Large-scale Units Discussion (backer's lounge edition)

"Should lose" and "Does lose" are very different things.

Large expensive units represent a lot of power packed into a single spot. Get a lot of them, and they form a firepower singularity which classic units can not breach. We saw this happen with experimentals in Supcom, although it admittedly was not that viable in a real game.

Adjusting raw efficiency is not a good solution, because long range, ultra durable units simply scale into better death balls than basic units. Their scaling needs to be addressed head on.

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There are several ways to mitigate experimental death ball power.

The most direct solution is to offer a super fatal weapon designed to wipe them out (like the D-gun, but without losing). You'll see a lot more discussion on that here.

A softer solution is to give the unit friendly fire. The Krogoth did this questionably well, as it was basically a walking nuke. It did not work well in huge clusters due to with supporting units, because it killed them all. It did not stack well with other Krogoths either, because it would chain react with them. And it was a terrible defender, because it killed everything it was defending.

Out of all the Supcom experimentals, the Monkeylord was probably the most successful. It was fairly cheap, with most of its firepower packed into a single short range doom laser. The laser was terrible against virtually every small unit ever, but excellent at sniping single high value targets like a Commander. So that's exactly how it was used. Unfortunately, the laser lost importance en masse, as its long range cannons scaled to be crazy good.

Another answer is to tie the experimental's power directly to your economy. This doesn't really limit the death ball scaling so much as limit the number of experimentals that can be used at once. The closest units to do this were the Supcom Mavor and Scathis, which could already end games with a single unit.

The best answer is to simply keep efficient, long range firepower out of experimental hands. Death balls exist in general because too much long range firepower will completely destroy anything that has shorter range. Long range units need to be easy to access, easy to kill, and not work well together.

That is a good point. Even if large expensive units are much less costeffective they could reach a critical point at which they supersede smaller units and can kill them for cost.
However are you using SupCom and not Forged Alliance as your example?
In SupCom 1 experimentals were much more expensive and Siege Assaults Bots would beat them for cost. I'm not sure how many Monkeylords or Galactic Colossus you need there to achieve critical mass. It depends on how fast you can get your bots in range of the experimentals which in turn depends on openness of the terrain and from how many angles you can approach the experimentals.
In Forged Alliance experimentals were about as costeffective as t3 units.

Then you have units like Fatboys which are excellent artillery support but is rather weak against stationary artillery and TMDs.
I think that there is room for large expensive units spearheading an army. Their tankiness or ability to focus fire down other units could make them useful but still be rather ineffective without support.
Somewhat off topic:I think in order to get good ship play it should be largely about getting the most expensive heavy ship with long range and good firepower. However without support it would lose to submarines, air, mass hovers or even smaller ships for cost.

But that is exactly like experimental play! We already tried that on land. How is placing the same theme on the water going to be more successful?

In FA it's not really the same thing since 1 experimental can compete with t3 land units for the same cost.

I have a lot to say about small units being more strategically interesting than big units.

Bobucles has got this thread pretty much covered though- listen to him.

I think that pretty much this is a good way to handle superheavy units. I think a super heavy unit spearheading an army could fit into this.
However you don't need to have a super heavy unit spearheading an army. Heavy units might be enough. What I'm arguing for is escalation in unit weight.
Like this:
Tank:Good damage dealer, lots of armor, decent speed.
Heavy tank:Tougher than Tank but lose for cost against Tank if they can focus fire on the Heavy tank. Slow speed.
Super heavy tank:Tougher than Heavy tank but lose for cost against Heavy tank and Tank if they can focus fire on the Heavy tank. Very slow speed.

As the engagement escalates heavier and heavier units are deployed because they are more effective in concentration. However as heavier units are slower it also gives more room for lighter units to outmaneuver the heavier units if they get the opportunity. Lighter units might be able to make a breakthrough and then the heavy units will not be able to keep up.
Heavier units might be better at holding a choke point but if they venture out on open plains they can be overrun by lighter units.

Indeed, as people are saying, it's very important to make them as barely cost-effective as possible, and instead making them incredibly specialized units is always the idea that comes to my mind when talking about these.

I see experimentals breaking way completely from an army's normal MO. Taking SupCom as an example, the Cybran had their experimental gunship which was based on their core tenets of mobility and versatility, which always felt like a bit of a cop-out for me. When first reading about the unit i thought it'd feel more essential to keep it alive, not to spam building them all the time as was most effective to do.

That came, of course, from its weaponry. The super high rate of fire guns on it were just too good against most lesser units that you wouldn't need to build a force around the gunship, just roll it into the battlefield and use More Dakka for its intended purpose. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have experimentals with dakka style guns, but then they should lose most or any advantages they might have against heavier foes.

Now picture a n-agon, divided into as many 'unit styles' as there are vertices on it, which would have every unit in the game pinned on it at some part of its surface area, with most units on the lines between 'styles'. Most units would reside within the figure somewhere, with some jacks-of all-trades in the dead center of it.

The point of experimentals, in my opinion, would be to have them at the very vertices: completely dedicated to only one facet of combat and excelling in it above any other unit. The ultimate range, the ultimate damage, the ultimate speed, the ultimate defense, the ultimate rate of fire, the ultimate whatever. That way there would be as much risk into building these as you would clearly be able to see from the enemy unit composition, which would have a big chance of countering it unless your supporting forces were designed precisely to mitigate your experimental's weaknesses, which should be noticeable from its physical appearance.

Say the ultimate defense one, it should be vulnerable to nothing directly, but it would be possible for the enemy to move it about or neutralize its capacity for movement, or otherwise make it so the defense doesn't work at all while it's moving due to some mount/dismount feature. But if you supply it with a guard while it's moving, you could easily guarantee it's safe maneuvering, an therefore reach whatever position you were trying to secure your hold on.

These are just some examples of what I've always thought about for SupCom. I hope you don't mind the horrid walls of text.

Would it be barely costeffective against the units it is best against or would it be a good counter to the units it is best against?
The difference is quite big. Both are somewhat viable.

If those super heavy units are a costeffective as a counter to smaller units it sounds like lategame army compositions would be a combination of different super heavy units which outperforms a mix of smaller units which would be bad in my opinion.
You could have battleship style super heavy units. A battleship in FA would extend your range and is somewhat slower than destroyers so in a battle between surface ships you could outrange the enemy destroyers and force them to retreat or counter attack. In turn battleships could lose for cost against destroyers and still be an important asset as the battle escalates.
Then you could have the type of superheavy unit that could beat heavy units but would be ineffective against masses of small units.

Not at all. A battleship tries to pack in extra armor and firepower into a long range, which basically means having every attribute better than a destroyer. It's kind of pointless, especially if its only new weakness is other ships of its type.

A pure blood experimental would be more like a big bertha on wheels. Or a super factory that can build anything based on its mode (land, water, flying). Or a cannon that shoots satellites(with sats or at sats?). Or a gateway teleporter that delivers Comms anywhere. Instead of being a typical unit that has been specialized into a role, it is a specialized unit that has been made even more specific. They would do one narrow, gimmicky job very well, and be completely inappropriate for anything else.

I like it. Too many Supcom experimentals suffered from being overly generic units bristling with guns of every flavor. Cutting down the fluff gives us experimental units that are more accessible and more effective. Give me just the monkeylord laser. I want only the GC tractor claw. They're great weapons, but are simply too big and expensive to fit on a typical unit.

Destroyers are kinda the counter to battleships in this case. Are you completely against heaviness as an important factor when balancing units? There is still plenty of ways to differentiate a battleship from a destroyer on top of heaviness.

I certainly think that the problem with SupCom is that the ranges were a bit too long on the Experimentals. If they were slightly smaller and smaller-ranged, then you gave tracking back to MMLs...

I think an earlier poster was right, they should be specialized units that excel at one, and only one, given purpose. A breach unit should be completely vulnerable to air, but virtually immune to frontal-fire. If PA had shields, I'd say that virtually all of it's hitpoints should be in a forward-only shield, for example, and if it has decent enough collision detection, you could still do something similar.

The second problem with experimentals was that in SupCom, by the time Experimentals came out, there was little advantage to being in multiple places. The power of an Experimental was so overwhelming that, even if you crippled your opponent's economy with drops, you still lost the game because there was no way to hold the Experimental. I think that if a proposed breaching unit were made, then the continual anti-air and flanking support they would need would mean that if you took out your enemy's economy, it would be relatively possible to destroy it. Whereas in SupCom, you couldn't flank a Monkeylord, nor kite it to death.

The weaknesses of large units should be as strongly emphasised as their strengths.

You're wrong. The amount of armour and firepower on a Battleship is irrelevant if the projectile moves too slowly, or the turret tracks too slowly, or it reloads too slowly. There are lots of physics and weapons attributes that can make destroyers beat battleships, even if battleships have more health, DPS, and range per cost.

You need to separate Forged Alliance and SupCom here. In SupCom1 experimentals were slower and would be beaten by Siege Assault bots for cost. You could also use t1 and t2 units against them as a supplement because experimentals veterancy levels where much higher.

What you are describing is a different class of unit all together. A unit with low quality, long range weapons is either a long range unit, or an artillery specialist. It does not belong in the same class as units with high health and powerful short range damage.

I have nothing against a long range support ship, or an artillery themed battleship. I have a problem with designing these units as flagship brawlers among a fleet of brawling ships.

Read that again. What you're describing is a blatant contradiction of the DBZ trinity. Other games have tried that with other units (Interceptor -> ASF, experimentals in general). They almost universally get screwed up because better units simply scale better. In some cases, the only counter to the unit ends up being itself.

Large units will naturally exist because there are certain things you just can't put on a small unit. There is little need to take a small unit and make it a big one.

I do think it would be pretty easy to make a game where all units have the same price which means they also have the same "weight" and that would still allow for units to be diverse and balanced. You still haven't answered my question:

If you look at how I said Tanks, Heavy tanks and Super heavy tanks could all be balanced with eachother, do you think that is something bad?

What is DBZ trinity?
You can actually introduce a sort of an RPS relationship with only 2 units if you allow the balance to be outside just the unit stats. 1 Heavy tank cost as much as 4 light tanks. Coming 1 and 1 against the heavy tank, the heavy tank wins. If all 4 light tanks attack at the same time the Light tanks win.
Light tanks are faster and can avoid and outmanouver heavy tanks so on open plains they are better. If the light tanks have trouble getting in range of the heavy tanks they lose so as they get destroyed 1 and 1. Then Heavy tanks are better in chokepoints.

I think cost is a completely secondary trait of any unit. It only determines one thing about a unit- its power. It doesn't provide any other contribution to a unit's overall role.

For this example:

There is no difference between these roles. They are the exact same tank, with the exact same job, except one is a 4x variety. In large battles there should be NO difference between them, since the units have not yet made tradeoffs in their design. Everything fights like a swarm in big enough numbers!

A warrior's overall power is based on their strength, speed, and technique. The first two are obvious- HP, DPS, and movement are all key factors of any unit's design. The last one is tricky, and can really mean a lot of things. A unit that is more versatile, has more range, creates better death balls, and has fewer weaknesses would have good technique. A unit with negative traits and a single purpose weapon has poor technique.

In your case, the small tank only makes one unavoidable tradeoff. It gains a vulnerability to splash, in exchange for extra power. There are a dozen ways it could spend that extra power. The swarm tank could have been faster. It could get more health or damage per buck. The swarm tank could have better reach. It could get jump jets. It could explode violently when it dies(which isn't always a bad thing). It could have gained stealth.

None of these perks had anything to do with the individual unit prices. The small tank got a bonus because it took a dive on its technique to get something good.

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Of course, not all tradeoffs are created equal. A choice may end up excellent simply because nothing else can compare, or because defenses are hard to find. But that's the balance team's problem.

Do you have a link describing "DBZ trinity" in more detail? I can only find "dbz trinity" in regard to Dragon Ball Z.

The light tank in my example is faster than the heavy tank. Considering that light tanks can beat the heavy tanks for cost; a light tank got more damage and/or health per buck than the heavy tank in my example.

I am suddenly reminded of Red Alert 1 light tanks running circles around mammoth tanks.

Yeah. Keep in mind, everyone, we should entertain the possibility that there might be large-scale units that don't even have a form/function that mimics an Experimental from the SupCom series: this is a new IP, and I don't think Uber will straight up copy the implementation of large units from other franchises.

I'd like to think there will be large assault units, but seeing large transports, mobile factories, and etc. that could just be beat by swarm tactics would work well.

Let me make another analogy for folks that have played the Homeworld series:

Homeworld 1 didn't have experimental units. You started with the ability to make fighters, then developed the ability to make larger and larger ships. The largest ships (cruisers and carriers) could always be defeated by swarms of fighters and bombers, no matter how many of them there were. It was a great way to make sure all tech levels remained relevant.

The issue you face with a system like that is it becomes much more Rock Paper Scissors, and developing units that work especially well against other units based on maneuverability/shot placement in a system that simulates physics could be tricky.

But try to take two things away from the rambling: Homeworld shows that,

1) You don't need to use the experimental scale of unit production (end game monsters) to discuss huge units

2) Even if a large scale unit out-classes others in a specific way, or in seemingly all ways, doesn't mean it can't have a Death Star-esque weakness that can be exploited by smaller, or specialized units.

So rtather then humungus mecha we are also taking about just really big units?

Kindalike the minor experimentals from SupCom2? But you know, not experimental.

Not necessarily. I was just trying to say that there can be large units that just represent a larger class of x type of unit (tank, battleship, aircraft) without necessarily requiring an end-game level investment of resources.

I think units mimicking the size and abilities of experimentals from SupCom would also be cool, and I love the mini-experimentals, except that they pretty much wiped out the previous tiers of units as far as usefulness went, they were just small enough to be weak to concentrated fire. Having huge units with a good balance vs. all tech levels would be great.