How about not having structures/buildings/defenses/ as part of the unit limit? Eh? I think that'd be off the chain.
Call me Crazy
As a TA player from day one, I've played just about every 3rd party unit out there, and some where very cool, and some looked cool, but played badly, while others where just a different version of the same unit. I have tried making my own, but alas I lack in the skills to do so, and I know it's no easy task, and I solute those of you that have given us these other units, dang good job!
The core of my question (no pun intened) is that I have been toying around with the Idea of a repair pad (simular to the air repair pads) for patrolling land units. I don't know about the rest of you, but I really get annoyed finding my contruction bot or vehicle half way to my enemy's base trying to repair a patrolling land unit and gets blown to you know where!
So I think that would be a really cool building for SP to incorporate into it's advanced build matrix. I have yet to find one for TA, but I haven't used all the addon 3rd party paks, but have read about 95% of them and haven't seen one yet. Probably because you would have to create the AI with instructions to use it, and not many edit the AI for unit behavoir beyond passive and aggressive.
Just an Idea, think it would be pretty awesome to have a reapir pad for land units and perhaps even water units.
Thanks Lionoxx =)
I'll be back!
Lionoxx, cool idea but maybe should have made your own topic.
Back on topic: I think structures like walls or dragon teeth like objects should be omitted from unit count. Anything that can do damage would need to be on the unit count
~~ "The world moves, and ideas that were once good are not always good. In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
total agree on MadBoris! Maybe there shouldn't be a unit limit, but if you have more than for example 800 units, then your central AI cannot handle that much info, and therefor, all units have a reaction delay of 2-5 sec. That could be quite a pain in the ***, cause you cannot respond as quickly as the probably opposing nme, which has enough AI-cpu-power. The larger your units count is, the larger the delay is that units receive your instructions.
- Total Annihilation 2 Vault - http://www.icexuick.dagdief.nl/ta2/ -
I don't think the player should be intentionally penalized for building up a large force. What will make AI implode is simply lack of CPU power. Or coding limitations.
And I'm not sure about excluding buildings from the unit count. After all, TA had buildings that could do significant offensive damage, like Berthas, nuke silos, etc. If you could simply build as many of them as you wanted, it'd be kinda meh, don't you think?
I do agree on excluding things like walls though. Mainly because it takes so many of them to simply wall off an area, and it would use up your unit limit too quickly.
You've got a great point. I'd say only offensive/defensive structures should be part of the limit, however power plants, resources mines, factories, walls, etc. should not be.
Call me crazy
IDK... i think that only the big guns like berthas should count towards the limit otherwise people would never build LLTs and MLTS (whatever the SupCom equivalent is). But having global artillery nukes, and anti nukes on the limit would be resonable IMO
"IDK... i think that only the big guns like berthas should count towards the limit otherwise people would never build LLTs and MLTS (whatever the SupCom equivalent is). But having global artillery nukes, and anti nukes on the limit would be resonable IMO"
Huh? People never build LLTs and HLTs? (they're HLTs by the way). People in TA built plenty of everything even if everything counted toward the unit limit.
As for factories and resource buildings not counting toward the limit, that could potentially allow people to spam fusions+moho metal maker equivalents to bring their resource income to ludicrous levels, and then use it all to spam almost the whole unit cap's worth of offensive units.
I mean, it's kinda silly that you can build up so many resource buildings and factories yet not use up a single unit cap.
I aggree with what was stated above, keep the buildings as part of the unit count, except walls.
"War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left."
You've got a great point, though I actually like the idea of using my full unit limit to commit to offensive forces. That's just me though, as for gameplay and balance, you're probably right.
How about one unit limit snd one building limit? Separate from each other. There has to be a limit on both, but it is realy annoying when they affect each other. And walls should not be part of any limit (not that they were in TA. There they only counted to the limit while you built them. When they were up, they didnt count anymore.
I don't know if anyone else found this, but in TA, if you picked up a unit in an air transport, and told the transport to land on a carrier or air repair pad, it would DROP THE UNIT OFF ON THE PAD!!
All my carriers had radar jammers on the front of them...
Fosnez - CorePrime unit group
Perhaps two unit limits, one for defensive and production and another for damage dealing units. Raising the defense cap could be done by construct maintenance facilities, and as for raising the damage dealing unit cap, I'm not sure maybe giant Network Hubs or Routers that make the relaying of information to progressively larger forces easier.
Unit caps are made to deal with REAL limitations, ie more units require more memory, more graphics power, more CPU power, and higher internet connection speed. If there isn't a cap, then someone with a fast computer can make so many units that when they attack you with them your computer will bog down or crash. Or your connection won't be fast enough and you will have units jumping all over the place and other mayhem. There has to be a cap so that there can be a minumum system requirements specified, so that non of the above happens.
Besides, just from a programming standpoint there has to be a cap even if it is something utterly ridiculous, like 4294967296 (two to the 32nd power). ------------------- Erik
I just hope that the unit count is either unlimited or so high you never hit it.
We always hit the limit cap, and always think thats is not enough . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Vampires are immortal until they are killed."
I think the best option is to have a changeable unit limit (up to infinite) for each game as then you could change the emphasis of a game away from swarming and onto super units.
Also, being able to change the amount of each unit you could build would allow you to specify how the game unfolds... (As long as you can tell the restrictions in game so you don't try to build an army only to be told you've reached the limit for that unit.)
I completely agree. Maybe offensive buildings count as part of the unit limit but definately not like a unit builder building.
i agree too. PLEASE DON'T MAKE STRUCTURES COUNT TOWARDS THE UNIT LIMIT! everyone who reads this and agrees just send a reply to this post, cos this is something i really want in the game. maybe if we get enougth they'll take notice... like a petition or something. ------------------ knowledge is power
But some of then have to count, like turrets and nuclear pads, and the ones that can do damage. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Vampires are immortal until they are killed."
It seems to me that a unit limit is there for one of two reasons:
1. Limit the computational load in terms of AI and graphics performance. This is a valid concern and the amount to which you have to put a limit on the number of units is related to how much they impact performance. From first impressions, and based on the TA experience, it would appear that SC is going to be a game with a lot of graphic details and animation (applause) and so I'm willing to bet that even the buildings will need some amount number crunching. The only way I can think of mitigating this problem is by scaling back on the detail that is shown to the user and you zoom further out in your perspective, which in fact it appears they will be doing. From this point of view it may be inevitable that buildings will be included in the unit cap if there is one.
2. Artificially limit the number of a particular unit type that can be built for gameplay reasons. If you find yourself having to do this, then I would say that you have a balance problem. If having 1,000 anti-air towers makes your base impregnable, then rather than limit the number of AA towers you can build, another unit should be introduced that specializes in killing them safely and efficiently. For every tactic, there needs to be an effective counter.
PS: And if GPG is reading, please sign me up for the beta! I live close to the Kirkland office, so I'd love to come and pick it up in person
Adding some insight:
Number 1 is not only viable, but is quite necessary for performance reasons. Physics, AI and pathfinding code can't handle infinite numbers, it's not even a graphical issue (that actually could be overcome by an algorithm based on a sliding rule of dynamic tesselation altered by numbers of objects on visible screen). Buildings don't need to have physics, AI or pathfinding attached to them, that's the major difference why they could be excluded, they would only cost a few bytes of RAM is all. Buildings would be prermissible to be out of the loop for performance reasons. Ofcourse any structure that has offensive or defensive ability has to be within unit limits for performance reasons of physics, AI, pathfinding and to prevent spamming 1000's for major imbalance.
Number 2 would be a horrible implementation and the kind of balance problem a bull has when his rocky mountain oysters are removed.
ummm dont know if you guys have noticed, but from what i have heard in the previews the maps are gigantic, so i would suspect that the unit limit is going to be gigantic, if present at all (hey c&c generals didnt have a unit limit and noone ever complained about that) but yea if there is a limit on units two limits would be good, one for vehicles and another for buildings
In my opinion there should be no unit limit at all. The game should balance in such a way such that the unit count converges logarithmic instead of exponential.
Such a balance can be achieved by giving super units a lot bang for the buck. In TA powerful higher level units did not mean that lower level units were rendered useless, but there but it did certainly put a stop to their exponential growth.
Example: The swarming of skeeters (level 1 naval unit) on sea-maps is usually stopped by the more expensive pelicans (level2 kbots). Large amounts of skeets usually die in the process. The swarming of pelicans is put an end with crusaders. Without exponentially growing resources in TA this would result in a unit count converging to a limit.
As another remark: Hitting a unit limit in a game is really a bad thing. Games get stuck. Unit limits should never be reached. --------------------------------------------------- Total Annihilation Demo Recording Site
