Do we need tech levels?

Great argument Nightlord.

"You haven't read my post!!"

I am sure that your illustrations were giving mind blowing realizations and we just couldn't handle it!

I particularly love the part where you label the chart X and Y both on the bottom so you could just draw a line.


Availability of units doesn't mean anything when compared to affordability in games like TA because the economy isn't the same as Starcraft.

Bulldog tanks (T2) cost 467 metal.

Stumpy tanks (T1) cost 165 metal.

That is not a substantial jump in affordability, especially considering the number of T1 units you will build at any given time, T2 units are not a substantial jump in cost.

Good stuff. You went ahead and compared one of the more expensive T1 units to one of the cheaper T2 units.

Why will that reduce the scale? Please justify why that will happen, because I can't think of any reason for it to happen.[/quote]

If things are made cheaper like nukes, T3 power and big bertha (t3 art) it will not take as long to get to the end game (like supcom2) nukes will be fired off at the 20-30min mark reducing game length, complexity and depth.

Game mechanics will be different with the introduction of planets and until we see this its hard to draw conclusions. But i am against lowering cost of t3 and calling it t2.

They are both tanks, so I compared.

A.K. costs 56 metal (T1)

Sumo costs 844 metal (T2)

That's around 17 A.K.'s in worth, so not really a jump unless your trying to build 17 Sumos, but that's expected.

Besides, that jumps the point that your economy shouldn't be built on these small numbers anyway, so that kind of jump is really quite small.

You have an interesting notion of scale. It's not big units that determine scale, it's other factors, such as map size, and how economies grow as a game progresses. SupCom 2 had to have cheaper big units because the economy arguably didn't scale. If an economy scales, the point end game units will come into play can be pushed back by having them be extremely expensive.

And indeed, tiers are arbitrary. There's no rule of the sort: "Everything in this tech level must cost between this much and that much."

I was going to post something very similar to this.

But, yes; if you want umpteen tiers of units, please have the gaps between them very damn small. Smaller than that of FA.

That's a very big if. Anyway, starcraft teching, IMO, is incompatible with streaming eco. You may do something similar, but not identical. But I'm sure that we shall try to obtain same linearity of starcraft (where you can go from steady compaign to insane microcontrol and multitasking of mid/pro level).

I told that too. That's why starcraft is a hybrid model. If has both efficiency upgrades and options increasing upgrades. We are talking about efficiency now and why efficiency in SupCom affects options count in such bad way and does not in starcraft.

TA is dead. FA is almost dead. If PA is going to use this fanbase without actually expanding it - it's dead by design. But that's is a discussion for other thread.

I'm NightNord...

If you were looking at just images, than yes - they are quite mind blowing. Especially without tics on axises. I suggest you to few them as art.

Correct, in terms of gameplay. That's why there is no reason to keep high learning curve by bursting a number of available, but not affordable options into players' face.

Yes. But you can't build T2 without affording T2 factory, which is not that simple. Once you can afford T2 factory you also can afford most of it's units. So, that's what we want. You got one upgrade option that unlocks you 10 new options, not 10 new options from very beginning.

And there is actually some examples of units you can't stream-build as you just entered T2 level. Most commonly that's an artillery.

Absolutely agree. Good example (I know that I'll be damned for that) of good efficiency upgrades are starcraft 1 upgrades.

Even more, we need structures efficiency, namely resource pumps. Radar efficiency. Anti-radar efficiency. And by structures efficiency we may just unlock new advanced units for more diversity without skyrocketing learning curve. With each new unlock we may just a little bit empower previously unlocked units to be on par with new ones, but it's not necessary (we may design new unlocks in such way that they are on par without any scaling). But I believe that a small units efficiency grow, if properly balanced, would be nice strategic addition.

To clarify, "spamming all strategies at once". I stand by my statement.

What is all this doubt? Today I have read people predict the game will suck, the game will fail, the game will never be produced and the game will be inherently bad until modded. (this isn't just you, sorry for picking on you)

Bullet didnt say you were offering a solution. He said that supcom2's approach covered up the symptoms instead of removing the root cause.

Well luckily we were only highlighting the merits and flaws of each approach, not arguing that the other is silly. As it's a forum I understand if you missed the distinction.
A lot of things have been covered in this thread, but I didn't think that learning curve was one of them. Personally I think once you realise how to tech up there is no difference in learning curve between the various tier approaches.

Also I don't agree with the latter part of graph 4, the only strategies that go away are the ones related to having an inherent advantage (eg. having superior air force, high tech navy earlier etc) these would decline with any rts, and the affordability certainly doesnt decline (unless you are on the back foot already).

@nightnord: But, in FA, efficiency* doesn't go up with tech level... it goes down.

*using dps-per-cost as a metric.

You are using incorrect metric. You can't use "cost" as metric as efficiency grows with economic, so it's obvious that more efficient units are more costly. Also, DPS is not key. You should also account for armor and mass damage-per-second. More efficient units, due to lower numbers and greater range, commonly have greater mass damage-per-second and therefore much more efficient.

You are using incorrect comprehension.

I did not use cost as a metric.


And what you're talking about isn't efficiency. Go look up the definition of that word before you use it again.

[EDIT:] There is one way you could be talking about efficiency and actually have a passable definition of it. But you phrase everything so poorly that I can scarcely understand you at times.

I was not really referring to a scaling economy more the size of the game.
I don’t want umpteen tiers, I think more than 3 is too much. I think FA bridged the gap that was present in TA between t1 power and t3 power for example.

Do you guys agree though? it would be a bit silly to have a fusion reactor a tech 2 base a tech 2 point defence and a nuke silo all in the same tech tab? because that’s what it was in TA if I remember right? has been a dam long time.

The number of tiers takes second fiddle to the difference is strength (or power, or what you wish to call it) between early-game units and late-game units.

You can mush all of FA's units into two levels of factories, and you'd still have very similar problems. The only benefit rookie players would see is less chance to fall behind on a poorly timed upgrade.

If T2 is going to be specialized units and buildings, then it should be fine no matter the cost.

Well really what your talking about strength and power is balance between techs where i am talking about tiers which is just splitting up units into groups dependant on their cost. It just makes sense. I feel ur pain that T3 in fa decimates T1 but thats not a reason to get rid of T3.
I can see why you would want t3 to be less effective but to get rid of them seems a bit much.

Why can't we just start in T2? and cut out T1?

Well if you move units out of T3... they're not T3 any more, right? ;P

Why is Starcraft teching incompatible with streaming eco? The only difference would be that resources would drain like when you upgraded or made units instead of paying upfront.

Offtopic: Personally I don't think that insane microcontrol should be needed to play PA on mid and pro level.
Multitasking and map/world awareness should be much more important than micro.

When taking into account efficiency it is very important to understand not only the innate advantages that units have that are not expressed in their stats (such as firepower/m^2 or the way range affects outcome, which is not even close to lineair in large engagements) but also to understand that if a unit has 2x the HP and 2x the firepower, it is not 2x as powerful, but closer to 3x as powerful on stats alone, simply because it doesn't suffer firepower-drop at half HP the way two smaller vehicles do)

Comparing only any two stats between units is an unfair comparison that will unfairly favor the smaller unit.