For Backers Only: Megabot Experiment

^this.

It's all fine and dandy to say "well I want X complete first", but if we want super units and Uber is fine doing the work at some point if we provide the money, then why not?

Just because such a gap in military land unit size hasn't yet occurred doesn't mean it couldn't. A dramatic jump in material strength-to-weight ratio is quite plausible, and has already happened. Take the difference between steel cable and buckytubes today: One could build structures with buckytubes which are orders of magnitude larger than structures of steel, and there's no reason to build 'in-between versions' simply to fill the gaps.

Any super units in PA would naturally be constructed from materials which are far, far more expensive, but much lighter and stronger. Possibly far more light than strong, to keep the cheaper materials (and smaller units) not only viable, but superior options for any roles where size isn't the main priority.

This would strengthen the inevitable conclusion that large units are large by necessity and by design; they aren't just 'more of the same', they do something a smaller unit simply isn't big enough to do.

In the case of the traditional battleship, the reason was range; longer guns were needed to reach further inland.

In the case of a carrier, the reason was runway space; the planes needed a big, long runway to take off.

Too much emphasis on reality will quickly bring us to the inevitable conclusion that ALL bipedal walkers should not exist. Anything a biped can do, a tank or multi-armed quadruped would do far better. Allowing the commander unit to exist in the first place means any debate about 'realism' is a matter of subjective opinion more than any hard line.

These things may not be mutually exclusive. Large units have intuitive limitations and applications which are quite different from those of smaller units in interplanetary combat.

1: They would be extremely expensive, if not impossible, to move from planet to planet.

2: They are the only mobile units large enough to plausibly have weapons capable of firing across the void to hit interplanetary targets.

Discarding a possible tool for making interplanetary warfare work simply because that tool has had different applications in the past could be a grave mistake.

Of course, I do agree whole-heartedly with your philosophy. <> If super units are considered, I'd want those unit designs to be more focused on the late interplanetary game than on single-planet warfare.

Edit: To put it more succinctly, I would prefer that super units only be added to the game if their presence would improve the large-scale interplanetary warfare aspect of the game.

I'm OK, I'm OK, I'm OK !

I just love raw stuff. I do not really care of it will be finally included or not as long as I see the process behind.

It's really interesting to see the process, tests done, look to what is working or not, and having a game where you know why such technical/design choices has been made.

The only drawback is that I'm more and more addicted to these news and I'm too impatient to be able to play the game !

I like

Although as others have said, needs to be bigger!

I would like to see it bigger than the buildings at least.

Also I hope there is different type of weapons instead of the standard Cannon/Missile....

Let me explain this another way to show why it wouldn't happen. If I had the ability to create new units on the fly during a game, and I saw an opponent building such a large unit, to counter it I would build a couple of half the size or 3/4 the size units instead. Why? Because value-for-metal is better. I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket, multiple units are more adaptable and can be deployed separately, and I get my firepower in increments as I complete units instead of waiting for one big unit in an all-or-nothing gambit. If this value-for-metal scenario doesn't play out, then the optimal strategy is to play with only mega units, and the downsides of that are clear and have been explained several times already in this thread by others.

Likewise, to counter these smaller units, I'd build several even smaller units and so on, until you get to normal size units. You therefore wouldn't see any such gaps, and in most cases it is never effective to build the larger units in the first place. This is why I advocate slightly larger than commander sized "megabots". However, I'd be fine with larger units as long as the intermediate units were also present.

As for bipedal walkers, I'm willing to suspend belief for smaller units, as they do have a clear mobility advantage over tanks. But large bipedal walkers break every ounce of believability, and give you no advantage over, say, a shorter walker with 8 legs instead.

There are a couple of ways you could do the tradeoff. Option one is that a larger unit sacrifices flexibility for power concentration (same cost efficiency) or some power concentration + unit stat efficiency (trickier as if economy gets bigger enough to mass produce then they just get spammed). I personally think that's a great concept and generally something you'd be considering anyway in the jump from a t1 to a t2. Obviously has to be done right, but I think a *few* super size units would work really well as t2.5 augments to an army.

----

On that note, what if that bot was devoted entirely to rockets? Long range rockets on the shoulders for an MMM attack, chest slots are for a shorter range anti-anti missile decoy flood, and arms fire RPGs at long range as well. Somewhat poor in direct combat, but excellent fire support and base siege.

i like the size of it.

As suggested i also like the idea of it as a commander battle suit - thereby limiting it to a single instance. Might encourage people to take there commander for a walk more often too?

....

I....



UBER PLS

I mean seriously, (some) people want commmanders to be relevant throughout the game, and people want super units. Combine them! Give us a tank commander suit, a bot commander suit, and maybe a boat commander suit. Maybe 3 or so total. ALL PROBLEMS SOLVED

I haven't read all of this, but the parts I read haven't mentioned this exactly so I'll say it anyway.

It's big. Obviously. But somehow it doesn't feel big. Probably because it's a place holder, but here's the main thing I feel is off (and it's something I've seen more games do)

It needs to be angled downwards. This thing is looking forward/up, which means it's expecting to confront things about its own size. If you really want to make it feel big, aim all the guns downwards. Make its feet heavier, because that's where it's going to take most fire.
Don't just make it tower over enemies, but make it look like it was designed to do exactly that. Make it loom over enemies threateningly instead of just aiming forward and then shooting things at a silly angle.

But anyway. Other than that, pure size-wise, it looks about right. Big enough to be terrifying but small enough to fit on the screen while allowing you to see other stuff as well.

Godzillahhhh

Good example.

How about "Pacific Rim" Style Mega bots?

It needs to be big enough to step on things, so a bit bigger.

Ok,

I'll admit I scan-read most of the thread because 16 pages is simply too much to read in one go.

However...

First off, I think it looks good the size it is. If people have qualms about whether it'll be tactically viable, that can always be addressed.

Secondly, even if it's not a commander suit... The game's mechanics could limit it (like in Dawn of War, for example) so that you can only have one such mega-unit in your army. Explain it away with something like "The infrastructure needed to maintain communication and control with such a unit is just so dense that any more than one unit would use up all the bandwidth available on point-to-point wireless comms" or something like that if you like - I'm sure people would be fine with that. It then also gets around the "ho noes, he has 20 superunitrobottythingies and is about to destroy my entire universe and i have no hope" problem - give us one of these units only, make it suitably weak in certain ways, and it becomes a nice big trade-off

Thirdly, the physics of moving around need to apply to both teams. If you have lots of baby-bots, your big'un either needs to stop where it is, or kill your own baby-bots when it stands on them. By all means, don't let it walk through narrow canyons etc, but consider this... It's an uber-weapon on an uber-bot in an uber planetary battle, and therefore it needs to be able to /be/ uber... Give it the ability to blow up rock formations etc that are in its way so it can literally cut new paths across the planet!!! If it can't walk there, and there's no units in the way, let it blow up the obstacles. If there's units close enough to the explosions, let them suffer the consequences. However, if you do that, I understand it's gonna blow holes in the terrain when it takes out the enemy's army/base/commander... So much the better!!! KILLING SPREE!!!

Finally (because I've waffled enough)... People are obviously concerned about it being unstoppable. So... Make it a modular unit. Module 1: the legs. Shoot these with little tiny bots and suddenly your mobile killing machine is stuck in one place. Modules 2 and 3: the arms. Shoot each of these enough times and it disables. Module 4: the targetting sensor array. Shoot the head enough and the unit can't 'see' any more. Module 5: the core CPU - the heart, if you will. Fire enough ordnance into its torso and watch the entire unit just stop working completely. To simplify this, and prevent it from being a micro-managed one-vs-all battle... Just make it so that units hit different modules depending on their height/weapon/range... Aircraft naturally hit the head or torso, baby bots can only see high enough to hit its legs and immobilise it, bigger tanks can damage arms/torso (and if you're hitting it with tank shells that explode or whatever, then yeah, let them splash damage over the torso as well as the arms or something). I realise this last bit is going to be a bit of a ball-ache to code, but it leaves the commander of the defending army an interesting set of choices... Do I use aircraft or artillery to shell the unit so it can't see where it's going? Do I send lots of baby bots that might get stepped on, but will attack its legs so it can't move? Do I send my main tank force and try to blow the bugger up?

TL;DR: good size, some ideas for mechanics around it, waffle waffle waffle...

I love it. My only worry is from a gameplay perspective: it should be STUPIDLY expensive, as in getting one would require ruining that planet's military force on your side in favor of an economic build that could keep it online and active, besides its horrendous build cost. It shouldn't however take Mavor-style time to build, just something like the Aeon Colossus.

Hmm. (n.n) I kinda already addressed this quite thoroughly in my last post:

We already have those clear examples of super units working together with much smaller support units in the real world, and they emerged very quickly after the technology to make them. The second example in particular provides all the explanation needed for how super units could work without breaking the game or destroying suspension of disbelief.

Modern carrier groups don't have much in the way of intermediate 'in-between' ships. The carrier is gigantic, and the support ships have only gotten smaller by comparison over time.

Building two half-size carriers with half the support each is not an effective counter, because it's really expensive to miniaturize an aircraft carrier. Two half-length runways is not as good as one full-length one. Even in the battleship example this holds true. Two smaller ships could easily out-maneuver and out-shoot a battleship at close range, but would be unable to hit the inland targets which only the biggest guns could reach.

Building nothing but carriers is also just plain silly. Any naval expert will tell you a carrier needs support. The same goes for battleships. Big guns are great against big land targets, but not planes or other smaller ships.

Another major point: When big ships were first invented, there were lots of intermediate units. It was over time, as technology advanced, that the flagships got bigger while the support ships got smaller to create the dramatic size difference in carrier groups today.

I get the impression that the unit designs in PA aren't newly discovered during the course of a battle, but that they are extremely old designs which are built into the commander units, and have been ever since the first commanders models of this type were created long ago. If that is true, it's not unreasonable to assume that these commanders are able to skip the many intermediate-sized steps. The designs they've been programmed with have already separated and developed into their specialized roles: The bipedal robot equivalents of aircraft carriers and AEGIS cruisers, not destroyers and battleships.

As for whether my example itself is a fair one, ask yourself: Are ships the only examples of super-sized military vehicles because naval warfare is the only place where large vehicles could ever be useful, or are they the only examples of super-sized military vehicles because, as you mentioned, it's easier to build big ships and we simply haven't yet developed the technology for land vehicles of similar size?

Once we develop super-light construction materials like those needed to build, say, a walking robot with a mobile space elevator on its back (I'm pretty sure bigger is cheaper when it comes to one of those), there's plenty of reasons to build one, and very few reasons to build something half the size, which is both too small for orbital strikes and too big to use more conventional weapons efficiently. But it certainly wouldn't make all other ground units obsolete.

In conclusion, there are plenty of reasons to build big, specialized military vehicles. There's also plenty of reasons to miniaturize technology when you can. Those two factors together mean that it's quite likely that the carrier group archetype may be applied to ground vehicles one day, even in real life, and certainly in fun games.

Umm... considering this is a game where smashing planets together is (somehow) a cost-effective military tactic, (or, for that matter, a game where conventional weapons are still used despite the existence of nukes and a lack of reasons not to use them) I'm extremely surprised that 'another, even bigger robot' ended up being the thing that breaks your willing suspension of disbelief.

The commanders are strongly implied to basically be rogue A.I.s, which construct bipedal frames due to some warped sense of loyalty to their ancient, original designs. Considering that, it would stretch my suspension of disbelief quite badly if they were like, "All must be like the ancients. 8 meters.... bipedal. 12 meters.... bipedal. 20 meters.... bipedal. All must be bipedal. 48 meters.... bah, that's too big. Lets go freaky spider-thing for this one." *clanky high-five*

Better engineering, worse anthropology.

...but we all have different priorities and sensitive spots for that. I have a friend who can't stand it when magic makes something bigger or smaller. Make something out of nothing, sure! Change the past, why not? Create an unbreakable wall of shifting colours which lights people on fire, turns them to stone, drives them mad, and teleports them to another dimension, all in that order? of course! Magic! Make some guy a foot taller? Bah, that's complete nonsense! Too unrealistic.
He's quite a skilled designer of fantasy settings, too. It's just a quirk of his, and he makes it work for him.

As I said, suspension of disbelief is extremely subjective, and there is no right or wrong. Almost every decision the designers make in that area will bother some folks and please others.

At first i thought too small, due to the ship in the background as others have mentioned, as mega bots should rule for visuals and impressiveness, but then i figured all the bots are pretty big IRL as it is, and ships are far bigger than anything else, - no reason to believe the boyancey offered by water wouldnt continue this trend into the future.

So i settled on thinking its slightly too big - a commander should fear them, but not be terrified when he hears their first foot step on the horizon - at that size the commander would reclaim itself rather than face certain death. i'd prefer a battle with several big units and a swarm of support units, to a battle with one huge unit and a swarm of small units. so mini-experimentals, or tier 3.5 - more like early command and conquer days where a mammoth tank rocked, and you would get several, but a single one doesnt spell end game. - a battle that ebbs and flows, rather than i built x first so i win, which can happen with experimentals causing crippling blows.

1 tier two unit beats 3 tier 1, 1 comander beats five tier two (15 tier 1), 1 mega bot draws (just looses) vs two commanders (so 10 tier 2, 30 tier 1). - i figure therefore that slightly smaller fits this concept.

I definitely like the scale if you put it against the battleship in the background i think they would be around the same size i see this unit as a sort of Land Battleship with legs it certainly has enough guns XD.

Sorry if this has already been suggested ...

One rationale for very large super units in PA might be for an attention management advantage. What I mean is, super-units might be strategically inferior (in terms of resource usage, and even tactically) to a number of smaller units, but you might still want to build them to cut down on your management load. Instead managing attack and defence with multiple groups on multiple planets, you might build a megabot and assign it to defend a base; our build a couple and point them at an enemy base while you go manage a more important battle.

It just occurred to me that I might want to put this idea somewhere not buried in a gigantic wall of text:

I was just thinking the robot could point it upwards and fire it like Batman's grapple gun.

But instead of being a grapple gun, it's a retractable space elevator.

Maybe put a weapons platform on the end, or something like that. Use it to rain missiles or artillery down on the planet from orbit, or take pot-shots at other, nearby planets, moons, or asteroids.

Also, I just re-read that and I should probably get some sleep soon.