EPTAlso... if the units look the same to you in TA/BAR I think that's because you're not familiar with the game. I can understand that they look similar visually, but in terms of capability there're very few units that act particularly similar. It's like saying dragoons hydralisks and marines are basically the same unit.
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Southlight
United States11761 Posts
Also... if the units look the same to you in TA/BAR I think that's because you're not familiar with the game. I can understand that they look similar visually, but in terms of capability there're very few units that act particularly similar. It's like saying dragoons hydralisks and marines are basically the same unit. | ||
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ZeroByte13
744 Posts
I played TA and SupCom quite a bit, they are great games and rightfully are 5th most important classic RTS family together with Blizzard, Westwood, Relics and AoE families. And units do differ of course - but Blizz RTS units differ much more, at least in my experience. The amount of diversity that Blizz RTS games share across ~40-50 units, TA/SupCom share across 170+. Marine vs Zealot or Marauder vs Stalker (same "positions", if such concept would even exist in SC2) feel significantly more different to me than any T1 units from TA. TA units of the same tier/role are different of course, and quite a bit, but not nearly as much in my experience. | ||
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Southlight
United States11761 Posts
That also goes top to bottom in terms of the hard->easy in dodging the projectiles. Each unit leads to a different opener direction and deals with each other (for mirrors/team matches) and their CORE counterparts in varying ways, including that the counterparts don't even necessarily have the same weapon/projectile archetype. | ||
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ZeroByte13
744 Posts
TA has 85 units per side, and in a late game when you have enough production capacity and money, you usually use a small part of your arsenal and basically stop using many if not most T1 units, don't you? That's what I noticed for myself, at least. But I'm not a great TA player at all, of course, so I might be wrong and maybe most of these 85 units are actually used by good players thoughout most of the game. I might be clueless here, and can only speak from my own experience and my friend's. Who btw loves TA, SupCom and B.A.R. much more than he loves SC2, but his feeling about faction/units uniqueness is more or less the same as mine. (though FAF did quite a bit of rebalance to make it better). Then again, I saw a guy claiming (seriously) that factions in AoE2 are more unique than factions in SC2, so beauty is in the eye of beholder, I guess. | ||
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Southlight
United States11761 Posts
BAR takes it further - as far as I can tell in the tournaments with "pro" players 80-90% of armies are comprised of T1 units... T2 tech happens relatively later in the game and generally creates specialized units that help strengthen or push a certain scenario (ie. hold a siege, break a siege, attempt a hail-mary bombardment, etc.). Edit: To add to that CORE Kbot thing, T2 Kbots were:
Not one of these are going to form the basis of your army late-game. Hence, the Storm and Thuds continuing to comprise the bulk of your army. | ||
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ZeroByte13
744 Posts
On April 21 2023 06:54 Southlight wrote: Which is how I'd balance T1 and T2, so I like this approach.T2 tech happens relatively later in the game and generally creates specialized units that help strengthen or push a certain scenario (ie. hold a siege, break a siege, attempt a hail-mary bombardment, etc.).. | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17197 Posts
On April 21 2023 06:54 Southlight wrote: It's a different type of game - but also BAR handles it better. With that said, ARM Kbots have a very distinct direction for facilitating expansion and skirmishing, which is never going to be a late-game centerpiece. Incidentally, the CORE Storm and Thud could hold their own late-game. The reason why comp TA players never really liked the transition to SupCom (and why stuff like Balanced TA remained popular) is because SupCom went much harder in terms of T2>T1, whereas TA T2 units tended to be more specialized. BAR takes it further - as far as I can tell in the tournaments with "pro" players 80-90% of armies are comprised of T1 units... T2 tech happens relatively later in the game and generally creates specialized units that help strengthen or push a certain scenario (ie. hold a siege, break a siege, attempt a hail-mary bombardment, etc.). Edit: To add to that CORE Kbot thing, T2 Kbots were:
Not one of these are going to form the basis of your army late-game. Hence, the Storm and Thuds continuing to comprise the bulk of your army. You forgot to mention that quite often cheap T1 units in BAR are being produced en-masse late game for several purposes: 1. creating a mobile patrol wall around your territory to warn you of potential flanking maneuvers 2. field saturation during bigger pushes so that enemy units that have powerful single-target shots need to be manually aimed as to not waste their shots against all the chaff 3. probing attacks to test enemy defenses, clear minefields etc. (I mean, if you manage to sneak even a few T1 units behind enemy lines and into their base they can wreck total havoc on their economy, especially in the later stages when you have massive chain-reactions when your eco gets blown up) From the games I've seen so far it's not uncommon for players to mass spam Ticks and such for those purposes. It even says so right on the main website: The Tick is a fast scout bot that's cheap to build and perfect for gathering intel on your enemy. Use a few of them to take out your opponents metal extractors at the start of a game. It's far from ideal for fighting other non-scout combat units, however, in large numbers a Tick swarm is an effective way to draw enemy fire or even take out unprotected expansions. | ||
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ShloobeR
Korea (South)3804 Posts
in Supcom for example, if you had scouted a building but then lose radar coverage (or it's jammed), you lose the ability to target units but your units know where the buildings are. in B.A.R, unless I'm just missing something very obvious (and this is totally possible after only playing like 5 games) your units just completely forget what buildings are or where they are. It's kind of just a weird (and annoying) design choice. Also units don't have a 'target ground' function? Again I'm probably missing something but I was looking for it on my Navy units but I just couldn't find one. | ||
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AmericanUmlaut
Germany2574 Posts
On April 24 2023 10:54 ShloobeR wrote: Also units don't have a 'target ground' function? Again I'm probably missing something but I was looking for it on my Navy units but I just couldn't find one. They do, it's just called "attack." Hit "A" and click anywhere, and your units will fire at that spot. | ||
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ShloobeR
Korea (South)3804 Posts
On April 24 2023 13:35 AmericanUmlaut wrote: They do, it's just called "attack." Hit "A" and click anywhere, and your units will fire at that spot. oh god really? I swear I tried that multiple times  I'll try again I guess | ||
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Manit0u
Poland17197 Posts
The devs are talking about some upgrades they're making and polishing the game. They're also planning to release it on Steam but there's still work to be done before that and it's quite an undertaking. Considering the state some games release on Steam I think it's very admirable for them to pursue such high quality goals as a team of basically just volunteers. https://www.beyondallreason.info/development/steam-release | ||
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PunkSkeleton2
Poland2 Posts
The unique things about BAR and other TA style games are macro, interface (this one is mostly BAR specific), moving shot and reclaim/ressurect. The resource flow is continuous not discrete. There are no workers bringing minerals, you build metal (mainly mines) and energy generating structures and they generate X amount of resource per second. When you build something you don't pay in advance - you pay continuously as the structure is being built. How fast you build depends on assigned build power (which is in fact 3rd resource which you must expand). The macro in BAR is not easy, maybe there's less clicking but certainly more thinking as you try to balance the 3 resources in the most efficient way. Add the fact that wind is usually the most cost efficient (depends on map) but changes during the game and you really have a puzzle to solve. The interface... Let me say that after I tried BAR I immediately considered StormGate to be obsolete. Uncapped camera movement, rotation and zoom-out (yes, you can zoom out so you see the entire maps and icons instead of units that are too small to see). Drag-move command that auto-split destination of your units. Grid build. Auto-repeat on factories. Working and easily assignable auto-grouping... Moving shot makes it that if some units sneak past defenses the damage can be catastrophic. It is impossible to catch them if your units are not faster. They don't have to stop when they destroy your mines, windmills etc. Units also leave wrecks when destroyed (unless there is a significant overkill but that does happen very often) which can be reclaimed using any construction units granting some metal back (I think it's 75% but I might be wrong) or resurrected with T1 reclaim/ressurection bots. Resurrection costs only 50% energy and 0 metal and does what the name suggests - you get the unit. Reclaim bots are not cheap and resurrection is rather slow but it is still just broken in my opinion. Fights over wreck fields often decide games. | ||
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Yurie
11688 Posts
They did some 160 player trial runs recently and it works somewhat decently, the lobby system having more issues than the game itself. 40vs40 actually works fine on a modern computer, surprised me in a RTS. Though even in 8vs8 you will hit stutters or FPS drops if you move 1k+ units at once. I think the game suffers from too many options when you come in. You have action queues, which you can add or remove things to if you know the hotkeys as just one example. Pages of options in settings, widgets for extra options and so on. Setting the default options and only showing the most commonly changed in the default views would probably be nice. No match making is both a pro and a con. Lobbies has the downside of causing a lot of delays on getting the games started and boosting the best player to kill opponents worst one faster than theirs kills yours. Which isn't really how you would normally play a team game but I find that challenge gives more variation than if everybody was at similar skill level. You have your part of the map, covering your weak player and supporting your strong player. Economy sharing from minute one works fine in random public lobbies but I honestly think it is a broken mechanic if it ever got competitive. Since higher tier units are more efficient than lower tier units it is strictly better to do "Archon" mode from SC2 than both players playing. Scaling that up you probably want 1 person going tech/economy per team in an optimal setup and building units for the entire team. Which would turn team games into something most RTS players would not enjoy since base building is part of the fun. | ||
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sophisticated
57 Posts
On February 15 2025 07:51 Yurie wrote: Scaling that up you probably want 1 person going tech/economy per team in an optimal setup and building units for the entire team. Which would turn team games into something most RTS players would not enjoy since base building is part of the fun. I don't play but have watched some youtubes and afaik this is pretty much how 8v8s are played on what are called role maps: edit: or do you mean, like only one guy builds literally everything? That doesn't seem likely, though again I don't play. | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10601 Posts
My main gripe is... Why play this over Supreme Commander FA? I just don't really see what this does really better? There seem to be more units on each tier than you would ever need or want? Subcom was a bit on the low side but this seems to go way too far? I just checked and one faction seems to have... 31 Bots, 22 vehicles, 20 flyers, 20 boats, 7 hovercrafts and ~30 towers/defenses?... The fuck? What i find most worrying is, that it seems to have the same issues as Subcom in 1on1/low player games with a big likelyhood of them just becoming T1 spam but somehow that issue seems to be even bigger and the macro part smaller? Please, sell it to me  | ||
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Yurie
11688 Posts
Basically it is a more modern engine with some different features and more modern graphics. It is still in development and thus will likely gain more there. It feels responsive but havn't done supreme commander in a while. Basically similar but feels fresh. A few of the maps are pretty much clones as well. So the major argument would be that it is a similar game with a hopefully better engine and feature set. | ||
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sophisticated
57 Posts
On February 17 2025 17:40 Velr wrote: still unsure about buying it... Please, sell it to me it's free and open-source software, doesn't cost you a dime. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23866 Posts
However like, why are there so many units? There’s tons and tons of overlap. IDK I feel it makes it much more daunting to a newcomer without really adding a ton of variety | ||
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Yurie
11688 Posts
A tier 1 plant needs to have some type of skirmishing fast unit, some main line fighter, anti defence and some type of uniqueness to separate it out. They seem to want to have options inside each factory as well, so you end up with 6-7 units multiplied over 5 sets of factories. Where something like the mainline bot fighter loses against the mainline vehicle fighter but is better at flanking. Differences are there but I would agree are often small. The also keep a ton of unique units in. The entire EMP concept could for example be dropped to simplify the game and remove a ton of units. But then you lose your unique units, your SC2 storm or similar option. In tier 2 I agree they try a bit too much. Often 10 units per factory since there aren't as many types of factories and they still want all the unique stuff in there. Overall I think that is a sign of collaborate development. People have their favorite stuff that doesn't get removed. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23866 Posts
On February 23 2025 22:45 Yurie wrote: The separate factories and then separate tiers multiply units. If that is a good core design can of course be discussed, but for each to be viable they need to cover some basic things. A tier 1 plant needs to have some type of skirmishing fast unit, some main line fighter, anti defence and some type of uniqueness to separate it out. They seem to want to have options inside each factory as well, so you end up with 6-7 units multiplied over 5 sets of factories. Where something like the mainline bot fighter loses against the mainline vehicle fighter but is better at flanking. Differences are there but I would agree are often small. The also keep a ton of unique units in. The entire EMP concept could for example be dropped to simplify the game and remove a ton of units. But then you lose your unique units, your SC2 storm or similar option. In tier 2 I agree they try a bit too much. Often 10 units per factory since there aren't as many types of factories and they still want all the unique stuff in there. Overall I think that is a sign of collaborate development. People have their favorite stuff that doesn't get removed. Yeah for sure, I think you even see a bit of that in Stormgate as well, albeit in that case it’s devs trying to please everyone, versus that kind of direct collaborative development. I’m still overall pretty positive about the game for sure, there’s a lot right that’s in there! I think you see a lot of the strengths of the open source/collab approach in other areas. A lot of the UI stuff is top-notch for one. Want a feature? Well request it, or even build it yourself and if it’s good it’ll end up in the game. I think you see the benefits there for sure. More stuff, provided it’s good and doesn’t interfere with other things, is generally gonna be a good thing. This doesn’t necessarily apply to mechanics or components like units. That said I will add the caveat that I’m a relative newbie to the TA/SC lineage of RTS, perhaps for veterans this is way less of an issue. I’m just quite used to relatively small rosters of very divergent units. | ||
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