Game Enders

The game enders should mean not something always guarantees owner's victory (Giving the player extremely huge advantage), but something prevents unnecessarily long game play.
Probably asteroid kinetic bombardment could be an example of this (on my belief. I do not know how the meteor bomb would work in actual game though...), since it makes the battlefield smaller. but would not be something makes us victorious once we build it.

Can you guys think something prevents other game 'ender'?

That would be a good example of a potential "iWin" button. We can hope that asteroid will be guided by a bit proper orbital mechanics (like it was in the KS concept video) instead of changing into a sort of "direct fire weapon". That way you have a lot of time for evac (as long as you check the starsystem map here and there).

If you can afford a planet-killing superweapon and can't afford to carpet the game with scout planes, either the planet-killing superweapon is too cheap or scout planes are too expensive.

Maybe you don't even have access to that planet? How will your scout planes move there?

Or the commander has a cloak that can't be detected by scout planes?

You're making some assumptions that we don't know about yet. :mrgreen:

If you don't have access to the planet, you scout everywhere else. If you don't find the enemy com, you know he's in the one place you didn't look. If you've been completely pushed off two or more planets and don't have any means of landing units on them at all? You're probably screwed anyway because your opponent probably has a much better eco than you and didn't just sink all his resources into a game ender. You were probably wiped out before you could even finish your superweapon.

And for your second point: I will be disappointed if PA follows in TA's footprints and makes the late game Com a liability that needs to cower in a pond.

Prepare to be dissappointed then.

There won't be commander upgrades (as far as we know). And since I can't imagine a way to balance a commander that is both early and late game viable without being op at one stage or up at the other...


Personally I loved that part of TA. Hunting for my friends com while desperately hiding my own. But there's always the option of not having com death be a game over condition.

Anything with vision can qualify as a scout, so a dedicated role is redundant at best. Just build straight up units and roll the guy.

I'd like to see the commander scale by himself. I thought about having him start at relatively low health and low armor(due to stress on the chassis causing degradation of the armor from the high energy transportation system[I'm assuming the commander warps in like in SupCom [[Third level of nested parenthesis here ]]]), then having the option to sacrifice early resources to make him safer by repairing him, or to let the autorepair work on him real slow. That way the commander could increase in usefulness to keep up with his armies, but never having additional killing power.

Go scouting with a Krogoth or a Czar and see how well you do. You said 'anything with vision', right? Anything can technically scout, but that doesn't mean it'll be any good at it. After all, any unit capable of dealing damage can qualify as a tank, so a dedicated role is redundant at best. Just build straight up engineers and reclaim the guy. Also, good scouts tend to also have some combination of radar, sonar and/or stealth, which would probably end up OP if it was also on a fast cheap combat unit. TA had twenty different scout units (unless the Zipper and the Freaker don't count, in which case it had eighteen), which is quite a lot for a supposedly redundant role.

Also: You appeared to have missed my earlier point that any player that wins with a game ender probably could have won without one using conventional units, it just would have taken forever and been really dull for both sides.

At this point one player has clearly already won, and the other is being unsportsmanlike by prolonging the game when the chance for a comeback has long past.

Playing on Annihilation instead of Assassination is as much of an option as playing with 20 minute no rush no air no game enders no nukes no artillery premade bases full share autogive nothing but time. Sure, you can do it, but don't think you're actually playing the game.

Unit specialisation? The "scout" unit being a cheap, fast, low armour unit with far better intel abilities than general combat units (radar / sonar / long sight range etc.).

I would personally draw the line between "specialised" and "redundant extra" with a scout type unit on the specialised side; something with enough of a purpose to warrant the unit design. I would not personally call the scout role a redundant one.

Of course, it's probably only worth making one scout unit, and making that unit airbourne to maximise the "fast" and by extension "maneouvreable" characteristics. Like you say, any unit can perform the scout role inefficiently, but it's handy to have one that does it very efficiently.

There is still room for specialization, imagine a 'Sentry' units, it's still has the good intel/vision, but slower and prolly land based but the up shot is that it's well hidden, like via stealth. So it's not so much a "go can get info" type scout as much as a cheap and flexible way to extend your intel, they're the kind of thing you put along counterattack paths and out in the field to spot enemy movement.

Somewhat dependent on how building based radar/intel pans out thought.

Mike

T1 Orbital scout satellite is going to rock everyone's world!

"Periodic" bursts of intel as it orbits over the enemy and it's less noticeable than a scout-bot or plane... and more difficult to counter too, hopefully.

Dang you beat me to the spy satellite comment.... was going to say..... robots so advanced, but need a plane to scout seems a little lame. It's understandable in the beginning since resources would be scarce to shoot things into orbit... Of course if you're going to enter another planet with a mid-game economy established, I would think you would have the good sense to send in probes and maybe an orbiting satellite ahead of your com.

As for the com being lame at endgame, would having his power scale by the resource output of the base he is sitting in help? That way he only benefits from the boost as long as he's not out attacking something, and takes away the lameness of keeping him hidden, though you could still use cloak/anti-radar and tuck him somewhere as an option.

TA's already got you covered. Units can only be detected at short ranges because they all possess effective camouflage technology that cuts down engagement ranges to a few kilometers. It's in the manual. Plus spy planes are cooler than spy satellites.

I was more thinking about first entry on a planet from another...... Would make more sense to send a probe/satellite to it before landfall.... otherwise the solution would be:

1)send egg there
2)build infrastructure
3)build factory
4)build spy plane(s)
5)set patrol pattern
6)wait for resulting scout info
7)find established T2-level base on the other side of the planet, OH CRAP! Quickly build orbital gun, get in egg, shoot yourself outta there!

Okay 7 is pretty much only one of many possibilities, but yeah.

I do agree with you though, a plane is always sexier than an orbiting trash can.

I'm not quite sure I agree there. Especially in terms of gameplay.

Spy planes can be ordered to do stuff, they can be sent on missions, you can prioritise scouting certain areas, you can use them to exploit holes in an opponent's air defences, they can be intercepted, they create gameplay options. Spy satellites can't really do anything once they're built but circle around on a fixed path and provide info. The only option they add is "Do you want to build one? Yes/No".

Limitations impact gameplay just as much as options do in many cases.

There's no reason you can't have a scout plane. I simply posit that Orbital Scouts are reasonable and conducive to the "War of Information" too.

Something Orbital Scouts can do that planes can't is not get shot down by AA. They are a safer way to gather information without the inherent micromanagement of Scouts, with all the plusses and minuses that entails.

Scout planes aren't terribly bad. But they take a role that is very easily duplicated in just about everything else. Why would you need more than one? Why build any at all? The traditional "lotsa vission for cheap" is nice, but it's a role that very quickly gets saturated by the hordes of tanks, radars, and everything else that hits the field. So here's a few ways to help scout planes get an edge:

- Cheap/free stealth, making scouts far more difficult to unroot.
- Temporary cloak, letting scouts dodge projectiles and penetrate defenses.
- Suicide ram, akin to the Aeon Mercy.
- Suicide explode, creating a huge cloud of anti-intel (perhaps to hide your army?)
- Orbital flight.
- Sonar capabilities
- Deployable as mine.

There are certainly other ways to make scouts cool.

Orbital scouting will be essential to find enemies elsewhere. It's a big cosmos, after all. Cost will play a big role in how viable it ends up on a local level.

One could possibly use a stationary observatory, similar to the Eye of Rhianne.

Why you need more then one? Usually they're quite fragile so...

Why build any? Because they give you intel capability in a very fast and mobile package.

How does having hordes of tanks help you get to know what the enemy is building inside one of their main bases? I highly doubt you can get your hordes of tanks in there so easily to scout it...

Also, I really really hope PA won't make the same mistake as SC did with their horrible omnisensors. Intelligence gathering should be more then just putting down a single structure that will tell you everything around you in an enourmous area.

So, basically make a scout plane into anything else besides a scout plane?

Scouts don't need to be cool. They have one very important niche they fill. Getting intelligence fast in an area that is hard or dangerous to reach otherwise.