Unit design proposal

I'm not very good at explaining my thoughts so, if your reading this please bear with that in mind. Since I'm here and played the game now for a while I thought I'd contribute my thoughts.

Although this may sound negative it is only because I wish to start with my biggest concern for the game which is the design of units. Overall I think the game has a lot of potential, the changes recently like bringing orbital tech to tier 1 fabricators I think is a good choice. I do think the game has many positives as well, just wish to focus on this particular issue I feel is negative.

I think the unit designs are overly simplistic, and feel like copies of a previous game. Also the logic behind these units do not really make sense to me. Not talking about them being balanced or OP, just feels very little thought went into designing the unit and thinking about what its purpose was supposed to be.

Take bots for example. There cheap, fast and powerful. Land based. All the designs only have one weapon. There all specialised. Either shoot at air units or shoot at ground units. The introduction of the sniper bot to me didn't make sense. Sounds cool, a sniper bot, in practice its just a bot with a longer range and more firepower. Its still fast, its still pretty cheap and powerful like all bots, doesn't feel special or anything.

You have the other land units, the vehicles or tanks. Why do we have tanks? there slow, there range is a bit longer, they have less dps than a bot in practice. What are they supposed to be? Again they all follow a princeiple of just having one weapon, specialised as anti air or attacking land units.

Land units basic traits are , slightly longer range, slow, more hitpoints. Given speed, bot is superior, its extra firepower makes up for its lack of hit points when fighting tanks. Its also cheaper, so u can mass produce them easier and surround tank armies. You can also run away from tank armies and attack any part of a large base u wish while they chase you in a futile manner.

Why did a galactic war machine think slower, less powerful and more hit points would be a good idea? What is it supposed to do?

Whenever I use a unit I just often find myself asking, did anyone actually think why it was built in this fictional world and what use is it? What purpose does it have?

Here is my proposal.

If bots are meant to be a swarm like offensive unit that is cheap and fast and powerful. Then keep them as they are, just reduce there firing range, including that of the sniper.

Change vehicles into a defensive unit. Tanks were originally designed to be siege breakers or mobile artillery. If u want them to be slow, fine, make them different to bots. Give them a small pelter weapon like the sheller has with a small aoe like a proper cannon. Turning them into mobile artliery. Then give them a second weapon, a small anti air missile. This makes them more unique when compared to bots, which are also land units. This will give them a separate role than to the bots. Provide a different kind of strategy when using the units. Shouldn't be a case of choosing tanks or bots, u should probally use both. Tanks really should be more generalised, its meant to be a mobile weapons platform.

This is how I think balance should be. Bots are your cannon fodder main attack unit, but should probally be defeated by towers. Tanks are your siegebreakers, shouldn't beat bots, but should be able to defend against small grounds of air. Lets face it right now air dominates all land units, every land units or building except one building. The flak turret. Why can't u just give tanks a mini flak turret of there own. Doesn't have to be really powerful but enough so that air units which are lets face it, immune to all land weapons, actually take some losses.

Then there's air. My particular concern is the bumblebee and the gunship. My suggestion is to combine them make it t1. Turn the bumble from a bomber into a laser strafing tank killer. Doesn't have to kill tanks in seconds, but it would be an effective tank killing weapon.

Then change the T2 bomber, have its bombs dropped from a great height like a high altitude bomber. Thus giving time for bots and tanks to avoid being hit, so T2 bomber is more of a structure destroyer than an everything on land is doomed unit. Leave tank killing to the new bumblebee tank strafer.

Remove the sniper, it doesn't really have a purpose, its basically an artillery bot that is better. Its not a sniper, u just gave it lots of damage and made its range longer. Changed its firing time.

Back to the land mobile units I'm suggesting, give them increased range like proper artillery, keep sight radius the same. If u introduce mobile radar units or radar jammers, this will make there actual range and sight radius more important in battles.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, when your introducing new units, or changing old ones. Can you please give them a real thought out purpose. It feels like and this is my major concern. This game is turning into a clone. Its not offering anything new.

Its a game, meant to be fun and interesting. If I want to play a clone, I might as well load up TA the original and play that. Let some guy mod it to involve other planets. Is this going to be a new game or just a mod of TA with multiple planets?

The idea I think is really cool and planet smashing is fun. You got tons of potential here. Feels wasted on such simplistic units.

I don't really like the idea of bot->tank->defense rock-paper-scissors.

Also, I'm really not sure about the idea of putting AA weapons on tanks. Why not just have some AA tanks instead that you can mix in?

I do agree with you that the units are rather bland right now, but I think this game purposefully is taking the core TA/etc formula and putting it on spherical maps, etc. The repetition is intentional.

The balancing phase has barely begun. Things will change a lot.

I think many of your concerns it's stem from things still being worked on, the sniper uni for exams isn't going to feel good on the first/second attempt, especially considering that there are still many units to be added that could require further work to e done even if that had it "right" before.

There are certainly some roles that could benefit from having multiple weapons and such, but it's not something all units should have, then we end up with the issues we had back in SupCom where many units(in particular naval units) had AA weapons that did absolutely nothing, I'm talking about weapons that had say 15 DPS, against units with 2000+ HP...

Mike

Thx for your replies, but they don't really address my concerns. My concern is with the unit design and their functional purpose and how effective they are at doing what they do. The balance issues you raise, are just that balance issues, not unit designs. I'm sure Uber will balance the units to the best of their ability at some point. To try to explain. The sniper just feels like a slammer with a longer range and more firepower. Its doing the same thing the slammer is, so why do we need it?

You mentioned the navy having a second weapon that was useless, I don't see that as a flaw in its design, but a flaw in how it was balanced in the game. Not my concern.

My concern is with the very concept of the units they are introducing. T2 bomber is a bumble that's just bigger. slammer is a bigger dox. bots and tanks do the same thing, but bots do it better. Why I felt tanks need a separate role to bots so one person would use both tanks and bots.

I'm not suggesting a rock paper scissors scheme, I was , though badly trying to explain the purpose behind why units should be made. Towers would be made to stop being harassed or attacked by the main army of bots. If bots beat towers? why did they invent towers? We invented flak guns to kill aircraft, isn't that what there supposed to do?

anyway I posted my thoughts. Just like to make it clear, my concern is not about balance its about the concept of the unit itself. Right now we have tanks and bots that do exactly the same thing, except one makes the other obsolete. Stuff should be good at whats its purpose is for.

otherwise this game will just be build lots of this unit and attack. I guess I can understand they want to follow core TA game style and such but. LIke I said, why not just mod TA then upgrade its graphics and sell that instead of doing all this work to produce the same thing far more expensively.

This is an idea for a unit concept that would be interesting fit the game style of other planets. Have a mobile flying fortress type unit that acts as an SSTO ship that can carry multiple units that can be dropped onto other planets as part of an invasion force. you send like 20 of these of to another planet drop of 200 odd units. Units should fufil the needs of the strategy. Balance it later.

To be fair that was caused by porting units directly over from Supcom vanilla, multiplying air health by 10, and then forgetting to do that for half of the AA weapons in the game. Some boats got stuck using anti-vanilla AA in a world where air units had the health of ground tanks.

It was really just an issue of lazy.

And that is the case, but the game is in Beta still and the units we've had have been more or less, only the units required to have a "functional" game, basically what we had before wasn't indicative of the end goal, believe me we've discussed the issues with having the Leveler being 4X all the stats of the Ant on many, many times before.

Mike

Ok my issue has nothing to do with leveller being 4 times an ant or something. My issue with why the unit was made and its purpose for existing. I feel like I'm repeating myself.

I understand that it is still in work in progress. I have no problems with it being unbalanced or out of whack, or any problems with the economy.

My problem is that all units seem to do the same thing. in the end there ends up only being one unit that is better than all the others. This is not about the ant or leveller. It is about every vehicle and every bot and every air unit.

People when they find out which is the best unit to build will gravitate towards that unit. I remember when everyone built levellers. Then it was T2 bombers. Now its snipers.

All of them are being used to do exactly the same thing, Only difference being how much metal or energy they cost, or how fast they move, or whether they fly or not.

Here's an example of how something progressed with aircraft in real life. This is what I am talking about with unit design. not balance, not ants or whatever. I could not care less about it at this moment.

Planes originally flew low and dropped bombs near or directly over the top of their targets. Often flew in clusters in formation so as to bomb an entire area to make up for accuracy issues. The weapon designed to kill them was little more than a machine gun that fired into the sky. Plane technology improved and the flew higher but remained as bombers. At this greater height the rather large and powerful machine guns had trouble targeting or reaching their targets. So they designed the flak gun. Range was greater with a flak gun and the explosion helped take advantage of them being in formation. But due to the height it had to fire its ranged was limited and fired in a small area, since it was mostly shooting upwards.

Rocket technology improved, bombers started using missiles, the goal was the same stay out of range of the weapon and attack with impunity. Missiles allowed planes to attack their targets out of range of flak guns. Then anti aircraft missiles were designed.

Currently the best bomber that exists is one of the fastest planes on the planet and capable of traveling at such a height that its own technology was used to create space shuttles to help with re entry into the atmosphere. It is impossible to shoot down. However it was never mass produced and was replaced with the stealth bomber, due to weather situations making it in accurate in a need to bomb that place now scenario. But it would be greater inspiration for an orbital bomber.

Range of the flak and missile turret is so similar they just serve the same purpose don't really seem like different units. Does what I said make sense now?

Then I'd say hold tight until the balance has matured, right now it hasn't yet, once it has you can re-evaluate the units and thier roles.

Mike