End-Game Mega Units

See my earlier post for reasoning on having units that not only have a large size, but also a lot of hitpoints, how it is different from what we have now, and how it fills a role gap.

And that's just one giant robot I'd like to see. Flying aircraft carriers with warp drives would be neat. They don't need to build units, they just need to be able to warp to other planets to bring aircraft to other worlds and carry units so that gunships have a health gap to get inside an enemy base.

No guns needed. JUST a health pool.

And as far as aesthetics go, last I checked big units in all of the games that had them looked awesome. Ignoring gameplay, the experimentals looked badass in large groups. Especially the Supcom 2 ones, again ignoring gameplay. Laser dinosaur.

No, I'm not just using a different word. The design will be completely different.

You just have to be more flexible in designing them. Yes, they will be expensive (very), yes they will be big. Does that mean that they'll automatically have a bazillion hitpoints and shrug off small units like they're flies? Hell, no!

With saying that nobody (including me) wants SupCom experimentals back, I ment how they worked in that game. There is a way to design mega-units in a more clever way than that.

Most people would flay you for talking about supcom2 like that, positively.

But as I have stated, I have no problem with new different units, but signifying them a 'Mega' units as opposed to the other apparently non-mega units just sets them up as units to replace experimental and have the same problems that they had.

I would personally much prefer standard units be actually worthwhile at the own roles as opposed to a just unit mash.

That way we won't even need large units with exceptional ability's, just normal units with effective ability's.

Then don't use the word 'Mega' to replace 'Experimental', because that all you are saying, that mega units are just a different flavour of experimental and so they are ok because you choose to use a different word.

HOW are they ok, in what way? and how it that any different to what we already have in units? and how does it not look really stupid when I have 50 of them?[/quote]

No, I'm not just using a different word. The design will be completely different.

You just have to be more flexible in designing them. Yes, they will be expensive (very), yes they will be big. Does that mean that they'll automatically have a bazillion hitpoints and shrug off small units like they're flies? Hell, no!

With saying that nobody (including me) wants SupCom experimentals back, I ment how they worked in that game. There is a way to design mega-units in a more clever way than that.[/quote]

Yeah, but you yourself have just fallen into your own trap.

Creating a unit with such ability that I should and will focus the entire game around their use rather then to compliment a more balanced force.

We do not need mega units, we need effective normal ones.

And that's what I want to prevent. Just because they're called "mega"-units doesn't mean that what you said will happen automatically.

Mega to me just means: Lategame, expensive, big.

Nothing more. It doesn't mean that the game will focus around them, when the necessary tech-level is reached.
You can design them to complement armies, instead of replacing them. And it's fairly easy to do that imo.

Calling them "mega" doesn't change anything about that fact.

You are right it doesn't change anything.

So why have it at all? Why have people like me using to claim it's something it's not?

You're again just too used to experimentals in SupCom. Forget them, stop comparing mega-units for PA with experimentals in SupCom.

Why you ask? We have a little problem now, that with the teleporters the game is suddenly playable on an interplanetary scale. We fight over multiple planets, we often have multiple planets under our control. That means that we're also playing with way more ressources than before. I have trouble spending all my metal as soon as I have more than one planet under my control. It's like I have everything already, hundreds of factories pumping out units, many nuke-launchers, a dozen orbital launchers and so on. And I'm still sitting on 300-400% metal income.

How should I spend it? I'd need to build hundreds of more factories to even begin to spend all my metal. And at that point in the game, I'm getting lazy, tired, not sure what to do next and how to spend my ressources.

Very expensive "mega"-units acting as ressource-sinks would solve this problem, and also keep me interested in the later stages of the game.

How is having too much money a problem that ever needed solving?

That is the worst argument for having a mega-unit I have ever herd.

Because it's getting tedious. We're just humans, not machines.

This game should be fun at all stages imo.

Then suggest UI improvments, or better factorys.

Having larger mega units just because you have lots of money in no excuse.

How about instead, a factory that builds 10 units at a time?

I already suggested something like that in a thread called "Factory Complex" a long time ago. There were many issues with that, mainly because it would turn into basic calculation on when to switch from building standard factories to "better" factories. Not really challenging gameplay.

That thread was over 15 pages long. So, no I don't see that as an alternative. I got many negative reactions from that. I just think really expensive units acting as a ressource-sink would be the best, and most enjoyable alternative.

Or hell what about the UI addition of templates that can then contain a template for building 20 factroys at once?

Bigger units as money sinks are just stupid.

Well, because even if factories are becoming easier to build and to manage, I'm still not really satisfied with the idea of a "grind and repeat" style of gameplay. Every stage of the game should give me new features to play with, new challenges that I can solve in different ways. Spam is nice and makes the focus of this game, but it's getting tedious, making me tired and overexerted and not really hooked anymore in the later stages of the game.
That's just my experience.

And would you please elaborate why "bigger units as money sinks are just stupid"?

Because you should need bigger units just because you can't manager your own economy.

Once the game gets to the level that you have entire planets facing off, you really need to take a step back and decide how to weaponize whole continents and mobile mightily legions.

Grinding your forces like waves is only fun when you analyse what needs to be a priority targets for attack, you stop microing because you can only micro groups of 300+ by slamming them in a letting the little deals resolve themselves.

Personally the huge scale combat only gets boring when everyone is just a eve growing blob of mobile units.

As to why I love turtling and seigeing. It gives points on the map to conduct mighty and awesome events in the game that truly shake the world.

It's not that I couldn't manage it. It's more like it's getting tedious and boring and that it's so late in the game that I'm getting tired. Sorry for repeating myself. But the point that I'm trying to make, is that we might need easier solutions to spending our ressources in the latgame due to the exponential economy.

The argument I'm making is revolving about the fun in this game. And if the game expects me to do even more of what I've already been doing in the past 30 minutes or so, then it's getting boring. At least to me that is.

Probably, And I meant no offence.

This is true, while I don't agree with your solution, I agree.

I don't think large units should be for stabilizing an economy. They should ONLY be in to fill roles that cannot be filled by smaller units; otherwise what is the point? Making 10 factories and having them produce units infinitely is quite easy now. If the large unit has a role that can be filled by another smaller unit, then it shouldn't be added. The trick here is finding what roles can't be filled by small units and then running with it; if there are none, then there is no room in this game for large units.

That being said, I do think there is room.

Asteroids are clearly a large unit that fill an important role. They're a type of super carrier/doomsday weapon that helps bridge the game void between worlds.

i was too lazy to read the past five pages, but i'm pretty sure that's the same debate as usual.

i'd like to remind that building huge stuff do makes sense, when you have an entire planet for yourself pumping out +700 metal per sec, what do you plan to do with that ? a pentazillon dox ? ants ? even levelers wouldn't be able to use all that, and if you did, well great, you've just crashed the server or made the game unplayable due to lag and poor frame-rate. and my computer isn't even crappy.

even without that problem, it just makes sense to make larger units, rather than building 100 ants, if you make a super-ant with 100 times the firepower, hp, and cost, its better almost in every situation. if it takes enough damage to kill 50 ants, you still have 100% firepower, ants are down to 50%, if you take enought damage to kill 90 ants, you still have 100% firepower, while your pack of ants aren't even a threat anymore.

of course there is some downsides, you can't just split your mega-ant to fight on two sides, and having a hundred ants would save you some damage due to overkill, but again, your mega-and doesn't care about splash damage.

what i mean is that even if you just make the dumbest supersized unit by making it 100 time a normal one, you're not making the game dumber, you're making it more complex. should i make a huge anti-megatank turret and being devoured by a swarm of little crap ? or make plenty of small turrets and be rolled over by a megatank ?

or maybe i could make nukes ? or maybe i can run away in space ? this is not supcom, i liked experimentals in that game because it gave a new way of playing. you can rush, you can turtle, you can tech up, you can spread in space and whatever other game plan you wish.

all i can see is you saying "no, remove the tech up game plan, i think it's boring". well, to me there's nothing more more boring than a zerg rush (great ! you've just spend more time loading the game than playing !), and i don't ask to render rushes impossible.

megabots will not necessarily be overpowered, neither they will render T1 units obsolete. unless you can't help but imagine a megabot as a walking pile of gatling guns, i'm pretty sure megabots would be weak agains swarms of T1 units as you'll probably lose 90% of your firepower in overkill damage. and you can give them a slow turn rate, or a minimal range, or whatever.

even if "experimentals" or "mega-units" or whatever you want to call them where only supersized units, i still think it would be interesting, but that's not all we where taking about.

we where talking about giant-submarine-aircraft-factory-carrier-dropped-from-orbit, we didn't even said the thing would have weapons. you want basic units to be still useful in late game right ? then why are you complaining about space-dropped factories whose primary use is to build them ?

We're talking about combat. Not about smashing planets. Those two are entirely different aspects of the game.