The Leveler

Your argument has broken down.

Mainly because the whole "units that are better than one another and have flaws (yes flaws! no amounts of word beatification will turn that around." is not what I am arguing against.

"you're questioning the game concept? really I think your taking this "captured, assimilated and refined deal" waaaaaaaaaaay over the top. it's only words, lore. not the game concept. not what makes the game." The games concept, not just the lore, is what allows it to make sense.

And I am arguing for it in this instance.

"We need that! we need to have units that are not as good as their neighbor. it's the whole concept!"

Why yes it is, that is why we don't just use commanders.

"why else have economy? it can't only be to justify exponential numbers."

The topic has nothing to do with logistics.

"The aim is that even when you're flippin' loaded you still have to choose between the ridiculously expensive unit, it's neighbor the moderately ridiculously expensive unit and (why not) the horde of first tier units.)"

And here we come to the main event.

" ...to go to something else entirely that isn't the game TA fans and FA fans alike hoped for."

It isn't what FA fanatics hope for, but it bloody well IS what TA fanatics hope for.

But lets skip back the the worst part of your argument, the whole "ridiculously expensive unit", " moderately ridiculously expensive unit" and " horde of first tier units".

This was, and still is the remnant of the balancing designs and decisions of SupCom, SupCom:FA and even funnily enough SupCom2.

Where you don't chose between units for any real particular role beyond: Shoot air, Shoot ground, Shoot sub, ect. But more for, having one large unit, 2 slightly smaller units, or 60 miniature units.

But this creates a problem, where the larger units have such power of the mass of smaller units that their effective fire-power is able to be brought to bare in a single attack, allowing a conflict between, say the single large unit and the miniature group of 60 to still be heavily one sided when the larger unit can reduce the fire-power of the smaller units, sometimes before they can even return fire, and weaken the whole group with each additional attack. Where as in contrast the more advanced larger unit will retain its full fire-power up-to losing 99% of its HP.

They are experimentals from SupCom, and even with the two slightly smaller units against the 60 group they are nothing but T3 assault bots against the T1 assault bot. Most killed before they even see their targets, losing all of the fire-power they retained and despite being an even matched fight between forces that have the same firepower, same cost and build time in total are proved to be utterly worthless compared to the single larger units that are nothing but upgrades and replacements from the originals.

And that was the mistake SupCom made, it made every previous tier worthless in comparison barring the few outliers due to missing and needed unit types, such as a ground based AA designed to take on T3 air.

So in such a game, when you get to T3, why would you ever build a T1 unit? Its completely out-graded, futile and a waste of resources compared to it's T3 counterparts, and so it would be a waste of money to even bother. Even with a swarm, or a horde, of them they are much worse at doing the same job.

So why do you want to retain the outmoding gameplay of FA over the complimentary tier system of TA?

this is maybe where you go into extrapolation.
just because you and nano and knight are TA fans AND want this doesn't mean it is what TA fans want.

My perception of TA is not of a "complimentary tier system" sure it's that to an umpteenth degree more so than FA, but much less than current PA. and you want to take it even further.

TA had superior units. some units did become obsolete. indeed they weren't many but that's a general rule with these games where exponential economy is a factor.

I fail to see how this "complimentary tier system" can find any further support in PA as the interplanetary nature, the nukes, the metal planet weapons, the teleportation, conceptually defeat it.

And to the extent that TA units were obsolete, and to the extent that they had arbitrary damage modifiers, and to the extent that certain units were significantly too strong in OTA.....

You can recite flaws in vanilla Total Annihilation all you like. TA is not some holy text you can just point at and make caveman sounds and expect people to agree that PA should do the same. TA was a great game, without question, but that doesn't mean it was perfect. And features like obsolete units definitely fall into the "we have improved since then" category.

It is definitely true that when you had a really large economy in TA, it begins to make sense to mass-produce certain advanced units to the exclusion of basic units. Zeuses were a common choice, for example. In my opinion the main cause of this actually has nothing to do with the units' design, but instead with the economy. In the late game the TA economy transitions to moho metal makers and fusions. As a result, mexes (even moho mexes) become decreasingly significant after that point. This tends to lead to a large consolidation of defenses, which then makes light units largely pointless because almost any size group will be utterly annihilated before it can even close to range. Because the advanced factories' units were more expensive (and often had considerably more HP) it made sense to focus on producing those units.

Ideally PA will disallow that kind of economic and defensive in-filling, and will design units in such a way that basic units are useful in some capacity throughout the game, much like how every unit is always useful in Zero-K, although you may have to change the way you are using it. In addition to individual units, each factory is also always useful; including adding a suite of different roles and weight classes available in each factory. The player could actually just choose to build more expensive, or different units, from the basic factory either in response to advanced units or as an aggressive switch.

Acquiring an advanced factory should feel to the player more like adding a different factory, such as diversifying from bots into air or whatever, and conveys a similar diversity advantage without strictly upgrading your units or economy.

I quite frankly have no idea what on earth you mean by 'conceptual defeat.'

I think you are saying that having basic units that do not become obsolete is incompatible with having multiple planets, nukes, etc. And I have no idea why that would be. Large-scale destruction seems to depend upon having large armies to destroy. And the gameplay of developing a planet while fighting over it is central to PA, to the point that basic units really are much more important to making PA work than any advanced units are.

If anything, keeping basic units relevant is more compatible with having multiple planets because a conflict will proceed through predictable stages depending on the level of infrastructure on the planet. It will begin with basic units as the player expands. As the player expands and encounters increasingly stiff resistance by an opponent who is also expanding, eventually it becomes advantageous to incorporate advanced units for a military advantage to augment armies of basic units. The alternative is just to always build armies composed of the upgraded units if you can afford to do so, which is not even a decision.

Having basic and advanced that are meant to work together is much better from a unit diversity and gameplay standpoint. You get more types of interestingly different, viable units, and you have more economic and military interaction if those choices aren't made obvious by this or that choice being strictly superior, or merely an upgrade.

Why? This discussion has been going on for so long, but noone has come with a single good argument for why it would make sense, or increase the fun of the game.

Why do you take the sentence above, and think that it's meaning would be similar to "not making basic units obsolete"? Noone said anything about wanting to make basic units redundant later in the game. It might happen, because of the 100+ units this game will have some day. But that doesn't mean that you should try adjusting the fundamental game mechanics like the exponential econonomy to prevent it.
That would really turn this into quite the boring game. I don't want an RTS-style "Magicka: Wizard Wars", where it's only about switching between your tactics from time to time. How arcade-like do you want it? That's maybe a good way to do it when you have 10-20 different units total, but not a hundred.

And why do you think it would fit into a game of a scale this massive, with games that will need hours to play?
That's what tatsujb ment with conceptually defeated.

Edit: And he ment that it's impossible to balance everything the way you mentioned. How on earth is the unit cannon for example going to be able to not cost a fortune to be balanced? Or a teleportation device? Or a big death ray built into a metal planet? How are you going to make that cost as much as a single bot and at the same time prevent it from simply being pathetic?

I get the impression that you have no idea what you're talking about from this comment, or indeed what anyone else is talking about.

You obviously can have a unit that is stronger and costs more. Hell, in Zero-K (which is flat balanced) there are several Krogoth-class units and multiple superweapons that make nukes look small by comparison. But these assets cost so much that they are competitive with everything else in the game. You don't get to the late game and suddenly switch over to ONLY making superweapons or certain upgraded units.

Ledarsi, I'm very rusty with Zero-K but I'd like to know if you can tell me: is cost the only balancing factor in those Krogoth-Class units, or do they have inbuilt downsides that can be exploited to render them less effective?

other people's impressions :
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/suggestion-about-unit-tree.53734/#post-821845

It was an exaggeration. But what about the other stuff I wrote? Care to answer to that, too? Or do you just want to cherrypick the sentences that you have an easy time responding to?

It's also my opinion that everything should be balanced and viable. But not the way you mentioned by "flattening" the unit roster.

Careful what you wish for- I am cherrypicking the best parts that deserve a response, not the least cogent parts that would be easiest to obliterate, but consume far more text because of vastly higher mistakes-per-sentence.

Just for the record so you cannot edit this;

I lost count of the things wrong with these paragraphs before I finished reading them the first time, and deigned not to respond. Suffice to say, making all the units viable does not make it an 'arcade game.' It is not only about 'switching your tactics from time to time.' And yes, some people do in fact want to have units that are upgrades of other units and make previous units obsolete. Furthermore, it isn't random whether a large unit roster is arranged in upgraded tiers or is flat-balanced. That is a very obvious and deliberate design decision. It is not the case that it 'might' happen- it would only happen if designed that way on purpose.

If anything, having few units that are upgrades of one another would be an 'arcade' style tactical game. Increasing the number of units makes it more important to have the game be flat balanced because it simplifies the unit roster, and means players can consider every unit on the same cost-efficiency terms. They don't have to memorize which units are pointless to build and which ones are the superior 'upgraded' ones, and new units can be integrated into a flat-balanced unit tree more easily because only that individual unit's utility matters.

And as for adjusting the exponential economy- the economy will affect how players use their units, and will have an effect on which units they choose to use. But it has zero impact on the units' design, and if certain units are strict upgrades of other units, you should always build them because you get more utility for the same cost. Regardless of how much economy you have. And in addition, even if it were possible to adjust or change the economy to prevent units from being obsolete, doing so wouldn't make the game more boring, it would be a considerable improvement. It is almost a pity that those two things have nothing to do with each other.

I suspect you are quite confused about the basic meanings of the words being used in this discussion, and have little grasp of the concepts being discussed in this thread. More expensive units are not necessarily strict upgrades of less expensive units. And being able to use many different unit types in an RTS doesn't make this an 'arcade' game. How on earth could you possibly think Magicka: Wizard Wars has anything to do with the idea of having a flat-balanced unit roster in an RTS? And do explain exactly how being able to use all the units instead of only a subset at a time is "boring."

How exactly do you propose to make everything viable at the same time if certain units are upgrades of other units? It seems like you will always use the upgraded ones, and never use the obsolete ones, as soon as the upgraded units become available.

The only way to make every unit viable at all points in the game is to flat-balance the unit roster.

Like every other unit, the extremely large and expensive units (called Striders) can be defeated straight up. There are counters that are effective against them all (i.e. Infiltrator, Ultimatum) and in addition each has weaknesses specific to itself, (i.e. Bantha has no anti-air). They are very counterable if you know how, and you either prepared beforehand or buy enough time to use the quite specialized counters. Also you can actually just beat them with a lot of forces, but the amount required may be prohibitively large, and the Strider can be repaired while dead units cannot.

In spite of how individually powerful Striders are, it is unwise to use them without extensive support. Although it certainly seems like that is how they are always used, since they rarely appear and usually only by weaker players who don't see the value of a large group of less individually powerful units. And then a cloaked Ultimatum uses its D-Gun and then that's the end of that gambit.

Now that's just the arrogant way of admitting defeat.

By
A: Making higher tier units more expensive
B: Making higher tier units more specialized (without changing their cost correlation to basic units)
C: Giving late game options to upgrade basic units
D: Creating a stone-paper-scissor balance scenario (which PA basically already uses to a great extend)
E: Combining any of the above

Those are the options that I remember on the spot. There are probably more.

A: This is balancing. If the more powerful unit is sufficiently more expensive, you are flat-balancing.

B: Again, this is balancing. If the more powerful unit is more specialized, you are flat-balancing.

C: No. Just no.

D: Rock-Paper-Scissors is atrocious game design. It is boring, deterministic, and should be avoided like the plague.

E: A and B are obviously necessary in order to flat balance units. C and D are just not good ideas and should not be combined with the others.

Giving units weaknesses or higher costs is precisely what I am talking about when I say we should flat balance them to avoid having units that are strict upgrades of other units.

If I wanted to play rock paper scissors, I would go play rock paper scissors. This is a strategy game and thinking that strategy is just a matter of scouting what your enemy is building and then countering with the standard counters is very simplistic and wrong. I blame starcraft 2 for this.


Your option B though is EXACTLY what Ledarsi is saying... so you are basically agreeing with him.

Yeah sorry, but it looks like PA will definitely be like that.
Just take nukes and anti-nukes as an example. Bomber snipes, orbital platform snipes, anti-air turrets and so on all fall into that category.

I'm agreeing on specializing. I also agree on making higher tiers more expensive. I don't agree to adjust T2 units to T1 units.

This is what I disagree with. I still want to upgrade my economy. I still want more powerful units. I'm not sure whether it is possible to create a unit roster with more than hundred units where no units become redundant later in the game.

But my ideal picture of the lategame would be many small units being the meat of the army, covering some big units that are the boom. Like mentioned before working in that other game. Where super units should get covered by small units.

I'd also want more specialized roles for big units, like I mentioned in the megabot thread not long ago.

Well if you want diverse armies, then you have to understand that a tiered system just simply would not allow that. Just think for a second: "Small units should be the bulk, but I want upgrades with more powerful units that will most likely make small units obsolete". Obviously bigger units would be more expensive, but this idea where you ACCEPT obsolescence is not OK. No unit should become obsolete from another unit purely out of stats.

Acceptable obsolescence:
Opponent set up defenses at all his mass points/bases. Raiding units now obsolete.

Unacceptable obsolescence:
Finished my bigger factory. Units from smaller factory now obsolete.

I could think of a handful of numbers to change to basically make levelers close range armored artillery, so levelers<ants<turrets<leveler.

This would make ants all game and levelers dotted amongst ant ranks.

And this is where you're wrong. Nobody has proven that it' impossible to do with a tiered system. You all just repeatedly say it is like some broken vinyl, because of your lack of imagination.

That's so wrong, not what I said, and also very contradicting. Thanks for misstating my argument again and again. It makes it really difficult to lead this discussion.

And you know what? Obsolescence is bad, yes. But it's not the number one priority to prevent when you create a unit roster for a game this massive. It's actually far away from that. There are more important things to take into consideration than unit obsolescence. Seriously, you don't change the whole game concept just because you fanatically want to prevent obsolescence. That would be ludicrous.

Nobody is planning this so that units become obsolete, but it might happen with over a hundred planned units. And if it does and isn't preventable, then I probably couldn't care less as long as the system itself is fun.

What you suggest by flattening the unit roster makes this game simpler and more tactics-driven. In other words, it's destroying the long-term motivation aspect of progressing through the tier system and turns this more and more into an arcade game where games don't take more than 10-20 minutes (or where you don't need more than 10-20 minutes to unlock the full unit roster).
Trying to unlock steps along a complex unit roster is what motivates you even in longer games. Your suggestion might prevent obsolescence, but at the price that this game would become very boring very quickly in the long-term. That's not the way to do it.

To be honest, I'm tired of hearing people scream "obsolescence, obsolescence! Don't step on my ant's toes!", when some of those ideas being suggested by those people are very dangerous, game destroying ideas.

It's actually really simple to make a tiered system without obsolete units:
Make higher tier units into glas cannons. High damage output, but easy to destroy. That's one way of doing it. And it's probably the easiest one of making sure that basic units will not become obsolete. It's probably also the way that would create the most depth and dynamic out of this system. You can also make it the other way round: big higher tier units that are very tough, but without much of a damage output, maybe as a support role. You can even have both options in the same unit roster. And for everything that is both powerful and tough, there will be hard-counters (for example bombers countering a leviathan ship).

See, it's not that difficult to prevent obsolescence in a tiered system now, is it?

Ah, yes, lack of imagination. Because we can will-power unicorns into existence using our ever powerful imagination. It is not a lack of imagination, and to be frank, the upgrade system is where the imagination is lacking. "Hmmm, lets add new units to the roster. OH I KNOW, let's add a unit with the EXACT same role, but better! Oh gosh, my orifices are OOZING with imagination"

Yea, I wouldn't care if the system was fun either. I find a large unit pool with a huge range of utility to be fun. I do not find hard-coded gameplay to be anywhere near entertaining. Progressing towards the same darned goal (upgrading econ->building better units) every time is stupid and boring. Where is the strategic honor when you are using flat upgrades to the enemy for one reason or another? Sure, you may have taken a risk to GET those units, but that is hardly strategy.

You seem to lack understanding of what a flat-balanced game would play like, and I honestly don't blame you because almost every strategy game has it. How about you spark up your super-powerful-unicorn-existing imagination and try and think about how cool it would be for the strategy game to be about strategy rather than just progressing up the same damn economic tech tree and unit trees every game. Every game. Every game. Every game. Why do you need to do it every game? Because using some units become obsolete based on game TIME. All we are asking for is for that NOT to happen.

#ironic

And this is exactly why I am telling you that I don't understand why you are arguing. I have no problem with the bigger units having a different role like glass-cannon or mighty-glacier or whatever your heart desires. Give ant more health than leveler then. I would have NO complaints.

If you found my response offensive, good. It was meant to be so. Don't take it to heart, just don't make accusations again. Claiming things like "you lack imagination" and "game destroying ideas" really flusters me, and I don't have much patience for those kinds of things.

You obviously, again if I might add, didn't understand the essence of my post.

You said that you wanted to flatten the unit roster, and that you didn't think that tiered systems can work without making units obsolete. I just proved you wrong, and you didn't even notice it.
Also you didn't understand why flattening the unit roster might work in other RTS games, but not in this one, because this one is much more massive than every other RTS game you played so far.

Having a tiered system doesn't automatically mean that you'll always build the same units if they are specialized and fulfill different roles (yes that is possible in tiered systems). I don't know where you got that from. And it almost sounds like you're whining that you need to build metal extractors every game. "But I don't want to build metal extractors EVERY game!" Oh, how I pity you!

And what I ment by lack of imagination was not ment to offend you, rather than to state the truth.
You can simply balance the ant vs the leveler by making the leveler more expensive. For example the goal could be to make Levelers more effective in small areas, while ants are more effective in big, wide areas (because they can surround their enemy). There are so many different ways to make none of those units obsolete within the framework of a tiered unit roster, that I just had to ask myself whether you're thinking this through, and why I have to do your job of thinking for you?

Yeah and that's fine with me, too. Although I probably wouldn't do that. First I'd just try making the Leveler more expensive, before I'd take away it's hit points. But yeah, like I said there are many different ways in the framework of a tiered unit roster that can prevent obsolescence.

You didn't understand why long-term motivation is necessary in a game of this scale, and why a tiered system provides that motivational force, while your suggestion doesn't.

In case we're talking past eachother:

This is still what I'm arguing against. I don't care whether you dislike the fact that T2 mexes make T1 mexes "obsolete". I find having an exponential economy much more important than preventing T1 mexes of becoming obsolete later in the game (which is just plain silly btw, who cares if T1 mexes won't get built later in the game? I certainly don't). It's a matter of priorities.

Actually, I mis-typed there. Most strategy games have tiered unit trees. I meant to say that you probably don't understand how a flat-balanced unit system would work because there are very few games out there that have them. Also you did not prove squat. Having to hard-code in motivation with the tier system is counter-productive. If you need to be baby-fed progression, there are plenty of games out there that do it. Uber made the claim that all units would be useful at all stages of the game and a tiered system is INHERENTLY NOT LIKE THAT.

You are literally repeating concepts that "flat-balancers" are saying and then acting like it is the tiered unit system; it isn't. Obviously none of the "flat-balancers" would be complaining if Leveler was only better than Ant in certain situations. Obviously this thread would not have been created if that was the case.

Please explain to me why long-term motivation is needed. The goal is to kill the enemy commander, and that means you need to know what is going on, you need to deal with problems, and you need to carry out your goal. Having a tiered system that pushes you further on any of those fronts is just flat out stupid. The tiered system, be it economic or units, just predefines things that people need to do. The very DEFINITION of tiered says that a higher tier is flat out above the others. None of the "flat-balancers" are arguing to not have bigger units. We aren't saying "bigger units are bad they must all be ant sized" It is JUST about unit roles and those roles being useful in circumstances throughout the game. The motivational force should be the end goal, and progressing towards that goal should be done through strategy, not upgrading your stuff.