Engineers and constructor types.

Ayceem, distinctions for the sake of distinctions are bad. They create needless surface complexity that adds no strategic depth.

The "mobility archetypes" are practically irrelevant. There is a big difference between a plane and a ground constructor, but TA had very little difference between the ground constructors. Zero-K does, but relies on special abilities instead of speed and turn rate differences and marginal terrain factors.

I would also make the case that the aircon creates a gameplay pathology of having a highly mobile buildpower singularity, rather than the more interesting distributed production paradigm, where a player has many different production areas with differing amounts of buildpower, working on different projects to meet local needs.

The primary purpose of the different constructors in TA was to lock the player into a particular construction path. The actual differences between the units are pretty much cosmetic, with the obvious exception of the aircon, which is extremely fast and flying.

Locking players into certain tech routes creates variations in game state by making it expensive to mix and match. On one hand, this is somewhat interesting, such as having a player going bots against a player going vehicles. The other player's unit selection is limited by their selection, and the other player can leverage those limitations.

However you get a lot more depth with greater simplicity with a flat system, which encourages mixing and matching, and the player spends on whatever they choose. This creates a lot more player choice, and an explosive number of game state permutations.

In this case, a player is looking at the current board to determine what the opponent's limitations are, and should largely ignore things like tech limitations. The other player might build anything in future, but that doesn't matter. What matters is what the other player already has, as in right now, and where it is, and how it fits into the current larger game picture.

I think that number of units should be minimize as much as possible because I do not want to waste my memory for same engineer but has floating ability. For that reason, I would like to see no more than two type of engineer (basic and advanced) and they should fly so they can be used in every environment.

Also, I do not want to see the basic engineer become useless after advanced is available.
Therefore, each engineer needs to have exclusive ability such as only basic can do reclaiming and only advanced can do capturing (Commander can do both).

How many times does it have to be stated that they were not 'distinctions for the sake of it'. They were not cosmetic only. Not only that, they weren't even hard for the player to understand.

The mobility archetypes allowed for an RTS paradigm you just couldn't get with a singular 'land unit' distinction. It actually was little surface complexity and much depth. The problem is this paradigm was understood subtly and intuitively, which scrubs used to the constraints of other RTS games didn't want to wrap their brains around. The archetypes' relevance has nothing to do with 'construction paths' or 'special abilities'. Also, if you're building your game engine to allow for fully physically simulative playing fields, with gravity and all that, it would be silly not to acknowledge the extra balancing factors that come into account with full simulation when designing the actual game. Factors which previously weren't there if you were just designing a deterministic maths game.

I credit the construction aircraft's overuse in Total Annihilation more to a combination of ancient user interface and short build ranges than anything else. Play Balanced Annihilation or any of the Spring games and you will find air constructors rarely come into play.

The only layer I will give you credit for being redundant though were the seaplanes in Total Annihilation. Those really were just copies of the standard planes, only they could land underwater.

I just want to use a better and more flexible engineer than five different engineers at one time, as long as it does not harm game balance.
What is the benefit to carry a large phone and a Pentium PC together when you can carry a smartphone?
There were hundreds of unit in SupCom, and each of them had different stats and abilities, so did they really make SupCom profound?
Could use all of TA units at the right timing?
Fewer units may make this game too simple, but I think that PA will still be difficult to play with simple unit pool.

An omni engineer isn't really better in any partiular field.

But I do feel like we can make the differances between the engineers greater as to make engineers each indipendantly powerful in their own field.

Tank engineers who build stuff super quick and are tough, but have great difficualty with hills and obsticles, but are very fast over open ground.

Spider engineers who are able to traverse extreamly difficualt terrain, but build stuff slower and are rather fragile, but possibly are smaller and cheaper.

Gunship engineers who project a nano shiled over their constructions as to protect them, but are very slow and build stuff slowly, and are fairly expansive.

Submarine engineers who are stealthy and are able to build very, very quickly but cost energy to maintain and are fairly expansive to build.

I think that it is just all about different philosophy.
I love the way you suggested too. I just prefer the way I propose and there is no optimal answer that satisfies all of us.

Fair enough buddy.

No. Movement archetypes belong on units. A sniper unit may work great from the hill tops. In this case, a unique mobility trait allows it to climb hills. A tank may excel at storming across terrain, making it excellent for open field battle. These traits are meaningful for combat units, where speed and agility matters for victory.

Mobility niches should not be represented as new CONSTRUCTORS. The only goal for an engineer is to reach a location and build something. If it can not reach a location to build something on its build list, then it is a terrible engineer. If it is trumped by another constructor that moves faster and builds bases up quicker, then it is a terrible engineer. If it can not work a valuable project in secret without being immediately spotted and targeted, it is a terrible engineer. Terrible engineers deserve to be weeded out until a handful of excellent ones remain.

If you want fast, agile distribution of build power, pay for a transport or something that flies. That is a powerful economic bonus and absolutely deserves a price tag to match. There is no point to an engineer that travels across a swamp more quickly, and spends the other 90% of its life glued to a factory.

New constructors should represent construction niches. A basic engineer only cares about raw efficiency, so that bases can be built quickly. An advanced engineer excels at building in a specific major theater(like land or sea). An assist bot needs to be flexible and fast enough to keep pace with the army. A bot that represents high speed, easy to redistribute build power is in its own class entirely.

The distinction also becomes less relevant as the game advances and more of everything hits the field.

Early on, picking and choosing tech is a big deal. Every penny wasted is another tank that won't be there when you need it. Later on, complex tech barriers simply get annoying. I could have a dozen different constructors on site, but I can't build an advanced vehicle lab because I forgot to bring a construction vehicle. That's just an annoyance.

I'm a huge fan of having separate types of constructors.

At this point bobucles, you won't even acknowledge the points I made. So I'll just paraphrase your post to make the same amount of sense.

Excellent use of the Ctrl-h, acm. You may make a thrilling turret defense yet.

Despite having an amazing tool, engineers are not dependent on the rock hard, seamless designs necessary for durable combat units. If their movement platform has a problem with terrain, they can point their lathes down and build themselves a better platform. On the move. Without ever having to touch a drop of extra mass.

So tell me ACM, why does an engineer need to come in half a dozen different terrain-centric designs when it already implicitly carries every single one?

Would you like to provide proof of that claim?

What lathes can and cannot do is in game, so where are these platforms?

Yeah...questioning the logic behind the proper application of the nanolathe like this is just opening a can of worms.

Like- why don't engineers rematierialise themselves into ultimate war machines if they implicitly carry everything? Why stop at propulsion types. Also why not just arm everything with nanolathes? They're so much more versatile than munitions, and can decompose literally anything near instantly.

Or why aren't we fighting with nanorobots instead of rudimentary eight foot tall war engines?

I want to say this:

If the constructors are all split up to have different mobility archetypes, and there is a air constructor that flies, the only one people will ever build will be the air constructor.

Even if it has bad build power, people will just make more of them. Even if it costs a lot, people will still make more of them. Even if they are tech limited, the only one people will ever build in large numbers is the aircon, as once construction begins any constructor can finish the job.

If I need a tank factory at some place and there is a tech limit, I will have a transport fly a tankcon along with my aircon fleet to the desired location.

Even if the tankcon is durable and fast on open ground, designed to move alongside armored units and assist them with repairs and a little bit of damage with its built in cannon its existence is only meaningful in starting to build its tech limited factory, then be a slave to it while the aircon fleet does all the real work. After that the tankcon might as well not exist at all. Until I happen to need another tank factory.


This is one of the things bobucles is talking about ayc. Even if you have 5 or 6 constructors all with different mobility factors, unless they are all tech limited the only one people with pathologically build is the one that ignores the most terrain limitations and is the fastest. All others will be ignored, and even if there is tech limitation, they will only be used to get the process started, and then be ignored until needed to start the process again.

Making the many different types of constructors with different mobility factors nothing more then a waste of money and development time.

Frivolous spending on constructors is something you can get away with against an A.I.. A human opponent will analyse the cost-to-benefit ratio of every action and use the most effective ones against you. Sufficiently weak and expensive air constructors will prevent massing them from being an appealing strategy. If air constructors are flimsy as well, they can't be sustained everywhere such as near enemy lines either.

Doing simple maths. If air constructors cost twice as much to build and yield half as much build power, you have to spend four times as much just for the ability to fly. The resources spent on build power from air constructors could be spent on four times as much build power from ground constructors--or equal build power from less ground constructors, and other things(like more combat units to defeat you with). So what if Planetary Annihilation increases the scale of skirmishes. All you're doing is upscaling the costs of everything.

I'm pretty sure the use of mass air constructors in Total Annihilation lends itself to a combination of short build ranges(turning ground constructor usage into a traffic jam), lack of aircraft collissions, game balance scaled towards resource production over individual build power with which to spend it, and an ancient user interface making map scaling a hastle to the player; also making projecting your power over more than one location a hastle. Play Spring games like Balanced Annihilation and you will never encounter air constructor spam.

I care little for tech restrictions, what I'm arguing for has nothing to do with that.

And it's ridiculous the attitude of "Why refine the roles of ground forces if you can fly" is only applied to units armed with a nanolathe. You don't see anyone thinking tanks and terrain are pointless because you can build fighter planes. Generally if a game's air force is so much more powerful than its ground counterpart, it's regarded as a poorly balanced game.

Then you run into the problem of "why have aircons if they are such crap compared to groundcons?" If the aircons are not crap then it becomes "why have groundcons if they are such crap compared to aircons?" It becomes a balance nightmare of extremes.

The ability to fly and ignore the vast majority of terrain is simply that powerful. The question of "Why refine ground roles if you can fly?" Is also the reasoning behind why aircraft are given such heavy restrictions in order to balance them. So it is not an attitude restricted to units with nanolathes, we are just focusing the discussion on units with nanolathes at this time.

And if there are no tech restrictions then why do we need so many constructors with so many different movement systems in the first place when you can just use a transport to move them from point A to point B and have the benefit of bringing some guard units along with?

The only real cause for constructors with different movement systems would be dealing with terrain types that are normally incompatible even with transports. Which would be land, water, and orbital. However even then a single omnicon can be designed to be amphibious so it can go between land/water and when in orbit activate thrusters for movement.

Why do we need to have half a dozen constructors with different movement systems?

It really isn't a nightmare. If you need maximum mobility, and to reach isolated positions, say to get metal spots captued or radar towers built, or even to get to reclaim fields quickly, you would value an air constructor. Balancing is just a matter of finding that threshold. True enough though, they would be crappy for sitting in the heart of your base to build a dozen fusion reactors.

Why have different movement archetypes instead of one omni-engineer if not for tech restrictions? - It's about picking the right tool for the right job. And making the most cost effective decisions. Also because if Uber Entertainment intends to have simulative terrain affecting unit performances, as well as varying unit slope tolerances as reminiscent in Total Annihilation, such decisions actually become important, and you can't then just lump every ground unit into one omniclass of 'land unit'; because one 'land unit' may not be fit to traverse all land. You really need a different unit. This of course assumes Uber Entertainment doesn't take the attitude of all terrain being divided into distinctive "passable/impassable" areas like in every other RTS game, in which case the need for different ground movement archetypes doesn't matter so much.

And understanding half a dozen constructors was never a problem in games. I don't get how people think it is.

I'd like to see a limited number of full-fledged constructors (land, air, and maybe a support tower would satisfy me), but supplemented with intermediate sapper, mine- and bridge-layer units that can build a few light defenses or transform into temporary structures. It adds a little more flavor to the game than "I throw a group of guys at your group of guys" when you have units performing non-combat tasks that need to be protected.

And I want to blow up a bridge with units on it and watch them fall, because I'm a bastard.

You know, I never liked the flow that came from limiting the construction of things like mines to specialist layers. Requiring such narrowly applicable units meant I never built them. I'd be much happier is such things could just be built from regular construction units like every other building.

Fair point. An artillery unit that sows mines is also an option.