Introducing a new Dev

May I ask, why end game play needs to be a 'jump' over early game play, rather than a smooth transition?

Isn't it a complete catch 22; having the player able to make meaningful choices and yet requiring a specific threshold for endgame, thus limiting their choices to specific units that allow this?

I agree that Late game tech should have an economic barrier for entry... but not necessarily an economic jump to maintain.

I know your a dev, so with all due respect...

Damage:HP currently is like 1:3. Doesn't too small mean to increase the... Damage? Maybe it has been a while since I been to school, I would be sad if wrong, but you do mean the other way around right?

Direct overpower upgrade and direct underpower upgrade, you didn't use those specifically to conjecture their balance but rather discuss that they shouldn't be copies, right? Honestly, I would be fine if Levelers and Peregrines were similar but had "confrontation" flaws that kept them from being 100% army composition and instead used as only "meat" while t1 was bread and butter. For instance: I would be ok if levelers had all they do now, but they take 10 seconds after having a target fireable to lock on to as many targets in range as it can and fire rapidly into them, because if you didn't have any ants with them they would be destroyed flawlessly without firing. Another example: if peregrine were horrifically slow but dropped a handful of bombs in a sweep or something, then they would require hummingbirds as well because they couldn't even get through ground AA without dying unable to drop a single bomb. ahh crap hummingbirds are the fighters not bombers. why were bombers even mentioned instead of fighters come to think of it? These would make them similar in use but require at least twice the t1 units to support them while they add meat to the bread&butter in the form of higher burst damage. ORRRRRR... you could just make them entirely different to kill that arguement. But I am ok with blessing-curse upgrade of t1 units so long as they are balanced.

Economy jump too... big? Please tell me I am getting what you are saying backward at this point. You currently have infinite economy in pretty early grasp if you don't get picked off in a rush. Tell me that isn't intended to stay. You meant... Economy grows too fast and/or too large?

The last one I had to read twice. Well, you got that one right. Economy upgrade from t1 to t2 has no bad side, it is currently T2 MEXES TOP PRIORITY RUSH TO DO ASAP TO WIN. Bad side effects to it are not heavy, getting rushed while your weak economy temporarily is lowered to upgrade is rare and you aren't very crippled during, not getting metal points don't matter because after 6 you have enough metal to win even if the whole planet is convered in enemy... really all I ask for is balancing it down, which coincidentally makes it interesting right there because you are paying a large up front cost for a little extra metal a second and the health to survive more than a few seconds of direct fire or a few bombs dropped. Then the interesting strategy, is when to build your t2 and where to build your t2. T2 greatly weakens your economy to upgrade, so it pays off to get more metal points rather than fewer t2 metal points, yet being able to predict mexes that the enemy will be able to attack lets you build t2 in advance to save you from losing metal to enemy attacks, so upgrading t2 later makes you perfectly equal or stronger early game and cover land faster, but upgrading t2 earlier gives your borderlands mexes heavier survivability and gets your economy higher after 45 minutes at the sacrifice of it being crippled during the first 30 minutes.

You touched on very few points of the overall, but you have lots of time before game release, so as topics become heavier I am sure they will be addressed. For instance, I am sure when someone makes a post about making less metal available to the player because players quickly get infinite metal, and it is the 1000th post on that topic posted in late beta, then I am sure you will secede to that sentiment. That is just an example, you seem to have touched on that. I suppose the short list is the only MAJOR issues to be seen, and you don't want to overbalance buff or nerf any units this early in the game development.

The economy jump being too big and economy growing too fast are the same thing Trophy. Different words, same meaning.

Sorry, my forum quoting skills arn't very good, I'll try to make it understood what Im replying to.

Yes, I did typo damage to health ratio. Currently things die too fast...This btw is not the accepted truth around the office here, but there is a lot of unit tweeks still possible.

The leveler/ant and Hummingbird/Peregrine are direct upgrades, Tanks and Fighters. The advanced unit exactly matches the strategic considerations of the basic unit. The general design theory is to have few actual direct upgrades. As direct upgrades, the basic fighter is better for its cost (and cost means metal, energy and TIME) while the advanced tank is better for its cost.

Nano clarified the economy jump wording (I think)

The list was supposed to be a list of concerns from the community to the dev team that will be considered for working on for the release of Beta. It is by no means the only things we are considering, and many of the known issues are not considered a priority to release the beta, but will most defiantly be addressed during beta.

Will wreckage be given some love?
I'm quite convinced that they were a crucial element in TA gameplay.
I'm not speaking about their role in the economy but their role as walls.
It provide a dynamic battlefield that is quite unique and it would be a loss to dismiss them.
They have the ability to indirectly increase the Damage/HP ratio of a battle, without removing the option of quick raids/traps

Wreckage has been getting love this last week. Beta will release with some of the above

That's... actually a frightening thing to say SirVlad.
That concerns me... that concerns me greatly.

Quick! You get the pitch forks, I'll get the torches.

I'm not quite ... all there I'm afraid Menchfrest... I'm a little stunned actually.
... I think I need to go away and lay down.

Now I'm quite curious why they think that because I can't think of any reason for that myself. And I don't think I've met anybody on the forum yet who thought that.

But then again, our response to it is probably why devs don't like to talk about their plans.

The only reason to think that is to desire the pace of the game to be set at breakneck speed... and hit that 'magic' 1,000,000 units on screen. Units that are that fragile, and that easy to replace... just boggles the mind in terms of how it could possibly lead to ... anything other than a blender.

I'm too zoned out to care one way or the other at the moment, but being silly I can get behind anytime.

But I really don't see the influence on the speed of the game though. If a battle that currently lasts 15 seconds to destroy a hundred ants suddenly lasts 30 seconds, would pace really be slowed?

Imo pace mostly depends on how fast you expand, how fast first conflict happens how much time until all mex spots are covered, etc. which they game gets nicely I'd say. I like how fast one can expand and that a game on a small planet lasts half an hour on average. It depends on how fast you can build stuff, not how fast stuff blows up (unless the blowing up would take excessively long of course. )

I mean, the expected livetime of an ant in battle even in 1v1 is 3 seconds (3 shots). Against a laser tower? One second.

An ant takes what, 15 seconds to build with probably 5 more to roll out? So one every 20 second? So even if you increase their time to life to 20 seconds in 1v1 you wouldn't accumulate units as they just die as fast as they'd get built. And with larger force concentrations the time to life of an unit can be lowered arbitrarly (as long as you can get additional stuff in range).


Edit: If one wants to increase the speed of the game, lower mex hp so early raiding is easier. That will keep people on their toes.

The pace isn't really slowed down just because you increase health, the stands can still change quite fast.

But the attention requirement is, you can't leave units unattended for even a second now, you have to check back at least every 5 seconds, even less if your enemy is juggling with Levelers and such, and less again if your enemy is using bombers.

/me looks at your army
'Will it blend?'

In order for any units to have any staying power, you would have to buff them to a insane level. Thousand unit battles will be common, and so, with those numbers at least, your units are going to look like they are made of paper.



Btw, is there anyway we might be able to get air units to fly higher? (Give bombs more travel time before they hit.)

This concerns me as well. I'm not sure why units dying faster is a good thing. I hope they at least try a balance change that would decrease damage across the board. I want to see how it plays out.

I'm not surprised.

They said it would be macro. They only achieved it too well. Can't blame their zeal.

Only thing wrong is, it creates too big a skill gap and makes all that skill dependent on economy and production management. Who produces most fastest wins.

Limiting the upper cap with an existing metal limit that actually makes you need for metal so you want to watch your choice of build. It also gives more value to land. This is done by little less metal point, income, and drastically reduced or removed t2 mex.

Speaking of value of land, more factories over heavily-assisted factories is a good trend. People complain about factory pausing between units, but the real problem is expensive units produced instantly thru assist. The more expensive units actually could use more of a delay to encourage investing in more t2 factories over a single overworked assisted t2 factory. Gives more value in land acquisition.

Unit variation is coming, this will make you feel like you are building different things, if different things are in fact worth using enough to build blends of them.

Bombers are also direct upgrades, but i can see how those are easier to diversify. Simply once ammo costs metal make the t2 ammo cost much more, or just give it a different damage pattern (my suggestion to levelers too, just give it a different damage pattern) like less damage per bomb but multiple dropped on a sweep.

Honestly, if you are worried beta needs to be more playable and fun for casual players, then this list is good.

I just thought economic jump meant the cost between basic and advanced, as the cost gap is not too very big.

There's already more than enough rolloff to make it far better to build multiple factories than assist one. Why nerf factory assisting even further?

Me neither.

Not that I mind, specifically.