) I’ll start by mentioning that most of special abilities are overall well done and enjoyable, bringing profound change to warfare as they come along. That being said I can see a lot of room for improvement :
- All special abilities come with a flat +25% despite having some wide difference in power and use. Cost could be scaled depending on power of upgrade
- There is a huge gaps of power between abilities, ranging from close to useless, useful, powerful too OP. The thing is that once you get access to the OP one, you get very little incentive to build the less powerful ones, and there are certain upgrades I have never build. Not because I don't want them, but because I have other choice which are simply waaaay better. Unit with -50% upkeep, +1 vision range, + XP when victory would be lovely but I actually never get myself to build them… Scaling the cost would partly fix this, another solution leads me to my main grief against unit special abilities :
- You can only equip units with one special abilities. SMAC allowed 2 at one point in the tech tree and that made unit design way more flexible and fun. Enabling units to get 2 or even 3 special abilities would be awesome.
Here is a way this could be implemented :
Colonization era units get one improvement slots, mechs units era get 2, transcendence units gets 3 slots.
Colonization improvement costs one slot, mech era costs 2 slots, transcendence costs 3 slots.
Colonization improvement adds X% to cost of unit, mech era 2X%, Transcendence era 3X % (X will need to be figured out, perhaps 10%?)
This system would avoid super uber transcendence unit with several transcendence improvements while giving a lot of choices and flexibility in your unit creation. from cheap units with no improvement too very specialized units with more and more options/combinations opening up as you climb the tech tree.
- Some improvement are OP. One specifically is the one (can’t remember the name) which reduce damage to 0 if you successfully attack. I have won entire war against AI with virtually no losses with this improvement. Could be nerfed by reducing the damage by 50%, or give a flat +50% to unit while assaulting. I never had the opportunity to use the time dilatation one, which gives as much attacks as point of move, but I can imagine a very powerful combo with several instant nano repair operations deployed between attacks (Although that is smart playing, so not sure if should be nerfed)
- The game could benefit from more abilities options, the more the better as it would deepen options and game play. Here are a few thoughts :
City attack specialist, gives a +50% attack vs city or ignoring city defence (mecha or transcendence era)
Cover : Gives a flat protection % against special ops and artillery (late colonization era)
Xeno killer specialists : +25% against aliens units (early colonization era)
Engineers specialists : Ignore terrain movement malus or + 1 move (colonization era), unit may build roads and fortress
Guerrilla specialists : Provide double flanking bonus to other units
Police force : reduce town morale penalty by one when unit parked into city ( this would need to be carefully balanced, but I loved how you could used units in SMAC to reduce drones)
Guys, if you have anymore ideas, don’t hesitate proposing them here, IMO the more the better!
