#Give people what they actually want: more “upgrade” units

10 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

cobalt salmon
#

A common suggestion that gets thrown around here is that people want a way to carry their early-game units out into the mid-game and late-game, whether that be through a power spike at rank 6, additional ranks for all units, or some form of prestige levelling system for units. While no one of these ideas is terrible, I believe it misses the forest for the trees, somewhat. For the most part, what people are actually missing from units that they had to replace is the “feel” of that unit and whatever unique role it served on the battlefield.

To this end, what I think would be a better solution in the long term, and not involve having to introduce broad new mechanics or heavily rework old unit balance, is to eventually get to adding additional “upgrade” units that fill and improve upon the niche of a previous early-game unit.

For example, as the Salamander is an upgraded form of the Flame Trooper, so too should there be a heavier version of the Puma, an improved Arsonist, a Hornet with even more RNG to gamble on. What people want isn’t necessarily to keep using their Hunters forever, they want a unit that feels like a Hunter but doesn’t completely fall off the moment you leave the Boar Badlands.

Obviously, this comes at the natural labor cost related to introducing brand new units, but I think this solution more closely aligns with already existing design principles, doesn’t involve the introduction of any new mechanics nor any overhauls of current ones, and is just simply more interesting.

dawn urchin
#

Imo you can both introduce more units and give them newer sp levels

#

Though to be clear new sp levels can't increase exponentially, they must go up incrementally past level 6. I've gone through this at length in my threads of course

#

Also I don't think all of this comes at the same time. Ideally these are long term goals that can be added slowly over time

crisp rampart
#

🗣️🔥

cobalt salmon
#

I wasn’t meaning to suggest this as an all-at-once change, mind

#

Just what I feel is a generally better design philosophy

#

It’s better that units progress than they stagnate

elder onyx
#

I was just thinking about how to solve the same thing and the idea that I liked was to have a direct unit upgrade system. So for units of a similar feel/niche maybe troopers > hunters/junior officers > rangers > arctic troopers. As a radical rework maybe at R6 you can promote the whole unit class to the next higher tier or at R6 you have to opportunity to upgrade individual units to the next higher tier unit.

Another way to do this I thought about is to make the cost of training a “new” unit have the previous unit included, so it maybe it takes a commando as part of a training cost to make a veteran. Costs and things would have to be rebalanced for this surely.
In this system, it could be neat to have nano units be a sidegrade/alternative so using the trooper as an example again maybe they get the opportunity to be upgraded along the previous route OR they can be promoted into shock troopers > commandos > veterans.

Gives a reason to build a lot of units from the lower tiers so you have the material as you progress and lets them promote with you. The concept looks a little funnier for vehicles because going from mini to mega doesn’t make sense with different chassis and stuff but eh, it’s just an idea. Maybe you could emphasize the crew are getting a new tank in a story mission or something “takes a veteran crew to man a mg and the main gun or something.”