More hitpoints overall?

I know it's not the time for balancing yet, but the thing that came to my mind is also not, strictly speaking, a balancing issue.

Currently, a typical battle involves one- or two-shotting most units, because they're so low on hitpoints. This means that if two armies advance towards each other, half of them are already gone before they even get into visual range, and the encounter ends seconds later. This is quite sad if you want to observe cool battles, of course...

So I wonder if it would make sense if *all* the units get significantly more hitpoints, so those battles last longer? This should lead to a similar end result balance-wise, but we'd get the chance to see more flying bullets and beautiful explosions... and battles wouldn't be over too quickly...

Or is my impression very mistaken? I haven't played too many large-scale games yet, so maybe I'm all wrong and this is not an actual issue... what do y'all think?

Definitely, currently you have no time to reform your units mid battle or change focus or retreat because everything is dead within 3 seconds of combat. I think a 70% increase in health, with a 30% increase in damage and a 35-40% decrease in firing rate would make for better feeling combat. Bots should also get a slower rate of fire but only a little, and a little more health.

I mean the cannons on most units aren't machine guns, they need to have impact, visually and in terms of damage, per shot, to distinguish them from bots.

I think T2 tanks should get the slowest rate of fire and the highest damage, with T1 bots having the highest rate of fire and the lowest damage, because bots have the advantage of speed.

Also turret turning rate and torso pivot rates on units needs to decrease, flanking and attacking from the rear have little to no advantage, paired with the decreased rate of firing, it should be punishing to be flanked and surrounded.

And again, units need to be able to aim their weapons at units in visual or radar range, even if they're not in weapons range, to give an advantage to having radar coverage in a battle and of course if there is radar jammers.

I agree, a pretty big boost in health would make battles better

maybe not the units but the factories and com definitely.

In all my other war strategy games battles will usually last long enough for you to do something I hope PA will have this "in battle" strategy :ugeek:

Or you know, they could change one thing at a time. Increase health, playtest, if needed increase firerate, playtest, if needed adjust damage, whether more or less is needed and on a per unit basis.

To many changes at once and you aren't really figuring out what aspect made it more balanced.

More resistant units definately.

It would be great if we could also use wreckage as cover in battles as well just like in TA.

Right now though T2 tanks feel like they are made out of wet paper. It would also be nice if the lowly T1 bots were a bit tougher as well. Just a bit.

A sufficiently useful ubergun can protect the Comm.

There is the same issue in Starcraft2.
The units are small, very clumped and have a long range in comparison to their size. This leads to a huge numbers of units firing at the same time. to sum up, the damage/second/m² is very high.

A solution is to space out the units when they move by tweaking the pathing.
I sincerely hope this will be adressed.

i can't speak to the specific recommendations but I agree with OP's sentiment.

superouman explained it just right

good point. that's been mentioned before but superouman explained it well

Well in sc2 the game is purely isometric in its mechanics, and only simulates combat, a marine can't miss, but in PA units can miss, and the game is the most 3d RTS ever, with real projectiles. So units shooting through each other doesn't make sense, assuming they shoot straight, and not over each other at curved angle.

simulated projectiles is nothing new and it was in Sup Com 1, that is why it is the prefered rts.

real rts = simulated projectiles

I like the fact that the game is fairly fast paced and don't have long drawn out slug fights.

So I really don't agree much with the OP, I don't see how it would add to the game.

The problem with paper tanks in my opinion is that you have to take a large quantity to achieve anything. I understand that the point in the game is large battles, but due to the fact that tanks explode when you sneeze on them they last less than a minute. Then you have to spend several minutes waiting for more units to be built before your next brief clash.
If you haven't played TA I would strongly recommend it, it's very cheap on GOG.com and it's without doubt one of the best strategy games of all time.

To sum up, I definitely agree with the OP.

I did play the original TA, that's why I am here. :mrgreen:

TA is an amazing game, just not because of the length of life of it's units. TA also had a unit max, in this game we can build an "unlimited" amount of units.

But it does seem like everyone else disagree on me with this.

Oh no I agree that that wasn't the one thing that made TA such a brilliant game. I'm coming to realise more and more though that my perfect version of PA would basically be TA with orbital stuff and the nice shiny new visuals =D

The point still stands though that I find I spend significantly longer building the units than I do fighting with them because they die in a couple of seconds, while they take tens of seconds to build. They just feel like they have no substance.

As I've stated before though, I think that these issues will no doubt be addressed in time, but the devs are (quite rightly) focusing on getting the game fully working. Balancing can wait until later.

The game isn't really fast paced though, you just go through units like popcorn, you build 100 tanks and dent the enemy or trade blobs in seconds and have to wait to build more, until T2 units get built then you either die to T2 tanks in 2 hits or get bomber sniped.

Mind you real tanks would work identically if they had weapons with a 10m range. Modern tanks have trouble resisting Armor Piercing rifle rounds, let alone a HEAT Discarding-Sabot round.

But eschewing realism because THIS AN RTS MOFUKKA, I would rather tanks have a lot more health and a lot less damage. While Bots would have more damage, imperfect accuracy and less health. That way their roles are separated.