Infantry & Vehicle Gameplay

Cost, health, damage, range, speed, firing mode, splash damage, refire rate, acceleration, turn speed.





I think bots could be slower....

If vehicles have a much MUCH slower acceleration.

So in an "urban environment", vehicles are slow lumbering units while bots are comparatively quicker, but in an open field it's clearly in favor of the vehicles.

Particularly with range advantage.

However I think that Dox vision should be equal to the Ants range advantage, (of course, Ants are slow, so they could also have more vision than their weapon range.)

That means in the "urban environment" (an enemy base, mountainous terrain), Dox can still avoid Ants and flank and so on, but Ants can still hunt them down.


Whereas currently Doxen just tend to run headlong into a turret and die.

If the current T1 units remained the only units at the factory I would agree they need similar stats, but its more important that each T1 factory has a reasonable counter to each the others, not necessarily similar units. Even if you only want 2-3 T1 units per factory you can make every factory viable vs any other, but each will still have it's own very distinct play style.

For example,

T1 Bots (all slow moving and low health, but versatile terrain options and cheap to produce)
B1 -->Anti-Bot and Anti-Tank (laser/blaster)
B2 -->Anti-Air (rocket)
B3 --> Anti-Defense (sniper)

T1 Vehicles (faster and tougher but requires easier terrain)
V1 -->Anti-Tank and Anti-Air (Laser)
V2 -->Anti-Defense and Anti-Bot (AoE-Artillery)

T1 Air (ultra mobile, less vulnerable to many weapons. More expensive per unit)
A1 --> Anti-Air (interceptor)
A2 --> Anti-bot (high AoE)
A3 --> Anti-defense and Anti-vehicle (high damage pinpoint)


At T2 you can break them each into 3 or 4 roles by creating more diverse and specialized roles such as AoE or specialized anti-armor weapons and might have units better focused at engaging specific targets. T2 Vehicles may focus in siege and armor while T2 bots focus on stealth and rapid deployment (unit cannon ammo, etc).

i feel with that youre taking the TA path and creating a lot of redundant roles, uber has it right with more specialized units being at the t2 level imo.....unless thats what youre suggesting?????

i must say that units being able to see beyond their engagement range with decent weaponry makes them slightly OP. not seeing their entire engagement range forces players to invoke more tactics to get the most efficiency out of their units instead of ok i can see them in just a few more meters, ticks w/e we can open fire with no supporting role like los units required
also it is clearly in favor already of vehicles in an open field, dox are easily crushed with no buildings in between them and the enemy

The whole point is to have units that behave differently, but where there isn't a "best" factory, or "best" unit.

Simply making the units roughly equivalent does indeed prevent one from being better than the other. But it makes them very similar. There are a variety of possible ways to make units different from one another without necessarily making one better than the other.

There are a lot of ways to combine attributes. Zero-K has an immense variety of units which are all just variations of attributes and stats, but the diversity that results is enormous. And Zero-K is by no means the only possible game that could have such a diverse roster- it would be entirely possible to make a completely different game with as many units that are all different from all the units in ZK.

I think it may not be useful to cite realism for how infantry work, since real infantry enter buildings where vehicles cannot, and use cover to increase their survivability.

Instead, PA should look at how infantry dynamics work on a macro level. Instead of cover dynamics, infantry bots can just be an efficient source of HP. Instead of being especially susceptible to small weapons/explosives, infantry bots can have a small pool of HP and pack together tightly. High strength and survivability with low mobility and range makes them naturally defensive (enemy doesn't want to get close) without imposing any special limitations, just like infantry. The way that infantry units work can be mimicked on the large scale without modeling how they work on the individual scale.

I also very much agree that vision plays a very important role in unit design- units with less vision than attack range benefit immensely from spreading, scouting, and planning an assault or a defense.


One thing that struck me about the livestream was that it came up that PA is about the large scale, so the player doesn't have to do "tactics." I think this may be an over-extension of the meaning of limiting micromanagement. Tactics are awesome- the only issue is that in many other RTS games the player has to issue an immense number of orders to implement even rudimentary tactics like forming a pincer, defensive line, or encircling a position, and so on. Minimizing micromanagement means removing the clicking, not removing the tactics. I say this because a lot of unit diversity has tactical, but not really strategic, implications. I hope tactics of using different groups of units in different ways, as well as maneuver and positioning, are very important aspects of PA. Tactics are very good, and not at all synonymous with micromanagement.

I definitely agree T2 units should be more specialized and not simple linear upgrades. My point was that each T1 factory can provide all the minimum necessary soft counters to the other factories while having its own distinct style of gameplay. Also, if every T1 factory can support your most basic needs in it's own way, then the T2 factory doesn't have to support every need. Bots don't *need* T2 artillery because they have a T1 unit strong vs defenses, etc. This way each factory tree can have it's own very distinct T2 units with greatly reduced overlap of combat roles between T2 factories.

With a system similar to what I suggested your much better off if you can support multiple factories of mixed types, but your not crippled in the early game because you chose to focus on bots before you built air or vehicles. T1 would be nearly all soft counters that are fairly flexible, while T2 would have more hard counters, but they would also be less versatile and more vulnerable to other units.

ZK doesn't only have attributes. It has an entire class of shield behavior, terrain deformation, a stealth layer, terrain specialists and suicide units. Those are not mere attribute adjustments.

Even then, ZK has a huge amount of redundancy in its unit roster. It HAS to, because it has a perfectly flat tech tree. There are a huge range of factories, and they HAVE to be somewhat competitive against each other. But just because you CAN make a small/medium/large/fast/riot/AA version of every chassis in the game, it doesn't mean you HAVE to. At some point a well rounded unit can be good enough.

Because they're stupid robots and deserve it.