For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

It must have tons of uses

My opinion is that a big unit that is costly to produce needs to have some kind of payoff, and if you look at the real world or even just look at it from a planetary perspective then there just isn't precedent for such a unit. Especially when dealing with such a large scale map.

There would or should simply be too many countermeasures and ballistic / small scale approaches against a unit like this that it would be impractical and costly to build for offense and too expensive for some kind of purely defensive utility.

We see this kind of logic flourishing our own human made ship / aircraft / armor designs. Mobility and defense have been key forever. Stacking the jets with a smaller individual payload that they have to resupply back at the base while keeping room for multiple AA missile countermeasures. Stacking our boats with multiple missile countermeasures.

Usage of camera drones, radar and birds eye view Intel of the battlefield to assist ground troops.
Precise / Smart missile attacks, fired from light anti armored artillery put in relative safety.

You want to decimate an army or keep your base safe from a pesky jet counter attack?Any sufficient artillery piece that can do that for you without adding in a 48 foot tall bipedal robot into the equation. :/

The trailer I was presented with when kickstarting the project presented a slightly modern touched army of robots. Tanks, stealth bombers, and basic robot infantry shooting lazers / plasma / some form of ballistic bullets / missiles.

Next the robot guy goes and makes moon base / missiles to bomb the planet or reinforce his troops with.

Ergo the focus here is not on the super robot, and arguably it shouldn't ever be about having some kind of super unit. It's about super weapons / missiles being manufactured and deployed at range to the detriment of the entire planet.

I'd have to ask what is a 48 feet tall robot to do when a giant meteorite crashes into the planet, essentially wiping out the main bases of both people? It simply wouldn't be proper to give credence to the idea that it would be good to build something on that scale (as a land unit anyhow).

Minor edit: I did a bit of thinking, and I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of commander suit as suggested in some of the pages, but the scale should still be on the lower end. When it comes to size I'd rather look to orbital / naval units.

I see a lot of people talking about the Krogoth, so I did a little digging on the TA Wiki for non-TA players:

"The Krogoth is built from its own factory, the Krogoth Gantry, rather than the Adv. Kbot Lab. There is no ARM counterpart to the deadly Krogoth."

"Its main weapons are the Gauss cannons mounted on either arm, its secondary weapon is an Annihilator-type laser mounted on its head and its third weapons are two Starburst rocket launchers mounted on its back that are used as effective anti-air weapons."

"A single Krogoth can destroy a sizable ARM base if it isn't well defended."

"It has extremely durable armor, capable of withstanding seven nuclear missiles."

"The Krogoth also has the distinction of being the only official unit in the game to be able to survive a direct shot from a Commander's D-Gun."

(Page references: http://totalannihilation.wikia.com/wiki/Krogoth ; http://totalannihilation.wikia.com/wiki ... ontingency )

Now it seems that some people don't like experiments, but they do like the Krogoth. (Again, it seems to me. I haven't really been keeping a list of who says what)

But the Krogoth seems to be a unit that would beat any two land based Experimentals from SupCom 1/2 easily....

Granted, I'm all for giant slow-walking robots of doom. They are epic. I just want people to understand what a "Krogoth" is.

Krogoth livvvvvves

I like the scale though!

I personalty don't like super units, because of two things, they will either get spammed due to efficiency or not be used at all because they cost too much and are not very powerful. if they are implemented, they should be an Easter egg found only on metal planets on a metal throne with deactivated peewees bowing down before it, thus allowing it to be efficient without being spamed. (would have picture of that but i am not an artist.)

Hello, I thought I'd chime in with an idea that was sparked as soon as I saw the scale of the possible unit being discussed.

I read some of the thread leading up to this but not all, so pardon if this idea was already posted.

So as I was reading about this, it came to mind that , "What if a unit of this size were constructed in orbit with an orbital gantry, and it had several strategic uses?"
They could consist of the following primary uses:

* A carrier unit, deployed on a longer range basis, its function is to travel to the planet, carrying a load possibly comprised of Air, and ground units, with a maybe sea, if it can land in the ocean. (Dropships of some type could be used to load it up with units from the surface)

* Upon landing, a unit of this size acts as a smaller version of a KEW with a much smaller zone of effect, if any.

* Upon landing the player controlling the unit has several options: Deploy units berthed within, or transform into two separate modes. One mode might be a mini-base with a possible factory complex / turret mix (air / ground), kind of like Metroplex (if you were to think Transformers). Another mode would be a walking robot comprised of a total mass / size that equates to the previously mentioned building mix.

* It could be possible to transform into the robot and walk it around, keeping the units inside until the player deploys them. (which it could do from robot mode) This would mean units would deploy from specific zones, for example, ground units could exit from the feet area, and air could exit from the shoulders.

* Once a unit of this size makes landing, it cannot leave the planet.

If the strategic usefulness of this robot was limited, it could have a secondary function of being used as a firebase, or breaking apart into smaller units, which effectively destroys the unit and replaces it with other units that cannot re-combine. They would equal the mass of the original.

Thoughts? I know it is a rather half-baked idea, but maybe it'll get some thoughts rolling!

The scale is fine. It could be bigger but you don't need it much bigger

Except it wasn't actually that hard to defeat a Krogoth in game with the defences you would have by that stage in the game (Krogoths weren't cheap), and they can also be paralysed by spiders. Also, Krogoths lose easily to any sup com experimental. Krogoths were also much smaller scale-wise than the megabot when compared to normal units (only around 2-3 times taller than a tank).

What about giving the experimental imbalanced and very powerful weapons but with limited ammo and it would need to come back to its construction facility to be refilled.
It would be totally vulnerable when out of ammo.

No giant bots please.
They are awesome for five minutes until you realize, that they make for completely boring gameplay, because they lack the tactical versatility a group of multiple units has.
Plus, they also are the units which need the most babysitting, because you don't have a lot of them and they are extremely valuable.

Also there are the frustrating "Didn't get counter in the right time"-losses, which while being a failure on the side of the player can still cost you newer players and therefore shouldn't be given a lot of room to happen.
Not to mention that newer players could also gravitate towards rushing to the giant bots, so they are also diverting their attention away from more successful strategies, possibly denying them entrance to the strategic depth of the game.

Honestly, I don't see anything really good about going towards the extreme in terms of unit power. Except for the visuals of a giant unit, but that's not enough to have them in there.

Seems pretty cool to me. And remember, bigger is always better.

The Scale on it looks pretty descent, and I personally like the idea of one or two super heavy units for a game. I'll keep this brief because there are A LOT of posts on this topic.

Super heavies can be useful in situations that more conventional tactics fail like when you need to crack a choke point or devastate swarms of cheap units. They also do look pretty good and it does feel great when the effort of making them pays off like that.

On the other hand it does bug me when one unit can be the make or break factor in a game. If a super unit is the key to success then it reduces the challenge of the game by a massive degree.

Then again those are simple balance issues so really it just comes down preferences. I'd just say that Super Heavy units are like any other weapon, they have their uses and limitations. Personally I'd like a lot of choices available, but with land, sea, air, orbital, nuclear and KEWs to choose from I'm pretty sure that a Megabot would just be the icing on the cake.

No super units. It may be fun at first, but it quickly erodes, balanced, fun gameplay.

There are no simple balance issues.

If a giant asteroid with engines on it coming at your base from orbit isn't a super unit then I don't know what is.

As this fades into oblivion i just want to leave a NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Too Small!

So late to this topic but alas, I'll comment.

I think it needs to be smaller (about 70-75% of current scale).

As it stands, it seems like it'd be too huge and bulky. Ultimate units aren't my thing but large specialist units can be amazingly good.

Superweapons often take two flavors:
1. Not worth the time to build (Paragon / Mavor)
2. Overpowered (Fatboy / Monkeylord)

The only viable niche they can fit into is the 'Siegebreaker' role. When you're attacking a very heavily fortified base, it can sometimes seem impossible to breach. This is where specialized siegebreaker units come in.

That way, they have a situation purpose without being overpowered. Outside of their role, they can be a FUN unit... especially for finishing off players as a final insult... but they should generally be less cost-efficient than swarms of smaller units.

The other acceptable use is large 'support' units, which provide valuable assistance to large forces. An example of this is Titans in Eve Online, pretty worthless on their own but very valuable to a large army.

As long as design to fill a strategic niche, then it'll be fine.

p.s. I've never found large units that step on other units to be enjoyable. There's rarely any downside and it's usually pretty pointless, since those huge units usually kill anything they can step on instantly from range anyway. Exception are tanks running over infantry in early C&C games and the giant mobile bases in Universe at War. (those were cooool)

Super late to the party here.

First thing I thought when I saw this was "Squiggoth", which was immediately followed by "Too clunky, waste of recources". I could see one of these puppies on the field, hopefully scaled down 25% or so, but I'd imagine he'd be incredibly slow. A barely-mobile artillery unit - the robot form is more for show than actual use. This guy looks like he need to drill his feet (and possibly arms) into the ground for foundation before letting the cannon's blaze, making a long transition period between salvos and motion.

I like the scale of the super unit; something the size of a building is appropriate.

In my experience, you can have super units and still have balanced gameplay, the super just needs a critical weakness.

I can quote my experience modding Starcraft II and restore the Thor to its original size and larger. I designed it to have a ton of damage and attack very slowly, whilst being huge. It was a very powerful unit and was worth the large amount of resources it cost, but it ended up being very difficult to use correctly. The key here was the fact that while it did a large amount of damage, it could only target a small area at a time to do that damage, its weakness being its slow movement and turning speeds. It was very easily flanked and left alone it could be destroyed with very few losses. The key was that it augmented your existing army in an interesting way that required skill to be used correctly.

Now, Starcraft II is obviously a completly different scale than Planetary Annihilation, but the same concepts still apply. Super units should just be a matter of risk vs reward, something akin to putting all of your eggs in one basket.