So, this one has been floating around in my head for a while and recently I have found the time to play RTSes again, in all their afternoon-consuming glory. I had almost forgotten about PA after beta; I'm glad to see things are coming along. Anyways, one thing I've noticed with the addition of new units is that the separation of power between tiers is still evident, even if it has been significantly reduced since Beta. Most significantly, orbital rushing is a valid tactic, which is something I can get behind and respect, so things are moving forward. However, I would like to suggest a "gamemode" option when Uber gets around to making tweaks as small as this: Remove Advanced Factories and Advanced Engineers, and give their respective Basic Counterparts the ability to build both Basic and Advanced Units and Structures. Now, I'm sure such a radical experiment begets an explanation. One thing I've noticed about Total Annihilation-based games is that a high-tech unit (Advanced Units in TA and PA, T3/Exp Units in SupCom) is not necessarily inherently more powerful than its lower tiers in terms of cost/potential ratio, but rather is more powerful because it requires the action of building a higher tier factory to get. This may sound like a relatively minute action, something that all new players are eager to do, and getting that awesome big factory is a thrilling experience if it's your first time playing the game, but I would like to see as a psychological experiment, how the balance between "high-tech" and "low-tech" units changes if that barrier was completely dissolved. At first, this looks like it would be conducive to the opposite of good gameplay. Extremely long-range weapons could be built right off the bat, nukes could quite literally be rushed from the get-go, units such as Basic Radar, Basic Power, Basic Metal Extractor, Single Laser Tower, and Missile Tower would become obsolete. That is an obvious flaw of this gamemode that I have not put significant thought into nor plan to; it would be a side-effect and part of the experiment. But the impact of being able to access your army's full potential, to make decisions about your army composition and how to specialize form the get-go, would be curious to see.
This is something that Zero-K did. It's an interesting idea in that everything you can build, you can build right off the bat. The only limit is if you can pay for it. It does open up strategic options, and allow some interesting strategies. However, from experience, it has one major flaw. Namely, that a game with full access does not so much have a learning curve as a learning Berlin Wall with barbed wire and armed guards. Yes, you can build a nuke right off the bat, but by not having the economy to do so, in 999 games out of 1000, doing so will get your arse handed to you promptly. In other words, although interesting strategies become possible they are almost never plausible. What happens is that most games start off in a very similar way with deviations into exciting craziness being very rare. This places a burden on the player as you are giving them a lot of options, but most of them are the wrong pick. The player needs to learn a lot more of the meta-game before they can play it competently. On the other hand, by having a two tier system, the more interesting and situational units can be timed to appear later in the game, thus directing a player to rely on their bread and butter units first. Overall, it's an interesting experiment, but having seen it executed I would not recommend it be used seriously for any game that wants to be accessible to a large number of people.
Very interesting read, indeed. I would go out on a leg and say that if Uber deliver on their promise of T2 being a specialist tier only then this should be a non-issue. You could even use this as a benchmark after a fashion in that regard. Colour me enthused.
interesting idea, but as you said yourself its mostly a psychological question from the benefit. if all is available from start and you know the mechanics, you allways use the best thing in resourcecost/efficiency from the beginning. that effectively reduces your choices like YourLocalMadSci said. having to build this awesome big factory is not only a psychological thing, it also needs a bunch of resources, thus making teching up a question of the right time and opportunity and therefore increases your choices. also taking away several units from the start of the game seems a not so bad idea. think about for example the t2 sniperbots or the t2 vehicle arty. having this from the start makes any towers build obsolete since one of this units can crush then very easy.
