Comments on: More tech 3 land units

By: BLITZ_Molloy

BLITZ_Molloy — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 23:29:26 +0000

They should have just done like TA and had two tech levels. Balancing four is difficult. Either you have people skipping levels, or you end up with slow gameplay that drags the matches out for hours.

Frankly I think the frantic teching in this game is quite hard to get your head around. The economy management is much more complicated than TA, which wasn’t a cake walk by any means.

By: Ryuken

Ryuken — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:05:20 +0000

The campaign is more like a (slow) easy puzzle each time you play it.

About T3: nerf it like hell is all I can say, and provide different unit roles than in Tier 2. No RTS remains interesting if so many “lower-tech” units are made obsolete that fast/easy.

By: Daniel Rutter

Daniel Rutter — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:37:58 +0000

> The campaign mode teaches new units slowly but surely

The campaign mode teaches SupCom like your drunk uncle teaches driving.

I’d been playing campaign for a week, then had a few 3-way games with friends that I usually used to beat in TA, and they stomped me like a flaming bag of poo. I’m pretty sure campaign made me dumber :-).

By: yacoub

yacoub — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:23:40 +0000

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?p=68656 :)

By: Jester

Jester — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 10:19:58 +0000

I agree. There should be a risk involved with skipping T2 entirely. Or at least more risk than there is now. As for T3 variety, I think that will be fixed in time.

By: Cyde Weys

Cyde Weys — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 05:54:56 +0000

You’re only overwhelmed by the stuff on offer if you start with skirmish and multiplayer right away. But that’s like trying to learn to swim by jumping into the deep end of the pool. The campaign mode teaches new units slowly but surely, starting off with only power generators and ending up with the full arsenal. I wouldn’t want to reduce or limit unit variety merely because newbies might get confused, especially because the units are already introduced in the campaign. That’d be like removing all of the controls in a car except for the two pedals and the steering wheel because a first-time driver might get confused.

By: Daniel Rutter

Daniel Rutter — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 05:49:07 +0000

They’ve promised us downloadable units at some indistinct point in the future, which will presumably fill out the roster in much the same entertainingly random way as they did for TA.

In the meantime, I don’t think it’s a big problem. I think it also makes the game more approachable. When I first started playing SupCom I was somewhat overwhelmed by the variety of stuff on offer, even considering sensible rationalisations relative to TA, like the deletion of sea and air engineers.

Add another 15 units and the new-user experience will not improve :-).

By: Cyde Weys

Cyde Weys — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:40:38 +0000

The problem is that the economy curve isn’t laid out well. Going to T3 from T2 isn’t significantly more expensive than going from T1 to T2. Thus, the variety of units is irrelevant; T2 is always going to be skipped. If T3 was significantly more expensive, it would create a middle game where T2 units were used extensively. As an example, think of the game Empire Earth. There’s 14 different ages, all the way from Stone Age up through Future Age. However, they’re well spaced out, so that you can’t go from Stone to Future quickly and never need any of the units inbetween. All of the units from every stage are pretty much needed because the stages last long enough.

So the real problem is that T2 doesn’t last long enough. It doesn’t have anything to do with the variety of units. And I don’t think that the variety of units at T3 should be gimped just so that T2 units get some play. That’s unfair to T3. T3 should have a wide variety of useful units just like all of the other tiers. Of course T3 units are going to be better; it’s a higher tech level and the units are more expensive.

By: T2A`

T2A` — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 03:42:13 +0000

You’re missing my point. If you add variety to T3, T2 still won’t matter.

Think about it. Why have T2 at all? It’s got to be there for a reason, right? Just because it’s currently skipped by most players doesn’t mean it was meant to be skipped. Indeed, why would GPG waste their time designing all those T2 units if they wanted T3 to eclipse them completely? T3 doesn’t have variety because T2 does.

You can add all the variety in the world to T3, but you can’t simply make them more powerful versions of what’s there for T2. If that were done, they might as well just get rid of T2 altogether – just have the factories go from T1 to T3 and delete all the T2 units from the game.

I understand that you want T3 to have more variety, but what I’m saying is that just because your factory is at T3 doesn’t mean it should be producing all T3 units. However, this is how the game is played right now because T3 bots are too good. If GPG makes them less good, T2 units come into play, and then the game has plenty of variety with no need for extra T3 units.

Either way, you end up with the same variety. If siege bots become less good, T2 gets used. Variety. If you add T2-style units to T3, the new T3 units get used. Variety. The latter, however, makes T2 completely pointless, even less so than it is now. At least now you potentially have some use for T2 mobile AA and stealth/shield gens. Your wish for new T3 units would make it such that no T2 units would be used. Ever.

By: Cyde Weys

Cyde Weys — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 02:54:56 +0000

I don’t agree with the argument that T3 doesn’t deserve variety because T2 has it. T2 is merely a stepping-stone that is skipped within minutes. Its variety largely doesn’t matter. The lack of variety in T3, on the other hand, does.