Paper units

everything still goes pop pop to each other. if you have new stronger units they take four or five more popcorns thrown at it to kill it but inbetween each other, they'll still go pop-pop so it'll still be feeble and funky as hell.

currently not having intel is the ultimate bane. in fa it was extremely bad, just very very bad.
in this game, you can go with any number of tanks against the t1 destroyer (typed bluebubble then gave up...) if they don't have intel you will loose that any number. ...which can be 1billion, that doesn't matter.

just a dirrect consequence of pop-poping.

I was expecting the first advanced units to be support units, not just vastly more expensive combat units with higher stats.

There is definitely a place for the "very expensive high-quality" combat unit. But they aren't really that important as a unit type and won't be used that often. The kinds of advanced units that will see a lot of use are things like minimalist artillery or strategic anti-air, or other types of high-power specialist functionality that you just can't get from a basic factory. Chewing on a base from a safe distance, swatting down bombers, mobile antinuke, stealthy units, heavy recon, armored assault, etc. etc. There's practically no end to the possibilities.

Just a chunk of HP with a gun is a very rudimentary type of unit which really should be the mainstay of the basic factory. Even in the late game, the basic factories should be where the regular army gets built. The advanced factories are for the additional, more specialized tools to supplement the regular troops. Your long-range artillery that gets trashed by one Peewee in close combat, or your assault unit for attacking a wall of turrets that gets skirmished to death in the field. The advanced factory should offer a wide variety of specialized tools that can yield huge returns, or die for nothing if used improperly, not just give you a bigger hammer. More basic troops is how you get a bigger hammer.

I would point out that in the later years of TA, the megamod community started down-teching a lot of heavy units. If a unit is expensive and heavy, but otherwise just another flavor of basic combat unit, why not put it in the basic factory regardless of its price tag? Zero-K took the idea to a whole new level, and, for example, offers the Zeus on the cloaky bot factory (the ZK incarnation of the T1 bot factory). There should not be an assumption that everything in the basic factory needs to be cheap, or that everything in the advanced factory needs to be expensive.

I've thought about it too and I agree. I don't think advanced units need to be always more expenseive, although in most cases they probably should. I also don't think that they always need to be tankier per cost. I feel like Zero-K has done it pretty damn well. Still, the majority of times, larger units take a lot longer to die in an exchange between equal-cost units, due to their comparatively lower damage.

For example, in Zero-K(or really almost any RTS game), a basic raider unit like the bandit kills another bandit extremely quickly in combat. Not quite as quickly as units in PA, but it's close. Now take any expensive assault unit, like the Zeus(it's not that expensive, but still quite a lot more expensive than a bandit), Reaper or Goliath. They can take a huge beating before going down. Low damage, high survivabilty. Makes them feel tough. And this is something I hugely miss in PA at the moment, as tanks and especially levelers are currently extremely high damage cannons mounted on a plastic body. It removes immersion.

At the same time, I have no problem with some other advanced units dying pretty quickly, something that isn't a freaking frontline tank. Thinking along the lines of arty, advanced sniper bots and even some closer range units like high DPS AOE units.

I'm sure they'll get to it once they have dealt with more pressing thigs. There's gonna be exciting times ahead with all kinds of new units coming and whatnot.

more hp!

More HP but keep base defenses as scary as they are!

Unit-Unit battles need to be longer. Two Dox should not be able to oneshot each other and leave two dead units.

Dox doesn't oneshot other Doxes.

I totally saw a match earlier where two Dox ran up to each other and they both died almost instantly.

Maybe it's like twoshot but still that's kind of silly.

']http://pa-db.com/unit/assault_bot
More like 2 seconds.
I don't mind if the cheapest bots die almost in an instant. It actually decreases the need for micro as you otherwise have to worry about the enemy bots just running past your bots while just trading a few shots.[/URL]

Then why build them at all?
This was the first thing which scared me off of Supcom when it came out: You build units and they are totally useless and pop instantly when the wind is too strong. This doesn't feel epic or awesome, it feels like you have an army of ants (the animal, not the tank).

Doxes are currently one of the best units in PA. Arguably they are too strong.
Having a heavy tank wade through hordes of light bots shrugging of their fire in order to brake through the enemy lines is epic IMO.

Exactly

this thread requires aknoledgment.

I say more HP and make building walls easier (which they are currently working on). That way you aren't relying on turrets and towers to be virtual walls.

The long and the short of it is that people think adding HP will make battles more "epic" because they will be slower.

They will be slower, that is for sure. But they will not be more epic. They will just take longer, and individual units will have more freedom to ignore smaller amounts of enemy firepower.

The way to make battles truly epic is to have very fragile units in large quantities, which seriously fear enemy firepower. Which die by the dozens, by the hundreds, when you charge into close combat.

As a very simple demonstration, I present to you a rather unremarkable NOTA game. Pay particular attention to the land battle on the far right of the map. Land units are cheap, tiny, and squishy. But for not much money you can build huge numbers of them, and they die like crazy. The result is an immensely more "epic" land war than having one tank that takes a lot of hits.

I would also like to point out that NOTA also does naval combat better than any TA derivative game to date.

there will be more diversity in the battle; which I think is CRUCIAL because, I pop you you pop me, really takes me out of the experience. and the sim projectiles will stop being such a usless power sink and finally be put to good use. also unit veterancy which has been begged for all across the board would be allowed by this. And lastly fixing the balance pretty much requires this anyhow.

why fight off the good? yea sure you battles are shorter. does that shorten the game? no. yea sure battles are shorter. do you like their outcome? well that's personal maybe, but when I send some thousands of units at another thousand units, I expect something a little less anticlimactic, than noone left standing, or two units on one side left standing. (again this is due to sim pro not being used, WHY ARE WE TRANSFORMING THIS GAME INTO STARCRAFT?)

I don't want unit/unit battles longer so they'll be 'epic', I just don't like the popcorn-like effect that we have now where they explode in a hit or two.

Right now two seconds of one tank blob pointing somewhat away from another can mean the difference between an even fight and an 80/20 victory. Adding more HP would give more leeway and time to maneuver a little.

I've played enough RTS games where splitting your units up for flanking maneuvers is just a way of turning them into bite-size groups for your enemy. That would play right into the 'unit blob' problem.

I am not against long battles. I want long battles.

But the way to get long battles is to have large quantities of small units, not units that individually take more time to kill. More durable units need to be more expensive because they require more firepower to destroy; either in the form of more time from the same number of units, or more units to do it in the same amount of time.

Small, cheap units are better because a really huge group of them suffers casualties when it fights a smaller group. They also require more reinforcements, can be split or maneuvered with, and you can mix your unit types more naturally than you can by using small, discrete numbers of more expensive units.

If you get one artillery piece and it dies, you no longer have artillery. If you have 30 of them in the army and you lose some of them, you have reduced capabilities. Then you need to reinforce not by sending one important unit, but by sending some of whatever units you need.

On the other hand: Battles shouldn't be over before tank can turn his turret in the right direction.

In my book, units need more HP. That doesn't mean that the HPPS ratio needs to be like in games like StarCraft, but doubling the current health surely wouldn't hurt.