Paper units

I can understand the reasoning behind wanting things to happen faster in regards to battle, but currently this is just too extreme. As other have said it kinda makes it such that you have to commit to battles 100% otherwise it's a guaranteed rout.

Doubling the HP isn't even that drastic of a change really, for Levelers for example double the HP means it only takes 1 Extra shot from a Leveler.

It doesn't do much between Ants and Levelers because Ants will still die in one hit, but I think that's more so an issue with the power gap.

Mike

Shots per kill. It's a pretty handy metric for all sorts of things. You're welcome.

In Starcraft2, taking down any higher tier unit feels rewarding. Sniping a colossus, focusing down an ultralisk, hell even taking down low tech units feels good because they don't just fall over when another unit looks at it. And people still sometimes complain that units have too little HP in SC2. Units here have even 5x less.

That isn't a great comparison because StarCraft and PA function on completely different scales. In PA aside from things like commanders, you're not supposed to be invested into individual units, It's realistic to ask someone to be investing into 300+ units at once. But you can get investing into groups of units, things like having a bomber wing that just made a great bombing run and what not, but there is nothing to get attached to on an individual level.

Mike

Yeah true that. But we could compare it to TA or Zero-K and current HP/cost is still very far off compared to those games. In Zero-K for example, it takes tens and tens of seconds for higher tier units to battle it out 1v1. Very far from just 1-2 hitting each other.

well in this game you need to kill A lot of enemy units, so they will die quickly.

We're currently working on a naval pass right now, and part of that does include making naval units a bit more resilient.

I kind of like how pop-corn-ey the units are overall, but I also don't think a bit more health would be game breaking. I think in the coming weeks and months, we'll be able to be play with these numbers much more actively, as the core gameplay stabilizes again.

I especially don't want to do drastic hit point changes until we get some of the core pathing features in, such as formations, as those have a pretty big impact on unit vs unit and unit vs base battle resolution.

I also like watching my T1 arty lighting up the advancing army, furthermore it's awesome the AI actually makes an army to launch at me!

The question is: Why shouldn't it be satisfying? In the end satisfaction is what makes the game fun.
I didn't play Supcom much - in fact I only played the singleplayer campaign.

Hopefully some naval ships will have their own dedicated radar to help utilize the range of their guns.

+1 op

yeah, right now anti-air and stationary arty and catapults are so massively op.
But especially anti-air, they're so cheap and you can hold the line vs a big group of tanks with a single anti air if they come in single file.

This has been discussed before. Try doing a search before posting.

I like the current damage ratios.

Back in the old RTS days, like early Command and Conquer, you could have two tanks shooting at each other and it took a while to kill the opposing tank. So you'd have two tanks just sitting there shooting at each other. thump. thump. thump. thump. And finally they'd die.

It... sucked.

I prefer PA/SupCom mechanics where equal tech levels take a few shots at each other but lower level techs get destroyed in one shot.

It makes strategies much more dynamic.

first off the thread is two pages long and Garat replied favorably so I think it's legitimate enough, second, we kinda ARE comparing PA to FA and right now the two do not resemble each other at all in the case of army combat. some thump thump would be nice, FA had less then most games but heck-tons more than PA, right now most of the time you feel ripped off in every engagement because you know your army's potential but you loose it to situational circumstances that your oponent did not plan for and can just feel lucky to have had... until the same happens to him.

right now it's all so random.

In FA you could predict what would go down, made casts a whole lot more enjoyable, with talented casters that coud make these predictions.
Here the comentators are like " OH and we have a potent contendor here with a massive 100 tank army with some bots and scouts in the mix it's moving foward, it's going to make a massive break-in! aaand it's gone.. ' v ' "

Interesting that you would say you can't predict outcomes.

Granted I watch a lot more matches than possibly anyone on the forums, but I can predict the outcome of an engagement 95% of the time. I can also predict what needs to be done for the smaller side to win – if they can – with near complete accuracy.

What would thump thump thump accomplish? All that would do is make units shoot at each other more with very little difference in outcomes.

For starters, it would allow people to influence the battle while it's happening. That's what makes battles generally interesting in most modern(and old) RTS games, seeing people make awesome plays/manouvers and displays of skill while the battle is ongoing. If everything dies almost instantly once it gets into range then that aspect of the game is removed and only setup matters.

Setup mattering only is totally not true.

I've seen armies take out enemy forces twice their size with the proper micro. When microed, bots, levelers, shellers, and stompers can be incredibly effective.

What's more, PA is supposed to be about the large scale macro, not micro.

I'm not saying micro should be avoided, I'm just saying most balance decisions will be made to benefit macro, not micro.

As stated. I like the current damage/health ratios.

Because it is just one freakin' tank. If you take out a whole army, then you can feel satisfication. But the leveler is, as I said, a normal unit. You don't feel all that satisfied when taking out one T3 unit either, but when taking out a whole group of them, OR an experimental!

But it's still a huge freaking tank. My hope is that a tank will feel like a tank no matter the situation - be it an early game skirmish with a few units or a battle with 100-s of them. Just because you can make them en masse doesn't justify cheapening or reducing the enojyment of fighting smaller clusters of units. To me, currently it doesn't feel like units battle at all - it feels like they fall over at the sight of each other(whenever somebody gets into range of it's opponent).

Don't get me wrong, I love how the game is shaping up, but I do feel like this aspect of it can still be improved big time.

What? I'd argue the opposite, and vehemently. Having two marines blasting eachother for a few seconds is what breaks immersion- by the time they die, they're more lead then flesh by weight.

Tanks die fast. The way it is currently, it rewards information far more than micro. If you have any sort of range advantage, you can do an incredible amount of damage before your opponent even knows you are there. That units die quickly causes the dynamics of the game to change in a dramatic way.

For example, the way it is now, a leveler will /always/ win against a T1 tank without taking damage, assuming that they both see eachother. If you increase the HP by 10 times, then the T1 tank can get within range and fire, causing the Leveler damage. That's a huge change in the style of the game. What you're suggesting doesn't just slow down the combat- it causes a huge host of changes in the way that units interact with eachother.

Beyond even that, with how quickly units are made, increasing their survivability by 10 could quite easily make it so that you build them faster than they can even be destroyed. You're dealing with a scale that's very, very different than SC.

Edit: tldr, changing the health/damage ratio doesn't just change how quick the fight goes, it changes how units interact in a fundamental way. If you increased health by 10 times, you would have to reduce movement speed by 10 times in order to maintain they way range advantage works.

P.P.S: Furthermore, it changes how overkill works, which is a really important part of simulation-derived diversity. Small units aren't good against huge blasty cannons just because they take less damage from anti-armor, they're good against huge blasty cannons because shooting tiny things with a huge cannon is a waste of a cannon shot, and it's pure overkill. That those kinds of things fall out of the simulation is an important aspect of the game.