Suggestion - A new way to handle experimentals

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by schuesseled192, July 29, 2013.

  1. schuesseled192

    schuesseled192 Active Member

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    Supreme Commander added experimental units to the TA style of gameplay, but i don't think it was implemented very well. There was no trade-off, other than build time, to counter it's huge power. In a game where you lose when your fragile commander gets kaploded, it's important that your commander has a chance to survive in this horrible world.

    What i think would be a good idea, would be if the concepts of experimentals and commander upgrades were combined in PA.

    Imagine physically slapping on tonnes of mass onto your commander, chunkifying his arm's n legs and whatnots. Making his weapon and constructor bigger and better, adding hefty AA gun on his back. The trade-off to doing this (yay a trade-off) is that sending your comm into battle is risky, if it doesn't work you lose.

    I think i'd prefer this to having Giant Death Robots, that once completed are unstoppable, and no its your fault for not building your own silly.
  2. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    this was actually already done in FA ...in the form of the black ops mod.
  3. cmdandy

    cmdandy Active Member

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    Your idea is probably going to be shot down in about 30 seconds by ten different people going :shock: :shock: :shock: "use the search function! Uber already confirmed no commander upgrades of any kind!"

    But I dont mind your idea. I quite liked another similar one someone else came up with a while back - for improving your commander late game - via attaching another unit to augment his abilities. A tank for improved firepower, a t2 fabber for improved engineering that kind of thing. Long story short though, from what Uber has said, commander upgrades are mod territory only.
  4. Xagar

    Xagar Active Member

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    Uh...that's not really new at all. This was in Supcom 2 in a big way.
  5. schuesseled192

    schuesseled192 Active Member

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    Was it? You could triple/quadruple the size of your commander in supcom2?

    Because that's what i'm talking about.
  6. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    Not the Physical size, but you could greatly boost the commander's power level via the research system.

    Mike
  7. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    Another "Make the Commander Scale" thread... but this time it's made love to "We need Experimentals" threads.

    You're late to the party. igncom1 already proposed this about 4 months ago. Nothing has changed.
  8. schuesseled192

    schuesseled192 Active Member

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    Your kind of missing the point.

    In a nutshell my suggestion is:

    "Uber if you have to put experimentals into this game, and i'd rather you did not. Make it an all or nothing gambit, if the experimental unit dies, you lose."
  9. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    Who said that Experimentals were confirmed?.. even slightly?
  10. schuesseled192

    schuesseled192 Active Member

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    I said if , and if you had been reading up on the subject you'd know that they arent sure yet.

    (neutrino on reddit)

    Its the little bit that inspired this suggestion.
  11. mushroomars

    mushroomars Well-Known Member

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    inb4 20 pages of completely pointless discussion.

    Okay, here's the skinny, I want this wonderful (mostly) intelligent neckbeard community to discuss something useful in their free time. Uber has purposefully avoided confirming Megaunits. They seem to lean towards adding them, however, they have also hinted that if they do add them, it will be in a DLC.

    I must stress that NONE OF THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED. This has all been casual comments and vague posts by Uber. There was a thread that neared 100 pages on experimentals, and virtually every single possible suggestion for experimentals was listed, including your idea.

    Personally? Experimentals were almost a selling point for me in SupCom, the first combat unit I ever build was a Cybran Monkeylord. I bought the game, started a skirmish and immediately rushed my way towards building a Monkeylord. I think I even forgot to add an AI to the skirmish, I just wanted to march it about and hear the glorious sound of its laser. However, I played TA after I played SupCom (blasphemy, right?) and I was about 3/4s of the way through the ARM campaign when I noticed "Wait a second... There are no experimentals in this game. Okay." Then I used my battery of 40 Big Berthas to parkinglot a CORE Energy Farm.

    In my humble opinion, Experimentals aren't necessary so long as the regular units themselves are done right. The reason SupCom made people feel that Experimentals were necessary was specifically because regular units were done wrong. Hopefully this won't be the case with PA.
  12. bobucles

    bobucles Post Master General

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    It's already been established that big units and traditional roles do not mix. However there is still room for a few experimental niches, thanks to the space layer and planet damage system. Whether or not they can work remains to be seen.
  13. vermin009

    vermin009 New Member

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    Hi everyone. Myself and the group I play with (4 others) have been dedicated players since TA. We're keenly awaiting the full release of PA (especially the multiplayer LAN) and like what's been presented so far in the alpa.
    We love experimental units. Love 'em.
    So a big yes vote from us on experimentals. Can't wait. :)
  14. Neumeusis

    Neumeusis Active Member

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    Opponnents to the experimentals usually don't want them so much that they try to shut-down evey threads going toward this topic.
    And people who want them usually have hard time to understand why someone wouldn't love some experimentals...
    ("Big unstoppable machine of Death ! Yeah !" blabla "Balance !" blabla "Don't use them !" Blabla and so on and so on).

    On topic, point was maybe partially covered by the Exo-suit thread.

    I would recommend the two threads, especially if you like watching people fighting for their ideas.
    And in bonus, you can find some nice interesting posts in there...

    P.S. : both topics are in the Backer's Lounge, you'll need the correct access rights to read them !
  15. schuesseled192

    schuesseled192 Active Member

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    Alas, I cannot because I do not.

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