For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

This seems appropriate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAO4t8672hc

I'm obviously not gonna be seen here, but here's my take on Megabot: something on that scale, its primary purpose is probably psychological warfare, or making the other guy soil his pants. In universe, is there a reason for the enemy to do so, or are they all just unfeeling machines? If the latter, we can do without a Megabot.

This also, in-universe, explains why all the factions in SupCom have experimentals on that scale (the commanders, at least, are people) and why in TA, the Core had Krogoth but the Arm have no equivalent. (The Arm used piloted gear; whereas the Core were "patterened" into AIs.)

The aesthetic is too blocky. Also consider making non-bipedal super units, like a capital ship or mega tank.

I think the size is respectable. However my main concern is that this unit doesn't over kill too much. I would love if it could release a large salvo of missiles that , in the scenario with a large number of small units, each unit only is hit by enough rockets to kill it. That to me would make the unit feel that much more powerful.

My take: the megabot scale seems to big...

I could do without a megabot type unit but if it is being considered i would say make it about twice as big as the commander.
As it is right now I sincerely believe it looks out of place.

Too many guns. The reason experimentals were cool and interesting in supcom was because they filled pretty specific roles (fattie for base bombardment with low HP, spider/GC/chicken for short range directed fire/high hp, and air experimentals for big bombers or suicide bombs (czars)). If you cram as many long range, short range, and anti-air weapons onto a single unit as you can it becomes very uninteresting to use.

I agree with the general consensus that if experimental/super units are going to be included, they should be balanced in such a way that compliment, not replace, a large army of smaller T1/T2 units. The devs have already stated countless time that they don't want T2 units to replace T1 units late-game, so I think it can be safely assumed that they would avoid the same thing with any super units.

With that out of the way, they have to figure out how to do that balancing. There is a pretty good precedent with units like the Fatboy, Tempest, and Atlantis from SupCom 1. Of course, the same game also gave us "game enders" like the Ahwassa and the Mavor, that PA is trying to avoid. (Sorry Neutrino ) Anyways, the Fatboy, Tempest, and Atlantis were all pretty neat support units for an army, but they were almost totally useless by themselves.

As for the Megabot whiteboxed unit, I think it could work, but it's going to be much tougher to balance. I don't have any hard numbers on the experimental bots from SupCom, but they seemed way, way more destructive for the cost of their mass and energy compared of an army costing the same amount of mass and energy. Especially because an army can be whittled down, losing firepower as units are killed; an experimental at 15% health is just as destructive as it was at 100%. Which leads me to the next thought I just had.

I don't know if how much of a technical challenge it is, but I think an excellent way to help balance a Megabot would be to divide it into subsystems. And I mean more like Homeworld 2 - not like the customizable SupCom ACUs. If the unit is going to be visibly huge, make different parts of it individually target-able with separate health bars. If the feet get destroyed, it's immobilized until repaired. If its AA gets destroyed, it's defenseless against aircraft. Etc etc.

One last thought: Think of tanks, especially in the context of their role in WWII. The Megabot is a tank, all T1/T2 units are infantry. The tanks can run over all sorts of terrain and blow the **** out of fortifications and other heavy armor, but leave one by itself and a few infantry can sneak up and stick some explosive in its tracks and leave it a sitting duck. The tank's success depends on being in a good position to fire its turret, which is devastating direct firepower. But it's slow to turn and reload its turret, of which it only has one, so it is SOL if it's suddenly surrounded and outnumbers by enemies, even if each of those enemies is individually much weaker than the tank. Make Megabot units like that and you'll have something that people will want/need in their armies, but only be able to use effectively if they support and position it correctly.

The scale looks ok. But somehow I don't think super units are a good idea. The question should be. What makes this game unique? Well it is called Planetary Annihilation. This is not just a name. It is a game concept. Personally I don't just see another TA clone. I see a new game concept. Blowing up planets. So I would prefer to see different possibilities to blow up hostile planets and of course counter measures to those. Super units is just too much of a Supreme Commander clone.

I like the scale of it. It's big but not to big for me. It would be fine to me if you put a unit like this into the game.

And for the balance part: You could design some big-unit killers into the game.



And sorry if my english sounds a little bit like 5th or 6th graders english, it's not my native language.^^

Size looks good.

In terms of design I have always liked this guy, just for inspiration.

I like the idea of many rockets, those do good in overall battlefield destruction.

In general I am not a big fan of super units.

I believe that with super units there are two important aspects that are linked. Cost/effectiveness and role. If a su is going to be a front line demo bot, then it should not be able to destroy unproportionally more units (in terms of metal) than it cost. However a su that is specialised and more difficult to use could be cheaper. The role could also be more focused on destroying base defences and having less effect vs units.

I do like the idea of them having a special ability, this should of course not be totally op.

In the end it's still a random guy who sits in front of his Monitor and thinks "OMG A WTF-UNIt, SHOOT IT DOWN!". Following your argumentation the look of units isn't something to care about, since these robots won't care about.

Of course one of the foci is blowing up planets. But you'll likely do that only about 1% of the time you play. So there should be things you do in the meantime. The uniqueness of this game doesn't get lost because you build some units (whatever size they might be) in the 99%-rest of the time.

I like the size

Just please don't make any one unit armies like monkey and gc and chicken. Slow units. And be VERY careful when giving them weapons with aoe or a high rate of fire. And far more expensive than upscaled t1/t2.
edit: mostly easily swarmable if found alone or with weak support.

Some examples:
Fragile artillery (long range only, no aa, deploy time. Like scathis, but less damage since there's no shields now).
Heavily armored with medium to long range, low rate of fire and high direct damage (walking annihilator?).
Maybe one with short range and high rate of fire that is kitable by most of t1 and t2 but will destroy will destroy anything that gets in range.
Possibly some "auras" (repair, buff, debuff).

Let them add to the army, not be the army

Paralyzers, snipers, mud, lava pools (or other environmental hazards) could be nice counters.

Just a couple of thoughts.

What about a naval unit which would be a mobile unit cannon and factory (or transport) This would make for the ultimate amphibious assault.

The unit cannon could be short to medium range and could autofire unit as soon as finished (or by batch). Alternatively, no factory but a huge transport with cannon for disembarking

I think it looks awesome , possibly a little bit taller, and possibly more bulkier too.

Or make it asymmetrical, one big gun one side and other smaller ones the other, who knows, but it looks great .

Think it looks cool

I think its a perfect size and shouldn't be bigger, because otherwise it could end up just pretty daft given the scale of the planets. One of the things that kinda annoyed me about Supreme Commander was although the units were awesome and huge they were so big they just dwarfed everything.

Their weapon systems were so big that other units didn't even have a firing range as big as the Unit in some cases.

I think having it bearing lots of weapons is very cool, of course its going to be tricky to design aesthetically. I would say however if there is going to be a giant robot it should be able to
a) Crush smaller units by walking on them
b) Be much slower moving
c) Have more than one weapon system
d) Have a chest laser that can be channelled for a few seconds before being unleashed
e) Have powerful sounds, when it fires you should know

Bizarrely enough I think The Brick and The Tin might be good ideas for inspiration for a super unit

I also like the guns sticking out from the sides as well as the focus on multiple front facing weapons and the asymmetrical arms

Quite a reasonable summary I'd say.

I'm personally totally in the c) camp. To me its too big.

Huge bots (its 30-40m tall on the screen) just feel too cheesy for me. I know arguments from realism are kinda hated, but that thing just looks like something any armour penetrating rocket or grenade could take out with one well placed hit.

Usually big things have high hp and are hard to destroy because of fairly logical reasons. Buildings, made out of future-concrete are well armoured with meter-sized walls, ships, with lots of compartments have huge volume and having one part destroyed doesn't sink it, etc.

But such a huge robot usually has small parts, often the joints on its legs that aren't larger then a medium tank. But a medium tank gets killed fast while a similar sized and as complicated thing as a mechanical joint suddenly takes dozens of the punishment.

Asides from realism, those huge units often are damage sponges and I don't like that. You fire at it until the barrels glow and its as effective at 10% health as it was at 100% health, which was a few minutes of it being fired upon. If there has to be huge super units, make them different then normal units, have them bleed armour and make individual components destroyable.

There's a good example in the boss battles in Binary Domain (look at the second half of this video for an example). The huge robots there have all their critical componets armoured, when shot upon, that armour gets destroyed, ie. bleeds off, and the individual componets, here the legs, can get destroyed. In the end, its down to 2 legs from about six or so in the beginning and can barely move.

When I fight a such a big unit, I want to be able to order my PeeWee equivalents to destroy its shoulder rocket pack and be able to cripple its armaments that way. Or have a couple of tank destroyers concentrate their fire at its frontal chest plate until all armour there is destroyed and it blows up the reactor placed behind it destroying the unit, even though only a fraction of its total hp would have been depleted.

While this may require a bit of micro, I'd be ok with it since I don't expect such huge units (if they have to be in the game) to be too numerous and I'd make it easier counterable and perhaps balanceable that way.

Or as another example: Its nice that you have a Monkeylord, but I'll just rush a couple of KBots under it, where the Monkeylord can't hit it and they'll eventually shoot their way through the bottom armour.

In other words, don't just make big super units with tons of hp, make big super units with different mechanics then just hp, to make it more interesting to destroy them. And shooting of smaller parts of a big units, that would be so awesome, even I'd like big units then.

I like big robots.

For a super unit, I'm thinking it might have some unique functions?

Like a ludicrously large gun, a shield or what not.

I say go big or go home. :twisted:




When I devote resources on building a monster, and my opponent gains a bit of map control and thinks they are winning...
I want them to pee their pants when they see me unleash my monster.

I like big robots. Maybe it's so big that it has to be built in pieces, making it vulnerable until completion?


I think there definitely needs to be super tanks and aircraft/hovercraft too. The super tank could be like the Shuttle Crawler/movie hq/mobile bot builder, and the hovercraft could be like a floating battleship with big guns on the underside of it.

On a side note, there's quite a disparity between the larger 3 ships and the smaller ones + the subs. I know it's a WIP at present, it just looks a little off to me.

You didn't say that :lol: