Experimentals

It is time to discuss it properly..

I think that it is very cool spend truck loads of resources and time to build a unit that is huge, nice looking and can make a difference in battle. But honestly I hate when they are too powerful..

Experimentals should be powerful for me,because it's called experimental!What's useful to spend ALOT of rescourses in a unit which you can pwn with for example 20 tanks?
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Lets take SupCom,all Exp. units were really powerful ,but you also needed really much time to build one.(~>Well balanced(my opinion))

In Forged Alliance you can build a Exp. units in max. 9 minutes (with heavy assist(I had such a game once) but generelly after 15-20 mins it should be possible for everyone and on each map.They are strong but easy to kill,tbh.

SupCom2 ..... didn't play it for a long time but with some tanks it was possible.
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So again, where is the fun to spend everything in one unit if it's NOT the BEST unit on the current battlefield?


Vollatze aka. Prince

I would prefer modular Superunits.
Units that be assembled from asteroids or scratch with different weaponry where you can target different parts of it. I think that would work well on the sea or in space.
Mm... making another thread.

Experimentals might have a place on land though as you can't just add another leg and hope it works well like you could add another thruster to an asteroid.

Experimentals are super a super idea, but have one drawback : makes lesser units totally obsolet.
And in most of the games i've had with friends, the war finish in Expirimental war : the winner is usually the one that have the most.

I'd prefer a system were the is a SUPER Uber unit, that rocks, but you can only have 1-2 active at a time.
So you have to be careful with it, and use it at key moments, and not send them to death in your opponent base.

Experimentals should be as powerful as the amount of time/resource you have to spend on it. So, if the experimental is not overpowered, so isn't the amount of resources/time necessary to build one.
If we don't use the term 'experimental' then these types of units could be just top units that are bigger and more powerful than the others. I just don't like the ideia of being able to build one or two very powerful units and winning the game because of that.

^^This. I have not voted against Experimentals, but the less, but larger units you have, the there will be less (but bigger) explosions. If PA is going for massive scale battles, experimentals should not count for 30 units. Please don't make other units obsolete late game.

I felt like scaling down experimentals in supreme commander 2 had the opposite effect, making them smaller and cheaper made them compete directly with the standard units. I think ideally there should be more to experimental units than being scaled up versions of your bog standard gunship, spiderbot, etc.

Uhm, just MAKE them count for 30 units or even more. Unit count should be weighted by the strength of the unit (i would say, propper unit count for such an unit would be the number of T1 units it could take on at once...). Well, and make experimentals more expensive again. In vanilla SupCom, experimentals were quite an achievement, you could hardly build one of the bigger experimentals every 15-30 minutes (if you had a good ecconomy with mass generators) and still they lasted only a single assault. In FA it became unbalanced because health of most experimentals was pushed up that far that they could be used to destroy a complete base without any backup, also they got way to cheap, especially in terms of build time. Not in terms of mass, but you could build them way to fast which almost eliminated the chance to destroy the unfinished experimental like the sitting duck it is. With 20 enginiers (or whatever the highest reasonable number in a full size base would be) building an experimental should still take minimum of 10 minutes for small, 20 minutes for large, 60 minutes for epic (like experimental nuke or mavor...) experimentals. Enough time to counter and costs which are high enough to prevent experimental-rushes for the first 60-120 minutes of each game.

Also consider energy upkeep for experimentals, somewhere in the range of 2-10 factories. Upkeep worked as limiting factor for T3 artillery, mass creators and nukes. So why shouldn't it work for experimentals too? Together with unit count this should work pretty well on preventing players from stacking experimentals in early game while still leaving them intact as a strategical investment.

Btw.: Experimentals should go more for synergie than for brute firepower. Sure, i liked the Monkeylord or Mavor but those units did ever only need some backup for their weaknes to prevent a counter, but there was no point in combining them with a real strikeforce. The experimental carriers and factories played more interesting. Some additional firepower if you get the unit in the right place, but mostly support units with defensive abbilities. What i always missed, were mobile experimental shields against T2 artillery or an experimental engineer for reclaiming wrecks and repairing right on the frontline (just imagine some type of mobile Hive)...

Honestly ... no. I don't like the idea of Experimentals. Some bigger units, ok, but keep their power on a reasonable level. Superpowerful units to me simply have a mindless a-move to win mentality, which I dislike.

Something to realise is that there most likely wont be an experimental tier, just one or possibly a small handfull of units. The previous comparisons have all been to the krogoth who was just massive. Seeing one march towards you made you wonder what the hell you had done to deserve this because its only weakness was to long range artillery as they slowly trudged towards you.

The standard advanced land units where 1-2% of the price meaning they literaly cost the same as an army.

given the scope of planitary annihilation i would not be dissapointed if the construction of one of these meant potentialy abandoning the planet.

But similarly krogoths were not a tactical unit, they could only be one place at a time and they had to walk there, allowing the other player to at least try to respond. By comparison the more exotic abilities of experimentals helped them become an easy replacement for armies that should have been much more flexible (although this was mostly due to comparative cost and build time) and filling every role (there was one of everything... except perhaps air superiority). Instead of encrouaching on other units roles, a much more fitting role for them is impending doom.

Experimentals are great when they can be countered by less than their cost in resources spent on smaller units. The value of the experimental is it's concentrated in a single unit which retains full effectiveness until it dies vs an army that gets worse through attrition.

In an end game stale mate it allows for stacked experimentals to bust through heavy defenses which is good. However if they are too good we end up like in FA where once you reach a certain point it's foolish to build anything but.

Krogoth was ideal because it was expensive, slow, took forever to build and could be countered with less than it cost to make. But when supported with an army beside it, it allowed CORE to punch directly into bases it would be difficult to otherwise. So I am strongly in favour of experimentals which are strong without being game winners in and of themselves.

The primary key to this seems that an Experimental class unit would be entierly its own role instead of encroauching on roles that other units should be doing.

I think the Experimentals should be balanced like say if they are powerful attacking they should have weak defense or flipped.

That sort of balance leads to them becoming more of a large standard unit instead of a real experimental. Large units cost more than their roles because you pay for all the parts you dont use instead of just the parts you want.

Although I like the Idea of a truly epic experimental That fact is you never see them as to balance them there cost and build times have to be so far beyond any other unit in the game they only become feasible after any other game would have ended. Take the paragon inf FA. The only games you see those in need to last 4 or 5 hours.

I voted for Epic but not too powerful simply because I want to build an experimental every now and then. not view it as a last resort because I have more income then I know what to do with.

On a side note, I notice everyone is using experimental as a plural. If we indeed do get more than one experimental would it be a bad thing if there costs and relative powers were staggered. so Some of them would be rush-able and seen very often while others would be so powerful and expensive that they made waves the few times they were seen.

As long as they are in the same vein as the Krogoth, I'm fine with a handful of experimental units.

I think experimentals shouldn't replace existing unit roles except bigger. It would be better if the experimentals were very specialised and have very unique abilities. The flying or submersible aircraft carrier was a good example of this. They were unique, and had unique abilities. There is no need for a bigger tank that blows stuff up faster.

I think the experimetals should be powerful, otherwise they woudln't differ from "normal" units to much and it would be pointless to have them at all. Make them epic, expensive to build and slow.

But why not have both options in? We could have "low budget" exp-units ala Krogoth which would be epic, but still easy to defeat if send out without a proper support... and we could have massive experts, more expensive, even longer building time, but stronger and more of a threat... like the Fat Boy.

I want to **** my pants when I see something big incoming and that would happen if I see something fat boy like...

I think that an incoming asteroid might also invoke the same kind of reaction.

I always thought that experimentals should have a significant upkeep cost as well, kinda like the idea of cloaked units, to make them bad *** you need the energy and to move a mountain of lazes some energy should be needed as well.

I also like the idea of a building/ deffensive experimerntal I have to say that FARK's are my favorite units and that is why I only play as ARM in TA. I would love to see a super FARK.