Paper units

At any rate, PA's problems right now aren't technical in nature (except maybe pathing, which can be awful at times).

It's just a question of balance.

Pelters: Probably too cheap [or too good for their cost]
Missile tower: Probably too effective against ground units [or too good for their cost...]
Ground units in general: Probably too expensive relative to the defenses

I imagine at the moment Uber is working mainly on performance and crashes. I think unit balance can be greatly improved with like 3 days of effort once they can get around to it.

Incidentally, one of the problems the balance is creating now is the "T2 rush". You should rush to get a T2 bot factory. In TA this could get you killed because you'd be rushing to T2 and you'd get creamed by a T1 rush. In PA right now you can totally cream a T1 rush with like 1 pelter and a few missile turrets, so T1 rushes are a bit silly. I don't even build T1 units anymore except on really tiny maps or to scout (except for a few fighters).

It's not a question of balance. It's a question of gameplay.

We need fully fleshed-out units and mechanics before we can meaningfully discuss whether a particular unit is too strong or too weak.

I do agree that T2 currently gives the wrong kind of advantage. Advanced units should not give such an absolute advantage, such as the ability to get more metal from the same number of mex spots.

Advanced tech should provide role diversity to augment a basic army. Not a strict economic or military upgrade.

That would be interesting, if that was their plan (I suspect it's not) -- to make the T1 army the best you can get with T2 purely being some nice extra options.

e.g., the best tank with the best damage and most hit points is T1. Going to T2 gets you the same tank but now it also has SAM capability. Or T2 gets you mobile artillery. Which is nice but you don't necessarily need it.

But nothing about current gameplay suggests that this is meant to be the case. T2 units are almost all superior versions of T1 units. Fighters, bombers, tanks, bots, fabricators -- T2 is better. The only exception might be ships because I think X metal of T1 ships can beat X metal of T2 ships. The T2 ships mostly just get bombardment capability through extra range.

Might be interesting if upgrading to T2 was more about unlocking nasty options like nukes and Halleys and less about creating a flat out superior force.

The fact that T2 unit costs and firepower are direct multipliers of T1 units should tell you everything you need to know about how final those stats are.

It was my understanding that unlocking 'nasty options' was exactly how the advanced units were going to be designed, and that all the units would be useful throughout the game.

I think that the biggest lesson from SupCom is that tech levels that supersede previous tech levels are ultimately bad design that just result in needless extra unit design work, needless economic inflation, and needless time spent passively base-building.

Instead, why not have a flat-balanced unit roster and a flat economy that scales with physical size instead of time/investment on the same land area? Time and money spent upgrading mexes so you can start making units with the upgraded mexes might as well go directly towards making units and playing the game on the field. And instead of having redundant units, you might switch back and forth between using several types of units from a very large, flat roster, all throughout the game.

The basic factories should have all the combat units you need to form the backbone of your army. The advanced factories give you a lot of options for things to add to that backbone, but barring very unusual circumstances you should not build an army composed entirely of advanced units.

The way I see it, the basic factory might have several different types of basic troops, some generalists, your basic anti-air, artillery, scouts, assault units, and so on. You could absolutely get by with only using the basic factory, even against an enemy with an advanced factory.

Having an advanced factory gives you a lot of options to tailor the standard army by mixing other types of units into it, some of which may have superior characteristics, but which cost more as a result. Imagine taking Zero-K and just designating certain factories as "Advanced" and having construction requirements, while the units they produce are still flat-balanced.

The point is that every single unit in the game should be paying for its strength on the same cost playing field. Advanced units may be locked behind an expensive factory, but that's no reason for them to be objectively superior for cost. Flat-balance all the units, regardless of tech. It means all the units will always be relevant. The requirement to tech to certain units means a certain amount of economy (and therefore time) is necessary to access them. So the tech requirement serves as a timed-release, not as an upfront investment for superior units later.

Mash my words together why don't you, i said Red alert is slow with high hp and starcraft requires you to micro cos of high HP, never said starcraft was slow.
I much prefer the simulated projectile realism where you can out flank a group and they die before they can turn and fire back effectively, got you out numbered here buddy your thinking and then bam another group appears to the side and ruins your units.

There have been games that just give a straight damage bonus to flanking units. It's not inherent to simulated projectile. And likewise, there have been games which have cannon turrets before.

But simulated projectile probably makes it nicer.

I agree with the hp buff as long it dosent make an unit take 5 minutes to kill another and dont transform it into a megabot, it could make interesting combat

The faster a unit dies, that harder it becomes to balance, because of the random and unrealiable nature of how fast it dies.

Unit should live at least twice as long as they do now. It just seems like they die fast just for the shake of it. Dont get me wrong i like huge numbers of units as much as the next guy, but i also like to see my units live longer than to shoot once or twice

I wonder how many shots an average tank in World war 2 survived to fire.

Just to reiterate, there is a big difference between saying that all units should be tougher, and saying that you want to be able to build units that are tougher.

Units that cost as little as the Dox must be fragile because of how many of them can be constructed. A really large army of high-HP units can move about the map with impunity and ignore the enemy. Units and defenses need to be able to discourage an enemy from entering their range, and the only way to do that is if those units die quickly to comparable levels of investment.

If you want units that have more HP, ask for units with higher cost. Like a bigger tank with a higher cost. Or a cost increase in conjunction with an HP increase. Such as making the Ant bigger and tougher.

I totally agree, in starcraft 2 units died already slightly too fast. If its 5 times faster than in sc2 then its really way too fast

Even with triple hp the Dox would fall pretty quickly. :>

Nope, not relevant. All battle casualties are based on a decay function. You need absurdly durable units for the battle to not end quickly (like half a minute endurance from Supcom2), regardless of engagement.

Currently units die faster than they can actually engage. Rocket tag is the worst kind of design principle.