I don't have the knowledge base to even guess at TA's WHY. Did Chris Taylor say that about TA or SupCom or what?
TA was, as far as I'm concerned, an accident. Units really didn't have much purpose and there's good reason why only about a third of the units in TA are useful. There might have been some vague semblance of an overall plan but it clearly didn't have much depth, otherwise TA would have had a lot more viable units. We really are lucky that TA's design was good enough that it had some basic/advanced balance at all.
I only read the first page but I just want to say I agree. Why is of paramount importance with respect to a goal, while how is equally important with respect to achieving it. Personally, I don't even bother trying to sell people on my vision(s) for the game because no one ever agrees with me ever as far as I can tell (in any context) I make my mods to play by myself. I have exactly zero interest in junk measuring competitive play. I will play co-op 5% of the time and single play 95% of the time. And in those contexts what annoys me the most is balance itself. This attempt to turn the game into paper rock scissors just annoys me. Especially when it's implemented via invisible walls and arbitrary values with little to no story or physical justification. I essentially want a context simulator to dump my decisions in and see what happens knowing anything COULD happen, as opposed to dumping decisions on what is essentially a lock until I give the correct answers opening said lock. That's why I made the mods I did. To create a back story, improve fun, tear down arbitrary balance walls. That way when I lose, I don't feel like I've been cheated and when I win I feel like my plans were valid. My core point here is I'm glad someone is asking why balance at all. Lack of rigid balance and ways to avoid micro are my main sources of enjoyment in this RTT (it's real time tactics not strategy, this isn't civ) over the others. (I'm 35, I've been into rts since dune 2.) I loved TA and FAF but I deeply hated the arbitrary balance and the on-rails single player experience. Balance to me is another kind of rail. It forces you to play like star craft. APM and excessive micro; which I can clearly see in the competitive replays. The truly unique thing about this game is the GW mode. That needs to be expanded and there needs to be an RPG element involved. That's why I made my loadout mod, because I so badly want to built a character. Anyway, like I said. Glad someone is asking why. And I for one wouldn't mind sacrificing balance to the fun gods faster than an Aztec POW. (I could ramble about this topic for hours.) See my blog post for more rambling loosely related, about the point (why) of games. And mods. http://underlore.com/its-not-just-a-game/
Couldn't agree more. Some more features, stats, goals, stuff to make it a more cohesive experience, would be nice. People like things like that. 1v1 is ok, t2 is still a little too expensive and t1 air is apparently a bit dominant, so could stand to be more expensive just like you say. Not sure about reworking multi planet, why do you say that?
I want you to imagine a typical multi-planet scenario: There's the home planet, let's call it Prime, that everyone spawns on. Then there are two moons with substantially less metal that orbit this planet. Once the battle for each planetoid is decided, the battle moves into the orbital layer.....or does it? Because it doesn't. Once someone spams Umbrellas over a wide area of the planet, landing any sort of invasion in the orbital layer is much more time consuming and resource intensive than building a nuclear weapon and obliterating the enemy base. The balance for orbital has zero diversity and little variety. Battles for the gas giants are usually decided by whoever can spam the most avengers around the planet - and whoever can keep their Jigs alive the longest. SXX are dominated by Umbrellas. Case in point: http://www.twitch.tv/mered4/b/664766853 starting at 57:15. That guy dropped around 20 SXX at my base - and they all got demolished. I built four umbrellas. FOUR. He eventually nuked me - which shouldn't be the first option for orbital warfare at any point. Also, orbital fights tend to behave like duels between T-Rex - both sides just butt their heads together and wave their arms uselessly until someone gets tired. That's not fun or interesting after the first experience.
It's funny how much of this particular thread has turned into a discussion of the minutia of balance tweaking, and almost no discussion whatever of larger vision, despite vision being the point of the thread. For example, when I said I wanted to add an rpg element to gw, I wasn't simply saying because it would be fun. I'm saying it makes tons of sense given a couple factors. Each of the planets in GW has history in the flavor text. The commander models are obviously reflections of personality, and they exist in-game though I agree they should remain totally cosmetic. This is also an unofficial sequel to TA, and in TA the first thing you hear is: "What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine..." So even if these things are all Core bot leftovers, with Arm clones long rotted away, or clones in cryo pods, or whatever, they should all be living sentient (if single minded/psychotic) people. Also the loadouts are already essentially set up as character builds. My point is that you guys are still going down the rabbit hole of editing balance to manipulate game play as opposed to sharing what you'd like your over-all vision to be. If the goal is balance in itself, like real time chess on a sphere, cool cool, or if the goal is realism/sim, ok, of if the goal is to do away with micro almost completely, fine, or if the goal is to emphasize micro, also fine. So what I'm saying is, you guys are proving OP's point. You're essentially missing the forest for the trees. Personally fwiw I want this game to be totally logically consistent with respect to balance. I want everything to make sense even on close inspection. I want no idiot balls tossed around, no arbitrary lost technologies, and I want decent gameplay or story explanations for everything. That is the goal of my mod. (Which I never expect to be popular.) The first question was why can't fighter aircraft aim missiles at stationary ground targets? "Because balance" is the official/community answer presumably. Well, my vision rejects that argument essentially "because physics." Physical consistency and common sense design choices of war (such as why no cruise missiles) trump balance. War is essentially a contest of technologies. Physical realities: bullets, beans, bandages. They didn't reject technologies or tactics because they would be unfair or boring. War is hell. I intend to address other changes in line with this overall vision later. For example, the vast majority of units should have some critical supplies baked in (such as self repair) and various parts should have consistent functions. E.g. Every nanolathe in the game should logically be able to build everything else. Every planet needs to be movable, even if it takes 50 engines. Etc. Balance isn't the point for me. Railing future game play isn't among my goals. Whether you think that sounds cool or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is I have my "why" down. And you guys for the most part don't seem to be thinking about your whys. I essentially want the game to be a hard science fiction event and see where that leads, as opposed to a fast and loose balance focused space opera. Less George Lucas, more Arthur Clarke. (If you prefer the opposite, perfectly fine.) I'm essentially picturing in my head PA as this statement plus a couple billion years: “They could be shown the mastery of their minds and bodies, so that they could achieve the full expression of their powers, not spend their lives like ineffectual ghosts trapped in a marvelous machine beyond their skill to operate. They could break the domination of pain, so that it became a sentinel and not a tyrant, sending messages which the rational mind could accept or ignore as it pleased. Above all, they could choose to die only when they wished; they would be shown the many paths that led beyond the grave, and the price that must be paid for immortality in all its forms. A vista of infinite time would open up before them, with all its terror and promise. Some minds could face this, some could not; here was the dividing line between those who would inherit the universe, and those who were only quick-witted animals.” ~A. Clarke (via alien character) Thanks for reading to the end (And putting up with 11 uses of the word "essentially" /sigh I'm trying to get better about that.)
Why Why? I had a conference about this "why thing" a few months ago at my job. I guess it's trendy now... Why a game? To make people have fun. Why balance? to make the game fun. Why not a futuristic airplane that moves at match 10 and shoots everywhere? -> because that would be the only unit needed to win. -> A game where you just build 1 unit type is not fun OR a game where players don't try to win is not fun
"Why a game? To make people have fun. Why balance? to make the game fun." That's a meaningless sentence because fun means whatever you want it to mean. "Why not a futuristic airplane that moves at match 10 and shoots everywhere?" If we have the tech to build that we have the tech to counter it, or the tech to prevent you from building it. A better answer would be if you could violate the laws of physics in the ways required to make an airplane with it why would you make an air plane with it? And the game has a planet killer. The answer to why not, is essentially too slow or too expensive or otherwise not suited. The why not is also story. If such a unit were possible this universe would no longer have war at all. Your example is only absurd because you're forcing it out of context as a condition of the hypothetical. "a game where players don't try to win is not fun" My fun is not created like your fun. I generally have no interest in other players at all, and frankly I'm pretty damn sure the majority of PA players play solo or co-op vs AI, which is in spirit very different from the apm micro twitch rank chase that is "competitive" play. People that prefer that style of game are typically playing COD or the more cookie cutter RTT games. Yeah there are a few in the PA world, but like the OP said. I don't think we should just assume catering to them is a good idea for this game and this community. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't and we should work out how we determine that and how to proceed based on either finding. Assuming you want this game to stand the test of time.
I mostly play 1v1 and FFA on single planets, but this all more or less makes sense - I konw that nukes are basically the go-to-thing for end-game stalemates. Just send a radar or three for scouting, locate comm, nuke nuke nuke. Orbital definitely could do with some balance work I guess, to make it more fun, and to give players options. But anti nukes are cheaper than nukes, right? So if you're getting nuked, is that not your fault...?
bsergent, The first question was why can't fighter aircraft aim missiles at stationary ground targets? "Because balance"is the official/community answer presumably. And now you say that you would balance the fighter: "If we have the tech to build that we have the tech to counter it, or the tech to prevent you from building it" How does my plane violate the laws of physics? and how does my plane violate the laws of physics more than any other feature on this game? Fun means something very specific achievable in many different ways. I understood the main desing decisions of the game by watching the kickstarter video a a pair of gameplays and I personally found them fun.
"How does my plane violate the laws of physics?" You tell me. It's your hypothetical. If it does violate them then so can I presumably to counter it or are you making it a win button as a condition of the hypothetical. Point is, a win button isn't realistic. It's not in keeping with my goal/vision/why of cross referenced physical/logical/historic consistency. I assume there is physical reason for the continuation of the war in it's current form. It's balanced only incidentally, retconned if needed by changes to reflect that. Your super jet is a win button. And like I said before if any such instant win were possible there would be no war and thus no PA universe to begin with. Yes you can have a universe that exists only to serve the metagoal, that is internally inconsistent or absurd, (like plants vs zombies for example) but I reject that because of my own definition of enjoyment. In this universe war is axiomatic. In fact it's the purpose of it's existence. So doing anything, storywise, to make that the case is fair play. That's what OP was talking about when he said a solid why shortcuts complaint. The Why trumps everything. It guides all the other decisions. He's saying uber seems to have no such why, and I agree. I see little evidence of one other than the meta goal of making a "fun" game that pleases current owners and encourages future buyers. I believe OP is saying that choosing a goal will make their efforts towards the meta-goal much simpler. I agree on that as well.
Fun is the most generic goal in the history of gaming. Fun for whom? Fun how? Fun WHEN? It's a worthy goal, but it's so generic that it cannot be relied upon to guide the balance. Instead, we need to look into the future and ask what we want the balance to look like IN THE END. Not next week's patch that *fixes everything* like clopse and a couple other folks are speaking of. Take a step back from the current iteration and think about what the gameplay should look like. Do you want a balance based around strategic, long term goals ("that Halley moon is a strategic point - we need to hold it or we'll be in a lot of trouble later on.") or tactical dodges ("Oh! Someone took the Halley moon! Let's find their offworld commander and murder him before he finishes those halleys.")? There are tons of other questions the balance team should be asking, and they've got more expertise in this than us. So I'll leave that to them
