Station stuff

[thexenomorphian]

ive realised that i have been ignoring the other important aspect of the game the stations any new robots like a z12 or something

[thexenomorphian]

or any other ground unit actually

[Quartz]

or anything rlly

[thexenomorphian]

yeah anything station related

[I Darkstar X]

Aug 23, 2018 5:40:06 GMT thexenomorphian said:

yeah anything station related

I mean we have already seen the existence of Mechanoids, and I assume that the robots you can build would have armor upgrades, but aside from that not much. I know some people could be asking for a spider robot thing, but I imagine that any other unit is either highly game-changing and therefore being kept a secret, or simply does not exist.

In a game like this where two humans (can be) pitted against each other, balance is important. Take other successful games with a great number of different "units" and "weapons" and suchlike, such as Team Fortress 2, or Overwatch. (which are not RTSs I know, but EA2 is half FPS, and the same values matter, if not even more so due to the scale of RTSs) Those games are still being finely tuned and balanced today because of how players are: we look for the best way to do something, and sometimes, that best way is a bit too effective to be fair, and/or cannot really be stopped without extensive forewarning, and even then its tough.

As a specific example, take TF2's Pyro's Axtinguisher item. It used to be able to deal critical damage (which I believe is triple base damage?) against burning targets. but now it only deals mini-crits (50% bonus damage I think) to burning targets. Why? Because of what I said above, it was far too effective. The Pyro class is already very close to enemies, less than a second of holding a movement key out of melee range. It was a death sentence for a Pyro to get close to you in TF2's early days before the nerf, because this Axtingusher did so much damage and reliably so. It was the best method, so players used it almost exclusively, which was not fair to the other players, and to the other melee weapons who were so outclassed.

To bring the topic home, yes, EA2 and TF2 are completely different games. But the art of balancing game weapons and strategies is core. In an RTS game, you don't control what just one fighter has equipped or what they are, you control tens of units, multiplying even the smallest advantage. Adding in an entirely new unit into the mix, especially this far into development, would require checking for every possible unfair combination and too-effective strategy. Extremely time-consuming, and an undertaking that would require a great amount of effort.

So having just upgradeable Z11s and the Mechanoids is just fine with me. The game will be very fun with just these two, in my opinion.

[thexenomorphian]

Executive assault was basically the greatest game ever you could upgrade each individual unit and customize its weapons mainly due add more fun to the fps concept but it still played like a normal rts you had different units with different stats even if you picked the same weapon the other vehicle might do less or more damage with it whenever i played i had an army consisting of a11 a12 light and heavy invigilator walkers hornet attack fighters heavy bombers and a gigantilator  my brother also had a wide and diverse army and good defences and a lot of the time my entire army would only be a quarter of what it began it's assault with

to basically sum up what i am saying unit variety is a staple of rts games and customization dosen't really matter as all you do is change the units stats a bit also i like bringing up tf2 as an example but i was asking if there were any units rob didn't mention because not a lot of people asked about anything station unit related other than the mechanoid (means any unit in the game that he did not mention)



              also there is no armour upgrades there is only shield look closely in gameplay footage and instead of robot type(the body) they say armour

[thexenomorphian]

the entire armour thing bugged me in the first game cause it also said vehicles hull's were armour

[Rob]

In terms of station units, currently the game has:
Z11 bot - customisable standard robot which can use most researched weapons in the game.
Mechanoid - Much larger customisable robot which is armed with twin weapons and much more armour.
Exectron/CEO - Executives which run everything armed with a type 2 laser.
Teletrons - Mobile teleportation points which need to be deployed in order to operate.
Infestors - Slug creatures which can fall off trading ships and cause havoc and multiply on the station if not dealt with.

Internal turrets - Used to defend the inside of the station and can also be manually operated.
Doors - Doors can be set to open, closed or locked. Doors are prised/hacked open.
Forcefields - Currently impossible to get though and only surround the bridge, the field generators need to be destroyed to disable them.

Obviously more things can be added/changed when needed.

Hope that helps.

Cheers
Rob

[thexenomorphian]

thanks for the update