Do we need tech levels?

Nightnord ( )

That, you see, is complexity that new players may not get the first time. I thought (was it you a few pages back?) that you studied game designing, and mentioned that "Many many units = Turn off for new players". Well, it's just as hard as understanding the fact that a laser will get stuck on terrain while the enemy shells fly over, but the laser travels faster. It's die and retry. Having a decent number of basic units that can fit every role, in a rather uniform way is cool. But the best way for a new player to not get overwhelmed by the untis is really simple actually: Units identity.

In total Annihilation, what was the difference between the jethro and the rocketeer? One had guided missiles, the other did not (but they were stronger). Both looked totally different though, with the Jethro having those huge missile supports on the sides, while the rocketeer only had one. Once you saw a jethro in action, you knew how it behaved compared to his pal. The names though, weren't that clear, but you remembered them because they both used rockets, but behaved totally differently and had names that weren't hard to remember. Big bertha (Huge canon), peewee (so unique little guys) flea (Tiny speedy unit), fido (4 legs), Zeus (Zapping relentlessly moving forward bot), etc... So many names that were easy to identify at first glance, or gave hints on how the unit worked. In SupCom, "Mercenary, Corsair, etc..." damn, stupid names for air units.

If the names and the looks are unique and clear enough, you can easily have many units (I don't say thousands though) that could not rebuke new players. But if you have generic looking guys with different abilities and names that mean nothing (I'll be damned if I remember any name and roles for the Seraphim except for the huge T4 bomber of doom), the game becomes a war of knowledge only.

Give me a game with a guy with two handed swords and a naked torso, call it berzerker: Ok, low defence, high damage output. Show me a troll with a huge club: Ok, slow but tough and powerful. That is good game design. That's how a new player gets into a game that has hundreds of units: Because if you have half a brain, you'll understand that it's better to shoot at both of the guys I mentioned above than to attack them with peasants with pitchforks (Though pitchforks may work against the fragile berserker due to their numbers, let's try this).

A sleek robot: Fast robot. A large tank: Tough tank. Wheels? Fast. Big canon? Big damage. Called Zeus? Electric attack, will have to try that later. Sumo? Must be tough and slow. PeeWee: Ridiculous name, small size annoyance. Picture pointing at the sky? AA.

More units and tech levels the better. The more to learn and play with the better. If i wanted 5 units i would go play starcraft where most of you should be.


More units/factions just adds depth. For people saying units became useless in fa you just were not using them right. Sorry..

BTW, I never studied game-design, I'm a programmer. My option are just my option, it's not some well known, studied facts based on statistics and conference papers.

Naming is important, look&feel is even more important (BTW, I always thought that TA's look&feel was dumb, especially this K-Bots, which are all the same differing only in "hands". SupCom has every unit and even almost any attack projectile unique, so you may understand what is attacking you even without looking at attacker), but this is absolutely different topic. I would agree, though, that names in SupCom are idiot, especially Seraphim. But, to be honest, nobody actually reading names (T2 gunships, T3 gunships, strat bombers, AA, whatever it's called - you don't need names, you need roles, that's the logic of SupCom) or even looking at units themselfs. I have a very powerful rig, but I'm playing on minimals to disable useless distractions. They only units that are bad in SupCom are UEF T3 bots - they are both K-Bots with one or two guns (that's why K-Bots sucks. I may only hope that Uber will not follow this ill-formed chassis separation - ground/k-bots), but they are vastly different in behaviour.

Any tech will be hurt by bad look&feel, but only "basic=>special" tech would be hurt by bad names. Anyway, how names and expectations are helping someone to master use of this units? Yeah, slow-but-powerful, but how much slow and how much powerful. Is it good on terrain or will it hit small ground distortions with it's projectile? What is rate-of-fire or accurancy of it's attack? Names and look&feel won't tell you that. Tables with data points won't tell you when this units are good and when they are bad.

You need to trial&error to find out tactics yourself, or read internet for tactics made by someone else. Anyway, you need to spend some time or effort before you'll be able to control/build your forces efficiently enough (without much concentrating on this topic) so you may start thinking about strategy options.

More units != more factions, if you are following supcom tech. In supcom more factions is more depth - it's diversity in play style, but just pushing more units per race would be just dumb (that's why most of units+ mods for FA are useless and not as played as vanilla game) - it should be done very carefully.

In "basic=>special" TA's style tech you don't need many factions, you need more special units so everyone may compose their own "faction" from units they like more.

Actually it was me who said something about studying game design.

Also, understanding physics is something that is very intuitive for people. People will see a laser bounce into a hill while a shell flies over once, and they'll get it. Because that makes sense, it's how the world works.

Also, it took me years to figure out the difference between the Jehtro and the Rocko. It wasn't until I played the game again as a 20 year old that it dawned on me. They were very easy to recognize for sure, but it took some very close attention to figure out what they actually did different. From the perspective of a new player, both of them just shoot rockets.

Zero-K actually improved on this by specifying which units were 'anti-air' and which were not. This made clear to new players what the difference between two walking units with missiles was.

In the same regard; you know that you shoot a troll, you don't engage it with pitchforks. There's just two problems:
A) the solution to big, heavy hitters in many games, is swarming them with small units.
B) the solution to a similar, equally heavy hitter in the same games, is not swarming them with small units but something else.
C) this is obvious to you because you are an experienced player. I often play games with my girlfriend, and while she likes them very much, she would not come to that conclusion, let alone be able to figure out the best solution herself. It's great if you want to alienate players that aren't willing to invest the hours, but there won't be a very large player pool left I fear.

I also still have no clue what the Fido actually did. I know what it looks like, and it's very recognizable, but what is it for? The design and the game don't make that clear at all.

Don't let how much you played TA and how intimate you got with the units cloud just how complex the units in the game could be. Also don't forget how the campaign eased you into the whole thing. That's something that PA will also need a good tutorial for.


Again; I feel my position is being heavily misinterpreted. I'm not against lots of units. I'm against multiple units doing the same thing (ie; T1/T2/T3 of the exact same unit) and I'm against overwhelming new players with choices. The game can have all the depth in the world, but if you don't think very long and hard about how to guide new players into it, you'll never get a good playerbase to explore that depth.

And again; for anyone who says 'the more the better' I seriously suggest you play Space Empires V. It's a great game, but it's also a showcase of why easing new players into the game is so important.

But their not useless. Here goes another dude, you may be able to program but you dont have the skill to see that all units had a role that could be used. If you thought they could not be used that was down to you not finding a use for them, and I assure you every unit could be used at any point in the game. Name me a unit that could not?
Its this depth that I am talking about that you dont experience because you never got good enough to.
Same with all the fools here that think lower tech became redundant. Incorrect.

CHRIS TAYLOR TRIED TO SELL THIS IDEA TO GET AWAY WITH THE ONE TECH LEVEL IN SUPCOM 2 AND ALL YOU NOOBS ARE STILL EATING IT UP EVEN THOUGH THE GAME FLOPPED.

Mass units all the way huge numbers, massive tech trees, this is what made TA so popular over CNC in the first place. Now you wana cut it down and play starcraft, SIGH at you guys!!!!!!!!!!!

You know, if you are not going to give any adequate argument or listen what other says, no one is interested in your opinion. You are playing captain obvious now and what you are talking about is not the point of argument - no one here trying to repeat SC2 "labs" nonsense and no one trying to imply that some unit is useless in SumCom/FA. (yeah, it is all, technically, one huge offtopic - we all agree that we need tech levels, only question is "which"). We are talking about completely different thing: what is better - to have same unit roles per tier, just more powerful, or to have different roles at each new tier.

It's pretty obvious to me you want situational awareness, sleight of hand and wit to be a non-factor in battles and want a game of pure numbers. Sounds boring to me.

pluisjen, stop confusing your own incompetence with what's actually right. You spend all your trust on ivory tower studies(I dread to think what the modern games industry is 'teaching'.) and not the street.

Yeah, I'm out. This is a waste of time, the only logical response I can have to all this insult slinging and deliberate misunderstanding is a good cussing session, and that's not going to help anyone.

W don't, we want to restore what we had in TA like you said. (Not that TA had a massive tech tree anyway.)

None of this has anything to do with tech levels. There's one clear discussion of fluffing the unit count vs. trimming redundancy(honestly there's plenty of room for unique units as is). There's another clear discussion of working on the learning curve (where the visual look and in game tutorial would reign). Neither has any real connection to how many tech levels belong in a full scale game.

You need another thread. Maybe two.

I learned that one pretty early. You build the Jethro and don't look back.

Jethro tracks with its missiles making it effective AA, the Rocko is a long range rocket sniper who does much more damage, making effective direct fire artillery.

Well yeah, I figured that out pretty early as well. It just took me a long time to understand why. I figured out for most units whether I should or should not build them. But I never really understood why, and there were too many to experiment with all of them, so I just cut out over half of them and played with the remainder.

That's how it goes if there's nothing or nobody around to explain these things to you and you're not a very good player yet.

Yeah some units in TA weren't very useful at all.

If you haven't noticed, every unit has weaknesses. Tanks can't shoot air units. Artillery can't survive close combat units. Every unit is specialized, every unit has a purpose.

So what are these so called "special units"? How can you restrict unit abilities when they already are very restricted?

And IMO it would be really weird if the first units would never become useless. It would lead to players who do nothing but exact same cheap units the entire game.

I think developing and upgrading is an important part of the RTS games. With more resources, you obviously get better things. If there were expensive "special" robots, no one would build them if some cheapo early game units will still beat them in most cases. Which means that there cannot be any expensive mobile units at all, which means that you reach the limit "You can't get any better units anymore" sooner.

Better, upgraded versions of units make the unit managing more easier. Firepower and health is focused on smaller area. It also saves unit cap.

AND besides, stronger versions don't make weaker versions useless. You just need 10 weak versions to destroy one strong version. If you can't afford building 10 times more units than your opponent, your opponent is simply better than you. If your opponent makes your units pointless, well he just owned you. I watched a video on Youtube where 750 mobile scouts (or some other weak land units) defeated one Galactic Colossus. Colossus was able to kill just about 200 of them. So everything you've said is invalid. They weren't pointless, they just killed Galactic Colossus. They were worth the money.

I'm not saying that I like the "light tank > medium tank > heavy tank" style and I'm not saying that Supreme Commander's method was flawless, but it is almost impossible to prevent cheap early units becoming "pointless" unless radically decreasing player's options and removing the element of progressing.

Think units like "Mobile missile launchers" and "Shield projecting units" They are specialized to a task, and can't really do much else.

Well the basic units in TA are used for the entire game, and they should be, as they are the meat of your army the advantage of advanced units it that they do specific tasks better.

Take a light or medium tank for an example of a basic unit, good at fighting, average speed, can eaisly escort other units, and are cheap enough that losing a few is ok.

But a heavy tank is really good at fighting and can take a lot of punishment, but is slow and cannot out run an enemy, good at base assault but terrible at raiding or as an escort for faster units, and losing one is worth many tanks in comparison.

Well teching up in games like TA meant being able to afford the advanced units in numbers larger then a handful, and allowing the construction of bigger more resource dependent bases.

Certain mobile advanced units in TA had a huge power drain on their attack, making them well suited to the late game when you can support them in rapid fire.

Well games like these tend to go with more is better, an example is the light tank in red alert 1, being superior to the mammoth tank, not via firepower or hp but in speed and cost.

YouTube videos have a tendency to extend the truth, as 200 scouts would be killed before they got into firing range, as is the main problem with SupCom tiers.

Generally the stronger unit would kill the opposing units before they could even fire back, making their cost to the battle a little wasted, generally superior units end up getting spammed, as is with CNC3 mammoth tanks.

The range of tech in SupCom was another problem, T3 units could kill far more then their cost of T1 units, and really that's where the lower techs stop being efficient.

And when the efficiency starts going down, your really just throwing resources away.

Yes, in case you are staying on straight line and have two factories throwing units into each other, on of which is T3 and other is T1, T1 factory will lose, and that's why it's said that "T3 invalidates T1" ("in local battle" it should be added, actually, to prevent misunderstanding). Yes, as Setons' front you may rush to t3 and few t3 bots with good RoF will crush any amount of T1 throwed at them (well, actually, mostly because of stupid exping which is great for ACU, but terrible for anything else (in terms of balance and clearity of gameplay)). But while you do this, if your opponent is not dumb, you could find yourself in a middle of huge T1 army destroying your eco and your precious almost-upgraded-T3 factory.

Same thing, but less, is without T2. Actually, 5 T2 bots could kill one T3 bot, so if you spamed enough T2 bots you may just overwhelm this few T3 bots and, again, destroy the factory and eco - you won.

But in long-term, yes, T3 bots are much more cost-effective than T2 bots, so if you get stable eco you are building only T3 bots, using T2 only for few special bots or T1 for spamming behind enemy lines.

But this could be balanced. As that, you'll get your "T1 is fast, cheap but dies fast, T3 is slow, very powerful, very expensive and hard to kill". Actually, it's partly a case in SupCom - 700 scouts actually can kill any T3+ (including GC) unit by just moving behind it - a 100 will die in progress, but others would be never hit. That's how micro may make even weakest unit strong enough to kill most powerful unit. You may even snipe an enemy ACU that way =) But nobody will actually do this, as 700 scouts will succumb to few T1 gunships or bombers or point-defences or other T1 units before even reaching your GC.

But I start to understand your point, I think. You are frusturated by the fact that in end-game you end up with option of producing 5-6 units at most, leaving all strategy decisions in past. Well, this is a problem, yes, but there should be another solution than just flattering structure to "basic=>special" separation.

Yep, Hopefully the game will allow you to use both independently for an effective strategy.

Specialized units are only flawed against units they aren't designed to counter or fight, With a compliments of a few heavy tanks, AAA guns and artillery you should be able to be effective against almost any target.

Now I understand your point more clearly. I agree that the step between tech levels was ridiculous. T1 units were just small plastic toys and I agree that we don't need things like that in PA.

It was mainly because of the front line units like t3 armored assault bots that made lower tech levels so useless. Other t3 units, sniper bots and artillery had really low hp so you could say they were special units.

But I'd still like to see doomsday robots like Krogoth that are awesome against everything.

Well that is a topic for another day buddy!

Well, let me rephrase they point you are standing on, just to make sure I understand it correctly.

1, You don't need 75+ different units all of which should be used effectively to win a pro game.
2. You assume, that one particular player will actually use a smaller subset of this units, which he believe to be the best. The 75+ units are just the pool to choose from.
3. All "advanced" units are not "special", they are just "complex". Like, "basic" tank is nothing more than a gun-on-tracks that designed to shoot shells into enemy. "Advanced" tank is super-powered, shield-protected, multi-gunned amphibious beast with all-killing AA turrets and capability to launch nukes. But to just move it require a constant stream of power comparable with star nearby. I.e. "advanced" units still consists of autonomous units (which doesn't require micro-control to be effective), but every advantage of such unit comes with some disadvantage. That is - every "complex" unit has inherit imbalance.
4. What you want to achieve is something already named into this thread as "Perfect Imbalance" when each special unit is more effective against other special unit, but less effective against third special units. And basic units are all rounders and may beat them all in numbers.
5. Each special unit has it's own role, anyway. It could be a little more suitable for that role than basic unit, or it could be a little bit more universal (with additional abilities over basic unit with same role).
5. Newcomer don't need to learn all this special units - if he is smart, he may just compose his forces with same "arty, long-range arty, tanks, shields, AA, stealth" units, taking some special, some basic units - just randomly - and see which units he likes more (which units he believe to be more powerful).

Well, I agree that this would be fun. I would even suggest to mix both variations and make two Tiers. Units from second tier should be more powerful (and more complex), but more expensive - to make a stategic option "when to upgrade" possible.

Problem with such setup is that you need a constant additions to special units to make new options to choose from. But it could be done...