Solving the Mutual Annihilation Issue

The biggest flaw with the current PA gameplay in my opinion is the cancelling effect of colliding blobs of units. Groups of units like Doxes or Ants tend to collide and just disintegrate against each other as they converge. The units 'annihilate' like matter and antimatter, with nothing left after they collide.

Instead, the game should be a delicate maneuvering of groups of units across the planet, and a maneuver of units about a battlefield. The final charge resulting in a rapid destruction of one or both sides is only one of the possible moves players can make to make an advantage. But due to limited unit choices, spam and brute force direct assault are largely the only tactics.


Regarding Unit Hitpoints

Others have suggested that the cause of this issue is that all the units are too fragile. Increasing unit HP will only make direct combat slower. The underlying boring combat of smashing blobs together is unaffected, and will in fact be made worse by encouraging the formation of even larger blobs.

However it is my position that making pitched battle slower is actually not desirable. An engagement can still be slowed down immensely even if pitched battle at point-blank range ends quickly. The key to creating this type of gameplay is to give players tools that can be used to inflict damage for free when used correctly, but which can be destroyed for free when used incorrectly.

For example, a gunship unit which can pick off tanks but which can itself be quickly destroyed by anti-air missiles. Charging blindly into combat in such an environment is asking to be wiped out. But careful deployment and use of units can result in highly advantageous exchanges, even from a position of having an inferior force.

The trick is to implement an interesting system which creates the possibility of eliminating enemy units effectively, without running away and making any particular large blob of units stable. Rock-paper-scissors design of intending certain unit types to counter certain other units should generally be avoided. But clever use of assets should be able to score kills efficiently, such as using scouts and artillery, judicious use of air support, maneuvering using combat units, attacking in force into weakened targets, and so on.

In any case, total engagements using an entire army's strength in pitched combat simultaneously should be rare.


Maneuvers on Offense & Defense

The second aspect of creating more dynamic combat than smashing blobs together is to create offensive and defensive maneuvers, or deliberate moves that allow an army to be more or less effective.

Defensive plays should allow a player to achieve very efficient exchanges. An army prepared in a defensive posture should trade very favorably against certain attacks. For example, a group of units arranged in an creates a 'kill zone' that should result in extremely severe casualties to an enemy army attacking through the focus of the arc. Certain units might be more suited to being used defensively, but most common units should be capable of being used defensively to obtain an advantage in battle. As a direct result of the advantage gained from defending, it becomes inadvisable to spam and blindly attack with a large group of units because the exchange by attacking into a prepared opponent could be extremely disadvantageous.

Offensive maneuvers are created by an attacker attempting to exploit weaknesses in a defender. The most obvious is to simply charge directly into the enemy, which should be extremely unwise unless the attacker possesses overwhelmingly superior strength.

Two armies deployed across space, in some places defensive, and in others moving to be aggressive, creates a quite complex tactical picture. Both sides want to avoid attacking directly into a strong defensive position without overwhelming force because they will trade unfavorably. But neither side can afford to defend everywhere, or the opponent can muster overwhelming force to make a breakthrough in one place. So both sides must be intelligent about where to be defensive and where to be aggressive. An attack into a weak spot can kill valuable soft targets for free, such as economy or support assets.


Important Unit Roles

Skirmishers and a variety of other units can use superior range and/or mobility to pick off enemy units for free. Kiting is a basic RTS technique which should probably be automated for certain units. Skirmishers with slow or inaccurate weapons can result in protracted battles where both sides are exchanging a huge number of mostly ineffectual shots which are nonetheless effective at discouraging pitched battle or direct assault.

Artillery is very different in that it doesn't just have marginally superior range; it has vastly superior range to a common combat unit. However it cannot actually fight an enemy unit heads-up, and even if it deals immense damage, artillery has terrible raw damage output for cost. But its range allows it to fire with impunity, and therefore it is invaluable for destroying enemies from a safe distance. Artillery also slows down the pace of combat by giving both sides the capability of firing with impunity, but with vastly lower DPS per cost than close combat units at point-blank range. Softening up an enemy group or defensive position is necessary in order for an attacker to compensate for the advantages a defender must have, but takes time.

Units with high alpha strike also contribute to tactical combat, since they can be used to inflict kills with high efficiency. Potentially encompassing a wide variety of different roles and units, from snipers to ATGM carriers to missile cruisers, to many other units that deal lots of damage intermittently. Risk associated with using the unit also makes it less universally reliable; an inexpensive high-alpha unit that dies easily is a very simple unit design that creates a quite deep and complex unit to use effectively.

The efficiency of these types of units, to name just a few, depends on far more than just their cost, HP, and DPS. The "efficiency" of artillery depends on the player's ability to keep it alive, and the enemy's ability to locate and destroy it. An asset like artillery could destroy a large amount of enemy assets if used well, or it might miss every shot fired blindly and then be swiftly destroyed by a savvy opponent.


The Strategic Layer

The strategic layer of the game, including the production of units and the deployment of those units around a planet serves reinforcements to each active battlefield. Sending new bots, tanks, helicopters, and planes to replace losses and to increase your strength in each theatre is vital in order to compete with an enemy doing the same. However you and your enemy may make different decisions about which areas to reinforce. Asymmetric battles should be a relatively common phenomenon, where in one theatre a player must fight with a superior army while in another the enemy's army is stronger. A player's tactics come into play when it comes time to inflict maximum damage using whatever military assets are available in the theatre.

At the strategic level players make decisions about how much economy and military to produce, which kinds of military to use, and where to send those units. Strong strategic play could even give the player a strength advantage everywhere, giving that player a considerable tactical advantage. And strong tactical play can allow a player to accomplish more with less, potentially enabling a player to win in a local theatre with fewer units, enabling that player to spend more on economy or reinforce elsewhere.


Conclusion

The primary point is that currently PA revolves around spamming units that always fight in pitched battle all at once, and that such battles are both numerically deterministic and also over quickly. Introducing unit roles that allow players to obtain a tactical advantage by eliminating enemy units efficiently, rather than in a direct pitched battle, will slow down an engagement. by encouraging limited engagements instead of an entire group just charging into pitched battle.

Introducing unit types or mechanics that create variable exchanges between units will cause players to exercise far more caution when deploying a large group of units, since they might get efficiently destroyed. And adding unit types that do not want to just charge into battle all at once, and making those units compelling to use, will cause players to mix those units into their armies and attempt to leverage that investment to deal damage more favorably than by just charging in. Those units can have other advantages than just high efficiency in a pitched battle, and will slow down the speed of engagements by discouraging pitched battles even though two blobs of Doxes will still kill each other in a big hurry.

Adding more tactical tools, including defensive units to discourage the instant action blind charge, and units with advantages other than low cost and raw efficiency in pitched battle, will cause engagements between groups to slow down and become more tactically interesting. Instead of two blobs crashing and numerically cancelling each other out, players will maneuver smaller pieces of mixed unit groups to try and deal damage to each other more efficiently than the enemy army.

This type of thinking is fundamentally flawed. Combat follows a decay function, with the most casualties occurring early when damage is at its highest.

Supcom2 tanks had its damage ratio such that it took 25 seconds for a basic tank to kill another basic tank. It felt pretty slow. PA's damage ratio causes tanks to kill each other in 2 seconds (that first alpha shot is free!). It feels absurdly fast.

If you can not think of a viable number between 2 and 25, then nothing in the world can help.

I think we will be seeing many new units and buildings this month addressing these issues as the core build is pretty much stable now and there really isn't much talk about much else by the developer team and backers.

Absolutely agree on that. Though I wouldnt mind if units did last a bit longer in battle, now they just melt away quickly on the frontline.

The game has only slightly been ballanced. But I think it is not going to change much. How knows only time will tell.

Yes, I agree with your most of your post.

5. I honestly would use 5. Just saying, as simply as possible, my answer would be 5. "5" would sum up my answer.

I think what the OP and many of our current players are forgetting, is that there are already mobile artillery units that can be devastating if kept at range. I have a brief video from early Alpha in which the power of the mobile artillery is dramatically represented.



Mobile artillery is under used because most players are too lazy to try and use it effectively.

They could make more unit roles to create more instances of this. Then again there are many ways to trade in the positive with existing strategies of what to use against what.

I'd tend to agree with most of this.

I would still maintain that units should live a bit longer though simply because big battles with lots of units are fun- but at the moment only a few units ever get in range of each other so its not much of a fight. If everything was a little stronger we would get a bit more of a fight as at the moment large forces of even T2 are not that satisfying to fight with. That doesn't really change the blob issue its more an aesthetic consideration.

Something that might make a big difference- spring implemented the requirement for direct LOS for weapons fire to allot of units and that makes the battles quite different. There is no point having a large 'blob' of units in spring as all the units at the back can't target the enemy. It doesn't stop large groups of units but it does force better management and rewards a player that keeps all their units in weapons range to someone else who 'blobs' them as they effectively cripple their own fire-power. From the games I've played PA doesn't seam to take this into account with groups of units (although buildings do provide cover) so it could make a big difference to game play.

I think one of the biggest helps to getting rid of the mutual annihilation is unit variety. This will likely be fixed when the full unit roster is added.

We'll see though.

I also think more variety will go a long way in this regard as well, right now because the compositions are more often than not primarily composed of a single unit type it's not hard to see how that can have an effect on the outcome of a battle with another primarily single unit type composition, throw in the overall limited number of units available and the issue gets compounded further. Other things to change up the outcome of a battle like some Balance elements, primarily regarding turret and unit turn rates can make attacks from a flank or behind have a completely different outcome to a frontal assault.

None of this are 'magik' bullets for the problem, but they all help.

Mike

You're right. Most confrontations are same unit types.

However, when one side has unit variety, they're normally the side to win. Particularly when Shellers and Levelers are in the mix and kept at range.

Remember when the Ant's turret rotation was lowered during Alpha? That was a huge change to game balance. Flanking with bots became very powerful. Now with target leading, flanking with bots is less powerful.

All in all, there's still lots of additions to be made to PA and the gameplay is going to change drastically several times before release.

Gonna be interesting to watch.

I think it's mainly because players are lazy, they will use blob styles if they can get away with it. (and therefore it's a hard problem to address) I'm interested in whether there are people that have had success with playing styles that require some more resourcefulness.

Replace "lazy" with "trying to handle multiple fronts on a spherical planet", perhaps.

I think an expanded unit roster will help with this considerably. For example; the amphibious tank is one that people have mentioned again and again. Imagine that a player is using a small lake as a land barrier, and their opponent gets T2 amphibious tanks up early, losing crucial structures from a backdoor attack while trying to deal with a more obvious frontal assault.

Some of the mentions on defenses and energy economy might help here, as well, where bulletproof turtles are harder to achieve, making smaller, well-timed attacks and energy econ harassment more plausible.

To go into some more specifics, suppose riot units are added. Slow units with high constant DPS, effective against large groups of small targets. Against a group of riot units, a huge number of cheap, weak units will trade highly unfavorably. Riot units are naturally suited to defense due to their slow speed compared to the raiders and other low-HP units against which they are effective, but you can't be everywhere.

Also suppose ranged anti-heavy units are added. Long-range alpha strike damage allows a player to inflict casualties slowly over time on a group of units, and can be used to pick off high value targets. However you also must be careful when advancing or maneuvering because of the possibility of losing units to such weaponry.

The current implementation of mobile artillery is in many ways more similar to a skirmisher than real artillery, as its range isn't that impressive and it can actually fight relatively nearby enemies. Perhaps not when they are bumper-to-bumper, but so what? Real artillery shoots targets so far away that they have no real prospect of even moving in to fire at it in the near future, and can do nothing against an enemy that is close enough to move in to attack it. Artillery should be extremely different in kind from just 'having more range' than the enemy's units like a skirmisher or superior main gun.

This example isn't really what I mean by more unit variety, what you describe is essentially 2 separate conflicts. What I'm talking about using compositions with more unit types. For example a force that's 50% Tanks, 25% Artillery and 25% Raiders will engage way differently compared to a force composed of 100% of any of those types.

Mike

There are some psychological effects that cause lazy play. I think the foremost one has to be the inability for most players to understand the game from their opponent's perspective: they will neglect any type of plays that require effort (physical/mental) and intricate positioning because they will only observe that they cause weaknesses on their side without seeing how much weakness they create on the opponent's side. If given the choice, most players will want to stay in their comfort zone of "slowly expand, build an army, attack with army". Why would they risk units on suicide harassment missions and why would they set up flanks if that leaves a group of their units in a vulnerable position?

And also, typically such maneuvers require several days of practice before you can execute them, which makes the game feel like work to many people. I happen to think that the audience for this game can probably be expected to put in some work into the game, so it's not the end of the world, but I think that if you design a game you have to keep this sort of laziness in mind.

It's a very difficult problem, actually. Let's say you have a progression: interesting play styles are possible -> are viable -> are dominant competitively -> are intuitive even for beginning players. I think each step here should be seen as an important improvement in the quality of the game.

In the end it's partly a statistical argument. I'm sure there are many individual Starcraft II games that people here would enjoy (well, if they had an open mind), but you could still not be fond of the game as a whole because they are the exception rather than the rule.

There is also another problem, which is that by playing the standard turtle styles, you actually decrease counterplay chances for your opponent. This is a positive feedback loop: by playing more interesting styles you will create more weaknesses in your play that your opponent can exploit, but to do this your opponent will have to play on your terms (so to say) and take risks as well, which in turn gives you openings to exploit as well. In practice this means that if boring play is the norm that you can be punished for going against it. That's why being possible is not enough, it should be viable & intuitive. In that case more advanced techniques will trickle down from the top players and will become apparent more often on all levels. And even beginning players will be able to devise some new methods on their own.

I think the principal problem is managing mixed unit composition from the beginning of the game and a lack of actual formations you can put units in

I agree that unit roles should be emphasized, but the reason that a HP increase is constantly suggested is that otherwise the difficulty level involved is just too high if your entire group can be wiped out in seconds if you make a mistake. Quick outcomes are the antithesis of large battles, which is what this genre is meant to be about (and not a series of small skirmishes that require high degrees of micro).

In other words, we should be looking at ways of increasing group manoeuvrings and role importance while involved in a pitched front line battle, and the only way to achieve this is if units on the front line have staying power (and not just through numbers). Your army needs to engage theirs to keep it occupied enough to allow your artillery to (for example) move to one flank and concentrate fire to push them back and create a breach, or to organise your raiders to spearhead through into their lines to distract and break up their fire, or to bring an engineer right into the firezone and try to get some defenses up while shots are flying around (doing this in TA was awesome), or to simply allow time for reinforcements to arrive from your base to make up losses. You can't employ these strategies without a stable front (unless your a microing god, which shouldn't be encouraged), or if the units involved are going to die instantly when exposed to fire.

In addition to more unit types, HP needs to be buffed and/or DPS reduced, or the available strategies where army confrontations are concerned are going to be quite limited.

I see absolutely no mention of Wreckage in this thread... and that makes me sad.


What I'm saying is; you don't necessarily need to increase a units hitpoints directly to make them last longer.
Effective hitpoints are more important to long-term frontlines and more than 5 second engagements than raw unit statistics.