Do we need tech levels?

A line is an object from geometry. A function implies a rule that connects to sets. A linear function is one with a constant rate of change of one variable with the other.

T3 units are expensive. The decision to make a unit for a mission, has to deal with two questions, what is the expected benefit? what is the cost? If you don't have to ask those two questions, then you are playing the AI, no rush or x2 resources.

You seem to not be able to see that land units don't always fight other land units. Land units also fight structures and engineers. You actually never want to fight only the enemy's army, you will fight either when forced to, defending a valuable asset, or when you are attacking a valuable asset preferably with minimal resistance.

I am now not talking about micro here "Concentration of force." etc. I am talking about the more strategic level, the decision on whether to fight or not, when to fight and where to fight and with which units.

With regard to actual micro, there are plenty of examples where t2 land unit combinations properly microed can beat t3. The two assault bots that you can call unbeatable are the percy and the brick, but each costs about double the mass that you start with at the beginning of the game.

There are 100's of players better than me on FAF.

Who said it was a linear function?

For a line of the formula y=mx^n + c only 3 points are required to accurately plot the line.

Any other argument over the use of the word "line" is just semantics.

Edit: Concentration of force is not a micromanagement term. It refers to how powerful a given army is. In this case a 1000m^2 areas filled with T3 units is far more powerful than the same area filled with T1 units. This is useful eg. when attacking a strong structure - only so many units can be in range at a given time.

for n = 2, that equation gives a parabola...

Your point? We wouldn't be measuring with an x less than 0 anyway. x = time, y = economic power.

This is what I was referring to.

What does this have to do with the price of cheese?

Nothing to do with the price of cheese, but this is related to showing you that T3 units are not redundant with T1, since the decision to make one or the other is not only based on whether or not that given T3 unit is really good at killing the given T1 unit, it may turn out that they never meet eachother, but on which unit will do the most damage to the enemy, for the least amount of cost. It is clear that T3 units are not always going to be the best unit using the above formula. Example: T1 artillety will always beat out T2 bots, on air drop missions. They are cheaper and they cause more damage. Example: I need a unit to sit on a distant island to protect my mex from engineers that may come and capture it. I will leave a t1 tank instead of a t3 tank, since both can easily kill engineers.

Your description of a Supcom FA battle sounds like something out of starcraft. Throw the units at eachother, let the best microer win. I agree T3 units are more powerful in 1v1 battles on average, especially, when you just compare the generic tanks and the T3 assault bots, but there are a lot of units around those that make things a lot less linear than you present.

I could really mess you up if I told you to measure time in hours. My point is that for n = 1 you get a linear function and for n = 2 you get a parabolic ones, given the equation that you gave. Neither one is an exponential function but if you add all those up for n = 0.. infinitity normalizing each term by the factorial of n and letting C be zero, you will get the exponential, so you were on the right track.

Ta4life, that's a polynomial function. Get with the times.

You want;

Code:

y = a n^x

That's an exponential function. FA's economic power follows that function. I'd argue that FA's military power follows it too.

If you want to talk maths, don't be wrong about it.

You are right, the exponential is an infinite polynomial.

You switched the x and the n from the previous post. Sure it is now a power function, and for n = e it is the exponential. I agree that Supcom FA eco is exponential in some sense. There is definitely huge inflation of resources.

Fifty mass will buy you a lot more if you put it into the economy, than just a tank.

That is another good reason to build lower tier units when those will suffice, since any extra mass is best invested back into mass extractors and power generators.

But that ignores so many other elements that affect a battle's outcome, range plays a huge part on top of how the weapon deals it's damage among many other elements effect the outcome.

If we ONLY use a DPS:Mass Ration, then yeah Manti do .51 DPs per Mass while Loyalists do .39 DPS per Mass, but that's only if you ignore the fact that Loyalists are 0.3(3.7[M] - 4[L]) faster, have 7 more range (18[M]-25[L]), have farther vision (22[M]-22[L]) and more HP per Mass (5.1 HP:Mass[M]-6.4 HP:Mass[L])

You can't just cherry pick one variable that happens to lean in your favor and ignore the rest.

I propose again, lets hop on FAF and test this. Because I just did some quick tests on my own 184 Manti vs 20 Loyalists, and even with the Loyalists standing still, they wipe the Manti clean out! and the Loyalists only suffer at most 25-35% losses in my tests, and again, I say again that this is WITHOUT the Loyalists doing any kiting, they just stood still in a line. Obvioulsy not proof to end all, but it really refreshed my memory about how strong Loyalists are.

But the FA System didn't use the TA system, if it did, T2 wouldn't have units like the Pillar, which is little more than a Bigger Striker.

Fact is they COULD have done it, but with such a large (And Exponential) Gaps between the Tiers it just wasn't viable. It could be done, even with FA units, lets look!

DISCLAIMER - Ignore all stats and only consider how the unit itself and it's weapon(s) function.
DISCLAIMER 2 - I have Purposely left out engineering units and focused on combat units, we don't know enough about Uber's plans for them yet.

Tier 1
Snoop - basic scout, small, fast and radar/view distance
Striker - frontline unit and forms the bulk of your average army
Mech Marine - faster Raiders
Archer - basic Direct Fire AA
Lobo - run of the mill Artillery

Tier 2
Flapjack - Single-Target Rocket Artillery
Riptide - Amphibious
Sky Boxer - AOE AA
Parashield - Shield(not applicable in PA)
Demolisher - AOE Artillery
Percival - Sniper-type Bot

So you got your core basic units in T1, ad all kinds of specialists in T2. And to top it all off, this still isn't all that applicable to PA, as We know PA will have 1 "Unit Pool"(as per Neutrino) so that list up there isn't really complete, lets try again using units from other factions to round out all the possibility;

Tier 1
Snoop - basic scout, small, fast and radar/view distance
Striker - Frontline unit and forms the bulk of your average army
Mech Marine - Raider/Harassment
Archer - Basic Direct Fire AA
Lobo - Average Artillery

Tier 2
Flapjack - Single-Target Rocket Artillery
Riptide - Amphibious(Hover)
Sky Boxer - AOE AA
Parashield - Shield(Not applicable in PA)
Demolisher - AOE Artillery
Percival - Sniper-type Bot
Deceiver - Stealth Generator
Absolver - Anti-Shield Unit(Not Applicable in PA)

See now we're seeing where this can go, Nothing in Tier 2 outright replaces T1 units AND the T2 units don't cross over with each other either. They might specialize in certain aspects, but that would come with downsides as well, Naturally.

But, there are more variations that we can do to spice things up, like adding in the following units;

Selen - Combat Scout
Wagner - Amphibious(Sea Floor)
Serenity - Pin-Point Artillery(Similar to Flap Jack, but immune to TMD but Weaker)
Titan - Shielded Raider(recharging shields allow for rapid raiding but requires Power)

Now, of course this leads to T2 vastly outnumbering T1, but with careful planning you can do stuff like moving the Riptide to T1 and other similar shifts.

Of course, even that list is still missing a few things I would have included, like a Missile Based AA unit, long ranged, powerful but low ROF and there is the fact that I don't think we know yet how Uber wants to approach the broad units types such as seen in TA(Tank, Bot, Hover ect ect) and whether they would all be the same factory, or have different factories ect ect.

Mike

When I said damage I didn't mean damage per second. As I said I am not talking about micro here, I am talking about decisions to build or not to build a certain unit. After all this is the actual test about whether or not a unit becomes obsolete. Whether or not a unit dies against its particular counterpart from a lower or a higher tier(if there is such a thing) is not the deciding factor in whether or not a unit becomes obsolete, since one might choose to build the weaker unit in the 1v1 fight for less mass, then send it to attack some place on the map not protected by the superior units. This is where scouting and careful planning wins the game.

I liked the rest of your post. I think in this way the two tier would totally work, but it would be a reversion to TA style tiers, which I think are fine but lose a significant amount of complexity compared to the Supcom FA system.

You need to get into the habit of you know, saying what you actually mean and not being ambiguous as hell in order to set us up as idiots for not understanding what you meant.

Anyways, frankly I still don't see T1(Maybe T2, depends what stage of T3 your in) being a viable raiding force. So lets say you do that careful scouting and you see and exposed T3 Mex, you send 50 Manti at it. You get there, and between the T3 Mex and 4 T1 Mass Storage there is a total of 14,800 HP to kill, so that's 10 seconds (once all 50 are in range) which yeah, isn't all that much. BUT, all things being equal if you can scout out an unprotected Mex, your 'slow' attack force can also be scouted, and it only takes 5.4 Loyalists(thought you can prolly make do with 5 instead of 6) to balance out the cost of your attack force, it's not like that's hard to come by if you're cranking out T3 units, and depending on the distances involved the Loyalists could even beat you there, it's not as clear as you make it out to be, and what happens when he just decided he's had enough of your raiding and just pushes your front? How are you supposed to fight against units you can't hit with shorter ranged units? Even if you built units from all tiers, it just means they'll be taken out one group at a time, being kited if needed(as my impromptu tests showed, T3 vs T1 you don't even have to move to win when dealing with equal mass costs).

You don't lose any complexity, all the units still function with the same level of complexity, if anything you've gained complexity because now more units are viable, just look at AA in my proposed system;

The Archer is a good solid unit, it has average range, a good reliable direct fire weapon that delivers damage at nice consistent rate, sufficient against most/all air threats(on equal terms)

Then you have the Sky Boxer, a bit shorter ranged and lower damage, maybe a lower ROF(but not necessarily) but it has AOE, meaning if there are large number of units or units that clump together a lot(FA style Gunships) they'll be very effective, against single targets not as much but still a threat for sure.

Lastly you have the Missile AA(not included in FA for some reason) this would be longer ranged, high damage but with a long ROF, making it great for getting the first strike off, but chances are it won't get more than 2 shots off at a single target in a single pass(if that), it's good against Large HP heavy targets and works well with either Archers or Sky Boxers to get in the first hit(s) to weaken the target before getting in range of the others.

In FA you don't have that kind of complexity, once you can build Sky Boxers you just don't Build an Archer again, ever. The Sky Boxer has about 8 times the raw DPS(for only about 5.7x the cost), then throw in the AOE(effectively dealing its DPS to multiple units at the same time) and there is no reason to even keep you old Archers. This only breaks down because of T3 Air and the lack of T3 Mobile AA, but Aside from Gunships there prolly wouldn't be a reason to build Sky Boxers once you have the proposed T3 AA.

Losing the 3rd Tier does cut down on the "Tech Up Decision" but instead you are left with a wealth of compositional choices because you can actually mix and match units without having to worry about one being obsolete.

You could try a system similar to what I proposed with 3 Tiers, but then all you're basically doing is arbitrarily splitting up the Specialized units into 2 different Tiers, the only things I'd want to see a 3rd Tier for is possible(thought Uber has mentioned they want to handle any such units carefully) "Experimentals"/"Super" weapons, and then I wouldn't want it to be a rigid "Tech up to T3 to unlock" type Tier, but rather a loosely defined Tier that could be built as soon as you're into T2, just that you're Economy would be unlikely to support it until you've invested in a solid T2 Economy, and if you can supportit chances are it's because you cut so many corners you'd crumple like a paper house in the middle of a hurricane under any pressure at all.

Mike

Fact of the matter is more people here want two tech levels, even thought most of them never played TA. Or if they did not at a competitive level (vs AI).

We need to see the game before we can decide that 2 tech levels is too much or too little. At least thats what i have decided, you will get little more sense here.

Ah, I see everybody has calmed down again. Good.

Gotta say, I agree entirely with what OrangeKnight has said over the last two or three pages. He has elaborated on some points I started outlining a number of pages back and illustrated them nicely.

To be honest, considering all the derision from ta4life I'm surprised you even bothered. Hat's off to you.

Why does it matter how much and how well people played TA? OrangeKnight's last two posts pretty much sum up the advantages of a two tier system. While I don't think anyone has a problem with having more tiers in general, people have specifically said that they should NOT be done like tiers in supcom, which I feel is the key point of the argument. So the question becomes: how many meaningful tiers can you have before you start obsoleting units? By saying "meaningful tiers", I'm trying to avoid the suggestion of "one unit per tier" or other such nonsense.

Dude. I was already repeating myself, and even when I repeated myself, in the quote you quoted I specifically say I am not talking about micro. I am talking about the decision of whether or not to build a unit and in that case damage from a single T1 arty does not depend on how much damage it does per second, but what it will be attacking. I don't think I could have been much more clear, but you ignore what I said and instead tell me about habits. Then somehow I am the derisive one.
I have been reading your post replying point by point, but I always get the feeling people skip everything I write, focus on a small part then twist it and move on.

You ones again completely ignored the cost part, in deciding what force to build and instead focus on mantis vs loyalist fights. If I wanted to protect something from 50 mantis I would make 3 T1 pd's not loyalists and I would save a lot of mass. I would also not go to raid an unprotected T3 mex with loyalists, I would drop a couple T1 arillery next to it.(If I already had the loyalist built for something else then sure, but I wouldn't build a loyalist specifically for that purpose, and once again I would save lots of mass)

You actually say T1 is not a viable raiding force. I dare you to say that on FAF, when lots of people are on, see what kind of responses you get.

You also say that somehow I can't mix units from differen tiers? Why? I would love to mix stealth fields, sky boxers and bricks.

Your whole discussion about T2 flak makes sense, because T2 flak has been buffed significantly to take away the T2 air domination, but even then I would make a couple T1 flak instead of t2 flak when my enemy only sent T1 scouts at my base. T1 flak is much better at killing scouts than T2 flak, just because of the speed of the projectile. T1 scouts are by the way the best scout until T3 scouts come in, so they are used all the time because they are dirt cheap.

How can you say you don't lose complexity with two tiers vs three?

You have less times in the game where you have to make the choice between teching up and staying with your current tier.
You also lose complexity where you are not able to separate special weapon from more special weapons. For example mobile missile launchers from T3 mobile arillery. The ranges with which you can bombard your enemy increase two times, instead of 1 time.

Your last paragraph captures the point of tiers very well. IF you risk to ugprade to may gain the advantage of superior weapons, but if people call you on that risk you will "crumple like a paper house in the middle of a hurricane"

Overall your analysis shows(together with most other people here) is that you never actually played the game, making the decision to build or not to build units. You are absolutely stuck in the UNIT A vs UNIT B mindset. That is the mindset you can break when you play TA or Supcom FA in comparison to other RTS games. That is the difference and this is the difference that you never saw it seems.
Playing the AI, playing NR20, or playing x2 resources, or playing thermo is not a good representation of the game, and if that is all you did then you haven't played the game I am talking about.

Please don't come back with the " Don't look at how pro's play... it is too difficult and not representative of how it should be played"
There are not pro's in Supcom FA. There are only those that play and those that don't play and think they did at some point.

Props to You Ta4life. This makes a lot of sense to me. Stand your ground. You have more patience than I. I don’t know how many different ways you have to explain it.

Saddly between work and a Dinner Party I won't be able to do a proper reply for 13+hrs, but TA4life you're still being ambiguous: "I would also not go to raid an unprotected T3 mex with loyalists, I would drop a couple T1 arillery next to it." How many is a couple? is it actually 2? because that'd be a very pointless and easily deflected raid.

DPS may not the End-All in terms of stats, when when you talk about units being effective in combat(or more simply put at killing other things) you can't say it's not important, it is along with other stats like weapon range and HP as well as other things about how a weapon is setup(ROF, Projectile type, # of projectiles ect ect) are important, and how can a "UNIT A VS UNIT B" argument not be perfectly valid when you say things like "I would also not go to raid an unprotected T3 mex with loyalists, I would drop a couple T1 arillery next to it.", that's a UNIT A vs UNIT B type talk right there(BTW 2 Lobos take 70 seconds to kill a T3 Mex, thats a lot of time to be countered and result in lost mass and a failure to impact the enemy in any meaningful way)

And 3 T1 PDs would fall to 50 Mantis, but that's what you get to only spending about 30% of the mass to try and counter something.

Really, you say we have never played the game, but you've proven to be miss informed about the game on several occasions and the way you try to brush off stats as not being valid for comparison really makes me wonder if you've played it. Heck you don't seem to even have the time to fact check yourself, use this next time; http://faforever.com/faf/unitsDB/

Mike