My balance concerns - Not really about balance but how it's done.

yes pilot the 2.1.1 is better than the 2.1.2

The twenty minute start displays a very different type of skill. I'm curious was it Taylor that invented the 20nr?

The only thing you can do is try it your self on Hamachi. Trust me the ai were bumped down for the 2.1.2. Pilot i'm not trying to get at you i'm just adamant about my point.

Everything has weight when it comes to balance. I'm assuming the peace time in PA will be huge due to the expanse of space hopefully.

Why is it better? You have yet to answer.

The best way to describe it is we got the 2.1.2 at the start of a lan, spent a lot of time on it and concluded that the ai were much harder on the 2.1.1

In what way? You need to quantify it.

If you guys want to talk about AI difficulty in another game, may I suggest you move it into a different thread?


Alright "pros".
So let's say Uber gives us their full roster of units next week.
What kind of action do we need to see from both the community and Uber for us to get a playable balance upon launch. (pre xmas?)

From Uber : Replays are needed too. And some chat of some sort to quickly start games between "testers".
Also make a bullet list of how they want to see the balance working in their wildest dream. What they think is broken, what they think is working.

From the community : From there, start deciphering the game to know why things that doesn't work as intended doesn't work as intended. (because X is broken, because X is always more effective and render Y useless, because you don't really need to expand so there is no need to raid,... -not saying these are current balance problem, I'm giving exemple-)

And from both : Start to tweak the game on the lowest level possible (probably the eco) and go up until everything remotely works as intended. Probably with more than one test patch a day for big issues that need a lot of iteration to fix (for FAF, it's not uncommon to test about 5 different values in a day, each time with 2-3 games to check what is/feel better).

Well, hold on. Let me start the conversation from here:
What's wrong with rushes?

well rushes are more of a new player thing, while sitting back planning your resources and building base takes time and effort.
with only 20 mins to build a start off base u must make sure your defence and offense are in perfect balance so u don't get wiped after the 20 is up that to me is a fun game
Rushing to me is only for people who wish to fast forward a good game

Well I can think of a few important steps
1. Unit metrics/unit stats
Analysing metrics such as dps/cost, health/cost, power(health*dps)/cost is important when comparing 2 different units that have similar roles or are competing directly.
2. Defining the units role
The role of a unit is very important to define. In my opinion there is not a perfect balance for a unit. The unit can either have a very broad role or a very narrow role. Buffing a unit naturally broadens the role of the unit and nerfing it narrows the role of the unit. If a unit is so good that almost no other units have any use you might argue that it is overpowered and if a units role is so small that it hardly has any use it might be underpowered.
3. Defining counters and counterplay
I think that everything should be counterable. That doesn't mean that every unit or tactic have to have a counter but I'd say that there should always be counterplay. Even if 1 unit or tactic is dominating one theatre of war there can still be counterplay as air, land, sea and orbital clash mixed up by different focus on army strength, economy or tech advantage.

Problem with SupCom is that you can't strike a perfect balance because you can't scout your opponent so it's just a blind guess. Is my opponent making a nuke? Is he making a massive airforce? Is he making an experimental?
Also, why do you want to wait 20 minutes before the action starts when it can start from minute one?

Rushing serves the same purpose as AIs do in timvans999's schema for the game. They keep your opponent honest, they counter eco whoring.
Rushing is fine as long as it isn't the optimal way to go. Now, it may be the best way to go at the lower levels of competition, because those players don't know how to deal with it. While better players know how to break even or get a head in a rush. So at those levels, a rush exists as a threat that keeps people in line.
If we remove rushing for bad players, then higher level play will turn into sim city.
Rushing can't fast forward a game, because after a rush, assuming the rusher didn't straight up win, both sides are behind economically.

Planning a base with defenses is not the way to win in this game. As static base defenses seem, they are very temporary. The existence of in game artillery serves to support that claim. I believe the spirit of RTS lives in the two player dynamic, not in whoever can ecowhore and sim city the best for 20 minutes.

Are you serious? Unless you're talking about 20nr, then yes that's a very good point.

I just think the things I can do in your game whilst not rushing are the most interesting. And rushing is theleast interesting.

1000 pop cap is too low for decent ai.

It seems that there are (as ever) two very different camps of people. It's not possible to make somebody who is for the idea of 20NR-style gameplay agree with somebody who likes Forged Alliance 1v1-style gameplay, due to fundamental conflicts between the way they view how the game "should" be.

Therefore both ways to play should be accomodated. Forged Alliance does this by having 5k 1v1 maps and also 40k maps and 20NR options. Presumably implementing 20NR options into PA would be relatively trivial, and of course the players have the choice of map size already.

If anything I think that PA does not in its current state allow for early, fast-paced aggression and I hope that this can be rectified as at the moment I find the game can be a bit dull: SimCity for half an hour, then either one player surprises the other with a big navy/bomber wing/orbital force and wins inside five minutes, or it drags out past the point I can be bothered. Hopefully better UI and intel displays will mitigate this, but still I think that having 300+ units being cannon fodder for as little as three laser turrets is a bit annoying.

Start on separate planets.
There is your No Rush option.