Has there ever been an attempt to change Supcom FA to 2 tech levels instead of 3?

Actually there are 4 tech levels with the 4th being experimental.
It's possible in theory, but I doubt anyone will do that.

I think a reduction to 2 (3) tech levels would be great as it would eliminate a huge part of the hassle that teching up involves.

So I'm really curios to know if it has been tried?

Never seen it done, but I'd fuggin' play the **** out of a mod that did. I think it'd be awesome.

Hi,

i could easly add this support to DMS, 99% of the work is already done, id just need to add some code to remove/hide the tech slot, someone could then just make a lil mod blueprints mod to shift the existing units in hidden/removed slots into another slot.

It would work exactly the same as enhancement slots, we can already show/hide enhancement slots and enhancements with dms, i could easly expand this code to include tech slots.

There's balance considerations to make though. Which would take a lot of time testing and experimenting.

Hi,



Indeed.

That sounds great, although I'm probably too inexperienced to complete such a mod.

Anyway it would be great if you could include that in your mod, even if I can't manage it perhaps someone else will.

Then the question is how you go about it practically and as BM mentioned the balance.
I imagine that t2 basically could stay the same and then t3 could simply be included in the same tech level hence t3 units obviously would need either nerfing or cost increase for it to be balanced.

Perhaps some t2 unit or structure would fit better in t1 when t2 and t3 are merged though.

Why not make a blueprint changing mod that makes all TECH2 units TECH1 and everything beyond more advanced a TECH2 unit? Aside from balancing, this is literally a 10 minute mod.

I think it's better to either split up T2 and put about half in T1 or keep almost all T2 units in T2.

The effect of putting T2 in T1 would likely be a really small arsenal of units being used in late game, IMO it's better to have few units to chose from early game and more diversity later on. T2 units are IMO generally the most interesting and should there for be viable in late game.

All you would have to do is remove the T3 engineering suite from all ACUs and the T3 factories. It would be entirely trivial.

As mentioned before there would need to be some balance tweaks on top of that thought.

The fact that you don't have to pay the cost it takes to tech up to T3 have to be compensated. Without either nerfing or increasing the cost of T3 units the original T2 units would be completely obsolete.

Except if you just did what I said, the T3 units would not have to be balanced at all, since they wouldn't be in the game anymore. How are you going to build a T3 unit without a T3 factory?

there would still be balancing issues with just removing T3, as Experimentals would become extraordinarily over powered, as nothing save another T4. will be able to stop them. The problems combining tier 2 and 3 is that at which power level do you have them? If they are at current T2 levels then we still have a problem with T4, and if you put them at the current T3, then T1 armies become even more redundant then they do already when you finally tech up. It would be interesting though as T1 would last much longer.
Finally, you want to to keep in T3 resources, as without them making T4 we be a long and painful process - maybe make T3 resources built be commanders only?

Anyway, there will be many unseen implications and it will take a very long time to balance right.

But if you take out T3 resources, then getting a T4 comes at the cost of losing all your T1 and T2 production. That itself is a good balancing aspect.

That said, I would like to have seen SML/SMD remain in the game.

I just realized, without T3 there would be no omni.....


Stealthed and Cloaked Cybran ACU with microwave laser anyone?

How would you power such a thing?

And how would you get an Experimental without a T3 engineer or T3 ACU? There's nothing which can build it.