Game Enders

That is a brilliant idea. I doubt that it will be implemented but it is a very clever way to achieve the results you want without upgrades. Kudos ...

As far as "Game Enders" are concerned, I understand the arguments on both sides and I too wouldn't want to see a point in which 1 thing becomes dominate. What I mean by this is: if you keep building [x] unit, that there is some point [y] in which a million of [x]'s counter defenses wouldn't be able to stop it. So if it takes >500 bombers to get through any defense to kill whatever, even if that other player properly scouted and built 2,000 anti-air defenses, anything over that 500 amount (So 501) will be unstoppable.

Interceptor.
Pee wee.
Raiders.
Radars.
Unit cannon.
Any attack at any point in time whatsoever.

There's no shortage of scouting options available, because EVERYTHING you can do qualifies as scouting. A slightly cheaper, faster unit isn't going to change the difficulty of scouting in any significant fashion.

What? I mean that scouts can have MORE. What they do is easily lost to irrelevance as the match goes on. By adding new function, they can still be scouts AND do something else. It's not a tall order for one of the most redundant roles in the game.

So, I'm building a lot of nuke silos deep into my heavily defended base.

Now you want to scout this by sending a bunch of units towards all my defense towers and massed armies?

And you expect them to just go through them and have a lookie at what I have in my base? :mrgreen:

None of those things can fill the role of FA's spy planes or TA's mobile radars (both airborne and not, also SC T1 land scouts). The Spy Plane has double the vision radius and 20% more speed for a little more than half the cost of an ASF. Trying to scout a heavily defended base with an ASF will likely lead to you discovering nothing of use because T2 and T3 AA have enough range to blow an ASF out of the sky before it can even see the unit firing at it. Spy Planes have vision radii larger than the maximum range of flak or SAMs, meaning they're actually capable of identifying AA units before they're shot down (useful for finding holes in AA defence even if the poor turning circle of the Spy Plane means that particular plane is probably still doomed), and due to projectile travel time and the Plane's higher speed, also reveal some of the base behind the AA.

Giving ASFs this ability would be problematic, as it would mean the majority of air units have a giant vision radius and air superiority would be even stronger than it is already, and giving ASFs the ability to penetrate more deeply into AA on top. When you make a scout you're sacrificing some combat capacity for intel, which is a strategic decision. It severely nerfs stealthy units such as submarines because it pretty much guarantees that an opponent will have sonar around because every one of their fighters comes with sonar for free.

Similarly, a mobile radar unit is a distinct thing from any of the things you mentioned because it's mobile and it's a radar. It can determine the presence of units but cannot identify them. Sure, you could make T1 radar cheap and just have engineers tag along with your forces building lines of T1 radar as they go, and turning off/self-destructing the ones you don't need any more, but that's a lot of micro you're creating just to prove that there's no need for scouts.

Oh no! You better send 5 interceptors instead of one.

Seriously, scouting is not that difficult. Anything with a little speed and a little vision is automatically suited for the task. Add a stealth package (or even a cloak) and it doesn't matter what the unit is built for, it's automatically capable of getting in close for the intel. And guess what? Seeing a hundred enemy weapons firing in your direction IS scouting. It tells you everything you need to know to start dropping nukes and rocks.

It's not some kind of special ability. ASFs simply aren't blind. They can see what's going on without any kind of hand holding. Peel off a handful and they can sweep the map no problem.

A craft loaded down with special radars and sensing equipment is more suited for the gunship position. It might be stealthy, it might have sonar, and it depends more on being a mobile sentry rather than a suicide camera.

No, you aren't. Scouts have been so pathetically cheap that their cost is largely a non issue. Their use is little more than a quaint personal preference, a way to make ctrl clicking useful so you can manage 2 groups of units a bit better. Unless you want to discuss the merits of a 200 mass omni sensor with no upkeep, but that is entirely dependent on omni sensors being a thing.

In TA the cost of scouting mattered, because vision had no memory. Any time you needed to see a base it involved another fink sacrifice. But structure memory is kind of a thing now, and live replays make poor intel a thing of the past. Things only have to be seen once.

So, in defence of your position that there's no need for a scouting role, you suggest a scouting role. There's no need for an 'arguing with bobucles' role because he does it himself.

Well, who else can match me in a battle of wits? :lol:

I'm not saying that intel roles aren't needed for the game. It's just that they can come in a larger variety of shapes than your simple light-fast-cheap. Half the units in the game qualify as cheap, and half more will be fast. You want a scout that is special by being expendable+cheap in a game where EVERYTHING is expendable and cheap? It's like... why bother.

You have failed to suggest other variants, so I have taken the liberty of doing it for you. A heavy intel unit can take traits other units can't have. Bigger range, more stealth, energy drain, and even special powers. Speed is irrelevant when a unit has reach, and special powers can add tactics to a unit that otherwise has none. They can be simple, they can be grand, they can enable surprise attacks or cover a retreat. A missile with a camera can be given to a frickin' camera launcher.

Well what i want in a scout is:

-something that i can send to an enemy at low cost. throwaway units that can get in but don't need to get out

-something i can use to see the enemy coming. Not talking about blips, talking about actually SEEING. I hated in Supcom that radar just shows a grey blip and it can be either a scout or a Monkeylord.


So yes, that brings me to two scouts: a T1 buggy that moves around, and a T2 mobile detector that can deploy (or something) and provides me with a great radar range and vision.

Hell, it can even be the pivotal difference: T1 scouts provide vision an T2 scouts provide radar

Except that I did, in my first post in this thread on the subject. In fact, I made the exact point you just made, that scouts can have abilities which would be overpowered on non-Scouts. You need to think of more than just replying to the last message a guy has posted.

Even so, there is still a niche for a unit whose sole properties are being fast and cheap, that being the very early game. Early game unit properties are something which need to be very finely tuned because before you've made contact with the enemy, build orders are everything, and early scouting on randomised maps will be more important than it is on fixed maps where everyone's learned the best BO and so can make reasonable assumptions about which features people will head for. If early raiding is to be profitable over pure eco, your raiders need to damage the enemy's economy by more than their cost, and they can't do that if they're fumbling around without a clue where the enemy is, so players will be better off just putting everything they have into infrastructure. The scout, by virtue of being faster and cheaper than a T1 tank/LAB, can get over to your opponent's side of the map before his combat units do, and is the only way of having more metal boots on the ground during the first few minutes that doesn't inflate army sizes in the late game.

I would submit that the queen could be considered a superweapon. She's not inhibited by the "rules" that other units have and you can obtain more if you outplay your opponent. Also stale mates are exactly one player avoiding losing long enough. True, it's not a win but you didn't lose either.

You bring an interesting argument to the table. I agree game enders when poorly implemented can detract from game play, but typically the cost associated with building them is so prohibitive as to cripple efforts on other fronts. If this isn't the case and the game comes done to who can build the biggest bomb first then gameplay becomes more like a SIM than an RTS. I believe it really comes down to how they balance the power of the weapon with the cost of it's construction.

I think all of this is about how we define a superweapon. The queen dies to pawns, not often, but she can. Let's use the term 'game ender' instead of superweapon, for clarity. The queen is clearly not a game ender, I think we could agree on that.

I do hope no one thinks that I have a problem with very powerful weapons, I don't. I actually love the idea of asteroids, largely because they are a very balanced weapon. They are utterly effective, but gain the user nothing. They destroy, leaving nothing to capture. This actually prevents snowball effects. They are also counterable, another factor I like.

As I said earlier, twenty tanks in the right place can end a game, and that's fine. Giant hammerblows should be counterable by equally massive counterblows. To answer a much earlier question, stalemate isn't really an issue, asteroids destroy the very terrain, eventually everyone will run out of planets. It's not like a nuke fight, where people just rebuild over the rubble if they survive.

OP's idea sounds like the most efficient way to ruin large games since every 10v10 or 20v20 will have at least 2 players only building up to this gg button he wants.

And then everyone gangs up to kill them. Problem solved.

I think part of the game is figuring what type of unit or ability is a gameender on the current map/planet.
For example if you are playing on a planet where strategic artillery can reach everything then this artillery might very well constitute a gameender. When both players are aware of this it becomes a balancing act about finding a way to make this artillery as fast as possible without losing in the process.
Individual artillery pieces might be relatively ineffective as they are inaccurate and takes a long time before they make cost. So the first strategic artillery you make might just be an annoyance for the enemy and they might have plenty of time to bomb it before it makes cost or you make another one.
However once the numbers add up the attrition becomes too high and the enemy is forced to retaliate or lose.
If both players dedicate in making artillery you would have an artillery duel with the possibility of mixing in other tactics to distract or destroy the artillery.

I'd like to call this an endgame weapon of attrition.
Different types of weapons can scale differently to be endgame weapons of different sorts and different scale. They might not be able to cover a whole planet. They might be intercontinental covering the whole planet. They might be interstellar covering they whole system.
Typical of the endgame weapon of attrition is that it takes long to make cost while the individual cost might be low or high.

A superweapon of Power might be weapon that in combination with its' price and range, chunkyness/weight, damage or armor makes it supersede lower price equivalents. Once the players have the economy to field such weapons or units they will have to be made to stay ontop. Going for it early is risky as the opposition might attack before its' done or leave you vulnerable and making it too late might mean that the enemy makes it before you do. I would class the land experimentals in Forged Alliance of this sort. It has similar mechanics as t3 air and t3 land which will also dominate unless the enemy also move to the same tech.

A real game ender which will end the game given enough time to player who built it. This gives the game a point at which the game will end if the economies grow that big. I would class the Paragon and the Mavor of this class(I think the Sera EXP nuke launcher doesn't qualify because it can't brake through 7 SMDs while it is very hard to space enough shields around your base to protect from a Mavor).
This is a endgame weapon or ability which is completely or almost certain to end the game because of how powerful it is.
Because of how expensive it should be, it would rarely show up in 1v1 as players are likely to amass huge amounts of units for the price of a game ender.

In FFA such an endgame weapon would force the fight as other players can't let the superweapon stay operational. Players might even turn it off as they wait for a better opportunity to use it without being attacked by everyone.
A weapon that has a simple countdown to an "I win" moment qualifies as this. Although the countdown should probably be visible for all players.

If this is the case in PA then PA could have all 3 types of game enders, Attrition game ender, Superweapon of Power and Real Game Ender, because it would be unlikely that the players would be able to grow the economies without dominating to the point where Superweapons of Power and Real Game Enders can be thrown around unless there is a stalemate occurring. If a stalemate occurs and the economies keep growing I think Superweapons of Power and Real Game enders can be a good way to brake the stalemate as players have to risk dedicating to a gameender or the enemy will.

Although this might not scale well if players quickly can gain huge amounts of resources.
Then the game might boggle down to producing game enders as fast as possible.

You guys seem to be forgetting that we can launch asteroids at the enemy base. If that's not a kind of "Game Ender" then I don't know what is. Do we really need game-ending units, when we already have game-ending asteroid-strapped resource-eating engines?

Thought I may as well post it here, I'm sure there's other threads for this, but game enders brought this one up.

Smashing planets with an asteroid/moon looks hella cool. In addition to this, there's just some other over the top super killy weapons I want to see being enacted:

1: Resonator rockets: The way I see this in my mind, it'd be say, six rockets, slamming into a planet. Once buried under the crust, they start resonating, until the entire planet is shaken apart, and you end up with a spreading cloud of magma. Could just be one rocket.

2: Flarebomb: Send a missile/energy beam into the sun, cause it to have a massive explosion. Explosion hits target planet. Hilarity ensues.

3: Super death beam from the moon: This one is pretty obvious. Just think of Calderon and Han Solo

4: Von neuman machines/grey goo: A self replicating machine that once started, would take a while to convert the target planet into itself, but via exponential growth, take over an entire planet, until everything is absorbed. This one would have to be limited, otherwise you'd end up with a mantrid drone situation (For those that haven't seen lexx, an entire universe gets converted into mantrid drone arms when Mantrid decides to consume everything)

5: Black hole generator: Not as in a self sustaining black hole that'd eat everything up and kill everything off, but a black hole that sucks things up into it, causing massive earthquakes and all sorts of destruction, then when the generator runs out of steam, the black hole dissipates, all the matter inside it converted to energy. Totally enough to vaporise a planet.

I know it's a bit late in the development stage to be adding new content. These are ideas. I like ideas. These ideas could, at a later time, be added to a "More ways to destroy everything in the solar system" DLC

In real world there are game enders too: Nukes.

I

so then you lost because he built 500 units didn't you???

Aside from X vs. X, there should never, ever, never EVER EVER be a situation where you can say "We both had the same amount of units, he had X and I had Y, so it should have been a draw." That indicates that you have two units that fill the same role, which indicates your units are designed poorly. This is the issue with Tankblobbing; there is no hard or soft counter to it. Artillery is cost-inefficient, bots have too short range, and the Artillery bot always overkills. Towers are immobile, and therefore have diminishing returns the more of them you build. This results in Tanks becoming a first-order optimal unit, it's the final word in securing land superiority.

Tanks, right now, have no counter. This is bad. Why? Because it means that the only way to beat tanks is with more tanks, which is exceptionally boring. Bots fill a niche role, but they're countered by tanks. Bombers are too squishy to act as a reliable counter to tanks. Naval is... Well, made of paper mache, but it can be effective in a few very specific situations.

This results in very silly matches where "excitement" consists of you trying to predict where your enemy is going to send their tanks next. Oh, he has bots? Send literally any combat unit at them. He has planes? Send fighters at him. He has air superiority? Well, ground-based AA. Naval? Bombers. Tanks? QUAKE IN FEAR BECAUSE YOU NEED MORE TANKS THAN HIM. You CANNOT hope to counter his tanks with some unique tactic, strategy, or just a tried-and true hard-counter because to do that, you need more tanks than him.

See my signature for why this is bad.