Unit Design Questions

Gratuitous Tank Battles Beta feedback
1

I just finished the game as a defender on medium. Very much enjoying it so far, although it hasn’t completely sunk its hooks into me like GSB did I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

Figured that I’d post a short list of queries I have about designing units, as some aspects of the game still don’t seem totally clear to me. Again, I haven’t really managed to get the attacking side of things working yet so these are mostly from a defenders perspective. Apologies if some seem to be a bit ‘nooby’, but I think that’s a valid approach if the game is striving for accessibility, and I’m sure I’m not the only gamer who prefers intuitive gameplay to number-crunching.

  1. Why are turrets divided into ballistic / beam / missile etc when you can equip any weapon on them? If it’s just an aesthetic thing, then isn’t that already covered by the customisation options? It would seem to make more sense to either only allow each turret to equip the corresponding type of weapon, or to make the barrel graphic automatically change when a different weapon is equipped.

  2. Dual vs single turrets: again, is this purely aesthetic? (It seems to be).

  3. Larger turrets, naturally, have more HP and a longer deployment time than light ones. Is there any way to see these stats in the design screen?
    3b. On the same subject, would a ‘quick deploy’ augment be a nice addition for turrets?

  4. There’s another thread about this, but I still don’t seem able to save an edited version of the supply truck, despite reloading the game after saving my design. I now have three versions of the basic truck in my deployment box, so it seems to be saving the unit, just not the modifications.

  5. The weapon values for the SMG vs the Assault Rifle seem a little screwy to me. Shouldn’t the AR have a higher damage output? I’d think that would be the infantry weapon of choice vs heavy enemy units, while SMGs would be more useful against light targets.

  6. It wasn’t obvious at first that missiles had a 0% damage boost vs both shields and armour. Makes perfect sense, but without equipping the relevant augs the ‘effect vs shields / armour’ stat is hidden. Again, this is maybe a bit confusing for beginner players, especially as the modules in GTB lack the handy descriptions that GSB had.

  7. Finally, is there a way to permanently delete the shipped unit designs?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

2

1 + 2. I completely agree with these points. Allied command keeps sending me these pointless turret models, that do nothing in the game. Why would I want to redesign some of my turrets, just to alter the appearance of something that I already made? It’s such a wasted opportunity to create a wide variety of different turret types. Like a dual cannon that does more damage, but has less fire rate or range. Good for burst firing shields down. Or an extra light, very fast deploying turret, that has reduced health.

And how about some different soldier types? Like chunky ass genetically modified soldier and skinny conscript?

Units could be a bit more polarised than at the moment. I’d like to see, ridiculous, 2000 cost designs and very cheap, expendable, 150 cost designs. The players need more freedom to vary their designs.

3

I think part of the problem with having more varied unit costs is that we have other resources that are also very constraining. For defense units, we actually have a dire shortage of hardpoints to deploy turrets on, and on the attack the per-chassis supply counts are hampering (and the use of multiple chassis types is limited by the fact that the faster ones have their potential speed limited by running into the slower ones).

On the other hand, these limitations mean that it’s possible that lighter units are simply over-costed relative to heavier units. Even a cheaper light mech or light turret still costs the same space in an attack lane or turret hardpoint, and need to be cheap enough in terms of requisition to justify that consumption.

On the gripping hand, maybe we should have more lanes, to allow faster units to pass slower ones, and more turret hardpoints. Or, at least, maps allowing for such strategies.