Unit Veternacy: can we skip it?

Agreed. Additionally this gimmick could make some units too powerful in the end (if not carefully balanced).

So I'm with Neutrino, too.

Veterancy (and research points in supcom2 you gain from fighting) are imo extremely damaging to the game balance.

It usually means that, when someone wins one battle, he wins the game. That was almost certainly the case with air in supcom2. You win the battle - you win the game. Due to veterancy, research, everything just escalated when you won that first battle.

In my opinion, having no veterancy or any bonus whatsoever (except reclaiming the wreckage which is a bonus in itself) from fighting would be best. It enables people to actually come back from a mistake.

It's gotta be a 'nope' to veterancy from me too.

And I don't like the idea of auto-scaling commanders either.
I think it's great as how the game progresses you commander goes from being a relative badass to being vulnerable and in need of constant protection.

I don't know why so many people don't like it...
in TA it was pretty nice to have it. I loved when my defense towers became vetarans and improved their aim. I paid more attention to keep them repaired. Why say it was unbalanced? Would it be a problem to have it as an option so everyone can choose to play with or without it?

With SC the issue was with the implementation. Not the core concept.
In particular the healing mechanism combined with Experimentals' high durability and kill-rates.

Putting that aside you need to tackle the issue of how to differentiate veterans from plebs.
Having to roll the mouse over them individually and count icons in the properties window doesn't cut it.
Even if you manage to add a little chevron or something directly on to units and their map icons you're still left doing tedious assessments of how more effective they are.

It all just feels superfluous, not to mention fretting about one unit over another doesn't really gel with my idea of enormous battles, ordering hordes of bots in to the breach and their doom.

The problem is in online competitive play when a battle is won, the bonuses start working against you in an escalating manner. You win once = you win more and more. Without veterancy or research point or any bonuses (except the metal as I mentioned above) of any kind, it's much easier to come back from a mistake that you make. With veterancy, a single mistake is extremely costly and usually means losing the entire game.

We're not talking about games against the AI here (which is usually extremely bad and randomly throws groups of units at you for the l3\/\/lz). We're talking about intense online competitive games where every single unit or micro action counts and can tip the balance.

I think veterancy from TA was just a cool feature in which you could see a unit that's done well and gains a tiny buff, as opposed to a legitamate strategic option

It's probably a no from me, although I am still in favour of a kill counter. Is there a poll on this one yet?

I am opposed to unit vet HEALING. I think that veterancy generates a degree of awesome. Red Alert blimps suddenly got three chevrons and become endless torrent of blue bomb destroying everything. In supreme commander I found Veterancy to be annoying constantly making me control K ALL of my units because of veterancy of ONE exp, which meant it could smash millions of t1 units and have more heal than it started. I think that veterancy should not be healing but rather the addition of a cool new ability or simply recognizing bad A status

As a purely visual upgrade, without any damage/accuracy/healing/HP bonuses - HELL YES I am all for veterancy. Make the units golden or have them throw confetti in the air. Just don't let them become an increasingly spiraling unstoppable force.

Can the unit get a party hat for 100 kills?

I think that's gonna be one of the next stretch goals? They were talking about them being a "driver" too, after all.

I think visual upgrades for units would be super awesome. Turn my little bot into an awesome looking, battle hardened killer

I think that veterancy is an interesting thing to delve into. The 'slippery slope' concept especially makes it unfortunate. However, there are many ways to approach it. I'm all for the Commander getting veterancy, and in different ways, as well: for killing units, it could gain additional hp, faster repair, etc. This would encourage the mechanic of using the commander on the battle field.

However, what about construction veterancy? As in, build so many buildings, and now build speed, resources, or both are more efficient. This would encourage more basebuilding, methinks...

And whatabout the feature in SC2 where your factories would actually gain veterancy, decreasing build costs? I know this begs the question of the slippery slope again, but it has nothing to do with increased micromanagement, at least.

I think we've touched on an important point.

We need to think long and hard about adding another 'feedback loop' in the form of veterancy in to game whose genre already has some pretty vicious ones inherent to it already (e.g. successfully attacking an enemies economy).

To be honest, any player who's had a single unit kill about 100 of the enemy's doesn't need another buff in my books, he's already winning =P

I think supcom tried to keep veteran units alive by giving them a little HP boost, but it ended up being game-breaking, as a Galactic Colossus got about 10K every 100 kills in original SupCom, and was effectively made stronger, not weaker when you sent anything but Siege-Assault bots at it =S

Yep, we don't need Unit Veternacy.
Besides it can be explained quite easily - simple war bots don't "learn" cause they are... well... nothing more then a combat machines.

Unit Veternacy introduces more issues then improvements to gameplay quality and fun-factor. Especially when you have dozens or hundreds of units... what Veternacy gives you then? Nothing more then a wasted CPU power to calculate it all and a memory to store whole these kill counts and bonuses.

Between Jon's comment and the fairly negative opinion about veterancy I don't think we'll have to worry about it.

If it exists, it should be for the commander and any other 'hero' units only.

I usually don`t have any problem with veterancy, but in PA`s case I must go against it.

The point here is that the focus of the game is not to micro units into veterancy, but to create armies capable of countering the enemy`s composition. Of course guerrilla tactics must still be viable, but I don`t need veteran units to have viable guerrilla tactics and veteran units just make guerrilla squads dangerously overpowered.

Maybe on the commander, but veterancy on units has major problems I think.

Anybody else remember the veterancy on SupCom's factory's?

The point was to allow a players economy to become more efficient as time went on, allowing the conflict to escalate.

Could be a cool idea.

That was Sup2.

And all it meant was that if you blew up an enemy factory, you would doubly-screw them over. They were still at a disadvantage after they rebuilt it because the new factory would have no veterancy buffs.