Im refering to have from 1 to 5 levels to the attack and defense upgrades for all races.
I believe it could be funnier.
With all due respect, do you just… blurt out the first thing that comes to your head without even thinking about it?
Secondly, There are 5 upgrades for all races.
Protoss has:
Ground weapons, Ground armour, Shields, Air weapons, Air armour.
Terran has:
Infantry Weapons, Infantry armour, Mech weapons, Mech/Sky armour, Sky weapons
Zerg has:
Melee weapons, range weapons, Ground carapace, Air weapons, Air carapace.
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That is it. I was wrong, i already changed it.
Okay, I understand what you’re getting at now. Poorly worded before but clearer now.
I would still like to see your thought process behind it - what effect do you think that these additional upgrades would have on gameplay?
That is a bad idea for multiple reasons.
- It enables units to scale far too well, both against units that haven’t been upgraded yet, and against structures. Some units like Carriers, Phoenixes, and Zerglings will literally double their damage over the course of the game.
- It will render static defense nearly useless in the late-game, since the damage of these structures may be decreased by as much as 5 against combat units, and there is no way to increase the damage of static defense to counteract that.
- Units that gain more than +1 damage per upgrade can scale to the point where they become problematic against other units, while units with +1 damage per upgrade fall behind. For instance, +5 weapon Tanks would one-shot +5 armor Marines regardless of their current health. Rebalancing these units for their high-end damage may also cause them to be useless early on.
- Compositions that mix units on different upgrades will become far too expensive to keep supporting in the late-game.
Weapon/Armor upgrades serve as a method to add some variety to unit interactions and advantages to teching over the course of a game, but it is a very bad idea to push them too far.
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A little bit more of crazyness and more variables to handle
C’mon man you gotta give us more than that otherwise it’s going to be dismissed outright. Gotta think things through.
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The midle game will be more diverse with more strategies options
How? You cant just say these things and make them true.
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That is exactly the opposite of what will happen. The extra costs of the 4th and 5th upgrades will prevent players from mixing units that require different upgrades. The costs of upgraded mixed armies will be too high for players to afford, and upgrades would make too much of a difference for units that fall behind to remain viable.
On average, you are looking at 725/725 extra resources for each upgrade path. The extra costs range from 550/550 up to 825/825 depending on the upgrade.
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Even though all other units will have their upgrades too!
Yes but the benefits will afford the costs.
Weapon and Armor upgrades dont scale evenly.
Who knows if one day someone with the power to make this kind of changes true actually do it?
That just means whichever playstyles and compositions can function with the least upgrade paths will become relatively more powerful.
To illustrate this point. Let’s assume that a Terran player sticks with ground mech (factory-only), and another player tries to mix and upgrade Bio, Siege Tanks, and air units.
The first player spends 2500/2500 on upgrades 2*(100+175+250+325+400).
The second player spends 6250/6250 on upgrades 5*(100+175+250+325+400). The first player saves 3750/3750 resources on upgrades. That is enough for 25 Siege Tanks, 12 Thors, or plenty of other stuff.
The first player also saves on production facilities and any other specialized upgrades that the second player’s playstyle requires, such as Stimpacks, Combat Shields, Concussive Shells, etc. If the first player adds Starport units (but not Bio), then they still save 2500/2500 compared to the Bio-Tank player, a definitive advantage that could very well cost the second player the game.
The first player also has a third advantage. They don’t need to build as many upgrade structures to research their upgrades on time.
That is absolutely false. There is no benefit to requiring more weapon/armor upgrades than the opponent. It is just a sunk cost that makes it harder to justify adding new units into existing compositions.
Rather, there is actually a reasonable case to be made that RTS games can be improved by removing weapon/armor upgrades altogether, since idoing so would make unit interactions more consistent and drastically easier to balance.
The “advantage” of weapon/armor upgrades, if you can call it that, is that upgrades allow a player to gain temporary advantages based on researching their upgrades before the opponent, rather than pumping out additional units. Overall, the upgrades either cancel out, or they benefit high burst units (Hellbats, Tanks, Immortals, etc), increasing those units’ relative strengths over the course of the game. The latter can actually be considered a problem because often the units’ initial damage can be too weak, and their maximum damage can be too high, whereas a game without units in a game without weapon/armor upgrades always perform exactly as designed.
You can easily open up the editor and create an extension mod with more upgrade levels. That should be very easy to figure out.
However, you will have the problems that we mentioned. Mixing units from different tech-paths and keeping them upgraded will become prohibitively expensive, making it harder for you to keep up with more specialized opponents.
Sometimes the upgrades of weapons and armor makes the advantage more decisive
How many possible different games could exist? With more upgrade levels just will be even more. The examples u gave are not the only way a game can take!
If there are the same armies of the same race and with same skills players but one have all max upgrades level and the other no, the first will have advantage.
Just one weapon/armor upgrade level is more than enough to enable players to gain a temporary advantage during a game. Three upgrade levels are excessive. Adding a 4th and 5th level on top of that makes mixed compositions so expensive that the player falls behind on units.
Age of Empires, Grey Goo, Star Wars Empire at War, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Total War, WarCraft, and a ton more.
Grey Goo is probably the best example of an RTS that sticks to basic fundamentals. The game is slow, methodical, and limits the benefits of micro; but its counter-system and unit designs are solid. That game also doesn’t have weapon/armor upgrades at all, but that results in units that pretty much always have the “correct” stats to fill in their role. Unfortunately, Grey Goo seems to have failed to remain relevant because it has terrible optimization, and most player prefer faster game speeds and units that are more responsive to micro.
I don’t hate it. Same concept as increasing the supply cap, which I also support. SC2 maxes happen too soon, and there aren’t enough ways to translate an economic advantage into a combat advantage.