Risk vs Reward

You were kinda talking against what oyu said in the previous post. You said that the risk would be that T2 is harder to use, but more rewarding, T1 is simpler. What oyu just said here (at least that's how I understood it) was that in fact T1 was harder to use on its own and T2 just complimented it. Now I like the fact that T2 is more specialised and therefore harder to use but if used correctly it gives better results. If T2 complients T1 it's still better that if it outright replaces it, but that still means you need to go T2 to not fall behind.

Please consider that English is not my mother tongue. I'll try to use different words.

The concept I'm trying to express is that T1 and T2 should ultimately give equal chances to players to end up victorious at the end of the game.

Where T1, being more straightforward, will likely offer more rudimentary strategies, mainly based on out numbering the adversary.

And with T2 adding specializing roles able to offer the players methods to compete even when out numbered. With a sort of elegance.

Of course the ultimate goal of every player will be to learn how to efficiently use what T2 has to offer. But with T1 being able to compete against T2 as well, unless players will actually adopt superior strategies, using more subtle units in the mix.

Does that make more sense?

Anyway, one key point would be to not let T1 undefended against anything so powerful as a nuke. Or granting T2 a excessive surplus of metal/energy.

Sorry but I can't agree with you there.

What you are proposing is essentially:
T2 is weaker if you don't know how to use it but stronger if you know how to use it.
Most players will know how to use it, therefore it IS stronger.

You are saying that a good T1 player will win against a bad T2 player. That's true in my proposal, as well.

In fact, I am not even sure what the difference between your opinion and mine is.
It seems like we both want T2 units that fill different roles than T1 units and allow T1 units to fight more effectively/ need support from T1 units to be effective themselves.

Do you want no T2 economy at all ?

And why do you keep bringing up the nuke as an example for T2 vs T1 ?
Nukes are a completely different matter than T2 units vs. T1 units.

Why do you bring up examples from the current (un-)balance at all ?
Aren't we all talking about how we want to change it ?!

In fact, I just wrote that I do not want any T2 unit it be uncounterable by T1. End of matter. Why bring up nukes ?
Nukes are going to be changed quite a lot anyways, so their current implementation is not all that relevant.

And I am arguing for making T2 units cheaper, as well...

I think we are talking past each other here.

Edit:
You cannot give someone more options without giving him an advantage.

As long as we have two tiers, the person that reached tier 2 will be at the advantage in the long term.
The only thing we can do, is creating some initial disadvantage to going to T2 and keeping T1 and T2 closely together to avoid creating too much of a gap.

But we can't remove this situation without removing tiers altogether.

Edit 2:
And I also don't think that we should aim for someone being able to avoid going to T2 in every situation.
If someone decides to keep on fighting on T1 for another 5 minutes that should not be a problem (hence why T2 should only pay off over time...to avoid a jump and making the point of time at which you reach T2 too important).
But if someone allows an opponent that has equal map control to reach T2 and does not manage to take his T2 production out / gain some ground / win many battles and refuses to build T2 then he will be at the disadvantage.
If there was no advantage to having T2, then no one will use it.

Ehe, well... I let you decide

I think we agree on this point. The passage into T2 should be smooth, and give players ample room for mistakes than what it does now.

overpowering in itself doesn´t have to be limited to cataclismic steamrolling ...
the davidsituation or strategy is about finding weaknesses in the enemies base and army but you still need a critical mass to overpower those ... that critical mass does vary per situation ... but the endresult is the same ... you want to have enough power to significantly hurt the enemy ... a powerjump as poeple like to imply doesnt have to be massiv but simply significant to how that force is used against the other player having nukes is quite an increase in power (pretty much the reason why they are disliked), vanguards+pelicans not neccesarily ... yet they proved how devastating they can be ...

the thing i (and likely everyone) dont want for PA (or pretty much any game) to happen and what i fear could happen depending on how many and/or in which way options are changed/removed is that more stalematematches may happen and more standoff situations/more longer downtime aswell as tedious mircomanagment of hundreds units for no longtermgain ...
that stuff is generaly frustrating and just not fun to play or watch but still may happen ... that is why stalematebreaking options or fixes in some way are requiered otherwise there would be no real progress to the match ...

What if we had tech structures for unit unlocks instead of multiple factories. That would add less linear progression and more freedom and choice, but also give the possibility to snipe tech and minimize the tech jump from being either 0 or 1.

I always thought that was neat in Red Alert how tech structures unlock more units from the same buildings

So you now have the basic T1 buildings, and you build expensive tech that unlocks new units. Personally i think that would be interesting to try. Because its a smaller jump, Its not like now, either you have access to all t2 or you dont, and it doesnt all hinge on that one choice, do i rush t2 or not. instead you can have a game plan, im gonna go t1 this this and this and rush this one specific unit to add to the composition.

Suddenly you can unlock specific units at a specific pace. That would also make it possible to remove the advanced metal and energy, suddenly you have one tier resource, no more suddenly going from 100 metal income to 1000 in less than a few minutes .

double post.

Id be open to that, kinda....sorta.

Not a fan of centralised tech buildings eh?

Can't say I don't see the downsides of this either, as it doesn't translate well to a player when a opponent has stashed their tech away so you can't find it.

But that only one possible solution.

it especialy doesnt fit into the scale of PA ... hey i build hundred factories but only one techbuilding to unlock unit types in those? "make them be requiered for each factory then" - what makes that any different from upgrading ?

also a reason i don´t like HQfacs in FAF ... and if those became mainladdercontent which i think they are watching gyle´s ladder videos then FAF is pretty much dead to me ...

Hey hey, come on now, no need to be all doom and gloom about it!

And really, upgrading in that definition kinda applies to just about everything.

You upgrade an army by building AA to go with it, you upgrade the commander by building a radar on a planet.


Now I dunno about FAF, but there will always be a multitude of different balance mods that people will wanna play, regardless of what the vanilla or main ladder is doing.

And of course, if you don't like it, you will never be alone in that mind set, so the game won't die if you and like minded people would rather play a different balance!

yea that´s right i want to upgrade my army and base .. not single structures, unitypes or factorytypes ...

i don´t care about mods as much as the vanilla ... even though i am not a ladderperson i still want to play the game as how it is meant to be by the current vanilla and the HQfacstuff that became ladderstandart just alienated it for me

... as someone said before mods and different ballances can and do splitt the comunity ...
i rather like to play what is current standart gameplay for the simple reason of playing with the pool that has the most players because i like to play as much different players as possible but when that gets changed to the point i can´t accept it anymore then there is no real point to continue to play the game ...
don´t get me wrong i have nothing against mods ... i like them as ideas for possible additions to the maingame
but i prefer to play something that is whole and not one basepack with added bits and pieces ...
i would have rather liked some Blackopsmodsunits added to the main then that hqmod ...

This. This is what I always thought would be the goal. In basic, you have your 'basic' units. Things that do well a-moving them in mass, and things that fight by themselves well. In advanced, you have units that by design require support from other units to be successful. I think that honestly, just looking at units, its better than we think.

An equal mass of basic units will, in the current patch, generally kill more than their mass of a single type of advanced unit. Now, if you mix them, nevermind.

that is not how it works because by that logic your t1 aa would be advanced as it would need support by tanks
advanced should be as people said spezialised or units with high buffs but high debuffs as well
the vanguard for example fits realy well in advanced imo as it is very slow and shortranged for it´s high hp and damage output ... another advanced unit i can immagine would be a mobile catapult, has long range over vision so requiers radar or scouts to be most effective but has insane damageoutput yet at the same time is rather weak so it has to stay in the back ...

Another problem I see here is that the basic tier of units is both not complete (IM LOOKING AT YOU NUKE DEFENCE) ahem........but is also not very cool or exiting (Tanks are not tanks, but armoured cars like supcom t1 tanks were).....and possibly a little ineffectual? (Some units are not good at their intended jobs)

Some units don't have jobs... *coughbotscough*

That's not true. The current dox is an incredible raiding unit. It won't be as good at that when it becomes a grenadier. :-/

And the sniper bot is amazing.

The Dox is a good raider/zerg, the mobile AA is.....mobile AA, the combat fabber is a strong repair unit with the ability to build mines (Stacks better with tanks then bots, and so I feel is a good unit addition) and the bomb bot.....well I feel the bomb bot works better on the strategic level then the tactical level, as a way of punishing a opponent who has bad intel and thus has to deal with bomb bots getting to their buildings and demolishing half of their base within seconds.

So overall I love the bots, T1 bots at least, but they aren't supposed to be the hammer of your military, more the sickle.

I haven't been able to read the whole thread, so I don't know if this has been suggested already, but I would like to see an internal play-test without the t2 units and buildings that are direct upgrades. Revert the economy changes and see if people still go for t2 when it isn't exactly a direct upgrade.
So, no levelers, infernos, slammers, t2 bombers or fighters. No t2 AA building, no holkins, no tri-barreled laser tower and no t2 economy. What happens when t2 is a side-grade, rather than a direct upgrade?