HP to DPS Units

I think high HP to DPS units would be great for PA gameplay. There should be a wide variety of units but as a rule of thumb high HP to DPS makes for sturdier units, more forgiving combat and more interesting battles.

In Supreme Commander it sometimes felt like battles were over before they started. That was a result of the way tiers were balanced and also the fragile nature of some units. Supreme Commander was not forgiving. Early tactical blunders could often put you in a hole for the rest of the game. You should be punished for making mistakes but the game should not be decided in the first battle.

A sturdy unit has a lot more room to undo a mistake by retreating than a fragile unit.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

I felt the importance of moving in formation was a great part of supcom. Bullet sponge units would encourage blobbing as having units stray into the line of fire before time would not be a big deal.

I think it would be quite boring.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

It depends what you find interesting, low hp to damage ratios make for very tactical games - like supreme commander. When you're five, four, three or even 1 shotting other units it becomes very tactical in nature: move this bunch of units to this choke, move this bunch of units here to cut off the enemy. Another problem the GPG games had (in which TA was superior) was the adjacency nonsense and micromanagement of economy in general. The focus should be on troop movement and being confident in how and when you engage.

Higher HP to DPS ratios give you battles that cascade - I suppose it can be a matter of preference as units blowing up immediately might be your thing. But if you haven't played a game where units aren't immediately disposable I would encourage it. Battles are much more exciting as you can actively change the outcome of the battle as it becomes more apparent. This is much more difficultt when battles are extremely short but numerous.

edit: I'm not sure what you mean by the importance of moving in formation, naturally this would still be important as you would be better positioned. If a battle lasts longer you can actively pull and push flanks as well as encircle your opponent, formations would be more important in those circumstance.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

The economy is paramount. Without it, you don't have strategy in your strategy game. Additionally I felt adjacancy made base building an interesting puzzle rather than just boring plop down buildings wherever.

The game you are advocating is a very non-strategic tactics game.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

Real time Strategy is not a puzzle genre. Placing buildings intelligently is already enough of a puzzle without nesting extra mechanics in it.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

this

also the terms strategic and tactical are so terribly overused all over this forums :S

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

To be honest, I found that the units in supcom and FA were fairly durable, with low unit counts you resulted in battles that had the "cascade" of back and forth action with a fair amount of micro influencing the outcome. The problem was higher tier units got so much more damage and HP that lower tier units would get obliterated instantly, as the higher tier units were balanced against their own tier, and then negated by further higher tier units that had even more HP/damage that obliterated them. Culminating in gigantic HP pool high damage experimentals that took forever to die unless you fought them with a lot of units that they simply cannot defend themselves against effectively, most of the time being air units.

Beyond that, it was a matter of numbers, once you got enough of something it does not matter how much HP the target has, the critical mass of damage that can be applied to a single target makes that irrelevant.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

Strategy: Your goal and where to apply your resources best to achieve that goal

Tactics: individual battle manuevers and such, choosing which enemies to prioritize, flanking, formations etc.

maneuvering your units is tactics. proper handling of the economy is strategy. adjacency adds additional depth to the strategy aspect

it is for this reason I maintain that supcom is not only the best, it is in fact the only RTS.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

Then you need to reread your definition.

I don't get all the hate other RTS games get on this forum, its like people don't play more then 1 game.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

I suspect the main reason as I said is that they are really tactics games rather than strategy games.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

Under your definition, most RTS are what they are.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

One thing I've always felt highlighted high damage low hp vs low damage high hp was the fact that Sup Com has skirmishes, whereas TA has front lines (and pretty intensely fought over ones, too).

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

I suspect the main reason is, you just haven't played enough games.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

The really fun mechanism in TA were the wreckage.
You could quickly kill units with an unexpected attack in a weak point.
But once the conflict is engaged, wreckage begin to block projectiles and the dps would lower.
It made raiding really fun and at the same time brings more tactics to long time conflict.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

Hence the hate for the widespread mislabelling of real-time tactical games.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

This is the latest discussion about adjacency:http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=40387&start

I'm in the camp that the adjacency bonuses in SupCom only added complexity without giving the player more viable options. Depth is what you should strive for when you increase complexity. Depth gives the player more viable options, more viable strategies or more tactical maneuvers.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

It added the depth of optimizing your base. It gave the considerations you put into placement of structures depth. Rather than just putting anything anywhere willy nilly.

You're right, it didn't add options. It limited them. Sometimes limits are what make a game more fun and challenging, in terms of overcoming those limits. Base layout as I said was an interesting puzzle that took the tedium out of the layout and turned it into an interesting challenge.

I wish people would stop harping on about options as if they're the end all be all of game design.

I will give that some of the bonuses were borderline useless, and the idea of using them as a way to prioritize resources is an interesting and novel perspective. Supcom was hardly perfect and had a lot of balance issues. But the idea was sound.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

... the first time you played. Then it was pretty much the same every single time.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

That can't possibly go over well. If you just throw stuff around willy nilly, even without bonusses, your base will suffer for it.

Re: HP to DPS Ratio

That's because they are. If your game doesn't have options, it's called a movie.