Poll. Experimentals/tier 4/super-units

We all know about experimental units from SupCom. They was cool, but they was overpowered.

Sometimes they was a silver bullet turning the tide of battle, but sometimes both sides was just spamming them like T1 low units, effectively shrinking player's strategy option for just few units.

I feel like I love the idea of ultra-units as end-game primary strike force, but they shouldn't be only end-game strike force, nor they should be restricting use of other forces by outpowering them a lot.

I personally love the idea of old Metal Fatigue RTS (Named MF in poll), which was centered about huge customizable robots, so player was able to choose between massive melee, defense or ranged attacks, mortars or flying capability, and so on. Problem is - they was making all other forces useless in MF.

So, I would personally love the ability to make a few, but not too much, such customizable ultra-units (maybe not exactly the robots, but MF's one was just looking cool).

Or maybe ability to customise commander unit is such way, so it would be only very powerful unit (but it's loss would be end-game).

So, would do you think about experimentals?

No TA option? Where it's more of a game ender unit, then a super powerful one?

Plus, it wouldn't be tier 4. There won't even be a tier 3 in PA, why would they jump to tier 4?

Well, it would be T3 than, rather T2. Or commander-tech. It doesn't matter, actually. It's more about gameplay - what do you think about experimental stuff in general. How much restricted it should be, how much powerful.

I, personally, don't like game-enders. They was worst stuff added into SupCom: FA, IMO. They just making players to go turtle and try to build them up within huge defense ring.
Or they just toys for winners to make a spectacular, but delayed victory.

I think any army should be based on masses of regular units. 'Experimentals' (I'd rather call them something like superweapons) should not be massed. The game should encourage you to use only one or two, and they should be more like powerful counters and buffers than game-ending uberunits. Thematically I like the image of one HUGE robot leading a mass of small robots, better than a mass of huge robots. Actually it might not be that bad if they worked something like a Warcraft 3 hero with less micro.

The Krogoth wasn't a game-ending unit... it was just big and tough. How is the TA option fair or correct? :|

Because in a realistic game (not one where people where goofing off), it was rare for anyone to get the chance to actually build one. It took a very long time to build, and cost an insane amount of resources. Most likely, if you built one, you where already in the lead and the krogoth helped give you the final push to win. The main time this might be exempted is on pure metal maps, as resources meant little there.

Also, the krogoth was far more powerful then you might think. If you had a radar targeting facility, as well as some radar units next to your krogoth, he would kill off any units before they would even get within a screen of him. This was extremely epic when you would just walk at the enemy base and never see a living unit. Just krogoths weapons flying, and wreckages everywhere. Of course, radar jamming and stealth units (hawks in particular) could reach him, but if you had the resources to build krogoth, and the enemy couldn't stop you, it's unlikely they had a force big enough to stop you anymore.

What's the essence of an experimental unit? It's a huge, strong, very expensive unit with a long build time that is way bigger and way stronger than all of the other units in the game.

By its very nature it is boring to control because it focuses your attention on a single thing rather than a large army of dynamically shifting forces that have different abilities.

I honestly thought Chris Taylor was losing his mind when he kept announcing that they would be introducing more factions and more experimental units to an already complex game that had many high-profile balance and gameplay issues. They never fixed those issues, but aggravated them by adding more units without considering how they would affect gameplay.

Let's have units that are bigger than others, units with different abilities that complement others. But let's not have units that make armies obsolete and change the gameplay into building one thing and walking it through another person's base.

It's boring and we've seen how it failed miserably in Forged Alliance.

I think that SC2 made a good approach with the minis. In the case of the megalith, Urchinow, and fatboy, they were long range support units that considerably added to the value of your army, but were fairly weak, and didn't constitute opness.

There were also lots of very interesting experimentals that weren't exactly uberbattletanks. The bomb bouncer was one of my favorites. For those that don't know, it was basically a mobile experimental shield that only blocked high-arc weapons, like artillery. If enough damage was done to the shield, it would build up a charge, and then once the charge was finished, obliterate most units in the area.

I think Experimentals don't necessarily have to fill the uberbbqpwn role. They can also fit into the support role, and the crazy interesting ones, as mentioned above.

They already confirmed that there will only be Tier 1 and 2 if I'm correct.

More tiers maybe later down the road.

I would like a few not too powerful ones. The build-able thing that should have most destructive power should still be planetcrashing. Experimentals should be few and the crown jewel of an army. It should be a huge factor on tactical(battle) scale and only a concern when on a campaign(planet) scale.

What if you could convert the asteroid into a giant "experimental" unit? Then you can have it remain a planetcrasher, yet still walk around afterwards destroying everything remaining without a challenge. I can imagine it, a giant asteroid with legs

I like the idea of very large units, but they can't be all singing and dancing battle wagons, they should fill a highly specialised role and be utterly compromised in all other areas such that without the appropriate back-up they get owned.

Skip the concept of super units, etc. You have your commander, that should be your super unit. Then the tier below that are support commanders or something.

previous discussion: Experimentals

While TA has a basic teir and an advanced teir, they are really more like teir 1 and teir 1.5 in unit strength.

My personal preference is to keep the focus on huge armies. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't love experimentals for the fun factor! I love crazy units and to have more and more crazy units in post-launch updates would be awesome... but make sure they're all costly enough so that they don't factor into any viable strategies. For me, they're there for you to build because you've got more resources than sense and simply because you can. Like these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuze ... 00_Monster

Yeah, I saw that, but it has just too narrow options like "I like experimentals/I don't like them".

Well, currently it seems that more people believe that it would be better without any ultra-unit at all. That makes sense, of course - people will think about different transporting/deploying strategies to surprise their enemies, rather than trying to secretly build-up a super-weapon (building KEW probably can't be counted as "secretly").

I personally still believe in idea of count-restricted MF-like customizable experimentals. By being few they won't be primary strike force on strategic scale (but how much you should spread them will also a good strategical thought), by being customizable (by swapping parts) they would fit any role from supporting fire to heavy-armored "tanking". They could be even recon roles.

As commander upgrade it would also be fun, as in SupCom or TA your commander at late-game was almost useless, just some abuse you need to keep protected from any foe. By giving ability to swap it's parts with much more powerful in random, you'll get only, but very powerful and agile unit, useful even at end-game (but tied with risk of loosing).

The one nice thing about experimentals was that they ended turtle games.

In most Supreme Commander FA games I have played most of the time the game ended before even one experimental came out. But every once in a while you'd be up against someone hiding under layered shields trying to build fields of heavy artillery. And the only way to crack that nut was to march a dozen giant laser spiders into their base.

That TA option is a completely innaccurate description. The Krogoth is super expensive but actually very poor value. You can paralyse it with a spider (less than 1% of the cost of the Krogoth), you could surround it with Flashes and immobilise and kill it (less than 10% of the cost of the Krogoth).

Mavor already covered off experimentals - he said they have plans for only 2 tech tiers to start with, then maybe add some later on... just like they did with TA.

I've added TA option as people asked for it, using description provided. Never played TA thoughfully.

Also, I don't see how experimentals are affected by the fact that there will be only two tiers. We are talking here about one or two special units, not about whole new tech level (well, with exception of MF approach, that will require few new bulidings).

Only two tiers and only one "race" is just mean for reducing balancing effort. You need less time to ensure that second tier doesn't shadow first one, while being somehow more different and more powerful. With third tier it would be somehow harder (you still need to prevent tier 3 from shadowing tier 2 and 1, while still making t2 somewhat important on itself, not just as temporary transition, like it was in SupCom). Same with only one race.

Experimentals fall from grid in terms of balancing. If they are count-restricted or reasonably expensive than they do not shadow normal tech. Also, they do not impose balancing in case of only one race - they are the same on all sides.

Also, it doesn't take much effort to implement. Well, MF approach takes a little more, to be done right, but it also adds a lot of possible tactical options (still, it also requires some balancing effort to prevent one options shadowing all others).

I love SupCom 2's approach to experimentals. The mini experimental tier let you do crazy cool stuff (see previous mention of bomb bouncer) but then give the thing an actual weakness instead of "lol game ender with stupid amounts of power AND a cool trick". Not that giant robot of doom isn't cool, but it gets a touch old if that's the only thing around by the 5th game.