TA Units vs. PA Units

I'd like to bring up something that's been digging at me for a while...

Planetary Annihilation

- Ant - Basic Tech
125 Health
225 Metal


- Leveler - Advanced
625 Health
1575 Metal

- Sheller - Advanced
250 Health
1575 Metal

Total Annihilation

- Raider - T1
A fair bit of Health
169 Metal

- Morty - T2
Not very much Health
321 Metal

You'll notice that Morties cost insignificantly more than Raiders from TA; compare that to PA where almost all all Advanced Units cost dramatically more than their Basic Tech Counterparts. You'll also notice I am able to use the word "Counterpart" to describe a unit in PA, whereas I can't use that word as frequently in TA. Yes, TA had straight upgrades, but they often filled a different role at least slightly; Bulldogs were T2 Tanks, and essentially straight upgrades to Stumpy T1 Tanks... Except they weren't. Bulldogs were much better at absorbing damage than Stumpies, while Stumpies easily outdamaged Bulldogs, as well as moving faster.

Levelers are functionally upgrades to Ants; longer range for cost, higher damage for cost, equal speed, same weapon, insignificantly larger size, and a slight decrease in health efficiency. This concerns me... A lot. It makes me think PA's unit design is headed more towards Starcraftian or Command and Conquer unit design where "Advanced" units are just upgrades of "Basic units", and what little differences in role they have are overshadowed by the blatantly higher power density for cost that Advanced Units have.

I've waited until Beta to voice my concerns about this. It is now Beta.

Not a completely fair comparison - Morty was an Artillery KBot, not an attack tank. Compare the Goliath or Reaper, or use the PA artillery tank.

I agree with your overall view though.

Fixed.

I agree with your overall statement.

EDIT: I probably should've looked further down, sorry.

Here's the figures for the TA units:

Raider: 1058HP - http://units.tauniverse.com/?p=u&v=81
Morty: 920HP - http://units.tauniverse.com/?p=u&v=131

Levelers are currently more like the Penetrator, in terms of role. They outrange possible opposition and can annihilate an army before it is ever in range.

You're right, though. Once levelers are in play, they can deplete a massive population of ants in seconds. If the levelers are two deep, they can face an equivalent breadth of ants almost unopposed, thanks to their high fire rate and the slow speed of tanks. They were so strong that, before the defense buffs, there was no reason to build artillery. (At least, judging by the tournament videos.)

Man, that reminds me of all the pulsing red and yellow lights in TA.

Well... The current units make sense when you see it not as basic and advanced but as t1 and t2 style as in SupCom. The name change doesn't fix that.


Although I think its still a bit too early to really discuss that. The balance changes towards beta were almost insignificant (the only important part was that tanks can't shoot air anymore) and I'd like to wait a patch or two where they had time to really concentrate on it.

Edit: you fixed it wrongly. Sheller is the arty and Leveler the t2 tank.

The excellent pa unit database has the numbers. http://www.pa-db.com/

Whole heartedly agree with the OP.

Which we're trying to avoid. Advanced/T2 units shouldn't be exponentially more powerful than Basic/T1 units.

Is there anyway I can drag 'T3' Orbital units kicking an screaming into this conversation to be scrutinised?

Oh, I just did?
Marvelous.

You know my position Mushroomars. With you 100% here.

Fully agree with you guys.

I agree with the points raised - with the caveat that I understand that balance is not the top priority yet, nor anywhere near done, and that units still have to be added.

EDIT: While we're here - we did discuss the overall desired direction for balance recently. There were a lot of good points raised at that meeting and there are timestamped minutes later in the thread. I'd say that's a good point to begin with discussions on balance

Adding in units doesn't make a lick of difference WrongCat, unless we're looking for specific hardcounters to an enemy unit.
A concept, I remind you, that Total Annihilation avidly avoided.

The units we have access to are flawed at their fundamental concept. Adding in more conceptually flawed units won't fix anything.

I like the idea of the op. But you can't compare these units right now. Reason mortys have no health is their high range in comparison to other ya units. Units in TA need so much micro to be used effectively. Shellers are just as efficient if used effectively (even with their range ratio to other pa units).

Shouldn't the longer range stop being such a big advantage when unit AI gets smart enough to move into range to shoot?

I don't believe we are discussing the AI directed units, but while moving into range it's important to consider that the tanks will be taking fire the entire time.

I agree with the general opinion here, units need more differentiation. TA had a comparatively huge number of units, and nearly all of them were interesting.

That said, beta just started, I'm sure it will be dealt with.

true - it may be fixed but it's ALWAYS a good idea to mention them...just in case

I fully agree with this topic.

(except this sentence:

Starcraft is the exact OPPOSITE of T2 units being straight upgrades of T1. In starcraft T1 is infantry, T2 is Tank, T2.5 is air, T3 is nukes and battlecruiser, and all units are very different and fill a complicated rock-paper-scissor matrix. That's the cool spot of starcraft. The bad is that you have to know the matrix by heart and it ends up in a click fest.)

I'm not worried because Neutrino is one of the guys behind TA and Supcom and there was a lot of variety there. I also think that the engine needs to be polished before it's meaningful to add lots of units.

However, I also think that currently all "tracks": Bots, Vehicle and Air have basically the same structure:
1 Fabber, 1 Scout/Standard Attack, 1 Anti-Air, 1 Artillery/Bomb
this more or less fully describes all units of all tiers and all tracks (except Orbital, but it's more of an experimental-T3 at the moment).
Which means there is no real diversity in the game in terms of unit roles at the moment.
(this does not mean that the game cannot be fun, just that you could remove units or even complete tiers and the game would not be that different)

My hope is that redundant units will DISAPPEAR and all units will have very different roles, not just different wheels/legs/wings.

I've thought a lot about worries and discussion about the "rock paper scissors" problem and the problem of units becoming obsolete. I think this is meaningless.
Would you complain because T1 fabber is obsolete once more efficient T2 is in ? Or that you can't rush straight to T2 air on a small planet because you would get scr*w*d by a bot/vehicle rush ?
I think that it's ok to have those kind of "time-space imbalances": you have to adapt to the different situations that arise, and create situations in which your opponent has trouble to adapt.
- Some unit will be more efficient early (anyway, you can't have T2 early game, so there are intrinsic time-space imbalances)
- Some unit will be more efficient in a small battlefield (because they have poor speed but high damage)
- On the contrary, units with more health / speed / range will be better on a large battlefield
etc.

Also, I want an invisible sniper, a detector unit, a raddar jammer, a stealthy bomber...

The only two big and difficult balance issues I see are:
- Commander becoming a liability later game
- nukes, anti-nukes, orbital weapons and anti-orbital balance

Actually, I'd really like to see terrain that vehicles can't handle that bots can, that would be more than enough for me. Open plains would be dominated by vehicles, whereas thick jungles and hilly areas would be bot-held. It's rather unlikely this will ever be happening, though. But mods!

Well, terrain in general I'd like to see enhanced and made more relevant, but that's another thread.