What do you think of the scale of Ubers Mega-bot.

Bigger isn't always better. Water limits how dense naval vehicles can be. It's hard to have compact firepower and mega armor when you're bound to a 1 gram/ml hard limit. The vast majority of our RL ships are hollow with a few dense pieces of equipment, because the empty space is necessary for the boat to float.

Anyway, unit scaling has more to do with human concerns than robotic.

*shrug*
I've stopped caring.

well...this was a annoying topic. not only did it derail like the other topic, but it got twice as rotten in the process. i Vote its got a suitable scale. thats it for me.

You think this topic is...BAD?

It increased my enjoyment to DBZ fighting games when they made some sense too. Yet, what game have you played that had both perfect cannon and perfect gameplay. Most that try to have both have neither (a broken character that is actually supposed to be cannonically 3rd rate).

That being said, if it makes you feel better, the megabot was simply a placeholder. IMHOm, they COULD make a megabot ship unit. They could make it a mobile gunship of some variety, one that carries a flat wall of guns, guns that can bombard a map, or one single supercannon system, or even a ship that can carve waterways into land for tactical defence purpose or traveling further torwards the enemy.

There could be an anything megaunit.

As I said before; stopped caring.

It does not make me feel better that the whitebox they presented is everything that is wrong with "super units". The scale is whack. Those three arguments are only the first of a long line of questions that, for me, erode a plausible justification for Mega-Bots.

Mega-bots need more than "awesome" as a justification for their existence. Especially for me, since I don't think a unit that size and with that density of guns is "awesome". It's comical in its absurdity.

My thoughts on scale for the presented Mega-bot is that it is wrong in many ways (listed in my previous posts).
My thoughts on the size of the Mega-bot is that I don't care until you tell me what it's for.

Cute. considering it was just a example they slapped togheter ur taking it way seriously.

If I don't take it seriously, someone else will...

And they might think the Mega-Bot is okay as is... which it really isn't

Luckily, seeing as Uber Ent has, en-mass, completely abandoned threads like these I'm hopeful that the backlash against "Super Units" has at least allowed them to see the contentiousness of this issue.

"Super Units" in general is not much of an problem.

Problem is, just building an super-scaled, all-in-one, ultra heavy assault bot can't be considered a smart move. That thing is doomed to be either OP or UP, but will never fit right in.

Why do you go unit cannon (a construction which is similar to size!)? Because it changes the way you play.
And why orbital factory? For the very same reason.

If a unit should be considered a super unit, it should provide a one-time, strategic option, but it may never be designed in such way that it just replaces armies or even worse, becomes stronger in numbers.

SupCom did it wrong. There is a good reason, why experimentals where widely referred to as "T4", because thats what they were. You would have build them INSTEAD of regular units once your economy was so strong that regular T3 units would no longer scale in mass. Same reason why you also dumped T1 for T2 and T2 for T3.

This is not a valid option, if the design goal was in the first place, to prevent basic units from ever becoming obsolete, which also means that just scaling up attributes from T1 to T2 is not a valid mover either.

While such a unit COULD fit into a standard factory, it's really more appropriate to use a gantry. The standard lathes can only reach so high!

There are any number of reasons a gantry is needed. For example, the construction process could have a huge number of structural issues. That means a special pad or supporting fluid is needed. Just as how modern boats are built in a dry dock, a super sized robot may require a "wet dock" for all the parts to come together.

Summarises my position quite well. Though there is practically nothing that doesn't get multiplicatively more powerful when massed unless the unit is question is pure utility, like Radar

Having 1 T1 Radar is useful.
Having 100 all next to each other; arguably wasteful.

Well, using mobile radar jammers to make a gap in radar coverage that was a certain shape would be a use of a sort. Humans do sometimes make mistakes when they are angry or laughing really hard.

Yes, you can troll people with radar/sonar jammers. I went there.

But I feel that experimentals should focus on being game mechanic or game scale altering things by filling unique and powerful roles that other units just can't. Such as mobile factories, radar targeting facilities, and intel/econ stuff. Just being a bigger tougher tank isn't really what they should be about for the most part.

That being said I wouldn't mind seeing some massive tanks ala Dawn of War's Baneblade.

I would be greatly disappointed in a DoW-Baneblade-alike unit. They're boring after you've heard the voice files once... hell they weren't even very good responses on the Baneblade :?

Mobile Factories... in a game about planets?

Damn, you lot think so small when it comes to "Super" units in a game about conquering an entire system rather than just one Map.

Well not an exact Baneblade clone. Just some really big kickass tanks.

Also, you're not thinking on the correct scale when I say "mobile factories".

I can imagine some rather large-scale mobile factories... and all of them seem wildly impractical compared to just building another factory... next to the other 17 I've just built with all the mass/energy you needed to build just one special factory.

Scale beyond a certain level is just impractical.

That's why the flavour-of-the-week giant machine in Thunderbirds was at once cool, yet extremely silly.

Damn... now I want to watch Thunderbirds just for a giggle at The CrabLogger (goes on a Path Of Destruction due to terrible safty protocols), The Sidewinder (which falls into a Pit Of Peril due to its own weight) or my personal favourite, the unnamed giant Scaffold/LaunchTower-esk thing used to try and move the Empire State Building in its entirety a few hundred feet down the road (which naturally fails and causes Terror In New York City).

....

Classics.
:lol:

You are still thinking too small. Those 17 normal factories can't move from planet to planet dropping entire fully constructed bases with normal factories, PD, and econ already in place, from orbit in drop pods. And then churn out piles of units, land, air, and sea, and then drop those onto the planet. Or engage in firefights with orbiting asteroid outposts while single handedly invading entire planets.

I liked this idea of a mega-unit. You mean a spaceship probe with fully constructed buildings and units for a drop onto another planet? This would have uses, and would be a costly yet not overpowered idea if implemented right.

What about a cannon like the Unit Cannon, that projects nanolathe to construct things on other planets and such, but has a steep dropoff to build with it and a cooldown to it or something?

It would allow you to partially move resources to other planets even if with a steeper cost and only in bursts, and assist small outpost bases in growing or establishing bases through enemy lines.

Long range nanolathing is interesting, especially if it can be stealthy without being OP. Also I think Mavor said at some point that some sort of teleportation would be in the game. I'm sure that anyone who has played Portal can think of a few interesting things to do with a portal generator and a nanolathe, or a gun.

In fact I could see an entire interplanetary econ system based on the idea. Each builder only has access to the resources available on the planet it is currently sitting on. But if you fire the nanolathe though a portal you can project that builder's build capacity and resources to another location off world. That way each planet is still its own economy but you can still use resources from one planet to assist another.

You could even make nanolathe relay stations to increase the range that you could project the nanolathe stream past the portal exit point. This would need to be limited in some way to keep engineers from never needing to move but it would also create supply lines that an enemy could attack.

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=45137&p=701691#p701691

That's a Metal Planet / Battle Station. We already have those.