Engineer functionalities

I would prefer constructors in PA to have a toggle between auto-reclaiming wreckage only (and run from combat), or aggressively auto-reclaim enemy units as well as wreckage. I'm also positive that a roaming pack of aggressive engineers is not going to be anywhere near as combat effective as an equivalent cost of basic tanks (or even an equivalent number of basic tanks, since engineers are usually more expensive than T1 combat units).

Note that in TA, unit types like the rapid fire artillery did not auto-fire by default. I could strawman your argument by claiming that Vulcan firing also wasn't a "core mechanic" of TA, because you had to manually target them (without even going in to having no radar targeting unless you built the building for it), or make an argument based on the fact that you had to manually type +shootall to get any combat units auto-targeting unarmed structures. Apparently shooting mexes and factories is possibly also "not a core mechanic".

The post I multi-replied to was arguing that not having any offensive reclaim at all has merits (I'm not sure it does), and that offensive reclaim was not a core part of this type of game (it has always been in this type of game). I seem to recall bobucles or possibly knight pointing out that in SupCom 2, the gun you could add to one of the factions engineers (through research) actually did less DPS than aggressive reclaim did. Its only advantage was a longer range.

Regarding reclaiming units to 1%, if PA implements the same method as SupCom, you'll get no resource for aggressive reclaim until you have reduced the unit to 0HP and it turns into wreckage. If you fear that aggressive reclaim is an abusable method for free buildings, this would entirely negate any advantage of doing it to yourself, and was implemented by members of Ubers team in previous projects. I'd wait and see how it works first, then we'll be able to discuss potential for abuse.

Like a lot of balance discussions, this one is likely best left until beta, when we have the game engine working and the focus of Uber is going to be on balance. We'll also know how the units are currently treated, and have a much better chance of proposing relevant and intelligent changes that'll make gameplay a better experience

Yeah, if reclaim works on enemy units I'd agree that this could be the solution. Personally I don't think reclaiming enemies is a necessity. Usually it haven't had much impact unless the enemy gets too close or isn't paying attention to his units when they are being reclaimed.

Well I wouldn't mind dedicated aggressive reclaim units. They could take the role of bulldozers and assaults, have lots of HP and reclaim anything that gets too close.

Very early in SupCom(after release) you could reclaim stuff partially and get metal for it. They later switched to the other system.

Personally I like how it works in Zero-K. It is simple without much quirks. You can only reclaim your own units. Once you start reclaiming your unit it turns back into a nanoframe and it stops working, producing resources, etc.

A full refund from reclaim on your own units could be bad for gameplay. If you can just reclaim your factories and switch production/unitcombos with minimal transitional cost it could mean that gameplay becomes less strategical as players can just push out whatever is good for the moment without planning ahead and just reacting to the opponent quickly.
In Zero-K you only get back 60% of metal for example.
In FAF/SupCom you only get 81% of metal I think.

Indeed. Anyway. We are left to specculate a few more days(hours hopefully ) before the alpha.

Arguing engineer weapons are a core mechanic is silly. They're about as core as fusion cutters on Terran SCVs. There are design considerations that make arming engineers a good idea but it's not "TA armed engineers, so we should too." TA did many things well and other things not. You should strive to understand WHY things are done, not appeal to authority.

And never assume that the default is the optimal.

There is an important distinction between a core mechanic and a mechanic which happens to crop up in many games. A particular non-core mechanic can be removed without dramatically changing the game.

I'm not asking for situations (as in sets of game mechanics) in which offensive reclaim is a good idea. Especially if those examples are as extensive as "It was this way in previous game X". I am looking for good reasoning from someone that offensive reclaim is always good to include in a game.

numptyscrub, I don't think you can justify thinking only about large scales. The smallest raiding party is going to consist of one unit, the smallest expansion squad is going to be one constructor.

As for Spring, it has a bunch of settings in a file which let the game creator decide whether a player can reclaim their own, allies or enemy units. There is also a different reclaim method available (as godde said) turns the unit into a nanoframe then reclaims it.

Also, I'm fairly sure constructors couldn't capture in TA.

Bleh, limiting game play choice.
Leaves the taste of bad RTS games in my mouth.

And one on one, traditionally, the constructor is toast. One raiding unit has rarely if ever been able to significantly affect a base in games of this type; it is generally unable to destroy a factory before the factory can build a single offensive unit. With constructors on repair duty, they are either mitigating the damage or forcing the combat unit to switch targets, basically guaranteeing you can get some backup offense built.

I'm considering what I feel to be appropriate sizes for the smallest effective raiding party as pertains to PA, and it is not one unit, or even 3 units, unless you are talking about "raiding" resource points out in no mans land (barely defended and possibly still under construction). If I were to send one combat unit in to an enemy base, even in the first 60 seconds of a game, I would not expect it to be anything more than a scout, and I certainly wouldn't start trying to analyse whether the combat capabilities of enemy constructors were the cause of its downfall. If I were to send an unaccompanied constructor out to eco spam, I would not expect it to be capable of successfully defending itself against a single combat unit, unless I was micromanaging it and also got really lucky. If I sent a constructor out and came across an undefended resource extractor, I would expect my constructor to either be able to capture it, or if constructors are not given capture capability the ability to aggressively reclaim it before building one for me.

So in that sense, my arguments are being based upon my expectations, as coloured by my experience of the mechanic in previous games. To me, it is intuitive that constructors can reclaim anything including live units; a nanolathe that can create live units should also be able to deconstruct them. Capture... I think you're right in that constructors may not have been able to capture in TA (I'm at work so I can't just fire it up to check). I can see an argument for not needing aggressive reclaim if you have capture, and vice versa, however I do feel that constructors should have at least one of them, and I don't see any insurmountable balance issues if you give them both (SupCom managed it fine, in my opinion). Leaving buildings undefended should not (again in my opinion) mean that you are immune to constructors until a combat unit can be sent or built there, and the threat of giving your opponent a "free" building (capture) should be enough to encourage people to make an effort to protect their real estate.

If Uber want to try out a whole bunch of different options for constructors during alpha / beta I am definitely happy to give them all a go and provide feedback. At the end of the day, as long as the mechanics work and provide engaging and fun gameplay, that's all that matters :mrgreen:

Heard something about bulldozers? How about an extremely armored engineer, slow, but could reclaim while being very hard to kill, it couldn't be aggressive -too slow-, but making it immune to EMGs would be cool.

Workers in other games have minor attacks, yet it is still capable of making or breaking a game. It is a simple defensive advantage and there's never been anything wrong with that, and if someone wants to work it into their strategy then there should be no restriction.

Throwing away inefficient combat units on the front line is an assured way to lose. There is no need to remove reclaim as a weapon, nor is there a need to add arbitrary weapons on a unit that has a lathe. The only real exception is the Commander, who by necessity can utilize both a lathe and its primary (super) weapon.

Find a better argument than "it offends my sensibilities". Aggressive workers are fine, and interesting, and fun to use.

This did not work well in alpha Supcom, where units could be reclaimed for 99% of their value and end up basically free. Do not make the same mistake here.

Ideally, reclaiming a live unit would return no more resources than what is required to repair a unit. But 0% is fine too. There's no need to make it superior to any other weapon, when it already gets the delicious wreckage afterward.

It was the supcom2 cybran engineer. The weapon research turned out to be a downgrade because default reclaim did more damage but was disabled in favor of the gun.

Sounds useless! A good reclaimer needs to be fast so that it can claim wreckage and take it before the enemy does. A slow, armored reclaim gun is a waste of armor and resources for a support unit. Even if it can score a few kills, it's better to flee at the first sign of real trouble.

You could use both at the same time, but it was micro heavy.

bobucles: I already posted what I thought and why previously in the thread. What you're quoting isn't an argument for any position in particular, except maybe the position of ration. Maybe you wouldn't be lambasted if you legitimately tried to justify your position.

"Engineers with attacks can attack" isn't a justification either. You're in luck though, if you go back and read my posts I justified why giving engineers a weak attack in most games is purposeful.

I always thought of the reclaim function serving as its weak attack.

Why should I? Reclaim-attack is already established in the games, it's a good thing, and you already explained why. Stop trying to flex your e-peen if there's nothing bad going on.

I hope they opt for the Homeworld version. After a big battle you can farm the metals from the corpses at a reduced rate so you could have more battles trying to keep an economical edge whilst guarding the corpse collecting units from incoming attacks. Less micro needed but far easier.

To make sure this makes more sense it shouldn't be 100% of the value, maybe 25%? but when you're in need of extra metal it could be useful

Wreckage is a well established mechanic from TotalA to 0K. Dead things leave valuable husks behind. The actual wreckage values are obviously subject to change, but it'll definitely be there.