Why upgrades are important

No one agreed with my 1st post, but I'm still going to keep posting feedback because feedback's good

So in the stream from Feb 8th, it was stated that there weren't any plans to have upgrades in PA. I think this is a mistake. Upgrades are a staple of RTS games and I think they all have them for a reason.

For starters, upgrades allow for more strategies. It's not possible to do timing attacks without upgrades. It also forces the player to think about and execute more economic strategies simply because there are more choices on what you can spend resources on. A player can choose to make strong units early game and be forced to use a more tactical approach when engaging in battle, because he'll have less units, or he can try to simply overpower his opponent through number because more resources will have been spent on units. More options are always good.

Second is that upgrades give a sense of progression to the game. They change the dynamics of the match as it goes on. With an upgrade system, unit A could be strong against unit B with no upgrades, but once both are upgraded, B is now strong against A (maybe not in the same way A was strong against B, for example, maybe now B can cloak and A can't detect cloaked units). Once again, this allows for more strategies. Plus a sense of progression is fun. It feels good when you finish +1 attack and now your army has just gotten a lot stronger all at once.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, not having upgrades actually rewards poor players and punishes good players. The better player is going to be the one winning the skirmishes across the war. But his victories mean nothing if that was early game and now it's midgame and his opponent is now building tier 2/2.5 units, which own the tier 1 units that survived the early battles. Those tier 1 units are now useless fodder. Now the playing field is even again because the guy who was winning the skirmishes has to replace his standing army with a new set of units, instead of simply upgrading them to make them a match for his opponents tier 2/2.5 units. Even if he was building up tier 2/2.5 units along with his opponent, the playing field will still end up much more equal that it should be because the tier 1 units aren't going to be of much use.

This does assume that there is a noticeable difference between tiers, and it's been a while since I played Sup Comm and longer since I played TA, but I seem to remember their being a pretty big difference between tiers in those games.

Okey, so your "possible most important" argument is invalid, the assumption is wrong. Heres why:

The current plan for PA (Unless i have missed a update somewhere) is two tech levels, but tech level 2 will not be more powerfull then tech level 1, just specialised (for example amphibious tanks).

So said tech 1 units will be usefull the whole game and wont ever become "useless fodder" and there wont be a big POWER difference between tech levels (While you get more units that you can use, you will still want to continue using the base units as your main army combined with "special" units).

I've honestly never enjoyed upgrades in RTS games.

Firstly when you've got a campaign it's BS that you have to re-research your upgrades for every battle. That whole "a fatal flaw in the research system" from SupCom2 is a massive slapdash copout. That's like Microsoft having a "fatal flaw" in their OS that for the past 10 versions formats your HDD when you shutdown your computer. You've had all this time, and still haven't even come out with a work around?

Secondly, it just doesn't fit with the backstory for PA. "Technology has been captured, assimilated, refined and transformed [...]" The bots have already been at it for the better part of forever. Any upgrades will be something like evolution, taking place over long stretches. You're not going to be on the cusp of an upgrade since it'll just slowly be put out there. The two tiers still make sense because tier 1 is typically quick to build, which is great for an initial insertion. Then once you have a foothold you start bringing out the heavy lifters in the tier 2 list.

1. TA did not have upgrades, and was one of the most inspirational RTS games ever.

2. Building lower tech levels to win early battles is never a waste if you are reclaiming battle wreckage and securing more resource locations.

3. Upgrades complexify an already potentially complex game and are not necessary if there is enough unit diversity.

4. In past games of this caliber (TA, Supcom, FA), only the commander/acu was upgradable for the most part. So units in general were not and did not need to be!

When you say upgrades, are you thinking in terms of Starcraft style upgrades? Where'as 30-40% of the power of a unit is not unlocked until specific milestones have been met?

I'm on the fence about this, I don't really see it as being important for gameplay. However Perhaps Unit Veterancy could play a factor. The more combat time a unit see's the stronger it gets to a point.

I don't see campaigns as being relevant to the discussion. Not all RTS campaigns reset you each mission either. There isn't even a plan for PA to have a single player campaign at the moment. It's currently a "nice to have".

I think it works fine. Time can still be considered as passing while battling it out and tech improves over time.

Another way to look at it is, that when the factory is 1st built, it's operating at a minimum level to get some units out. Upgrades are improvements made to the factory that allow for a better quality unit to be produced. Otherwise, why even have tiers? Why have different type of units? Why not 1 single ultimate unit that does everything and we only mass that up? Why not? Because that would be boring.

There were definitely upgrades in TA. They were just limited to the commander and buildings IIRC. If those are upgradable, I don't see why units shouldn't be.

But if you win an early battle, you'll have less waste to reclaim. The waste may even be closer to your opponent, giving your opponent the advantage. Plus, there's still a question as to how useful T1 will be vs T2.

Yes, that's the point. It's better for a multiplayer focused game to have depth so people will continue to play it. We're also currently only at potentially complex. The core game is currently quite simple. The only real added complexity that PA has (gameplay wise) is the multiplanet managing. The only RTS I've played that has something similar is Metal Fatigue. So it is a pretty immature concept and it will be interesting to see how it ends up working in PA.

Yes, I was mainly thinking of Starcraft style upgrades. But veterancy would be an awesome compromise because I love when RTS's have that. It would also fit well with PA's gameplay since not all attacks are guaranteed to hit. A higher veteran unit could have better accuracy (and armor and attack *wishful thinking, but Warzone 2100 does this*).

I read all this stuff so feel free to advocate. I'm sure there are people out there who will mod in some upgrades.

Supcom has veterancy too, i wouldent mind it included honestly. As long as they dont give it to experimentals in the same way as supcom (Normal units veterancy were okey, but experimentals with their ridicules health regen etc... *facepalm*).

If i remeber correctly PA experimentals "arent supposed to have the same impact on gameplay as Supcom experimentals", my brain interprets this to weaker experimentals and once again if i rember correctly PA will also have "just a few" experimental units. So they may be okey even with veterancy, but if veterancy is inlcuded the devs should take special care so that it dosent go as far as the supcom experimentals veterancy.

I have fond memories of my special ops teams xD (I screened surviving armies for high vet units, gathered them togheter in one "spec ops" army for later use).

A game with half a dozen theaters of battle is anything but simple. The previous titles taught us that screwing up one theater can have a terrible impact across the entire game.

Everything already fights using the pinnacle of technology. Adding additional layers of better technology isn't justified, and the gameplay benefits are dubious at best.

There was only ONE upgrade in the entirety of TA. It was the radar targeting system that let units fire on radar blips. Everything else was accomplished through a new and different unit, or by turning preexisting abilities on/off.

Anything else you saw, was the result of a dozen years of modding.

Don't do this. You can not armchair general a game that is not available to even the secret backer club.

So far, the only unit interactions we know of are a governing set of philosophies and ideologies. There's still a whole lot of unknowns that can happen.

A game of this scale has upgrades in the form of diffrent factorys and the like, so insted of upgrading tanks to use a new turret, just build tanks with the better turret.

And managment of upgrades like mex's in a game like this would make me want to pull my hair out.

"we are already ususng the best of the best, why would you yse somthing that is not the best?"

Everything before this line, good valid opinion/input/etc, but this line:

Becuse theres no such thing as something thats "the best" in every kind of situation. Kinda the same reason we dont have just one type of UBER unit instead of a army of different unit types.

There will be however be a range of units that will be.

So why upgrade a unit to fill a role that can be coverd in another unit type.

Overall the army you get is the best at everything as an army, so upgrading would indicate that you are not using the best and have to upgrade to it.
And that is not what the game is going for, so making upgrades redundant.

Wait, your forgetting cost and technological limitations, the "best" config may be a cheaper weaker unit that upgrades. You dont just smack the best armor onto a unit, you do whats cost effective, thats the "best of the best".

So lets say that one of these robots a couple of 100 years into the past discovered that his overall performance in war was increased by using standard units that then upgrade instead of building said units with a upgrade at the start (maybe he got his factory and first units out a couple of second or two earlier becuse of it or simular, but he still needs the "upgrade" later on). The result being that a upgrade system would be "the best of the best" and "ultimate perfect technology".


I dont want upgrades either, but i just hade to argue against that line, its not a good argument.

What does no upgrades mean? :OP
Every abilities of units unlocked at the beginning? and no research at all? :O

I realy do think that Upgrades/Researches are Important....
For example: a siege unit, that does good dps, but need a research to get its high range; at the beginning it will just add some firepower to your army but can be sniped easy, later it is strong support fire, but the enemy has time to build an responce for it.
a cloaked unit with VERY high damage but less life, to prevent overpowered rushes with theese research is needed for cloak, they are still go tho vs undefended bases.
Mana upgrade, very powerful caster, but wait time b4 spell can be casted(high mana cost), either thro collecting mana or research mana upgrade.
It will give the Player much more options about his playstyle.
ON the other hand it shouldnt be to much/to complicated, i would like to have the upgrades done in buildings/no extra menu.

I'd say given the scale of the game, unit upgrades are going to be pretty pointless, we just don't need them...

Want to get to the next fighting level? Build a tier 2 factory, get the construction vehicle, build a tier 3 factory.
Want to see further? Build a tier 2 radar station.
Rinse and repeat.

I played TA & Supreme Commander, and loved it, logged hundreds of hours across them both.
I played Supreme Commander 2, and went straight for an uninstall & sold it, it felt crippled.

However, that being said - certain units could perhaps get a veterancy bonus - TA/SC always kept a kill-count so it'd be nice to see that huge battle robot you've been dragging across a couple of worlds gain something along the way, without necessarily having to build a load of otherwise pointless "research bases" or whatever. Might also add a bit of dynamic to the play, get people to care a little more about those key units and amend their tactics to protect them more.

But that's a problem. If I have 500 tanks that I've kept alive, when I get T2 and can build better tanks, all of the resources from the 500 tanks are instantly wasted. My opponent has essentially caught up 500 tanks worth of resources because now I have to spend time and resources building 500 new T2 tanks instead of doing a mass upgrade.

Post 6 already covered that.

Why did everone ignore my post? (Post number 2 in this thread)

As said, the current plan is "t2 isent a more powerfull version of t1, t2 is specialised units". So you will ALLWAYS use tier 1 units in PA, from early game to end game.

Agreed, the same was true for TA, you'd still be spamming a tier3 opponent with tier1 units, because they'd be doing exactly the same to you!

The players who went for an all tier2/tier3 strike force got owned by swarms of peewees they simply couldn't waste fast enough.

You could always reclaim the tanks and get your money back, not that it would be wasted money anyway as a good fodder of tanks is always a good thing to have.

And resources arn't going to run out either, so really the money is worther even less then in other games.