Paper units

It's not a question of can or can not. It is a question of what it brings to the table. I think that this dynamic is significantly more interesting, because it mirrors modern combat- it's a game of intel and positioning, not a game of personally moving around single units.

Furthermore, there's no reason that things can't expand with more and different units. I just think that this speed vs. survivability dynamic is in a very good place as a baseline. It makes range, both view-range and weapon-range, critical to think about at all times.

you just described a microcosm. You could do tons more interesting micro tricks with FA. And in PA it really does 10% of what you're trying to achieve. Those moments when you get to kite are sparce, you really have to have all the right elements come together in the right place, at the right time. you can't micro against a structure in PA, in FA you could. ect...

What is a microverse? Did you just invent a new meaning for that word?
Please describe those micro tricks in SupCom.
You mean like bomber micro where you hover 1 bomber in the air dropping several bombs in a row?
Or dodging turrets with a single unit?
I really think PA should try to avoid single unit micro maybe with the exception of the commander since it is such an important unit.
At least you will be able to micro large groups of land units in PA which SupCom prohibits you to do effectively.

Most of PA's micro is currently exploiting the poor targeting which doesn't lead. It's a bug, not a feature. Also why missile turrets suck less than they initially appear. They're one of the few ground combat units which never misses.

Well I still think it is better than the projectile dodging that you do in SupCom.

I think the idea of what he was trying to say is that SupCom gave players both the tools and the opportunity to Micro, whereas currently PA only provides the tools(better than SupCom did) but doesn't give any opportunity to use them, or at least not to the extent of what was had in SupCom.

That could easily change as overall mechanics and new units get introduced mind you.

Mike

At first I disliked the quickness that units would die, but after playing and feeling this early version of the game out, it actually feels nice. It also feels at tad more realistic having big advanced tanks 1 or 2 shot each other. It does shift the focus to macro, but allows micro at some smaller levels. Just not as much about who can dodge the most shots. Turret rotation speeds and turn speeds are a big deal.

For those who played both TA and SupCom/FA, do you remember the HP comparisons. When SupCom first came out, units felt like they died so quickly compared to TA. And they did. But you would normally have 2x to 5x the number of units in the game. This feels like the same kind of step to PA.

The thing is that while PA might have the potential for more engagements, I don't feel those engagements will be, overall, larger than what we saw in SupCom. In that regard, I think the current set-up takes it a bit too far, right concept but just too much of it applied.

Mike

(Warning no biased poll was taken so I'm going with the vibe of the posts)
so to sum it all up

hp to dmg ratio is fine but just want 1 or 2 more hits to be absorbed before death across the board with all unit.

sorry, the word I was looking for was microcosm

UP

Actually thinking about it more, I might even wager to say that PA could end up having more, but smaller engagements if the current trend continues.

My reasoning is that because of how quick battles do and how you can't disengage in most circumstances once shots are fired you're commited you end up in a situation where you don't want to lose your entire force in a single go and there is even the potential that that smaller forces could deal similar damage to a larger attacker as it would suffer. This is because things die so quickly that you wouldn't have time to bring your overwhelming numbers to bear and as quickly as you're dealing out damage, the smaller force is deal similar or slightly worse damage.

Obviously this theory breaks down if the large force surrounds the smaller force in pretty much any way and doesn't account for how things could change either in the core balancing or via new units.

I dunno, just some ramblings.

Mike

Because it's not finished yet

I would agree that units die much too fast presently, for instance it's possible to lose a fleet of fifty ships if you spend a minute looking elsewhere.

To compare previous games:

In TA, buildings died pretty damn fast, but units tended to have to siege one another. This had the effect of drawing up frontlines for the battle and making slow, grinding advances possible. To make it clear I think that this is a good thing, because it makes unit composition much more important (tanks on the front line holding each other at bay, then mobile artillery or missile launchers hanging back and dropping additional damage on the enemy tanks - but how much AA do you need? How many turrets? Are there other lines of attack to defend or exploit?).

In Forged Alliance the buildings are very tough indeed, only by sniping with artillery/TML/bombers can you expect to take out a building quickly. A detachment of 20 T1 tanks will likely cause no serious damage to a base unless the opponent has lost all his ability to counter it, i.e. he's already lost the economic and military games. However units in FA are much weaker than those in TA, running away is often impossible if the enemy surprises you.

I prefer the way TA did it: buildings that shatter easily if the enemy gets through, but tough units to help stop that happening.

PA currently has the buildings’ strength about right, units in your base require immediate attention or they will wreak havoc. But I don't think the units themselves are right at all, they should be at least as tough as Forged Alliance, preferably moreso. Remember the FA units were both faster than PA's, and had shielding, and even then they were too easily killed compared to TA, IMO.

The one thing I like about retreating in this game is if you are going to do it you almost have to sac half of your army for the other half to get away. IMO this is pretty realistic, if you just turn and run in an IRL tank battle you are going to lose A LOT of forces when you run away. When a tank shell hits a tank it goes pop. This makes scouting very important, don't send that army of 60 ants in blind.

My only gripe with the low health of units is that it really... hides the nuances of using one unit vs using another unit. Which is to say that going mass L1 tank v. L1 bot will result in armies of equal size completely destroying each other. L2 units are slightly more nuanced, but still run into the issue that there isn't really a reason to choose one unit over another (unless you need to get somewhere as quickly as possible, then you go bots).

I would like more health but not a lot more, perhaps so units could take 2-4 more hits depending on the unit, I understand Macro being important to win the war after all but I really do think that Micro should be able to turn a battle.

Really this thread seems to be about the lack of unit diversity more than anything. Some units are going to be tougher than others. That isn't to say that your main line units won't be easily destroyed; the existing system is working well for that.

Those players who are complaining about how quickly everything dies are very likely the exact players who would prefer to build units like The Can. Those units are (almost certainly) going to be implemented later. I for one think they basic structure of the unit design is showing an immense amount of promise. Nonetheless, due to the relatively few types of units and sparseness of strategic weapons, PA is more of a wicked tech demo than a real game at the moment.

The problem I have with the current set up is that the units we have are supposed to your "average" tank and bot types, the kind the game needs at minimum to function, yet these "average" designs already kill/die so fast that you'd be hard pressed to make new units that die faster, you can only do slower.

I agree that we can't have battles like in TA due to the other elements of PA like Multiple planets and spherical maps, but this is so extreme in the opposite direction that you can't really push it any farther either.

I guess it comes down to that I don't mind that some units can die as quick as the current ones do, but I don't think the current rate should be the standard.

Mike

People really need to get over this idea that single individual units are important. Units like Ants are actually extremely durable when you consider how much damage they take for how much they cost. A large group of Ants can absorb an immense amount of firepower, and is quite cheap. The individual unit does not matter at all because it is just a piece of a group.

The unit's properties obviously determine the behavior of the group, but how quickly one member dies is more of an RPG or small-scale RTS consideration. The error here is thinking that one unit's survival is important, because when it dies it stops shooting (i.e. SC2 Colossus). In a large-sale RTS, twice as many units each with half the HP and DPS is functionally identical from an aggregate perspective, but arguably superior for gameplay because the group suffers more casualties and has to have reinforcements, it can be split or arranged in more ways if the player wishes, etc. etc.

The survival of one unit is completely irrelevant. In fact, the most fragile units in the game are almost always the most durable units in aggregate. An equivalent amount of metal in fragile Peewees is actually a lot more staying power than the same amount of metal in beefy Bulldogs.

The people complaining about their units dying quickly probably just want to have access to a comparatively tough unit. I'm thinking a 150-250 mex tick assault unit with relatively more HP than main line units, with other disadvantages like short range, low movement speed, or something else. The skirmishers will fight more slowly than close-combat units, with lower DPS and more range. And the assault units have relatively more HP, and will die more slowly than cheap close-combat units.

I would like to hear some of Uber's thoughts on a skeleton of upcoming units' roles and weight classes. I think a roadmap of what kinds of units Uber is thinking about would mollify a lot of players' fears about the current units and gameplay, like "units are too X" and the like, because the current units are (logically) not representative of the entire unit pool of available options to the player.

For example, I would like to see either a new unit at about the 25 mex tick weight class with a raider role (i.e. Peewee), or have one or more existing units reworked in that capacity. We also need about a 50-100 mex tick that acts as a real skirmisher. I would also like to see an experiment with a really cheap skirmisher, just to see how it plays. A 25-50 MT skirmisher might be very interesting; potentially put different skirmishers in different factories.

I think adding low-dps units like skirmishers, bombard artillery, low-ROF alpha strike units, and adding high-HP units like assault units will significantly mitigate players' fears about units dying too quickly. Currently almost everything used is both close combat and cheap; so it is no surprise they die almost immediately.

Because it's not finished yet[/quote]

The problem right now is, that due to low health, a lot of units are perfectly evenly fragile. T2 assault bots, artillery or T1 AA bots get all 1 hit by the leveler for example. A T2 assault bot shouldn't feel as fragile as the tiniest T1 units or artillery. And it's not like the leveler is some kind of crazy high alpha unit with a 10 second reload. If we tripled all HP, we would get differences - the T1 AA bot would still get 1hit, sheller for example would get 2 hit and the T2 assault bot would get 3 hit. Still, units would die very fast but at least everything wouldn't be the same. This is just part of the stuff that we are missing out on purely due to the crazy HP/DPS ratio of current units.

This even has nothing to do with the game being on such grand scale - when HP/DPS is that low, it destroys unit diversity. No matter the scale, I think we all want to have diversity...