Legs vs track: Style vs. Function

I do like the idea of the unit having wheels, tank treads, legs, hovering as being a visual short hand for it having different stats. So anyone could zoom in a bit on something and tell how a unit will behave based on it's appearance.

So you could say, "When going across water, all hover units float over the surface while walkers go along the ocean floor, and all wheeled units aren't amphibious."

or, "over units are very fast but fragile, while units with tank treads are slow and durable."

To add to BulletMagnet's analysis, bipedal creatures like humans have eyes at the top, higher than the rest of their body. This means that relative to their size, they have a fairly long visual range in comparison to most other animals. There are few exceptions, such as giraffes, but when it comes to comparing carnivorous/omnivorous predators, bipedal creatures tend to come out on top with regards to visual range.

Woo hoo!

@zachb: yup, this. totally.

also @bulletmagnet: wow, it don't get any more detailed than that.

So, i have what i wanted from this, cheers!

Given that the Devs have said, that they want their units to be easily and intuitively identifiable, i am hoping they go with this.

I've played games where the legged things are tougher AND slower than tanks, and it always bugged me.
Like, where does that make sense?

Anyway, thanks.
And i can't wait for this t come out!
Squee!

Total Annihilation adhered to a strict logic to locomotion in unit designs: Tanks could outrun bots on level terrain, and were also tougher, but were more expensive for the same firepower. This implied a utilitarian purpose to each form of locomotion.

Supreme Commander interestingly inverted this logic; bots were generally faster than tanks. Beyond this though, there was no logic to the unit designs.

I hadn't thought of that!

But that is only one of the reasons why a species went bipedal during evolution, this feature is not limited to bipedal designs.

Tracks are also only useful on rough terrain (like swamps, rocky sand or alike), but they fail at steep grades. They may have perfect grip on even terrain, but once they start sliding (and they do, thanks to their usually enormous mass, compared to other units), they won't stop until they hit the ground. Wheels are even worse and hovercrafts? Don't even think about it.

Any type of legged unit has the advantage of being able to climb much steeper grades as they can take one step at a time. There is only one major difference between bipedal and multipedal units:
A bipedal unit has different speeds for vertical and for horizontal movement. As it ALWAYS needs to stay balanced, it has only horizontal movement as far as it can pull up the legs.
A multipedal unit in comparison can align with the terrain and can therefor keep the horizontal movement speed up while climbing steep hills.



In the end, wheeled and tracked vehicles use the same movement mechanics. Wheels have higher maximum speed, but suffer more from terrain penalties. All units of this group have a maximum slope value they can't exceed. Speedup while going down, speed down while going up. Will align with terrain.

Bipedal have constant speed on any terrain type, but they use a different speed for vertical movements (same speed up and down). Also the only type of unit which MIGHT have access to jump-packs. Will still stop if encountering too steep grades (risk of falling over). Will never align with terrain, always stays balanced. Outrun by anything except multipedal.

Multipedal units are unaffected by any type of terrain penalty or slopes. They always move with the same speed. Will still stop if encountering too steep grades (risk of falling over). Will align with terrain. Slowest units of all thanks to the lack of flexible spines.

Hoverunits ignore terrain penalties, but share the wheeled mechanics by having a maximum slope and speeding up while going down. Will align with terrain, also always faces the upper end of a slope when moving sidewards (so the thrusters prevent sliding down, this is pure cosmetic and is not used in the actual movement calculations. Rotation is independent from the movement vector.). It would be realistic to allow higher slopes downwards than upwards, but that would result in units getting stuck in valleys which would be a bad decision design wise. Hoverunits also have ridiculous high top speeds (close to flying units), but only in return for bad acceleration, still best unit for covering vast planes. Hoverunits must always have turnable turrets if they are supposed to fire frontwards while driving as rotation of the chassis is unrelated from movement direction.

Flying units align with terrain while on ground and follow an highly interpolated version of the terrain while flying (they DON'T follow the terrain on a 1:1 level! They use a much smoother version). No penalty for gaining hight, but acceleration / deceleration mechanics. Also moves in actual 3D paths (like projectiles), following the terrain is only an approximation for the lowest possible flight level, but units may also fly straight lines if the planet has a concave shape at a decent point. This means, that flying units CAN avoid AA on the ground if it has been placed in a valley, but vertical distance also counts towards the attack range of the aircraft. Water counts as terrain in the calculation of the desired flight path.

Diving units are aligned with the water surface in a fixed distance. WILL adjust to a certain rate if the water is to shallow (up to auto surfacing). Actually moves in 3D, so it is possible to move up from the ground of the ocean or alike.

Floating units are aligned with the water surface. Will not adjust if the water is too shallow, but has a certain tolerance zone where it could switch to land based movement without drowning / running onto ground.


Having convertible units which are able to switch between the movement types is possible, maybe even makes sense. Like switching between multipedal and hovercraft for an ultra agile, light attack tank. Or switching between tracks and diving for nuclear missile cruisers. Switching both as active skill (like transforming from plane to submarine), idle action (like auto diving for submarines while idle) and triggered by terrain parameters (unfolding legs on ships when reaching land and vice versa).

Zero-K is a great example of taking things too far. It ran through every single chassis and weapon permutation like SMAC was going out of style. It was also a necessity for the game, as every factory was also a long term choice that had to be well rounded.

It's okay for different chassis to play major roles in the game. Tracks could be incredibly good on smooth metal worlds, hover is suited for lava/amphibious roles, legs for rough terrain. However, there is no need to build a factorial(!) number of units. It's wasteful for design, and it removes everything interesting about having different functions in the first place.

Instead, only a few select roles should be chosen for each chassis, a handful of options best suited to the role. A raider would get hover, a tank uses tracks, an AA legs(since it needs to be good when tanks falter and players go air), for example. Even the Arm Spider can return as a unique option to cover normally impassible terrain. If a player insists on a certain unit, they can suffer with a subpar variant that, while not necessarily more expensive or weaker, is slower and more difficult to build.

This creates a different personality to each world, where some units will excel and some will falter, creating a unique play style based on the remaining viable units.

I don't know about you, but I liked making desicions such as "Do I want to build the hard hitting hover tanks over the hard hitting tanks which use more traditional locomotion, which would allow my units to better traverse swamps? even though hovers are more costly per raw firepower than both pure land and pure naval.", and that there was a unit optimised for almost all possible situations. What you proposed I feel would pigeonhole those decisions; it would be like "Oh- that's the ONLY recon, or mobile anti-air unit that can be built in the game, and it has to be used THIS way.".

I'm curious to know why you consider it to be less fun.

First of all: one of the things i missed with Supcom was obvious unit use.
I want to look at a unit and think "it has tracks so it'll go fast" or "it has legs so it'll climb".

I think that PA should have obvious unit use. Hover technology is great for amphibious use and crossing difficult terrain. However, hover movement is very different from regular movement, and i'm not sure if it should be included (would be cool if it was).

So yea: legs means better terrain movement, tracks means more speed, hover has properties of both.


But anyway, i would like to see similar design choices for other features as well (weapons, anyone?)

Not really. It's more a case of "make the chassis fit the role". Hitting down every combination is pure unit bloat, and it does not necessarily add anything meaningful to the game. It is better to determine what is needed at the minimum, then to only add things that give a real change.

Every chassis option I gave has a much larger explanation for why they're suitable:

• - Treads on tanks make them work great for metal worlds. Unfortunately, metal worlds may no longer be bottomless money maps due to balance needs. However, the world can still keep its theme of intense, high yield destruction, due to a fast and efficient tank.
  
  - With rougher terrain, tanks can't solve everything. Players need more balanced forces such as including air units. An AA walker is perfect for the rougher terrain, efficiently protecting against most avenues of air attack.
  
  - When terrain gets really bad, tanks might be nearly useless. Walkers will similarly have a hard time if there are many rocks or rivers to deal with. A hover or jump vehicle can handle this terrain with ease, turning inaccessible avenues into easy attack paths for a raider.

Perhaps a player wants a fast AA unit for metal worlds, or a heavy tank to jump across rough terrain. These units are not ideal designs, but I'll admit they do fill a few specific niches. The idea is to give these "secondary" choices some additional cost, not necessarily in metal but rather in build time or energy. Players who choose these units are not looking for 2 of everything, but rather need a very specific role in an odd place. The price is a premium over the more standard unit models, with larger bases having a greater ability to construct these advanced units.

More skilled players can take advantage of an unusual chassis to squeeze in some kind of advantage. They exist to supplement the basics, not replace them. This can apply to any other unit feature as well(stealth for example).

The point is not to create a bewildering maze of choice, but to make generic units optimal and simple.

I found meaning in all the units in Balanced Annihilation(which has roughly the same amount for either ARM or CORE as the whole of Zero-K does). Maybe you didn't.

Your suggestion still pigeonholes the amount of ways to play. Your example scenario effectively removes the option of performing a ground assault over hilly terrain from the game just because it wouldn't be the most optimal route. If I had to do it with the tools you gave me, I'd be fu©ked. Even though armoured, hard hitting kbots would logically be the right tool for the job. And as for relegating hover propulsion to light raiding units, what if all waterways leading to a base were fortified with even moderate defences.. Well hovercraft are completely useless now! because you didn't provide any decently armoured or skirmishing hovercraft.

I still haven't seen an answer from you as to why games like Zero-K or Balanced Annihilation are less fun.

But that's fine because the defender is aware of that too, and may become careless/complacent about defence.

And it doesn't remove the option; it just changes it slightly. This is a battle of wits, not a battle of calculating optimal paths.

What is this then, if not the removal of ground assault over hills as a strategy? No uttering of a kbot design against ground. Bobucles is effectively championing that hills become "only fly here" zones.

Number crunching was hardly the most prominent factor in the afformented games and you know it. (Well unless you're a moderate to top tier player- but then all games become about number crunching.)

So, exactly.

100 ton bipedal bot should be faster than 1 ton on wheels?

Legs are good for scaling ground, they have nothing to do with speed. Least possible useful weight.
Wheels are good for speed, but they don't work on most of terrains (they need a road). More useful weight.
Tracks are bad for speed, though they are able to travel almost any terrain. Greatest useful weight.
Multilegs are just bi-pedal chassis with increased useful weight and stability (they are reason why bi-pedal stuff is unrealistic actually. Multilegs are always better and simpler).

Problem is - in RTS with such scale we shouldn't care about "roads", so no difference between tracks/wheels/bi-pedal. Also, there is "hover" type, which is just "can fly over any terrain, including water". How fast should be that one?

So, "function" difference is just impossible, imo. It's only style. Of course, you may try to limit designers by some weird restrictions like "hover is always fast, tracks are always slow".

Generally hover should be slow, but consistent. And not really good at climbing a surface that isn't flat.

I never said that. I said that Zero-K had massive unit bloat, which it does have. The game NEEDS such redundancy because each factory type has to survive being the ONLY factory for a long time, effectively a faction all its own.

There's no need to have a dozen different factories in PA. There's even less need to flood the unit lists with a dozen variants of Peewees and Flash Tanks(which are basically the same unit anyway). If the player needs a special unit variant to overcome some obstacle, then he has no problem paying a little extra for it. That premium is a reminder he's not buying a standard unit, and shouldn't waste it like a standard unit. If a unit doesn't overcome any particular obstacle or fill a new niche, then it isn't needed in the game.

There are plenty of cool ideas to make units stand out from each other. Why waste the efforts on a "Peewee of +3 turning"? I'd much rather see a jump tank or a stealth raider instead.

I never said that. What I did say is that tanks would be insane on metal worlds, creating an intense metal world play style. The chassis is deliberately used to give the world a personality it richly deserves. Tanks would be standard units on standard worlds, with the same strengths and weaknesses you expect of a tank.

On an overly rocky world, tanks would not be useful because screwed up terrain is never good for unit mass. A different play style is required, most likely depending on jump units and air.

Don't invent problems and attribute them to me. It's rude.

I never said waterways block pathing, only that they'd be annoying to traverse. Narrow rivers have been often used in games as ways of slowing units down, providing a unit disadvantage, or creating choke points. It's low ground, and players would be wize to capitalize on it for defense.

If the river is truly too big, then tanks aren't appropriate for warfare anyway. You're on a water map, and it's time to use a navy.

Then your argument starts and stops right here.

Your argument is that the variety of units as presented in games like Balanced Annihilation and Zero-K(which are just extents of Total Annihilation) is 'overkill'. But in order for it to qualify as that, it must actively be a detracting point to the games. You haven't produced a reason for why this is- or why the games are less fun. If you can't do this then you are wrong- the unit pools are not 'overkill' as you say.

Stating that Planetary Annihilation doesn't *need* as many units as one side in Total Annihilation is one thing. Stating why it *shouldn't* have is another.

As for your statment on factories being the only thing preventing unit redundancy, as well as on Peewees and Flashes being the same unit; that's rubbish- there's been many scenarios where I needed light raiding kbots over light raiding tanks, and vice versa.

If I might make a point:

AA hovercraft, AA K bots, AA vehicles.

There is some redundancy there that isn't really beneficial to the player, Why use AA vehicles over AA hovercraft? or AA k bots?

considering the HP of planes in TA, damage isn't a problem, and neither is accuracy as they all fire seeking missiles.

HP? Well AA vehicles have the most HP, but that still isn't a great bonus for an AA unit, Cost? Well the AA k bots are the cheapest.


So really this type of redundancy is what we should also try to avoid, because while you can use AA vehicles when you don't have access to the others, the games units should be built around only having access to 1 unit type.

What if you need to support your kbots in the hills and vehicles can't reach that? What if you need to bring AA with your hovers when they go on the sea or cross rivers?
We could have an allterrain hover antiair unit instead of all other variants. There is still lots of ways to distinguish different antiair units from eachother. In Zero-K there is typically gunship AA and plane AA. Plane AA have high alpha and are homing but long reload.
Gunship AA have have higher DPS but are in many cases not as accurate.

Wait, what? How are those two things related?

You claim it's not overkill, but this is what I see:

Pick a factory. Every factory has a few really unique things. Every factory ALSO has a bunch of generic units, with similar play styles and huge amounts of overlap. That overlap is NEEDED due to the shape of the tech tree, but the fact of the matter is that a ton of units end up FILLING THE SAME ROLE.

Is it overkill? Of course. Those factories could use the same handful of generic units and not change the game one bit. Tanks still tank, AA still AA's, riots still riot. The actual gameplay comes from the unique units, which provide the style and theme to each factory-faction.

The unit bloat might not take anything directly away, at least not from an obnoxious detail-picking mindset. But they aren't adding much to the game, either. It's just game padding. If you buy things for the bubble wrap, then I guess it's a treat, but it's not the meat of the game.