Paper units

Any reason behind the health/DPS ratio of most units being close to 1-1.5 at the moment? It means everything dies almost instantly in battle. I am aware that currently balance does not really exist and everything is temporary, but I see no reason why units' hitpoints wouldn't just be increased 10 times or so.

A small comparison between somewhat similar units across different games:
PA Slammer 1.33 HP/DPS
Starcraft 2 Thor 8.53 HP/DPS
Warcraft 3 Troll Headhunter 32.35 HP/DPS

So, units die about 25x times faster compared to WC3 and about 5 times faster compared to SC2. That's too fast imo. For example, currently a leveler onehits all other unts than other levelers(twohits them). This makes unit interactions quite boring with big tanky units feeling exactly as fragile as small low HP units.

Edit:
What this means is that units never actually fight or brawl, they just fall over at the sight of a similar opponent. A leveler onehits a slammer and almost onehits another leveler. This creates a lack of immersion as units feel like even the wind would blow them over, as if they were made of plastic or paper. A slight increase in HP would be insufficient as units would just twohit most other units of the same cost - leaving unit interactions still very flat and uninteresting. I'd say to fix it and bring survivability to levels seen in other good games like TA, units need to be given A LOT more health, I'm talking 5-10x at least.

Edit 2:
I'm specifically talking about the low HP of more expensive ground units here like levelers and slammers. A dox for example has an HP/DPS of 2, which doesn't seem off at all for such a small, fragile unit. But bigger units like levelers(HP/DPS 1.25) and slammers(HP/DPS 1.33) have much less relative HP(HP/DPS to be precise), giving them a plasticy feel. This is in contrary to the majority of RTS games where small units die fast to each other, but bigger units still can take a small beating from each other before going down. This is to make them feel tougher, bigger and more significant. Right now it's the opposite, which makes larger units seem more fragile than smaller in battles where both tiers aren't present.

Not having a go at you in particular, but there are so many posts saying the same sort of thing now. ie...

"I know the game is not finished/is in Alpha/Beta/Whatever, but why is this particular bit that annoys me not done yet"?

My guess is that the devs have different priorities, as they know far more than we do about creating the game.

Also, there's absolutely no point in comparing an unfinished game to a finished game. I doubt that anything you currently see in PA is classed as finished yet.

Again, I apologise if it seems like I'm having a go at you. I'm just hoping several "future posters" may read this.

I actually like that they die so fast. Everything dies fast but is also made fast, especially units.
You can produce a bunch of bots quickly but they can be taken out fast by another army of bots.. or by defences.
To break bases you need artillery, mobile or stationary, plans, perhaps naval-support, sats. This makes assaulting more interesting and discourages simple blob-spam.

It also gives this awesome feeling of huge battles where hundreds and hundres of bots are built and annihilated within seconds, explosions and scrap metal everywhere!

Due to the scale of things, having individual battles be over quickly does make some sense. Still, I do feel like the current situation is far too extreme. Not to mention that it removes any kind of micro from battles - all that matters is how you setup the fight. Once a unit engages, it dies in 1 or 2 hits anyway.

Well I feel like it would improve the beta and provide more useful feedback to Uber. Having fights at least somewhat resemble what will be happening in the future would be preferrable in my opinion. But I guess there are still much more pressing fixes to make before that becomes a priority.

This game wants to DISCOURAGE micro and encourage macro decisions, like setting up the fight.

Micro is fun though and I never heard them say they specifically want to discourage it, rather they just won't emphasize it. Obviously pulling back weakened units is not a priority if you've got 50 in the making at any point in time, but you should still be able to do it if you wanted, especially early game.

Improving unit health isn't about micro really, it's about tactical decisions and how said decisions change the overall game state. At the moment there's not much choice about disengaging with an entire group or attempting a run-by. If units engage each other, most of them are dead in under two seconds. You can't decide to block with your face and push through to valuable targets, and even if they're faster, your fast units can't disengage against slow ones because they're dead before they can even turn round.

I'd be wary of changing this before the Uber cannon is working properly. At the moment the Commander's pew pew gun can actually kill a reasonable number of T1 units without the Commander taking critical damage, but doubling or tripling the health of combat units means he'll take a lot more damage if he can't reliably fire his Uber cannon. Obviously 5x or 25x unit health is going to be too extreme a change in the other direction.

I'd prefer it if they doubled or tripled the cost of each unit in a trade for health, that wayunit balls would be smaller. Not to mention it'll improve performance just to there being less units over all.

What game are you playing, the whole premise is units and explosions everywhere. Don't up the health, bullet sponges are really boring and do nothing good for the game.

You are wrong.

I used to be annoyed by it but now I kind of like how units melt in engagements. It removes the need for tedious and un-fun micro while putting emphasis on placement , anticipating movements , scouting and mass production. If the engagements went on longer any difference in army size would be magnified.

Navy should not follow the same approach though. Ships should be tough as nails and a large investment.

Speaking on TA terms, even the stumpy could take around 3 hits from a T1 laser tower (iirc). But given the build time and costs, you only sent around groups of 5-10.

Paper units kill diversity and make for uninteresting battles. Why would I build anything other than T1 bots if everything dies almost instantly anyway?

Advanced vehicles survive longer than you think. A leveler can take way more shots than an Ant and does more damage, too. Not to forget their range.

A leveler onehits a slammer, right? And levelers barely don't onehit each other in a 1v1. This isn't chess after all and when so many things onehit or twohit each other, it just makes for very boring relationship between units. Not to mention battles are boring to watch - no actual battles, just everything which gets into range gets instagibbed.

Battle feel way more epic when things don't go down instantly but have to blast away at each other for a few seconds. Also it is much more satisfying to see those big bastard units go down once they do. At the moment it doesn't satisfy me killing levelers.

Everything is subject to change, but personally I'm quite find of units dying fairly quickly. If they didn't then the scale of this game wouldn't be as extreme; laser towers being so powerful means you really have to think about building hundred's of units. At the same time, I wouldn't mind a few units that are pretty tanky and have a large cost. The kind of unit you throw into an army of hundreds which sticks out and your enemy will focus while there's loads of explosions around it.

This

at first I really didn't like that everything dies quickly, even buildings....but now I find it really fun,

The reason why I didn't like it, is that I always played old CnC in a way that, the troops are real, it made it more fun, and by thinking they are real, well....I wanted to have as few losses as possible.... it made it a challenge to try and win a game with only a few deaths.

But....these are robots, screw em, just build more

I still think maybe a 10-20% increase to HP would be welcome. but not much more than that

Why should it be satisfying? A leveler is just some tank not an experimental. If you played SupCom, did you feel satisfied for killing a simple T3 assault bot? Or do you feel satisfied if you take down some heavy tank in any other game? (except games like CnC, since one tank is actually a rather big unit there)

Speed, range, relative damage share a very special relationship. For more information, run down the firing line of your local machine gun nest.