Revealed Units [04/05/2013]

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Sensor suites. Meerkats proved that having high altitude senses are a distinct advantage. It's no use having eyes on your butt. :lol:

The only annoying thing about having twin land factories is that a lot of unit roles will necessarily overlap. There's not much real difference between two different chassis types that both trudge along the ground. Both TA and Zero-K show this incredible amount of overlap, and Supcom removed it entirely.

IMO it would be much more interesting to have a plain ol' land factory and something else dedicated to more hybrid/aquatic roles. Bridging the gap between land and water is going to be pretty important, and I don't think it can wait for T2.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Just the speed and manouverability difference between vehicles and kbots is enough. Also you usally get a few bots for each vehicle's cost in resource.

The difference between legs and wheels can be enourmous, it just depends on the balance, pathfinding and how much different terrain there will be.

I really don't think that Samsons and Rockos where the same, even though they were very similar in statistics.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

As for tracked tanks and heavy assault bots:
They are the same, if you equip them with them same weapons. Both can turn on the spot (yes, tracks can do that), both can't go very fast (about 40-60km/h top speed), both have an almost not existent brake path. Only difference would be slightly less metal costs for the bot, but increased build duration / energy cost in return.

Zero-K is the worst possible example in this case, they don't just have overlaps, but redundancy at an point where there is an individual factory for every desired army composition, with dozens of alike units to choose from for every single basic role.

SupCom did great in avoiding duplicate unit roles inside each tier, it only messed up with the stacked T1-3 system which made T1 obsolete at some point and even T2 became obsolete except for a few units which didn't have a T3 counterpart.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

As long as I can put together an entire well built ground force using only different kinds of tanks then I will be happy. Bots are nice but I just love tanks. Tanks with big guns, small guns, missiles, flak cannons, tanks that go on water, tanks that go under water, tanks with lasers, tanks with freaking tanks on them!

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Ah, but I want bots on tanks à la Panzergrenadiers*.

And if they're not careful, I want bots under tanks, crushed. :twisted:



(*No clue how its called in english..)

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

I would have thought energy generators will surely be solar, wind and fusion? so they should have blades.. panels and cooling towers I see non! and I want them

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Just wanted to say that I absolutely LOVE the unit-style of PA all around. Uber has some really awesome designers.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Whitebox/placeholder units, we have no idea what they are going to end up looking like (although I suspect solar, wind and fusion are going to be pretty close)

According to wikipedia the closest term is "mechanised infantry". Since there probably isn't going to be a lot of speed difference between bots and vehicles, I'm not sure the distinction is valid in PA

Someone just needs to mod in a ground transport though, or a custom tank with half a bot welded to it

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

There are currently only a T1 & T2 power generator (land & sea). I'd say wind is the one not included, since it wasn't a constant energy producer in TA (and didn't work on moons).

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Except that none of those things are in any way the same.

Legged mechs would be far more effective on hills or rough terrain, but likely with a lower max speed on ideal terrain. Bots also would likely have weaker armor with comparable weapons, given that armoring a legged mech isn't as simple as a tank. Turning radius on a mech is non-existant, whereas a tank at top speed might take quite some time to turn or stop.

Even your top speeds are off. A modern main battle tank is capable of 67 km/h on ideal surfaces, a light tank easily 20 km/h faster than that. I assume our space deathbots are rather more advanced. It would be very impractical to create a legged platform able to compete, though certainly possible (nature herself managed that). Certainly it would be difficult to arm or armor one suitably.

I suspect there will be very different roles for vehicles and mechs.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

That will only be true if they're designed that way. Even in TA there was a lot of overlap between vehicle and k-bot factories. The T1 similarities are necessary, because they fight on the same turf and thus HAVE to be competitive against each other. It was only the T2 factories that had their own choice of unique units.

I do not think two variants of T1 land factory are needed (though multiple T2 branches can still be useful). IMO it is better to have a factory bridge the gap between land and water. TA's hovercraft factory had a ton of options that could work fairly well on land and compete with boats on the water. It's a nice hybrid option to have on swampy, amphibious worlds, where any dedicated factory doesn't work well.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

This game isn't going to have an independent build duration variable.

From the economy system sticky. Factories/Engineers will have a metal applying build speed and an energy cost. Building something will require a certain amount of metal to be built. The time to build will be a simple function of dividing the metal cost by your 'build power' (or metal/s being applied as a sum of all factories/engineers assisting).

So tbh, we really have no idea how Uber is going to balance cost vs utility of bots vs tanks in this game. In essense there is no energy cost variable in this game. They cannot make a bot cost more energy but less metal than a tank, cause energy cost is a variable of the factory/engineer, not the unit.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

They could make the Bot Factories require more power to run, it's not a Uniform "For every 1 Metal/s requires 50 Energy" it's more of a Tank Engineer has 3M/s and 50E/s Upkeep and Flying Engineer has 1M/a for 80E/s Upkeep.

So it is possible to include some variance in the form of the Upkeep cost for specific factories, it's not quite as mutable as units each having unique energy costs like SupCom/TA but it still allows for variation.

Mike

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Well that's true. It will also make balancing of the different type of engineers so much easier than in previous games.

So something like... (completely fabricated numbers)

T1 Kbot Factory
Build Power : 40 (Metal/s)
Energy Cost : 1200/s
Efficiency : 30 E/M

T1 Tank Factory
Build Power : 40
Energy Cost : 800/s
Efficiency : 20 E/M

T1 Air Factory
Build Power : 40
Energy Cost : 1800/s
Efficiency : 45 E/M

T1 Kbot Engineer
Metal Cost to Build: 800
Hp : 1000
Build Power : 20
Energy Cost : 1200/s
Efficiency : 60 E/M

T1 Tank Engineer
Metal Cost to Build : 800
Hp : 2500
Build Power : 16
Energy Cost : 800
Efficiency : 50 E/M

T1 Plane Engineer
Metal Cost to Build : 800
Hp : 800
Build Power : 10
Energy Cost : 800
Efficiency : 80 E/M

Obviously these numbers are entirely fake but it would have several effects;

[*] All three engineers will have specific rolls.

Bots will apply the most metal but be somewhat fragile with moderate efficiency.

Tanks will be front line capable, but apply metal slower with solid efficiency (but likely have a bigger footprint and lower turning radius so be poor at assisting en masse)

Planes will be extremely mobile, but fragile. They will apply metal slowly and be inefficient enough to discourage/penalize 100x assist spam balls.

[*] All engineers are at least modestly less efficient than factories. Advantage goes to the more spread out base with several factories instead of single heavily assisted factories.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

Even so, the cost of assisting is the same no matter where the engineers go. Assisting will end up favoring whichever factory normally costs a lot of energy to use. Which is why this system:

Is totally screwed up. The air factory has the smallest penalty from assisting, because its poor efficiency best matches the poor efficiency of engineers. Air spam becomes favored before the game even begins.

Energy is useful as a tech barrier. Generators are expensive, and the more you need the more effort a unit initially takes to build. This penalty peters out as the game advances and bases grow more powerful. Energy as a metal replacement is completely broken, as is the replacement of energy with metal. It did not work in any TA game or clone, because metal always has high value while energy becomes easier to get.

Unfortunately, a flat expenditure system heavily restricts the creation of good nuances in unit cost or assisting power. Any efficient base builder can dominate an inefficient factory, creating a hazard where factories can not demand extra energy without buffing its assistance. It also forces builders to be inherently inefficient, perhaps placing a high energy cost on base design.

The Commander can break this cycle by having a super efficient lathe. This makes the Comm a critical base builder for his low cost construction, while engis are better for helping low quality factories or working the odd build project in the field.

Don't forget that there are TWO factors to a builder's value: The construction power per metal invested in a builder, and the energy upkeep needed for that construction power(determined by cost of generators). It is possible for a factory to consume gobs of energy while still being a superior construction choice, simply because it's cheaper to build a few generators instead of assisting with a ton of high cost engineers.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

All true, I picked those numbers without thinking through all the angles. I really hope engineers are much much more expensive than we are used to. If the gameplay visualization is to be followed to strictly we may only be able to transport 5 engineers on one T2 rocket. Possibly not even that many. They need to be robust and fairly efficient at lathe or else any foothold attempt will be doomed from the start.

The only really strong argument against this is drastically slowing down the game start by making engineers too long to build without any assist and a single factory. If they do the 'commander egg' thing however with a somewhat customizable (modular) starting package, that could resolve that issue. End game would be so much better if you dont have to juggle 300+ engineers over four worlds.

Re: Revealed Units [03/04/2013]

I'll update in the next day or so with the new units from the live stream.

Edit: I've begun the update. I'm including as much info as possible, including build costs, upkeep costs, storage and economy info. It appears at first glance that all construction units have the same efficiency (just different speeds). For example, the commander uses -25M and -2500E while building, and the air factory uses -10M and -1000E while building.

Re: Revealed Units [21/04/2013]

Updated info from the May 3rd Livestream.

• Added Unit Names and descriptions where shown
• Anti-Air appears to be able to attack ground also