Message from Jon Mavor

I would love to see proper example of better units with one faction. So many people say we need faction or more units, but we dont really have good list of balanced units we could add in. Its mostly just "add more units".

I feel that current PA plays great and allows for many strategies. We could have more, but thats only addition, not something that is a must for good strategy in PA.

some examples
stealthgens for more sneaky tactics
hovercraft (jables mentioned them being a pain in the *** to make them with them not having their own layer)
interplanetary assaultunits
interplanetary siege/artillery structures
naval and orbital telegates
gunships more for defensive use than offensive use or airsuperiority
multiunittransports for air orbital and hovercraft ...

the problem i have with some people asking for more diversty ... they often mean "just let me do everything i can do with a vehicle factory with a bot factory as well" ... i.e just copy every role into every factorytype ...
f.e. example if i have a tankvehicle i also shall have a "tank"bot ... if i have a fast firing bot i also shall have fast firing tank or ship or plane .. see modx for example (no offence to @zx0 )

Well we do have a interplanetary fighter.

Never used it before personally...I always prefer to build static and mobile AA to do my AA work, so I don't actually know how powerful they are, if they are just T1 fighters with bigger engines.

yea but ít´s a aircraft fighter not a groundassaultunit ... just to avoid confusion i´m talking about a larger more experimental like unit in this case ...

personaly i used the interplanetary fighter a couple of times ... they are slightly stronger but primarily meant for going into either enemy territory or uncontested territory for airsuperiority were your t1 fighters can´t get to ...

Then look no further than my sig.

*Ahem*

There is only one mod that has ever had that philosophy, and that's ModX. Every other mod has carefully thought about what units to add and what units not to add.

and some of them limit gameplay that way not neccesarily for the better

I'm not saying that every mod made the right decisions on which units to include and which units not to; merely saying that if you state that most mods are just adding more units for the sake of more units, you're wrong.

Can we actually stick to what I'm actually saying? You're applying hyperbole to everything. I never said it needed to be chock full of "huge amounts of complexity via massive unit pools, or complicated technology trees, upgrades and such..." I only said that there needs to be more options than there currently are, regardless of the exact implementation. I'd like to have an actual conversation/discussion here but you're making it very hard.

Again, I also never said that PA's Roster as-is completely broken, at best I said it was limiting and arguably needs to be broader to compensate for the fact that there is only one faction.

I've never designed anything "willy-nilly" as it were, or at least if I just start out with the barest of ideas I refine it over time into something that has a purpose and is designed with the rest of the game in mind as much as possible. It's pretty much the bread and butter of what me and Hawkeye did for BlackOps, which in the end is more or less a large expansion to FA that focused on as much of the unit roster as possible.

You misunderstand my point, it's not that PA is completely broken as is, as I said earlier, The PA Roster "As-Is" would work pretty well if there was an additional faction or two. You can see it from people's comments in the reddit thread, the only issue is that they don't fully realize the actual root problem and instead lay the blame on PA not having multiple factions instead of arguing that PA's single faction needed more variety because they're so used to games with "different" factions instead of a game that offers many solutions to the same problem.

That's not a problem with the concept of more diversity/variety thought, it's a problem in the execution of said diversity/variety. Just because I can't do a certain trick on a bike doesn't mean the trick is wrong or flawed you know?

There is a certainly a fine line between making everything good at everything and being able to make do with what you got but it's not impossible by any means.

Mike

Huge turning circles prevent you from being able to micro vehicles; you don't want to see an ant that can dodge stuff, believe me.

Wreckage is a necessary negative feedback mechanic. The fact is that GA was designed to be competitive.

By the UI issue you mean not showing which units are selected in strategic icons? ' Cause I've fixed that with the help of @dompi.

it is however by no means easy and it is even less so with limited resources ... pick your poison ...
also bad analogy ... it´s more like people wanting to do the same stuff with a bike having a attached missilelauncher than with a car having a missilelauncher attached to it ... is it possible to make that? sure .. does that mean it is automaticaly good? ...

It's not easy, but it's far from impossible. I think I've done it or at least come pretty dang close to it.

The analogy certainly didn't get the point across as well as it could have for sure.

I never said it was easy, it is more work simply because it's more work on top of what's already been done but it's not that much more difficult than designing the rest of game would have been to begin with, the fact that they've already comes so far with PA means they should be able to handle something like this fairly well.

Mike

I don't think the unit roster is bad. Heck we could keep the unit roster and add in one or 2 new units for each factory and accomplish what I'm suggesting. A light and fast T1 vehicle, and a tanky T1 bot that doesn't do that much damage, or something along those lines would allow you to do many more strategies than you currently can. I would also argue that the current meta feels a lot like you need to memorize a build order, if you want to win. You almost always build bots, followed by air and vehicles, and there is a "most efficient" way to do an opening build.

and yet you speak about poor execution ...

that ´s mapdependant though .. the same buildorder you use on berg for instance may not help you on meso or on duat ...

True, but that's still a build order you memorize, and it's basically the same each time you play that map...

Well sure, execution is something that can be evaluated not just on PA as a whole on also on all the individual parts that make up PA. In this instance, Yes, I am saying that the execution of the Single Faction ideology for PA could have been better and many comments across PA's life time regarding the lack of multiple factions or unit variety back that up to a degree. I have always said that only having a single faction CAN work and gone on to say that ideally it would be such that 2 players can use completely different unit sets to carry out different strategies in a single match. Obvious that is a difficult goal to achieve and would depend on more than just the Unit Roster to be perfectly executed but it's the "Ultimate" goal as I see it but even something that doesn't go that far can still go far enough to result in something that achieves the spirit of the goal.

Mike

Firstly: only a fool would deny that PA is a revolutionary title. Having opinions is not black and white. Just because PA has shortcomings does not mean that it is completely flawed; nor does the game doing a lot of things right mean that everything is perfect.

Secondly: If you have a single viable strategy or build order on a map in ranked, regardless of whether or not it applies to all maps in ranked, than either the map is bad and should be removed from the ranked pool or the balance is bad and should be adjusted so that more build orders are strategies are viable.

PA is a Real Time Strategy game, not a Real Time Execution game. If you aren't able to devise multiple viable strategies then PA fails as a game.

that ultimate goal however clashes with the limited resources uber has access to ...

Well then it's a good thing what I actually said was;

I never suggested it NEEDS to be what Uber or anyone should aim for as a realistic goal as I said;

"but even something that doesn't go that far can still go far enough to result in something that achieves the spirit of the goal."

Mike

If Uber doesn't have the resources in competent designers to fix the balance of PA then I'm not sure that there's any hope to be had in anything Uber does for PA at this point.