Sorry if this topic has allready been covered but I have not been able to find a answer to it. What I was wondering is will there be a variety of units in the game (lots of units) like in Sup Com or will it be a more basic stragety game like Halo Wars. Personally I hope there will be loads of units (even more than Sup com) because the more units means more stragety, which results in different fighting styles and loads more fun.
PA is being based on Total Annihilation, which had a much wider variety of units than Supcom did. I believe the devs have casually tossed around 130 as the number of units types planned, but don't quote me on that. Halo Wars is only an RTS in the most basic sense. Even Supcom 2 and Starcraft are better comparisons.
I feel TA had crazy amounts of role overlap. There was absolutely no balance to which units were useful and it wasn't even obvious what a unit would actually DO. Supcom boiled it down to a few more easily approachable archetypes.
Name one unit in TA that you felt didn't have a role. If you really want we can name every unit and go down the list if that's what you need. There may have been some over lap, but FA wasn't without it's Tech 2 and Tech 3 either, so give it your best shot and the TA fans can help elucidate you. There were far more roles in TA than there were in FA, so I think this is a great learning opportunity for players who do not have a complete grasp of TA. Also, having a kbot lab and a vehicle lab did provide some overlap, but not as much as you might think. Caveat: I want to point out that TA may not have been tuned, but the unit roles were perfect and clear if given any real examination. Ergo, the designers of TA were master minds and the balance engineers were not.
supcom had the right idea as far as unit variety but lacked factory variety there were no amphibious, hover, bot or tank factories - just land there was no plane or gunship factory just an air factory these are things that can add a TON of unit variety while still keeping the overall unit classes self explanatory (this is a direct fire bot, this is amphibious artillery, etc.)
SupCom1/FA had the right idea, but the Power Gap between Tiers and lack of distinction between Bots/Tanks got in the way of it working out. Mike
ya i agree with that, i also rather liked the zero-k unit classes most factories have an assault unit, artillery unit, flanking-skirmisher unit and a scout/raid unit as well as a unique engineer.
TA had T1 units that stayed valuable longer. TA had T2 units that also blurred the line with tech 3, but at the end of the day were not as overwhelming an issue as T3 in FA. I think that both of these items could be accomplished for FA but not as easily. The mechanics of FA really leave less diversity options, because no cost to fire, long range, direct fire auto-hitting weapons like you see in FA don't lend themselves to diversity. I see the functional design of FA units and diversity as a loose case of Empire Earth (higher tech is higher). With the high cost of teching to T3 there is a demand for returns. No disrespect to the FA fan base intended, but the functional design of TA unit roles was superior in this regard. FA has plenty to offer: superior models, superior performance and superior animation are superior. Uber worked on both games. Obviously, there is plenty from FA that is unique as well as plenty of content that is ambiguous to both titles. I believe Nuetrino believes that TA has more to offer in fundamentals based on his pitch in the kickstarter, but that doesn't mean he intends to throw any babies out with the bath water or that we have a clear understanding of his team's entire vision yet. Honestly, I will be disappointed if there are not new variations and roles along with improvements of the fundamental mechanics working as intended. Just got to wait and see what's in store. May 3 isn't that far away and the end of May is soon there after.
Are you sure you're not talking about SupCom2 there? I don't recall FA having 'Auto-hitting' weapons, they might have been more 'reliable' than thier TA counterparts, but they were far from Auto hitting. Like I said, SupCom had a lot of things get in the way of proper unit diversity, those need to be considered first, things like the Power Gap, which lead to Tiers needing to be essentially standalone and the overall fairly high unit count that needed to be replicated across 4 factions(for core roles like AA). A lot of those just aren't/shouldn't be present in PA, we know we're dealing with 2 Tiers, seemingly T1 being General Purpose and T2 being Specialists(with little in terms of power gap), we also know there is only one unit pool. Imagine SupCom with the factions thrown in a blender, Imagine having to choose between the Aurora, Mantis of Striker? How about choosing between the Rhino, Mongoose and Obsidian? The Thistle or the Sky Slammer? Obviously the diversity between these units can be pushed a bit more once they're openly available to everyone compared to thier stock stats but you get the idea. There was a fair amount of diversity, but it was obscured behind different factions and sloppy Tier set ups. Obviously we should settle for just 'copying' with SupCom accomplished, but to ignore the good aspects because there are bad aspects isn't helping either. Mike
There is no autohit in any TA or supcom. supcom has tracking projectiles though so that could be it supcom2 has a lot of tracking projectiles. right down to, hilariously enough, bullets from an AA gun.
TA did indeed have some role overlap, but balance mods did a lot to fix that and make nearly all the units useful. While Supcom did trim things down, I feel that was mainly to make the game more accessible on the scale that it was played. It worked out just fine, but it lacked the situational nuances that TA had. That's where PA comes in. It has the opportunity to preserve the situational aspect of TA units, while maintaining a larger scale.
I am definitely talking about SupCom 1 , but I clearly stated that I expect nothing good will be thrown out (ignored). What I mean by auto-hit, is that FA really pushed up the reliability of ranged weapon to a level that micro and dodging isn't fun for the average player. I mean, if you can hit 90% of the time from longer range than your enemy force it's nigh auto-hit. So, that's what I mean. Obviously, the physics engine is still there, but is it making a difference to the game play? Good aspects should only get better. Absolutely. I like the example of the mongoose and the obsidian. From what I remember of the rhino is that it wasn't too hot and generally a straight tech upgrade. Obviously the Wagner and the Triton or Gimp have some extreme overlap. The Mongoose and the Fido probably have very similar roles too. If there is a spiritual successor who is to say who made who. Like I said, there is ambiguity (overlap) between the titles too. The Obsidian is interesting because it provides a new unit role and function that TA didn't have. I thought about posting specific examples of best breeds from each franchise. The general mechanics of the Obsidian and the Titan definitely fall in the want category for me. Obviously TA has a lot of interesting tech 2 bots like mobile radar, mobile radar jammer (cybran), spies, resurrectors, etc. A good example where Uber might want to lean heavier to TA is with the Can and the Bulldog. The Brick in FA was this unstoppable omega unit. The Can in TA played a similar role of super heavy, but the range was so short and speed so slow it wasn't too impressive and easily out manuevered and kited by slow ranged units if scouted. You can imagine it took a beating and was a staple unit from hard push to great defense. Also, the Can required energy to fire it's heavy laser. Similar to personal shields in FA, heavy lasers and death lasers in TA provided a economic aspect to weigh T2 against. An Obsidian with it's shields down is a unhappy tank. A Can who cannot pewpew also goes QQ. The Bulldog on the other hand was like a pillar, but generally fired slower velocity projectiles with more of an arch. In FA anything that has an arch fired high archs with gratuitous levels of AOE. In TA there was a lot of units that fire low archs and generally AOE wasn't as impressive. This allowed for a significantly heavier amount of dodging, low health (tech1) and less power creep. The Bulldog was good against large forces and medium slow enemies like Cans. Generally fast T1 assault bots were pretty good against unsupported Bulldogs. The Bulldog's maximum range came in most handy against hard slow/stationary units, but wasn't reliable against faster units at range. The core element here is the lob. I can understand why someone might not want the lob, but for game play its an amazing mechanic that to me brings the physics engine alive in ways FA didn't. Anyone playing Spring knows that.
I see it as an organic method to reduce micro, or rather lower the value of it at least. I still feel you're overstating the effects slightly, it also comes down to being just how hte weapons were crafted in the first place, SupCom still had many weapons like T1 Arty, even the Hoplite to a degree that weren't as reliable against an opponent that was moving around. But then factor in the army size and you get to a point where even if the intended target was able to dodge a shot, it's entirely possible for another unit in the group to take the hit instead. I guess it could be viewed as 'standardizing' the gameplay, units deal damage with the same 'reliance' whether you're dealing with a handful or hundreds which makes it easier to grasp how effective a unit can/will be. Not to mention you can still to a degree balance around it without it being completely arbitrary, the faster, more reliable weapons could do less damage overall compared to low/high arc weapons if that is needed to help balance. Mike
Yeah, I definitely see what you are saying. As the war escalates methods of microing positive effects into your conflicts just get harder and less important as the numbers of shells and units increase. Arguably your game turns almost completely to macro, vectors and transitions. This is part of what makes the initial stages of the match really exciting to watch. The ability for the up close and personal to be meaningful while the massive scale dictating its insignificance is part of what makes the overall massiveness of this kind of game righteous.
In vanilla the Morty and Fido had some incredibly bad metal/damage/hp ratios. The only thing that was useful about the Morty was its absurd maximum climbing angle, something which I really hope will return in a big way in PA. Spiders were also crap due to their enormous size. The MERL/Diplomat and Pillager/Luger also had terrible metal/damage/hp and their huge inaccuracy didn't help. The Krogoth was awful, that much investment in tanks, Mavs, gunships, etc could easily destroy one without much trouble. The Zipper/its counterpart and land scouts were terrible. Reapers were useless since one could just build Goliaths instead. Vipers were awful due to their poor accuracy and high cost. Gimps were ridiculously slow compared to amphib tanks, and they cost energy to fire to boot. Sumos were like Cans, but their pathing was so bad due to poor speed and turning rate they were impossible to actually use. T1 fighters were pitiful compared to Defenders/Pulverizers. Missile Ships were just bad battleships. Thuds/Hammers and Stumpies/Raiders did pitiful damage and their shot velocity was so low they were unusable. Again, the Thud's only saving grace was the same crazy max climbing angle as the Morty. Instigators were okay, but Flashes were about a billion times better. There's a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting, but that's the gist of it.
