One race = perfect balance!

It's because people think that internet discussion means converting other people to their own view. And they think that the most effective way of doing this is omnislashing. Spoiler alert: It doesn't work.

Solution: Present your viewpoint clearly and concisely, and as briefly as you can. If people need elaboration, then do so. Otherwise, refrain from spamming more and more posts. If your fellow debaters are intelligent, they'll read your post and keep it in mind. If not, then it probably isn't worth your time to try to convince them further.

Sorry that this is off topic, but it needed to be said.

Well said sylverster

But I disagree that this is a critical problem hindering the success of PA. Go make a thread about why unlocking units by upgrading the computer of the ACU is must in PA or make a thread about which criteria that needs to be forfilled in order to make PA successful.

You have still only compared the success of SupCom and TA to 1 other RTS.

Ultimately I don't think that a strategy game should depend on learning mechanics that heavily evolve about muscle memory training. That said, muscle memory training is probably more "addictive" than understanding and employing strategies.

I don't think it is apparent for a new player when he gets beaten by t1 spam that he also has to win by using t1 spam. He might think he can win by defending which he might do in low level games.
Starcraft is fairly simple in this regard. You have your chockepoint to defend and you can do so quite easily and you can use whatever build you want and then push out the map.
In Forged Alliance you have the commander that you cannot lose but if the enemy uses it offensively you most likely have to use your commander offensively aswell. It is not easy to understand the implications of pushing with your ACU. Always keeping track of the enemy ACU and taking advantage of the relative position of the ACUs is something that players learn at different skill levels. I'm talking mostly about small to midsized 1v1 matches here.
Those are also things that increase the learning curve without really using muscle memory and making it clear where a player should improve. Do you think these mechanics are bad mechanics? I think they are good mechanics.

Team games could be a clear case where unlocking units for cost across the board is a bad mechanic. It would be enough for 1 player to unlock and it would be a waste of resources for the rest of the team to unlock the same units.

I'd rather cut down on the part where you improve on "know yourself". Parts about knowing yourself that doesn't effect how you fight the battle against your opponent is redundant and only increases the learning curve like an economy that requires alot of attention.

Hills is 1 terrain type. Plains is another. If different factories can take advantage of different terrain types then you get asymmetric strategic and tactical option when players use different factories which is what you are striving for with factional differences.
When you say "balance gunships vs. bombers" against each other I don't know what you mean because they are both allterrain units. The interactions between them are not as interesting as between kbots and vehicles in TA.

I've provided a criteria. I can't compare it to much more RTS as I haven't played other RTS as much.

Well, cool. But it's not a "suggestion" or "idea". I also prefer to stay way from "muscle memory training" (though it's more cerebellum training), but I can't imagine anything easier to master for newbie. You just should not enforce this training too much or too long - higher skill levels should slightly move to more intellectual trainings.

As you've told - this directions are not clear. Newbie should fight few battles even before he would understand what exactly he need to improve. ACU control/Enemy ACU track are subsets of unit micro/enemy position recon. They are good start to develop your micro/recon skills, of course. But this is far from first steps. First step should be based on what you see on your interface - effective initial build order. You need to stand-up without stalling, or you'll lose even before battle start. Second is eco - you need to learn to keep an eye on your resource flows not to stall. It's something that you can't just skip.

Unit unlocking should be individual.

Some level of self-knowledge is required - if you don't know the cons and pros of your units you're screwed anyway. I guess that there is no possible consensus over this point - some people believe that micro it's what defines pro-player other believe that it's a strategy. But in both cases you need to train something "internal" - either memory of particular parameters of particular unit and muscle memory to click it around in proper pattern (for micro) or vision memory to notice and memorize good offense/defense positions and directions. And to know what positions/directions are good you need to know and your forces weak/good points and your enemy.

So I presume that Sun Tzu's statement stands even for RTS games anyway.

Please refer to this thread.

They do have different speed yet similar role, just like in your example. Wheels are able to move over hills, just slowly. If they do not, than your example like "balance navy with land".

Supportive or not is irrelevant. Perfectly symmetric games are boring. Board games try to break symmetry. For example, Chess has identical units on both sides, but symmetry is broken by the fact moves are sequential and someone must go first.

Moves in PA are not sequential, it's an RTS game with identical sides. It is in danger of being boring, because both players might perform the same actions. If fact, given identical starting positions, it would be a good (not great) idea to mirror all actions of your opponent. If he builds tanks, you can counter with tanks. If he sends bombers to your base, you can do the same.

PA must look for some ways to make the game interesting. Assymetric maps and starting positions not only might be nice, but necessary in this context.

I always disliked the idea of symmetric maps anyway. Sure they provide each player an equal starting balance, but for a proper strategy game, that should only matter briefly, during the start of the game. I do like the concept of choosing your starting location at the beginning of the game, like what's implemented in Zero K. This not only allows you to ensure that you have an economically viable starting location on a procedurally-generated map, but it also allows you to customize your start based on your strategy. Maybe you're planning on a air heavy start, so you position your commander near an abundant power source at the cost of some metal spots. Or maybe you want to take control of the ocean first, so you plant as close to water as possible.

Also, remember that while PA may have only one unit pool, making the battlers symmetric, the pool should have a good variety of units so that the player's choice of units at the beginning, middle, or lategame should be relatively unique in comparison to that of their opponent. In this case, the player's choice breaks the symmetry, and is one method to keep the game from becoming "boring."

I could take some value and say that FA haven't passed the threshold of "dead". Let us just agree to disagree.

Hence it will be a waste of resources for more than 1 player to unlock a set of units in the same team.

I think Sun Tzu is correct but I think you should remove the low level knowledge and low level micro if you can keep the strategic elements of those.
For example Kiting is something that I think is low level micro that can be automated quite well without removing the strategic implications of having Kiting in the game.

No, it is not like balancing navy with pure land units. It is more like balancing hovers with navy.
There might be a hill which the kbots can traverse but not the vehicles.
This causes asymmetry because the 2 different factories used by the players provide different choices.

Well spoken.

So, upgrading to T2 for UEF player in FA is a waste of resources if there is already another UEF player with T2 in same team? Teams are not like in SC2, but like in FA.

Theoretically I do agree with you. In practice auto-kiting is nearly impossible to be done right (and it was discussed already many times). Anyway - eco/tier upgrades in FA were more strategic elements than low-level micro. There are a lot of UI mods that allow to perform mex upgrading and tiering in clear and simple way without paying much attention to it. Yet you still need to learn when to upgrade. UI may help you, but it won't make decisions for you. So you still need to learn to keep an eye on your economy, on your enemy and on your production - that's obvious and that's good. But it still easier than "learn to rush", "learn to defend from rush", etc.

A lot of starcraft micro, for instance, come from UI limitations. As soon as client-side UI is not limited, you may do whatever you want with mods.

This causes annoyance, especially with composite force. And asymmetry too, of course, but price is high. Navy vs. hovers is better example. Hovers vs. pure ground is another example. But still, is hovers are as efficient as navy (as raiding force) - won't it obsolete navy? In FA on small water maps Aeon and Seraphim are supreme because of their cheap-but-powerful hover units. On bigger water maps their hovers are much less powerful. I don't know how you are going to balance that.

And wouldn't it lead to composite hover/naval force requirement to be efficient? Like Aeon+hover shields from FA.

I were referring to your latest "ingenious" idea. Forged Alliance is very different.
Teching for factory units then you would need the factory and buildpower in a good spot if you want to use teamwork and avoid making more than 1 t2 factory. If you tech for t2 structures then you would need to build t2 engineers and bring t2 engineers wherever you need the t2 buildings. If you want to tech for t3 power then it is enough for 1 player on the team to build t3 pgens and share energy.

Auto-kiting is fairly easy to do right. Zero-K does it right. Does auto-kiting needs to be perfect? No. Is player kiting always perfect? No.
For the rest. Learning to rush and to defend against a rush is lots of more fun because you are actually fighting the opponent and not yourself/the game. That is more fun in my opinion.

What? I thought you said you wanted asymmetry in strategical and tactical goals? That was your whole point when you argued for factional diversities.

What is wrong with making hovers be more efficient raiders than ships? If you compare to FA hovers don't stand a chance against kiting ships so hovers having a little advantage early game is not necessarily bad.
Also what is wrong with using a composite hover/naval force? If I want to use hovers for raiding the coastline but I want to use ships for bombardment that's not a problem.
It can be balanced easily and if it isn't balanced then both player have the option to use either ships or hovers.

Already rejected.
Thank you, dev team.

Shotgunning out a bunch of units from one idea is pretty lame. It is better to say "I want a unit that does X" and then make it.

Sometimes you might say "I want a unit that does Y. Oh, I guess Z pretty much does that already". That's fine too. It just means move on to the next idea.

We are discussing asymmetric strategy and tactical goals. A way to allow more asymmetry to happen is to have diverse factories with different traits and terrain traversability which can be compared to factional differences.

There are plenty of ways to get units from point A to point B. Air transports get units to a landing. A flat floating platform can be used to create bridges or act as a ghetto battleship. A unit cannon can get anything to go anywhere. If a boat is in the wrong lake, then fly it to another lake. Plenty of obstacles can be overcome by simply dropping in from orbit.

Let the transports worry about transporting and the fighters can do the fighting. Beating a particular obstacle without help is a specialty trait, as a good transport system can get generic units anywhere.

As for factory choice. Well. More interesting tools create more significant choices between factories. Locomotion is just one way, out of many possible ways for a unit to be unique.

This belongs in the thread about movement types. I'm not gonna let you take a part of my arguments and use it in the wrong context.

Your opinion about "right" kiting may not match with other user opinion. In may lead to frustration if your super-heavy tank just got destroyed by light artillery, just because it was kiting backwards instead of pushing forward. There is a lot of places where auto-kiting may bite you back.

You may create asymmetry by different means. This one is a worst one. There are better ways. Land is land, no need to separate it into sub-terrains.

Depending on what you call "efficient". Hovers are more efficient raiders anyway - they can move on ground and ships can't, so hovers have greater attack range. But hovers should not be able to screw someone building navy in early game. Otherwise navy will be useless on small scale/maps.

Nothing wrong unless this "cooperation" is de facto required. If hovers in cooperation with navy are better than navy force for same cost, than hovers+navy pairing became mandatory for every naval fight. No asymmetry here.

If hovers+navy is weaker than navy force for same cost than no one is building hovers in sea battle. No asymmetry either.

If they are on par - fine. But where is asymmetry?

I really curios how you are proposing to balance that particular problem - navy/hovers to preserve usability of each class AND keep asymmetry.

There is no asymmetry, because every player is a Commander with the exact same tools and choices.

The right auto-kiting would include easy ways of controlling the autokiting like turning it off. Zero-K have that.
Not all units in Zero-K have auto-kiting. For example heavy tanks don't have it so that is another reason why your example is bad.
Units that aren't suited for auto-kiting don't need to have auto-kiting AI.

1. There can be separate factories with different unit sets even though they have the same terrain traversability.
2. That is how factions look like most of the time. The factions can make different units. Different factories can make different units.

This is wrong on many levels. If I go for hovers on a map that is mostly land I should easily be able to screw someone making ships. There is big difference between "not be able to screw someone building navy early game" and "if both players play well ships should be useful". Chose your words more carefully.

The fact that hovers can move inland they can have different roles than ships.
For example you might be using vehicles and ships while I use hovers and ships. This causes asymmetry because my hovers can go on the sea and circumvent land defences.
Hovers could also have specific roles that ships don't forfill making them useful there aswell.
For example raiders, anti-submarine units that can't be hit by torpedoes, light and cheap AA, anti raider units, etc. Weather or not using hovers is required to gain the most efficient counter to the enemy units deployed it can be balanced and vary depending on what units the enemy is using keeping both players using different tactics and strategies.

Asymmetry always happens in an RTS otherwise there wouldn't be a winner.

Well, this is right thing about any automation. Yet if auto-kiting is bad it's still bad, no matter that it could be disabled (it's a noobtrap). Unless it's disabled by default and go with huge "it doesn't work how you think it should work" warning.

And tricky part is to say what units are suited and what your aren't. And auto-kiting itself too (as algorithm), of course.

Eh? How that's related? But well, ok, I see your point - you suggest to split all unit pools into small groups by factories, so you need to build specific factory to build a specific unit. While it sounds like a good idea at first place (as it's practically tech unlocking I was talking about), actually it's just makes unit production management terrifying - you have dozens different factories now and to build a nice composite force you need to deploy 5-6 factories to build a couple units in each.

That's why I suggested to put all unlocking into separate building and make it global, so you don't need to create/manage dozen factory types.

You've seems to intentionally taken a bad example. Of course I'm not talking about map with 95% ground a small lake within. I'm talking about map where water separates/mostly separates parties so you have to choose between navy or hovers. And you haven't answered question - it's easy to say "it could be balanced", but how?.

You are talking about hovers vs. land, not hovers vs. sea.

Prove your last sentence, please. At least suggest a way to balance it (preserving asymmetry) and why it's easier to balance than different factions. I do believe that different factions are actually easier to balance.

And in case you have two Brackman clones playing against each other in similar environments?

He is trying to create local asymmetry by local tech unlocking (different factories), so each time you are fighting for new map area, you need to choose what to build first.

Auto-kiting isn't bad. There wasn't any consensus whether or not auto-kiting was bad or good in the thread about automation.
I don't agree that it is a noobtrap.
Depending on if kiting will exist in PA and how important it is to kite then the players might be forced to use kiting to stay competitive. Kiting on several planets at once will be hard and would require alot of training to get good at. Having to have huge APM in order to play good is something that I think should be avoided and I think you agree about that.

Fast units with long range are suited for auto-kiting. That is the rule.
As an algorithm auto-kiting is not harder to pull off than making kiting units stay at maximum range against the closest enemy.

It is similar to tech unlocking in regard to that you need to pay for the factory to get the units. You don't necessarily need to use more than 1 factory in every game. Some games it might be enough to just use vehicles. Some games you want to use air and kbots.
There might not be a unit combo that is better than all else but rather it should be about using the right tools/units to beat the enemy strategy and unit combos.

Lets see in how many different ways hovers and ships can be "balanced" according to eachother. "Balanced" in this case just means useful.
Ships can be better than hovers because hovers can still go on land where ships cannot go. If hovers are simply better than ships in every aspect then you wouldn't use ships.
Ships can be generally weaker but have roles that hovers don't have like submarines, coastal bombardment, fast kiting and strong battleships or whatever really.
Hovers can be generally weaker but have roles that ships don't have like light AA, land raiders or any role pretty much.
Hovers can be stronger than ships in the early game but weaker in the late game.
Ships can be stronger in the early game but weaker in the late game.
Hovers can be able to raid land when ships can't reach it.
Ship bombardment could be able to reach targets inland that hover units can't reach because of cliffs or defences.
Ships can be more useful when there is lots of water while hovers are more useful when there is less water.
Hovers can be as strong as ships.

Feel free to pick 1 or several of these ways to balance hovers and ships.

No. I'm talking about a combination of hovers and ships vs. a combination of vehicles and ships.

You only need a RPS(Rock, Paper, Scissors) to get that balance mechanic. The "SpamHover" hover unit counter "SniperShip" ship unit. "TankShip" ship unit counter "SpamHover". "SniperShip" counter "TankShip". If we both use ships then SniperShips would dominate sea. If I use hovers then you would need TankShip to prevent me from raiding you on land and killing your SniperShips. If I use both ships and hovers while you only use ships my SniperShip and SpamHover combo would beat pure SniperShip but you can mix in TankShip to protect your SniperShips from SpamHover.
This is easier to balance than factional differences because we can both make hovers and ships.
If you spend extra resources on hover units to raid me on land I could use that resources to make TankShip as a counter or land units aswell as air for example.

If there is any randomness in the game involved then even a tiny difference can snowball into a huge difference that causes 1 clone to win even if the clones have identical start conditions and give exactly the same orders.
If I could replicate my intellect and play against myself, a game would most likely not last forever. Even though we have the same skill level and are inclined to make the same mistakes we are likely to make mistakes at different times and make different decisions depending on those mistakes.
Hell, if I think kbots and vehicles are balanced to eachother on the same map/planet, I and my replicated intellect might even make different factories in the same game.

But that is not asymmetry. Allocating limited resources between many opportunities is pure, straight up strategy, and the best/luckiest guy is going to win.

Asymmetry happens by giving players different starting conditions and unique tech. So far, we have no indication that any aspect of a game will be unique to a player (at least, nothing beyond hats).