Why don't we start directly in T2?

I'm watching the experimental LiveStream, where balancing is torn apart in the effort to fix it and improve it. And eventually find some more enjoyable ways to play the game. You can call those attempts experimental as you want, but there should be a logic behind them.

And I'm having a strange feeling about it. It seems that T1 is becoming more and more just a way to slow down the pace of the game, adding an unnecessary step. The real gameplay starts in T2 (it wasn't that way a month ago).

In fact, could someone tell me what's the point in having to build a T1 factory, so that you can build three or four fabbers, so that you can build finally a T2 factory? I'm still missing the point. Should we get rid of T1?

T2 is still a mere direct upgrade of T1 and players are forced to do the upgrade as soon as possible. And that's the only way to compete on a planet that's not ridiculously tiny.

So, why not to start in T2 and get rid of T1 altogether? What's T1 in game for?

And this is what myself and the other good/great/amazing players have been saying the entire time.

Invalidating T1 literally INVALIDATES IT. This removes depth from the game and a valuable asset - early game excitement. Current games don't have anything beyond light skirmishes until one side gets t2. This is kind of disappointing, honestly.

Uber were so adamant on the fact that T2 would be units with more specialised roles rather than just better T1 units during alpha and early beta.

But as time has gone by that has become further and further from the truth, and it seems increasingly unlikely that this will happen.

Very disappointing, better unit progression was the one thing I really wanted from supcom and it looks like we won't be getting it here either.

Yea I feel the same here. Just posted about this in the T2 balance thread too.

You don't even need to be a top-tier player, or even very good at all at the game to understand this; it's really just very basic game design theory.

PA doesn't have a large total of unit types to play with then you should attempt to have as many qualitatively different roles and types as possible. Having upgrade units (just quantitative differences) is a complete waste of design space.

I think t1 "phase" of the game is to allow strategy development.

if you make t2 weaker, it'll be impossible to kill the commander via ground and will lead to even more nuke spam

if t1 is stronger, how to prevent early raids & rushes?

i don't have the answers, I'm just lobbing grenades.

How could Peewees kill a Commander in TA, and yet Commanders in TA are perfectly capable of defending those rushes?

I think its good the way it is, but still balancing is still needed.
some units are overpowered: like the vengard
and others are underpowered.

How about we just see, because its still very much in the limbo stage.

Obviously, there has to be a purpose of t1. There has to be some setup or risk stage involved in the t1 stage, that wins or loses games.

Currently, technically, there is. It is about t2, but getting it faster is one thing, and scale of production of t2 is another thing. Well, if you spread out getting more spots in the very early stages, you have more metal in t2 stage. If you get t2 earlier, you get t2 multiplied economy earlier. There is a balance point between there where you get more economy than the other guy. That is still t1 as we know it.

I would like t1 combat and aggression to come back. However, it's one of those loaded arguements to ask why not start at t2. Similar question: If political leaders are capable of being corrupt, why don't we just govern ourselves? Stupid concept, we can't even get along with ourselves let alone each other, government is about a collective of people which wouldn't always cooperate without the threat of a police officer to beat them up.

why we dont start with t2? ...
let me answer that question with a question
do we want to be able building nukelaunchers right from the start?
having everything ready from the start has its own pros and cons imo ... from which the cons may outweight the pros that i dont think we (i personaly surely) dont want ...
considering the current state of the game having everything from the start may give you a whole bunch of options which would be the main pro of it but it would like immidiately invalidate other units ... like say if you have access to peregrines why would you ever build hummingbuirds at all ,why ants when levelers and vanguards ... this limits the ammount of unitroles to matter .... in other words you would have to redesign the roster around the idea ... but you still wouldnt realy want your players to have the most powerfull weopons on the board from minute one .... some sort of progession needs to be there to not make the game monotone in some way be it economical progression in gaining resources or technological progression in building specific techunits or structures ...

is this rhetorical? I have no idea what you're talking about. Your cute answer-question-with-question here fails on your assumption that everyone is familiar with TA. Elaboration would be appreciated.

Want to stop base rush? simple, Commanders had to arrive to the planet in something. Have all starting points spawn a "Drop pod" that deploys to release the commander, but also comes packing a few turrets and AA.

Early base Rushing just got really hard

Ok, in TA, basic units are competitive and viable all the way through the game. A Commander can defend himself... but it's likelihood of surviving depends on if it's got its D-Gun up and running, where it can run away to and if it's going to get support from other forces or defenses.

It's granular. The Commander doesn't automatically win against basic units and basic units don't automatically win against Commanders.

Same goes for T2. That was what was so important about the D-Gun, the cloak and how fragile the Commander was at ALL times.

T2 wasn't omgwtfbbq better than T1 in TA; mostly they were specialists. the power-gap between them was small, thus the Commander was threatened at all times by all units.

I would suggest, as some intermediary measure, to drastically increase the cost and effectiveness per unit at T1, so as to open up a large spot for T2 units to become specialized and not simply replacements, as currently, T1 units are simply inadequate against pelters, turrets, and commander. too hard to overwhelm.

I can understand your confusion if you've not played TA or Spring (btw I'd highly recommend you check Spring RTS out- it's not as flashy as PA but its free with some very mature game play, however I digress)...

The key thing in TA was that the commander was kind of all powerful yet also vulnerable. It was quite a bit of clever game design imo.

The 'Peewee' was a T1 bot similar to a dox. If you caught an enemy commander off guard (and *critically* without much power) you could micro about 5 of them and kill it. However if the commander had sufficient energy it could use its 'D-Gun' to destroy them in a single shot (a bit like the Uber Cannon- however the D-Gun could 1 shot kill *anything* in the game, it was however very short ranged).

The TA com also had other abilities no other unit had- such as capture and most importantly cloak. If you built an early e storage you could even cloak for a few seconds in early game (and a few seconds was often enough to save you from a rush, or get into that perfect position to D-Gun something important). It also meant the commanders capabilities grew with your economy so by late game you could use him as a stealth ninja to kill very large heavy units (provided you had radar jammers and the unit wasn't too well supported)... To be honest given the PA com has a fairly decent Uber cannon now- I don't see a problem with him being a bit more vulnerable like in TA as he can kill most land units quite easily.

It could be different game modes. I suggest a "minimalist pa" where commander is nerfed with only t1 units and factories available.

As a side note- I think the *only* land unit that feels correct in terms of survivability is the Vanguard. They can actually take a bit of punishment unlike anything else. I really think that all the other units need at least a 2x health boost (I think the vanguard can stay as it is though) so they can stand up to some punishment and battles will last a bit longer.

At the moment the T1 tank only needs to get the suggestion that something might shoot at it and it disintegrates itself. In TA that was about the strength of a scout, everything else lasted *allot* longer and was proportionally stronger compared to turrets. I think if everything had double the HP then turrets / walls would be about right (as in if you have 100 tanks and your opponent has 4 twin laser towers behind a wall, the tanks actually have a chance?!).

Edit: I actually don't mind the game play in the current built that much- I just feel it lacks something and allot of that is to do with how quick the battles are. If T1 units in particular were that bit stronger you'd have allot more room for micro and battles. In TA it was common to have groups of T1 units flanking each other along the front lines, going in then retreating and lasting a few minutes, they were fun exchanges! In PA, the only units I've found that I can use like that are the Gil E, where basically I can kite a blob of t2 tanks, whilst sending in cannon fodder and keep them at range.

It has been said there will be plenty of options (no nukes, no T2, no orbital, no air, etc.) in the game lobby to accommodate all sorts of variants. So there's no need to make a specific gamemode for it.

I think Uber should wholeheartedly embrace the T2 = Speciallized units concept.

Off the top of my Head

T2 Bots - Designed to enhance armies
Combat Fabber
Sniper
Stunner - some kind of small unit suppressor that slows them down and ruins there firing rate.

T2 Vehicles - Designed to act as siege fortifications.
Mobile Field Artillery - One that needs to stop to fire perhaps takes 20 seconds to transition between modes.
Stealth Generator - Hides nearby units
Radar Scrambler - Creates false positive radar blips
Mobile Anti-Artillery - Once stopped and enabled can shoot down incoming shells.

T2 Airships
Air Radar - Equivalent of awacs
Transport -
Radar Scrambler - False air blips
Stealth generator - hides nearby air units
Drone - Cheap air unit that has no offensive capabilities but acts as a target to flood an enemies air defenses.

I think that T1 units should always had edge in numbers over someone who will focus on T2 as T2 units are much more expensive to build.
Other idea would be ability to upgrade T1 factories later on for increased production capacity, so you could build units much faster (or 2 units in parallel) but at smaller efficiency... I don't know, I'm not huge fan of covering half the planet with factories ,meh.