T3 will not give viable transitions for T2 (note transition into losing entire base is not considered a viable transition).

It's also necessary for the new tier to provide something the player doesn't already have. Starcraft shows this through its tier system. You don't necessarily get bigger units to do the same thing; instead you get new tools and ways to play the game. The complexity of the game increased as tiers become unlocked.

T3 in Supcom screwed up. You could literally describe the bulk of T3 as "T1 but bigger", since it provided no new roles or strategies for basic armies. In fact, it REDUCED the available strategies by rendering all the cool Tier 2 stuff obsolete. In a competitive game the key factors for a unit role is availability and efficiency, and T1 won in both areas.

PA offers new potential roles for a high tech game. There are multiple combat arenas that cover a local and strategic level, such as orbits, planets, and potentially new star systems to invade. These offer new "tiers" in the sense that you're expanding the scale of the war and the interaction between worlds. In this respect, I seriously doubt that 2 tiers will be able to cover the scale of progression that the game needs.

I'd really like to see a flexible system, with a huge variety of tech-switch options, but a system where each decision you make on the tech tree (either by building actual units a la TA, "power-ups" a la SupCom 2, or otherwise) makes it harder, yet not at all impossible, to go back on your choice and evolve your "faction" in a different way.

In other words, decisions are weighted towards an end tech path. So you might tech (evolve) more organically with spider bots and bio units that heal. Or you might go for big, clunky, giant robots that are expensive but can shoot down entire fortresses. Or, evolve more to your micro-based style and choose tech-tree paths that make your units cheap, fast, and specialised.

However, each chosen path within the tree should I think make it progressively harder to go back (cost wise or time wise) to a very different path. A bit like SupCom 2's tech tree system but obviously integrated into the game like TA, where you need to build buildings.

Maybe there could be themes like: Bio, Intel, Swarm, Mech, Eco, etc that you can dip into and either be a tech generalist, or a hyper specialist in one "area". The tech choices could be visually obvious to enemies, unless maybe you chose the Intel path, which is unique in that it's intentionally NOT visually obvious if scouted, since your chosen path involves lots of intelligence gathering, subtle sabotage moves, etc.

Why not? The game could be conceivably be played with one tier; only cost matters. Having the monkeylord as a tier one unit would not affect its scale and have only a marginal cost effect. Tiers really only affect the early game anyway. By that I mean that only the initial jump to a tier has any risk. Once your economy can comfortably support the higher tier then it's existence is transparent.

I always felt the implementation of the third tier to be a bit pants and not doing much for the game. It was the same amount of higher tiered units that Total Annihilation had, just split up so an extra tier level could be formed. And tier 2 was more of a hurdle between 1 and 3 than anything.

A tier implies new infrastructure, more prerequesites, and more chances for scouting. It adds limits on what is possible, what players can know, and acts a safety buffer between different stages of the game.

Since Starcraft is such a good example let's use that. Assume that every race starts off with every unit unlocked and ready to build. What happens? There's no time to scout. No time for second chances. Players pick a unit and cross their fingers. It very much becomes a rock-paper-scissors game, because you only have time to pick 1-2 things and hope it wins. I'll go DTs.

Tiers allow the early game to be simple. Pick a few units, roam the map, shoot and skirmish and **** around. Tiers add time for players to scout out what you're doing. Keep in mind that air/land/sea factories are their own form of parallel tiers. If it takes a minute to set up, that's another minute it can be scouted out. Tiers make tech rushing slower and more painful, so that basic units have a chance to be established on the field. A player going for a cheese tactic gets slowed down and has more opportunity to be stopped.

Otherwise, the ONLY limiting factor is going to be cost. The only way to push a unit towards late game without tiers is to make it more expensive. An expensive unit can not be light, or risky, or have limited utility, because no one will use it. Say you want a really cheap cloak unit built for harassment, but cloaking ruins the early game. Without tiers, it'll be impossible to make it that way.

TA used energy and cost somewhat to establish more than the mere 2 tiers you see in game. At the very high end, base defenses and artillery required large scale fusion power to work properly. That level of infrastructure is not needed to build other units, so it was clearly a step above the plain tier 2 stuff.

Why do people keep going back to Starcraft's tech system? Sure it works in that type of game, but there are many other systems that can be implemented. Zero K is tierless, and it works fine. The stronger units are cost-prohibitive enough that without the proper infrastructure built on mass, energy, and construction units, you'll end up with an ineffective economy. With rare exceptions, it works quite well.

But going back to the TA style, preferably with a nice, balanced mod like Twilight, the early game allows for a much larger variety of choices than Starcraft does, and radar coupled with powerful scouting units allows a competent player to keep this from being detrimental.

As for the scale of progression, this need not be limited by tiers or tech levels. The point isn't necessarily to win through the use of superior technology, but through the use of superior strategy. By keeping technological progression tight, the unit balance will remain in check as well. Instead, progress is dictated by the wider variety of strategic choices available to the player from the new tech level, as well as their ramped up economy.

Tiers largely come from TA. SC has fluid tiers. Besides the basic principles still hold. Transitions are required to make something viable. Calling something T3 won't make T2 something that can work.

To make T2 work you need to be safe doing the transition and come out with a firepower advantage at some point. It doesn't matter if T2 is explicit via tech unlocks or wrapped up in building trees. It is all about surviving the transition and benefiting from it.

I agree with this. Once you had the fusion in TA you could start to power larger things like the big bertha and nukes. Which is a hell of a step up from t2. I fear this level of gameplay may be cut out in PA and be easier to achieve like it was set up in SC2.
I also really like the idea of SC using T2 powerplants to help you get to T3. As it was in TA you only had T1 power to get you to fusion which was hard work lol.

So, I read about 12 pages before quitting, and adding those two cents:

The two tech levels, "TA - Style", are good. Basically, Tech 1 was Fragile and Mobile, while Tech 2 was more powerful and tougher, but slower overall. This allowed units from every tech tier to keep on being used.

Saying there were 2 tech levels was wrong in some sort of way anyway. The commander was tech 0.5: He could build most of what tech 1 Engineers could, but not everything.

You still eventually needed to have some units that were tech 2, but that was mainly for economical reasons: Nuclear power plants, etc... and to have just enough tougher units for the enemy to spend on different units.

What I'm happy to see too, from a post of UBER in the first pages was that it would remain: Commander -> Build Factor Tech 1 -> build Engineer T1 -> Build Factory T2 -> Build engineer T2. Basically, you can reach tech 2 without stopping your production of units as in SupCom since T1 and T2 Factories are different buildings.

The great thing too was that T-2 factories couldn't produce T1 units, (but T2 Engineers could build T1 factories). Basically, it offers strategic thinking: Destroy the Tech 1 factories to slow him down, or destroy the T2 factories to prevent him from having tough units?

What I DON'T want to see is researches. I mean, seriously, it's clone armies VS clone armies, how would the be researching tech during a fight they've already done 10 000 times before. It's what made me consider SupCom2 as a pile of crap (and the dumbed down economy).


For this game, I could pretty well see this kind of system:

Commander builds basic economic and production buildings, then gets upgraded (SupCom-like) depending on the role you'll wish to give it.

Production buildings could be split in the "Basic 3": Air, Sea, Robots. The units produced in these factories would be T1 Engineers and fast, hit and run units, to allow good players the ability to harass, as well as let them be useful in the later stages of the game. Example would be air superiority fighters, light bombers and the like, . Tech 1 defensive buildings would be suited to fight them: FLAK AA, Mortars fixed defence, etc... Lots of splash damage.

T1 Engineers build the Tech 2 buildings, as well as building variants, such as "Vehicle" factories, that produce tracked T1 untis that would be a balance between T1's hit and run and T2's Toughness. Other T2 buildings could allow multi-purpose units and heavy hitters. Example of units available to T2 would be a Sumo: Extremely armoured, really slow, very good at taking out single targets. Or fighter-bombers: Able to do high damage to land and medium damage to air. Different roles, and quite a lot tougher; Flak/Splash damage is weak against those, so defences and weapons of Tech 2 are more focused on single target, high damage.

T2 Engineers could also build static, high level things like some huge range artiller and stuff like that that would be a tech 2.5

So you have tech levels 0.5, 1, 2 and 2.5? but you only want 2 tech levels?
I get a lot of people here want the game to be like TA but it just seems sensible that if you want t1 and t2 units surely the massive power plants and big bertha style weapons should be t3, to separate them at least for the case of simplicity regarding cost and build time?

Unless nukes and artillery are going to be much cheaper and easier to get like in SC2. In this case i just wont play it =)

You're still clamouring for T3 Pure? Seriously?

And aren't nukes just the upgrade of TAC missiles anyway?

More boom, more range, and more costly.

Really I feel like SupCom nukes were often too hard to get that there would be no point, and I would live a more liberal use of them.

I forget where I posted this comment initially, but I disagree with this method of avoiding T1 obsolescence for PA.

My feeling is that T1 units should be general use and T2 should be specialised units. This can be done in a manner that prevents both T2 units being of the same type as T1 units (for example tank and bigger tank) and T2 units replacing T1 units by simply being better versions.

Hopefully this will mean that we can expect to see something like this:
Typical T1 units:
Land Scout
Main Battle Tank
Mobile AA

Typical T2 units:
Sniper bot
Damage soakers (think sumo)
Raider tanks

I personally favour the factory upgrade system. I dislike having a base full of factories. It's just unnecessary and reduces the value of each individual factory. The loss of an upgraded factory is always going to be worth more in time and resources to the player than an individual T1 or T2 factory.

Regarding structures. If we take into account the above statement about T1 and T2 units, T1 & T2 need only to be different, rather than T2 being more powerful than T1. You could easily have your light and heavy point defence in T1 and things like artillery and tac missiles in T2.

Things like strat missiles and the like could also be T2. They could just be prohibitively expensive so that the player is forced to build the necessary infrastructure first in order to build them. Though I do agree with the comment that, if for nothing more than de-cluttering the build menu they could be grouped separately. The point might be moot though, since we don't know how Uber will implement build menus.

Personally, I see orbital as a kind of T3 tier. I'm purely speculating here, since we have had no detail about the orbital layer from Uber that I'm aware of. But if it can interact with units on the planet's surface (and it will be pretty poor if it can't) then it needs to be considered as a further escalation.