Greetings!
We've been burning the midnight and well frankly the to 5am in the morning oil getting the Substrate ready for the beta. Having a blast doing it.
I thought I'd share with you some thoughts on where it is and pick your brains on some ideas.
Some basics:
- Substrate units tend to require energy to do their thing
By Doing their thing I assume you mean that they will have greater DPS/defensive capabilities at the cost of requiring energy regen from the nearby units?
- Substrate have a unit that provides nearby unit boosts of energy
I like this idea, it seems like it could provide for interesting tactical options, wherby when attacking a substrate player you try to focus down their energy giving units while the substrate player has to be careful about how they position units. This made me think of a possible future addition to the UI whereby you can give certain units in an army various positions (front, mid, rear) this would allow for this positioning (the advantage to front positioning would be great DPS for your up close units) while still not requiring intense micro on a small scale.
- Substrate units have no armor (which is proving quite difficult to balance). Instead, they have shields which regenerate.
This sounds kind of like the protoss but due to balance issues I have a feeling that eventually just like in starcraft they still might need some armor underneath the shielding.
The Tier 1 units
- Reaper. This is a mid-range beam weapon unit. It comes in a squad of 4 and they tend to focus fire on a single target until it's dead. Its primary weapon requires 25 energy. When it's fully charged, it's pretty tough. When it's depleted, it's defenseless (or at least, has a very slow rate of fire since energy recharges at 1 unit per second)
This sounds like a mix of a reaper and oracle from starcraft. It sounds like an interesting harrasment unit however I would like to try it personally before giving any ideas.
- Martyr. This is a short-ranged unit that you see as Neutrals. The shoot little balls of pain. They don't do a lot of damage but their weapon requires no energy.
Not too much to say, seems like a unit that you can mass in order to try and overwhelm an opponent early on but won't be so effective later as you have units with much better capabilities at the cost of energy. I can see this being a good quick responder as it doesn't require the capacitor nearby.
- Capacitor. It's unarmed but it provides energy to nearby units. Very heavily shielded.
I would suggest giving capacitors various options, slow/medium/fast with shield being strong/normal/weak to compensate. This would allow you to use capacitor in some fast reacting armies at the cost of lower defense. In order to prevent switching the modes right as the battle starts maybe make it so when you switch modes they have to cycle their shields and regen them.
- Sky Cleanser. Anti-Air unit with modest ground attack.
Not much to say here, an AA unit is needed.
The Tier 2 units:
- Avenger. Fires an endless stream of death until it runs out of energy. It will take out a tone of T1s if it can. If it runs out of energy its secondary guns don't leave it entirely defenseless.
This seems like a straight up upgrade to the reaper with more DPS and secondary guns? I would possibly change one or the other to make them more distinct in their purpose in the army.
- Mauler. This is an awesome unit, possibly too awesome. It has a medium range armor piercing 3 beam weapon that carves through Tier 2 and Tier 3 units provided it has energy to fire it. Its secondary weapons are similar in quality to what is on the Zeus (not bad but not great).
This sounds pretty cool, however I would like to see a T2 unit that instead of getting a straight DPS boost from energy gets more of a defensive boost instead. Energy is a pretty cool concept however I would like to see alot more variation in the way in which it is used vs just "keep your capacitors near for a massive DPS boost"
- Destructor. This unit can only attack buildings. It fires streams of nano-decompositors which get onto buildings and begin disintegrating them.
This is the kind of cool energy using unit I like, it has a cool purpose and pretty unique.
- Drone Hive. This is basically a carrier. It's good for area control but is relatively vulnerable without allies. On the other hand, unlike the Avenger and Mauler, it requires no energy.
Oh god do I love carrier esque units.. Probably my favorite starcraft unit of all time. I think it would be kind of neat if the Drones could serve a secondary purpose like supporting air units with a small stream of energy. Also, not a fan of the name as all the other unit have kind of neat names wheras the drone hive is basically named what it is. Perhaps just Hive?
- Unit 5. Right now, it's a fast, unarmed unit. It was originally going to be a heavy scout but we've decided it's redundant. So feel free to chime in on what you'd like.
Here I would like to see something like the spider tank from TA/the jump ability of reapers from starcraft, a light harrasment vehicle that isn't necessarily super fast but can scale terrain that is otherwise unscalable. As everything hovers I have no idea what it would look like though.
Since there is no separate air factory this could also be a good spot for a unit that is ground based but can use energy to transform into a flying gunship mode.
The Air Units:
- Searcher. This is a lightly armed scout unit. Probably the best harasser in the game since the Substrate can build it from their Assembly (they don't have a separate sky factory).
Anti ground only or anti ground/anti air?
- Dominator. This is a fairly good (though not as good as the Fury) air superiority unit. However, it has a decent ground attack that you can use to really punish someone who hasn't built up some defenses. (it won't take out factories but it can definitely take out engineers and extractors).
Hmm, this seems like it would be a better harrasser than the searcher if it can take out engineers and extractors easily and I'm assuming that it has a faster move speed due to being an air superiority type unit which by its nature must be able to respond quickly to incoming air attacks.
- Punisher. Not nearly as good as the Hades in terms of AOE but instead it sends out sniper type shots from the sky doing serious damage to particular enemies.
I like this, I would like to see it doing pretty substantial damage but at an energy cost which can be supplied by the drone hive.
The Tier 3 units:
- Controller. This is a big bulbus aircraft carrier that sends out ~100 attack drones at its enemies. It punishes players who aren't scouting as if you run into an area it is settled in, it'll wipe out that army. However, it's very vulnerable to ranged attacks.
Is this like a slightly longer range/much stronger drone hive? If so, I would like an ability added to it where it can deploy its drones remotely around one of your buildings to serve as a sort of mobile defensive unit. This would give it a little something extra which I think would be cool. I also think it would be neat for the drones to have to recharge by docking with the controller after firing for a bit in order to encourage more thought as to when to deploy them. Also I think that it is important for this unit to have very different looking drones than the Drone hive for distinctiveness on the battlefield.
- Savager. This is an awesome Assault unit. It is very vulnerable to little units (unlike the Controller) but it will plow through tier 2 units and is decent against buildings.
Sounds like a good standard T3 unit. I would like to see it have some small amount of AA as well.
- Devastator. This is the anti-T3 T3, It has a scary central weapon that focuses in on an enemy T3 and will, given enough time, obliterate it. Its other weapons are fairly decent but its primary purpose is to take out other T3s.
Awesome, I imagine this as a ship built around a giant gun which is always fun. For balance/strategy I think it would be cool that as the central weapon is charging/firing/and for a couple second after the energy requirements would drain the shields making it an easier target if not properly defended and/or supplied with additional energy.
So far none of the T3 units require any energy it seems? Maybe have a toggle where this one can switch between using/supplying energy in order to become a fearsome destroyer of T3 or a good way to keep your units juiced up late game. Not sure if this is the right unit for this but I would like to see energy become a critical component of all tiers.
So the Substrate have one more unit than the Post-Humans to choose from. The obvious difference is the building destroying unit which the PHC lacks. On the other hand, the Substrate are much weaker on mobile artillery (unless you count the Destructor which destroys buildings from afar). Instead, it has to content with its excellent air to ground air tech.
In some respects, they are easier to get going with than the PHC. Their shields recharge automatically and their defenses are, imo, substantially better.
However, they have a couple serious weaknesses that good players can exploit. First, their shields are susceptible to EMP which will wipe out their shields which is most of their "protection". Secondly, because their T1 units come out in bigger squads they use more logistics.
We are trying to stay away from the idea of having Unit 5 be a shield recharging unit - as tempting as that is (and in fact, we have the code for it already, we just don't have the unit we want to give it to yet).
The Substrate play much more sci-fi than the PHC. The PHC units feel familiar. The Substrate are substantially more advanced. It's all energy weapons and energy protection. No rockets. No ballistics (beyond shooting canisters filled with drones). No bullets.
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