Tiny Infantry Mechs

Most players see the box art of a game like TA or Supreme Commander, and get excited over the giant mechs. I find those units are almost without exception the most boring units in the game in terms of their actual usage. Big, expensive units can only be in one location, . And if both players are using more expensive units, the net result is just that there are fewer pieces on the board, and this is just less interesting.

There is something to be said for scale. However the scale of an RTS game is entirely relative. Space 4X games played with hundreds of ships ten miles long, and the economies of entire planets represented in small denominations of purchase currency are larger in scale, but feel no larger because the relative difference in size between the largest pieces and the smallest pieces is actually quite small.


Infantry Mechs

So what I propose is to have tiny units. PA will certainly have huge mechs, and planet-killing weapons that obliterate the surface of worlds. But in order to have scale, PA's small units need to be very small. If a planet is populated with one base and a few huge mechs then even though entire planets are being destroyed, there is no sense of scale. Just like how controlling an entire planet in a space 4X game is no big deal, even making the game's robots enormous will just make the game seem smaller unless there are small units with which to compare them.

Tiny units will lend gravitas to the huge units by comparison. A thousand tiny units firing ineffectually at a towering colossus is a far better indication of the might of the huge mech than its visual appearance.

To fill this role of tiny units, I propose the implementation of a petty unit which is essentially a mechanical infantry unit. Their "real" size is irrelevant; the point is that these units are incredibly small, cheap, and expendable.


Infantry Design

Infantry mechs are petty units- very tiny, and very weak. As a result, I think having many different types is bad design because it may be difficult for a player to identify how many of which types are present from among a large group. However the group's approximate size should be readily apparent.

Consequently, I think a single infantry mech type is the best approach. The one type of infantry mech should be highly flexible, and able to engage a variety of threats efficiently, making a group of them a very dangerous threat. However they should be very slow compared to strategically mobile units (like their parent units/transports) and relatively short-ranged. Driving a vehicle into a blob of infantry should be walking into a world of pain, since it allows the entire group to fire at once.

As a result of this design infantry mechs would be flexible, highly efficient sources of HP and damage, but individually very weak. In large groups they would be extremely strong, especially in a positional, defensive capacity. However any group will suffer serious casualties in almost any battle, which will take time and resources (but not factory time) to replace. Still, in large groups, they can sustain quite a lot of damage and still exist, especially considering their numbers are being replenished by their parent units.

Their small size and small weapons makes them unusual in a few ways. Firstly, large enemy weapons are actually somewhat weak against them. A huge, powerful cannon that would be fantastic against a huge mech will just massively overkill a few infantry, while most of the group would be fine. And weapons that are strong against infantry, including ultra-rapid fire weapons or large AOE splash, would be ineffective against large mechs.


Infantry Organization

Building infantry units individually, considering their tiny size and their nature as petty units, would be a hassle for the player. So instead I propose that larger container units manage your infantry mechs, with many mechs to each container. These mechs should be integrally tied to their parent unit, such that the player is mainly giving orders to the parent.

A while back the idea was floated of a "drone carrier" which is a mobile ground unit which constructs smaller petty units, and effectively abstracts their construction and management away from the player. An infantry mech transport, whether a ground carrier or flying, could easily build and maintain a fixed count of infantry mechs, and deploy them in combat.

I think the idea should be adapted into an infantry carrier which builds and maintains a large group of infantry. A group of carriers would deploy a considerable force of infantry mechs, and have the ability to construct reinforcements in the field while your factories build other assets, potentially even more carriers.


Garrison

A garrison structure is a base facility which stores infantry mechs for defensive purposes. It builds and maintains a large reserve of infantry mechs which are deployed when the enemy is nearby. Garrisons might be augmented with other defensive emplacements such as pillboxes that increase the fighting effectiveness of your infantry mechs for defensive purposes. These might appear near garrison structures, or be independently functioning structures.

Garrisons have the effect of automating many low-level base defense functions. A small enemy attack can be defended without using strategically mobile units; the garrison is more or less a permanent fixture of the base, and can defend the base against enemy units autonomously, or at least stall for time while you send reinforcements. It then rebuilds the garrison, allowing the base to again defend itself from a similar attack, without supervision. This makes bases "spongy" with respect to self-defense, picking off scouts, and holding light pressure, and gives them some flexible defenders as a backbone even if you don't commit units that can attack to permanent defensive duty, and without covering the base in fixed turrets.

Garrisons also make capturing bases substantially different from open-field combat. The garrison will be taking casualties faster than it can rebuild them, making destroying bases a more time-consuming strategic move, and one in which initiating and falling back may undo the damage caused by your failed attempt as the garrison rebuilds. Garrisons also create an incentive to bring infantry along with a force intending to attack a base, both to absorb damage and to thin enemy infantry ranks before moving in with units that will be more difficult to replace. Disengaging after losing only infantry isn't a big deal, and this creates tactical options for the attacker as well.


Conclusion

Scale is relative. Huge mechs are cool, but if all the mechs are huge, then they become small units anyway. In order to have huge units, you need to have tiny units.

Fortunately, tiny units have a lot of potential for interesting gameplay because of how they interact with large weapons, and how cheap, massable, and expendable they can be compared to more valuable units. The biggest issue is the difficulty of managing a tremendous number of tiny units, which is easily solved by having them tied to larger units that build and control them. I think the best way to create a sense of large scale whichc will also and spur strong gameplay is to have tiny, expendable infantry mechs fighting against and alongside massive engines of war, and have them both be strong, yet behave quite differently.

You mean Mechmarines? The things we clearly saw in the trailer?

Infantry usually have the bonus of "Walking softly, and carrying a big gun" and thats not to mention that you don't use anti tank weapons on infantry.

But I don't feel like that fits in this type on genere.

But you have caught my mind with ideas like carriers/apc's, and the use of 100's of units comprising a single unit.

So I will lisen to the arguments.

We saw bots, but know not of their nature

True, but Mechmarines (at least in the context of Supcom 1/FA) refers to the basic tier-1 infantry units of each faction. Which I think every TA-like game has had so far. So it's not a big stretch to assume that the things we saw in the trailer were the frame for the basic Mechmarines.

I do like the garrison idea, but I have no idea where we would use it or why it would be any more efficient than a point defense. I like the idea of turning buildings into makeshift defenses, but if they're too powerful, we run into the problem of people making cheap structures as defenses.

Garrisons only really work when the enemy is not prepared to totally destroy the structure.....they most certanly are.

Super tiny bots only existed due to Supcom's ridiculous sense of... well, scale. Scout bots literally cost 8 mass on the low end and reached at least a thousand mass before going into experimental territory(10-20K), before going up to game enders at 200K. It's not unusual that a unit so small would be simply irrelevant against modest sized bots.

In TotalA, the difference between tiny and huge bots was an order of magnitude at most. The cheapest unit was about 30-50 metal, while super heavy tanks floated around 500-1000 (game enders being the the 5K-35K artillery). This established much more meaningful roles as it possible for a unit to be advantaged by but not be completely obsoleted due to size. The nuclear loaded Krogoth was the only exceptionally large unit, and it did very poorly against nearly everything else for cost.

BTW, garrisons have been done in other games, mostly to skirt unit caps. They're dumb because:
1) PA doesn't have a real unit cap (being hardware limited more than anything else)
2) building units and then not using them makes them worthless. Just look at the economic contribution of obscenely huge, private bank accounts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In terms of generic balance, tiny units are more easily destroyed by splash damage. This justifies an overall increase of stats, depending on how common splash is.

You sure like buildings that do everything and the kitchen sink, don't you ledarsi?

But bobucles makes some important points. Additionally, giving the units such a disparity in size makes them harder to read, which was why Supcom was so reliant on the strategic icons. By making this scale range smaller, there will be less reliance on icons, which is an important goal the devs have set for PA.

As long as you make sure there's only one unit at that really small scale, it doesn't really become harder to read. I think this sounds pretty interesting, actually.

For really tiny units, I prefer the drone concept. These units are too small to have their own power source and be self sufficient. Instead, the logistics are handled by a drone carrier. Drones may be leashed to the carrier's range, or the carrier may have a set limit on drones, or the drones may have some other crippling downside like a fixed location. The expense comes in the form of building the carrier, which otherwise maintains its own set of drones.

Drones, no matter their form (moving gun, engi drone, attack mine, or a plain ol' missile swarm) have an advantage in the form of high initial strength in battle. Their disadvantage is in the form of attrition, as drones are destroyed and must be replaced.

I really like the idea of tiny infantry mechs. But when it comes to infantry carriers I'm afraid it might get a bit too complicated and lose the intended feel of commanding a swarm of tiny bots. Are you sure it will be too hard to manage infantry as separate units? What do you base this on?

There's a big difference between TA's idea of a small unit, and Supcom's idea of a small unit. One difference is like between a zergling and an ultralisk. The other is irreconcilable. It simply crosses too many orders of magnitude to work in any sane capacity.

When a unit is "small", it means "smaller than typical". It does not mean "hundreds of units compared to a single tank". The former is fine, and will likely be seen as many types of units. The latter demands some kind of carrier, mostly so that the pitifully small units can be represented at a similar scale to everything else.

What if these "Mini Mechs" were produced and controlled in squads like in Dawn of War or Company of Heroes? It would make them easier to see, control and mass produce. Maybe there would be 10 or so Mechs to a squad?

And what happens if one unit in the squad gets killed? Is it replaced by healing? Are all members of the squad identical in functionality? (ie, they all shoot, as opposed to one supporting the other, and one carrying the equipment, etc) If so, why not replace them with a slightly bigger unit of equivalent strength.

Units in squads may make sense in a tactical game, but in a grand strategy game like PA, they just bring in a lot of baggage that can more easily be represented by an equivalent single unit.

That idea just doesn't really make sense to me in a game like this. One goal I this game is for te units to be easily distinguishable, and I think that these would just be too small to control correctly. Also some sort of unit that utilizes drones would pretty much be the same thing.

Well i like the strategic icons alot. So i dont really care that much if all size of units will fit on one screen.

I think Supcom did a pretty good job on unit sizes. Though it would be cool to have bots that are not even the size of a big ones foot.

I'm not seeing a lot of focused responses except for bobucles' comments, so I think I am mainly going to clear up a few things and address bobucles' concerns.

First, while there are obviously bipedal robots already in PA, the fact they are bipedal doesn't necessarily make them small infantry as described in the OP.

The three key features I specify are firstly they are tiny- as in you might fit 10, 20, or more in a vehicle that might be produced independently from a factory. Second, these units are made and stored within units produced from a factory, not from a factory themselves like a larger bipedal bot. This means you can lose the infantry and rebuild them fairly easily- the biggest cost being the time required. And third, they are highly efficient, but also weak, slow, and short ranged.

Regarding their counter relations with other units and weapons, the types of weapons that are strong against a huge mech will actually be very bad against an army of infantry, and vice versa. An equivalent cost in either is likely to produce similar amounts of military power, but will behave quite differently. Yes, this type of unit would be weak to splash damage. But they would be incredibly effective against big single-target weapons.

Consider the dynamics of a unit like an infantry carrier or garrison. While its stores are full, it represents a highly efficient source of HP and firepower. However as the group loses members, its effectiveness drops. So a large army behaves almost like slow-release burst damage which wanes as the force deteriorates from casualties. When it's gone, the only forces you've got are whatever you can build constantly, which won't be many infantry mechs. You need to pull back and build another force. Which you can do without factories, as the infantry are produced by their carriers, whether they are transport helicopters or APC type vehicles.

Similarly, a garrison is a large defensive army of mechs. And it behaves very differently from turrets. Firstly, the mechs can move, and can respond to enemy attacks from whatever direction, and are not limited by a fixed position and fixed range. Secondly, a turret fires at a fairly consistent DPS and has a flat durability value. An army of mechs starts off the battle at full strength, and as it loses members, its effectiveness drops. Great for stalling for time for reinforcements to come save the base, but not as powerful as an impenetrable wall of turret porc.

Furthermore, group of mechs has a much more complicated damage distribution over space than a turret. An enemy driving into the middle of a base before clearing it is going to get obliterated because they are surrounded by tiny mechs with, in aggregate, powerful weapons. However the enemy could drive right past turrets, which have a relatively consistent DPS regardless of the target's position, and have to because the turret can't move. Tons of tiny, cheap, short-range turrets that act like infantry mechs to deter enemies from entering before clearing the base just wouldn't work.

I like having a sense of scale from little units, because if all the units are big everything feels small (Supcom felt like tiny units stomping on tinier trees, instead of giving a sense of big units as was intended)

But I don't really like the idea of differentiating infantry. APCs and that sort of thing aren't worth the trouble IMO.

Until the big, single-target weapon wipes out the APC.

Swarm carriers have been tried in other games. Generally, there are 2 types of weak points. The first is to annihilate the drones, and the other is to focus fire the carrier itself. Picking both is usually the worst option as it involves dividing fire.

Depending on your definition, drone carriers can involve many different types of themes. They all have some kind of central production facility that stores its power as a secondary unit. The secondary unit is dependent on the facility for storage and use.

In fact, Mech-marine is 6 meters tall which is hard to call tiny robot.
I do not prefer infantry bots but it will be fun to see a small robot like terror drones.