There needs to be more anti tank options

Currently the only way to counter ants and levelers is with even more ants and levelers. Anything that's really considered anti tank counters bots and ships too. For example there should be a tank you can build that is only good at killing ants and levelers and make it unable to shoot air. Maybe give it a rail gun or something

Same with air, give it an air to ground cannon or something that is all around worse than bombers at everything but killing tanks

Right now I'd say the bots are more overpowered, as long as they are microd. Since tanks got a smaller turning radius, it becomes really hard for them to hit the bots.

Unfortunately this is the curse of Alpha. Uber is deep into working on Orbital and Multi-Planet play at this moment, so I think an expanded unit pool is not foremost in their minds currently.

Hopefully after the core systems are in we'll be able to talk more about specific unit-to-unit interactions.

Putting aside the fact that balance is no where done... no, can't actually do that.

We know, in particular, base defenses may be a bit weak still, but until we get some other support systems in place, such as unit flocking behavior, we don't want to adjust numbers too much.

Beyond that, there are a number of units, both in orbital, and that we are actively testing today, such as nukes and anti-nukes, that will pretty drastically change current game play. And then there's a host of other changes. And while the game is about macro, occasional micro is still going to always help determine the course of battle. A large group of T2 assault bots being microed a bit around a group of tanks will destroy them, so long as you keep them moving. That's not to say you want to do that every battle, but every general occasionally will have to get their hands a little dirty.

Your point is quite valid, but mostly, just way too early to try and "fix it", until we know exactly what variables are really impacting the outcome.

Unit Flocking Behaviour. Mmmmmm that sounds tasty. You can tells us more?

Elitron would need to provide a better description but think of it is the first step in formations - making sure large group of units flock, rather than try and cram together and get all up in each others grill. I believe it also generally also takes into account unit makeup (so AA doesn't rush the front), but that may be a part of formations, rather than base flocking.

I tried microing t2 bots but I still have trouble for many reasons

Bots have less range than tanks so they will be killing you before you can get in range, flanking may help but if they have radar someone can prepare their tanks easy

While you can micro bots they always group into a giant chunk, so basically if a tank is aiming at bot one and bot one dodges so he misses, he will hit bot 2 right next to bot 1 because they are so close together. Scale this scenario up and the tanks will still find themselves hitting plenty of bots. Flocking and formations should help fix this but it will only work if they are programmed to spread themselves out and maybe even giving them swarming behavior for example instead of this:

bot bot bot
Tank bot bot bot
bot bot bot

You get this:

Bot Bot
Bot Tank Bot
Bot Bot

You're not listening to answers given to you.....

The things you pointed out, exactly those : a developper of PA just said, they're not staying the same.
and you should point out when you're answeringto someone in particular a bunch of posts earlyer. (still though, the fact remains, these arn't problems, it is merely missing elements and mechanics of the game making those impressions.)

Simple solution is to not fight tanks with bots. I actually really like te separation between the two; Bots, because of their speed, can easily sneak past enemy defenses with minimal losses and start doing hits on enemy targets, like Fabbers and Power Gens. I hope this disparity continues to be the trend with bots vs. tanks in the future.

Bots are really powerful raiders now, they let you really lock down and zone in an enemy.

As for tanks... Yeah, they need counters really badly. Once Pelters and Lobbers get leading they shouldn't be so bad, and nukes are nukes.

Actually, now that I think about it, Nukes will indirectly buff bots AGAIN, because to hit a bot with a nuke you'll probably have to aim at your own base.

Agree with ghostflux. Bots > Tank.
Maybe the bot's HP should be reduced a bit.

Well from what I have read on the forums, we are only playing with a small subset of the final planned unit pool. A few people think its as little as 30% of what we will end up with. You never know, you might get your wish for more anti-tank options! I certainly hope we end up with more unit variety yet...

As far as i read there will be gunships, and the ability of tanks to shoot air units will be removed.
so, you would have your Air unit to Destroy Tanks without being hit, the same you have with Fighters Destroying Bombers without being hit.

At the moment (alpha) the system is just not finished.
Tanks and Bombers in mass feel too strong because the defense is not finished i think.
AA Turrets are a little bit useless compared to mobile units, Ground Defense is nice until your enemy has a huge mass of tanks (a friend wiped out my 100bot strikeforce with a few turrets + commander)
Its just not ready^^

You obviously haven't listened to the livestream where Jon says he doesn't like Gunships.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... k4#t=4249s

Ghetto Gunships were a thought though.

Also the fact that tanks can shoot planes is intentional. We asked for it to be implemented. It is an homage to Total Annihilation, where units could totally do just that.

If we TA fans have anything to say in the matter, it will not be removed.
(toned down and tweaked perhaps... but not removed.)

Gunships were a bit of a problem in TA and SC in that they ended up combining the firepower and durability of a tank with the mobility and speed of an aircraft. Oh dear.

However, they add such a large area of potential units (and hence potential tools to develop interesting strategies), that i would be somewhat reluctant to write them off as a lost cause, at least not without a fight.

So how could they theoretically be balanced? Obviously their character as an air unit would be to trade speed for health. However i would still expect their health to be substantially less than anything on tank-tracks.

Another good start would be adding a bit of variety in AA options. The fact that tanks can shoot back (hopefully ineffectively) is useful, but theres more fun to be had. I believe Knight made the suggestion somewhere that T2 AA could potentially have two distinct and specialised flavours - a high damage, long range, low RoF, accurate missile option, and a short range, High RoF, high AoE flak cannon system. The second of these seems ideal for dealing with gratuitous gunships swarms, while the first seems designed to chase down faster planes. Sounds like a decent use of T2 specialisation to me.

Next we have to consider PA's aircraft ammo system. I wrote down some thoughts on it here. I suspect these hypothetical gunships would have a reasonable ammo capacity, but wouldn't be able to loiter too gratuitously without putting up with a substantially decreased rate of fire. I can't really comment on this too much as the ammo system hasn't really been fully tweaked yet, but suffice to say, i think it's another balance lever to make use of.

And i have one other, somewhat more radical suggestion. Gunships are quite substantially different from regular planes. They hover, can stand their ground, don't go wandering off, and potentially offer a neat dichotomy opposed to regular fixed wing aircraft. In fact, i would go as far as to say the potential dichotomy between gunships and planes is as great, if not greater, than the dichotomy between surface bots, and vehicles. So why not spinoff gunships into their own separate factory?

There's certainly enough potential variance between anti-surface, AA, long range, anti-sub/shipping, or support based gunships that they could create a diverse and varied selection of units, for both T1 and T2. This opens up a whole new balance lever in that the energy/mass ratio of gunship factories can be tweaked independently of the planes, meaning it becomes possible to alter the "barrier to entry" into the gunship game, as well as how efficient they are from an economic perspective. Zero K did something similar to this, and it actually worked out really quite well.

Overall, gunships have such a broad array of uses that i would like to see them if at all possible. I understand where Jon is coming from about balance, but if Uber has the opportunity to do a couple of experiments with gunships, I would love to see how they turn out.

Well said, pretty much my thoughts exactly.

Mike

I like this idea a lot.

The tanks in TA don't actively attack air, well other than the AA vehicles (couple of the t2 look like tanks). If the units are static or constructing then it is possible. But definitely nothing like in PA.

I like the idea of gunships too.

PA definitely needs more tweaking in this regard. In TA, you'd get the odd stray peewee shot hit a plane or two but the only things that really got them were Samsons, Jethros, Defenders etc.