Idea for Experimentals!!!

I know how to implement experimentals without making experimental only (rush) game.

Make very small unplayable alien faction that would have only for example 3 units and at most 2 builidings in its entire faction. No one can play as alien faction. These buildings would be capturable and not buildable alien factories that could repair themselves slowly and build extremely powerful and very well armored experimentals also very slowly. Such factories should be very well armored, slowly self repairable, and not buildable. Player who attaches first power generator to it gets the alien experimental factory.

These experimentals should be very very powerfull and very hard to kill and to be able kill many strong units very quickly (it should take 2 minutes for 300 strong units to kill it, and during that time it should take out 400 strong enemy units). It should move slowly and repair itself slowly. It should be mobile toughly armored land experimental with epic fire power (300 strong units to kill it in 2 minutes, during that time it should kill 400 strong units) that can also travel underwater (bottom) and it should have torpedoes, some strong cannons and AA weapons and should be best against everything (buildings, defenses, land, air and sea).

There should similar air experimental unit that could move very slowly between planets by predefined orbit. This unit should be able to carry that land experimental and commander at once or many land units, and be able to attack from air. It should be extremely good against everything and very well armored. If it carries that land experimental, that land experimental should shoot when carried so firepower gets doubled (because fire would come from both experimentals i.e. tough powerful air carrier and carried land experimental)

There could be one weaker naval experimental.

My point is that experimentals would be worth having but there wouldn't be experimental rush because experimental factories wouldn't be buildable. A planet could have for example only 0, 1 or 2 or 3 such factories. These factories should be well hidden, and they should be defended by players because experimental should build for long time. Players would have a choice if they want to spend time and resources on trying to capture and defend such factory. Once such factory is destroyed it can not be rebuild but it should be decent source of resources after it is destroyed.

A player who has commander in such experimental carrier should be able to fly off his planet and attack the enemy planet even when his base was destroyed by asteroid. That should be possible because of the epic firepower and strength of armor of such carrier. So attacking enemy base with such experimental carrier that has commander in it wouldn’t necessary mean a suicide mission.

Destroyed experimental should provide ample resources.

This idea would give more choices to players: do they want to use asteroids or spend time on capturing alien factory and build in experimental.

Asteroid should be able to kill experimental easily. Asteroids could be used to fight such experimentals, destroy not only bases but remote captured alien factories and even to intercept that interplanetary experimental carrier and kill it before it gets to its target planet.

My point is that experimental would cost time (and maybe plenty of resources) to build, and that alien factory would be so important that it should be worth defending with huge armies once you have it, because experimental should be really strong and powerful and useful unit.

If enemy gets even both factories on the planet it would take long time to build experimental so you can try to destroy the factory by attacking it with your army or by killing owner’s commander. Once commander is killed factory can be recaptured (it doesn’t explode on owners death). You can also try to escape the planet and to throw big enough asteroid on it to kill the factory. This means enemy player doesn’t have only to protect its captured alien (experimental) factory and its commander from your army but also he has to stop you from escaping the planet to protect its factory from asteroid attack. This means it is very nice to have experimental factory and experimentals would really help to win but they wouldn’t guarantee you that you are going to be a winner. Your alien factories, their defenses and experimentals could still be easily killed with asteroid.

I think this idea puts new level of strategy into the game and makes it more hardcore and gives more choices how you want to play by just adding one micro faction you can not select (you can capture its buildings). Take the poll above.

Experimentals change how the game is played. It puts the focus on a single unit and introduces micro.

Not only that, but they're also harder to balance cost for effectiveness. 1000 units all costing 100 metal should be better than 1 unit costing 100000 metal, due to fact that overkill (damage > health) occurs for everyone one of those 1000, whereas only 1 shot at the mega unit will be overkill.

To balance this, they make that 100000 metal 'worth' more, and this is what causes problems.

Wars shouldn't be won by one mega unit (as is the case with experimentals). Like in TA, games were perfectly fine without Krogoths, whereas SupCom wasn't so perfect due to the focus on experimentals.

(^Personal opinion. Some people enjoyed experimental play. I didn't)

I don't think there is anything wrong about winning the war with mega unit if you have to put strategy and effort into obtaining it. Asteroid is a form of mega unit too and everyone seems to love that idea. You can kill entire planet with one asteroid but you need to put effort and thought into it. My idea about experimentals is similar, and my experimentals aren't so nasty as asteroids.

So... you want most games to be a rush to find the experimental structure and march a construction unit over to it to build the quickest, cheapest, power source possible, thus owning it? You want the owner to inevitably dig in his heels to defend it while the other player does everything he can to destroy it? After all, its powerful game-changing units; if it weren't, there would be no point to having them.

It seems more likely that people would rush to acquire it, and if they fail, make a token attack to take it out or take over control. And when that fails, quit the game. Sounds. Fun.

The idea of capturable alien buildings and experimentals seems like an interesting idea for a scenario on a specific map, or an optional game mode. But it's not something that should be on every randomly generated planet in PA, because then the entire game would revolve around capturing the alien experimental, instead of the classic TA-style gameplay seen in the Kickstarter trailer.

I agree with sstagg1 that Experimentals were problematic in SupCom -- but I still liked them. As much as I hated SupCom2, I actually preferred its usage of Exps, by integrating them into a balanced assault force, instead of in SupCom, wherein players could deploy a solo Monkeylord or GC, and steamroll to the enemy base. Because I agree that one mega-unit shouldn't win games.

If there are Experimentals in PA, I think they should Minor Experimentals, like in SupCom2, instead of the near-invincible Experimentals from SupCom.

I think Minor Experimentals will be balanced with asteroid weapons, because in the KS trailer, the asteroid had SEVEN engines to propel the asteroid, which were presumably costly and time-consuming to build. So if a Minor Experimental costs about the same as an asteroid engine, and a half dozen Min-Exps could win a game, that seems balanced.

I will say I will be sad if there is no experimental units or any very expensive end game units. As my whole playstyle for RTSs is build upon in the end being able to mass produce the Frack out of them. But this will lead me to mass producing asteroid missals to launch at all of you. About 100 will do. But yes I would love to see some experimental units but there dont have to be a ton. 2 or 3 would probably do.

So the first to build one wins, as it's more powerful than entire armies and has counters agains everything.

Again, ridiculously OP, first to get one wins, no counters.

No thanks, these are more broken than Vanilla Sup Com's experimentals.

Are you insane?

Experimentals will either be useless or change the focus of the game, balancing that is a nightmare to start with...

no, just no please.

Let me just clarify my post. I dont support the factory option. It should take you 3-5 or more minutes to complete one experimental through engineer or commander building with more units helping with building it could go down but no more than 1min less.

Experimental units should be just that experimental. As with them they are huge and that itself has disadvantages. Slow moving vulnerable to artillery from afar or asteroids/nukes. There is a long list of its disadvantages.

I know when me and my buddies played TA it was a chore to get that experimental to the enemies base or army to do any damage. As soon as anyone of us had one it was down before it got far that was how we played unless they was able to protect it. The resources and time spent into one unit could have built an army but that's what makes them fun to build to me.

An experimental well from what I play for, is a mega unit that IF you can get it within range its devastating BUT getting it their is the strategy the tricky part. They should be tough and awesome but not totally invincible to an army. You would have to backup that unit with additional troops and in the mean time the enemy is getting ready for it.

I trust uber has had experience with them and if they are in-game they will find a creative way to make them fun, something that if the enemy builds you shudder a little bit but you don't just surrender to, and of course Awesome if you build it.

I'm sorry but you're just pulling big numbers out of your *** and saying they would be cool. Total Annihilation and Forged Alliance are useful comparison points for any discussions on this forum, but especially so here. Huge units/weapons get to a point where they are so expensive and powerful that they decide the game one way or the other, and this is contrary to the idea of having epic battles.

The unit you're describing is just a big concentration of health and damage on one unit, in fact the numbers you are talking about far exceed the power of any of SupCom's experimentals. Much more interesting to have the same amount of DPS and health split amongst 500 units.

Any proposed unit should fill a specific purpose, this thread gives some good points to start from.

Whilst I like the idea of capturing an experimental base that may or may not be present on a given map (maybe an option to say yes, no or random), I think that the described unit is far too unbalanced to provide a fun experience like others in this thread have detailed very well. I think that sorynarkayn summarises it well.

I quite liked the role of minor experimental units in SupCom2, despite the myriad other issues the game had. If discovered factories were able to produce something on that scale ( I was thinking like the Cybran's Megalith II ) then they would be more like strategic points to hold on the map rather than an "own it you win the game" points. I also think they should be capturable both ways rather than a perminant ownership.

I am not sure whether this is within the scope of what Uber have planned for the metal planets or whether they will be more akin to capturing death stars but I could see it working well if it were structured in this manner.

You do know that that makes it 43 times tougher than a Galactic Colossus, right? And that's if a "Strong unit" is an Obsidian. If it's a Harbinger, that becomes 130 times tougher than a GC. Of course, offense wise, that puts it only twice as powerful as the Monkeylord. No build time worth bothering with could balance what, still using SupCom comparisons, could take four of the supposedly "Game Ending" Seraphim T4 Nukes to the face and keep going.

Based on you post history sokolek; you want a multi-faction experimental-focused game with a techno soundtrack!
How is it possible for one person to be so out of step. Did you even watch the KS trailer?

Excellent point.

Maybe sokolek should start a Kickstarter for Supreme Commander 3.

The number for the exeriments are ridiculous, but I like the idea of the capturable factory.

I would add an upkeep like -3000 energy and perhaps even metal ( yeah, you need energy to keep alien technology stable ) so once you got one, you better have to use it and you can't stack them.
And make them take damage when stalling. :twisted:

I probably wouldn't be too keen on the idea of experimental producing factories although, having not played any of the SC or TA games, the idea of experimental units does remind me of another RTS game known as KKnD Extreme which had a similar concept in the form of units from technology bunkers.

Essentially these were unique units that had different weapon systems and once they were destroyed they were gone forever.

I like the idea that there could be strategic points that once captured allow the production of special units. Not ridiculously imbalanced ones though as pointed out. Megalith sized experimentals would be fine, or light units with special abilities that normal units don't have, maybe a 'blink' style teleportation, or constructors that can build a special defense turret.

Whatever such a strategic point allowed to be built should only be slightly more powerful than standard units.

the thing with the asteroid is that its a one time use, i assume its going to cost a **** load of resources, and not only that, you screw yourself over in the process by destroying a good chunk of your own base and units that was on that planet.

I want to give more possibilities. You don't need to capture experimental factory. You can get out to the orbit and asteroid enemy or you can kill enemy with units before he gets experimentals. It is not any worse idea than trying to get to the orbit to asteroid the planet.