Unit Massing

[pbguy1211]

A: i know he didnt play his best game. that was obvious.

 

B: since I'm an insomniac, time of day generally isn't an issue. set a date and time.

[saberhagen]

Vostok? Ego? When has he ever claimed to be a great player?

 

And pbguy is definitely a better player than me. Inter at least, although maybe past his best through lack of practice.

 

I can say that Froz is at least inter as I've seen him on the zone when he was in JMC, although I've never played with him (those games were too scary!).

 

Isn't it weird that everyone's stopped arguing about SWGB2 and started arguing about who's better at SWGB1?

[pbguy1211]

hehe... i was at my best in this game before my old hard drive died. then i didnt even bother playing on the zone because i'd lag games.... about awhile later i got my new and improved HD. and now i can BARELY find and RM game anywhere... sad times.

.... waits for b4me to come out... counts the seconds...

[Majin Boba Fett]

finding an rm on zone is nearly imposible. even in the RM room. its filled with scenarios like "save naboo". now really, who would want to save naboo....

[Admiral Vostok]

Froz, I fail to see how my ego is too big. The reason I'm not admitting I didn't play great in that game is because I pretty much played to the best of my abilities!

 

And perhaps if you'd told us your timezone when we were doing the signup process, you could have been accomodated. Tell us now and we'll see if we can change the times around to suit.

[pbguy1211]

Vostok would be even better if he'd use his war center for trooper upgrades!

He'll have like 20 heavy troopers with no armor or laser upgrades!

[Admiral Vostok]

I upgraded lasers didn't I? Ah well, who needs troopers when you've got a cloud of fighters...

 

 

 

 

Okay, you still need troopers with a cloud of fighters, I'm just making excuses...

[FroZticles]

I played a low inter game yesterday did pretty good except I got confused and mixed WC3 and SWGB hotkeys up so thats the only problem.....

 

AEST is my time zone... Australian Eastern Standard Time

 

I left for about 6 months came back and all the same scenarios are still around even the scenario players stopped making maps. RM is not bad if you come on at the right times but at around 4pm my time its a ghost town.

[Admiral Vostok]

Oh, I didn't know you were Australian!

 

Well it might be difficult to fit you in but I hope we can arrange things, because when I go back to Brisbane at the end of the year I still want to play!

 

I guess I should ask how late you'd be willing to stay up... or how early in the morning...

[Sithmaster_821]

Froz, I dont know when you started playing this game, but back when I played, I saw pbguy in inter+ games a lot (I guess it helps being in the same time zone:D)

[pbguy1211]

geez, these days i'll go into any rm that isnt rookies due to there being so few rm games out there.

[Admiral Vostok]

Getting back to the topic of the thread, perhaps one way to reduce massing of units that are not usually massed is to take the way Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War is going. Basically tanks are quite uber in the game - I read somewhere that the toughest tank in the game could survive for ten minutes with 100 of the most basic infantry units shooting at it (note there are anti-tank weapons for infantry though). The way they avoided making the game just turn into tank wars is that they have two separate population caps - one for infantry and one for support. Support includes tanks and walkers and other support stuff.

 

If the same analogy was used for the next Star Wars RTS, support would include Mechs and Aircraft, and possibly specialist units like Jedi, Droidekas, Bounty Hunters, possibly even mounted Troopers. This would focus the game more on masses of infantry, with the support playing a secondary (but still major) role.

[pbguy1211]

i played in a 2v2 game the other day. me and some dude who'd never played on the zone before against the rack somebody and some other guy. the other guy was my wing and i worked him enough in t2, not noticing the rack was building a fort and a shield outside my base before it was too late. so after pleading for my teammate to come outside of his walls and help, yes i said walls, he did. though i did get flushed out of my main base due to a double team. i was able to hold off rack and the other dude on rack's team wasn't that big of a threat, though he was still there and i hadnt been able to do much to him. eventually i had a few masters go and convert a lot of rack's base in the middle. we took down a big part of it. then i had to go back and work on the other guy. i pushed him back and reclaimed the area of my base he was building on. at this point i realized rack was going for my teammate now. so i sent MD's and repeaters into his base for defenses. when i looked up and saw a pile of red (my teammate) in the middle of the map. i swear to go he had near 100 repeaters there going around his base to sneak up on rack from behind. i started laughing seeing so many stupid gungans throwing those little balls. after we held off rack's army, rack quit. i then went in and finished off his teammate and that was it.

but seeing so many damned repeater gungans in an actual game was just too damned funny!

[Darth Windu]

Vostok - but that is the whole point of multiple pop caps. For example, in my template a Stormtrooper takes up one pop slot, whereas an AT-AT takes up 8. Therefore, you have to balance numbers against quality.

[lukeiamyourdad]

pbguy-Yeah it's funny to see those gungans repeaters. Fully upgraded they're actually good!

 

Windu- Not really. People will still be able to mass AT-ATs. Ever played StarCraft? Oh yeah, no you didn't. Anyway, the game has multiple pop slot for different units yet people still massed Battlecruisers(compare it to an AT-AT).

[Darth Windu]

Ah, but that is where tactics come into play. While AT-AT's are very powerful, they are slow and have no weapons to protect their rear's, and so if you can get some units in behind an AT-AT they can rip it to pieces with impunity. As a Rebel player, you could also send Airspeeders to take the AT-AT's down or B-wings to disable them and destroy them at your liesure.

[lukeiamyourdad]

Windu, seriously, this is about unit massing not if we can kill them or not. Realistically, did you ever see 50 AT-AT fighting on a battlefield? Though possible, we never saw that and still, they would have sent more AT-Ats down on Hoth.

 

I'm talking about a way to get rid of mech and aircraft massing because it detracts from realism.

[Admiral Vostok]

Yeah Windu, if the game doesn't explicitely rule out the possibility of doing something, then people will do it. So while, according to you, massed AT-ATs might not be the best tactic, people will still do it.

 

Having a seperate Support Population is, in my opinion, a great way to get around unrealistic unit combos in the game.

[lukeiamyourdad]

I agree. We'll have to see how it works out in Warhammer before knowing if it truly works.

 

However, I don't want to turn mechs and vehicles into super-uber units like in Warhammer and mech should still be numerous enough on the battlefield for it to be realistic.

[Darth Windu]

Vostok, luke - but i think massed units are a GOOD thing. Star Wars is all about epic battles, particually in Ep2, and this should be reflected in the game. Also, so what is we didnt see 50 AT-AT's on Hoth, just because you didnt see them doesnt mean they werent there, and also its a moot point anyway considering that we know the Empire could have that many in any one place.

 

With the unit pop slot thing, again, how is this any different to the system i am using? Large vehicles take up more slots than less powerful units. WOW! How innovative of them, its been done before.

[lukeiamyourdad]

No. When it's too much it's too much. Look at how the Rebels can simply mass their units. We really won't see the Rebels take an enemy head on with hundreds of troopers. We know their general tactics are more hit-and-fade strikes. Massing units like we do now detracts from realism.

 

As for 50 AT-AT, I dunno, doesn't look epic anymore, seriously not. Just looks like a huge bunch of waling masses shooting lasers at other walking masses.

[Admiral Vostok]

Originally posted by Darth Windu

Vostok, luke - but i think massed units are a GOOD thing. Star Wars is all about epic battles, particually in Ep2, and this should be reflected in the game.

But 50 Mechs does not make for an epic battle, hundreds of infantry do. The Battle of Geonosis is the most epic battle we've seen, but there was still at most 10 AT-TEs, 5 SPHA-Ts and 15 Gunships. It was the hundreds of Clone Troopers that made the battle feel "epic".

Also, so what is we didnt see 50 AT-AT's on Hoth, just because you didnt see them doesnt mean they werent there, and also its a moot point anyway considering that we know the Empire could have that many in any one place.

How do we know they could? The Executor is the only Super Star Destroyer in the fleet, and it could only muster 5 AT-ATs. This to me says the Empire would never have more than maybe 10 AT-ATs in a single conflict.

With the unit pop slot thing, again, how is this any different to the system i am using? Large vehicles take up more slots than less powerful units. WOW! How innovative of them, its been done before.

Let me procide an example to explain:

Your system (the same as StarCraft/AoM/most decent RTS)

You have a total population of 100. Stormtroopers cost 1 population. AT-ATs cost 10 population. 10 AT-ATs are more powerful than 100 Stormtroopers, so people will buy 10 AT-ATs.

 

Dawn of War's system

You have an infantry population of 70 and a support population of 30. Stormtroopers and AT-ATs cost the same as above. The most AT-ATs you can have in an army is 3, supporting 70 Stormtroopers. Far more realistic.

[saberhagen]

AAAAaaaarrggghhh!!!!

 

We're sinking back into our old ways aren't we?

 

Why did we only see 5 AT-ATs at Hoth? Probably because of the limits of time, money and above all technology - it just wouldn't have been feasible to put in any more.

 

There's also the fact that a film is first and foremost entertainment. ESB is not a documentary. Those 5 AT-ATs we saw were enough to get the point across. It would have been pretty boring and pointless to show us extended scenes of 50 AT-ATs doing lots of stuff.

 

Ultimately, a film is a representation of something. It doesn't necessarily show us every detail of everything, but that doesn't mean we should assume that nothing which appears in or is mentioned in the film cannot be deemed to "exist" (for want of a better word).

 

Damn, I've just earned the right to be cast out of the purists. I think the point I'm trying ot make is the old one about having to take certain liberties with the films in order to make a decent game, in the same way that films take liberties in order to make an entertaining film.

 

And Vostok, please show me the dictionary that defines "epic" as "pertaining to a battle wich involves large numbers of infantry but relatively few vehicles".

[FroZticles]

I see where both sides are coming from. I agree with Vostok on some fronts and Saber in others. Personally I would like to see a horde of vehicles. Being a strong believer in both the movies and EU I don't think I've ever heard of 50 AT-AT exist let alone fight in a battle all on once.

 

saber- When he uses the word epic in that context he means it will not be an epic battle thats lasts for more than 2 seconds because you just got your whole army blown away by those 50 AT-AT.

 

Vostok- This Damn of War system sounds good but I do not like limiting people, I think making extrememly slow build times can work. Also make them very expensive which is what I plan to do in my template. I hate pop limits altogether it limits the "epicness" you can have in a battle.

[Darth Windu]

Vostok-

1. Epic means large, not lots of infantry. Aside from that, as i said, in my system there would likely be lots of infantry because they are so versatile and can hide from mechs in forests. As for AT-AT's, if you dont have any support units for them, Rebel Rocket Troopers could sit behind them and attack unimpeded.

 

2. Please show me the spot in ESB where it is said that the Executor only carries 5 AT-AT's? Lets look at this logically, that ship is massive, and could easily hold 50 of the things, if not more.

 

3. THE SYSTEM ISNT ANY DIFFERENT! All it does is split up mech and infantry pop slots, which is purely cosmetic. 100 Stormtroopers may be less powerful than 10 AT-AT's, but they are a lot cheaper, more versatile and can easily defend themselves whereas AT-AT's are incredibly expensive and need other units to cover their flanks and rear.